Volume 1, No. 2:

In Praise of Ignorance
Liberal Education and Literature
Eurocentrism and Pluralism
Socrates and the Homeric Gods
Freedom and the Supersensible
On Private and Public Values
The Epistemology of Panic

On Private and Public Values:
Reconciling Socratic and Platonic Conceptions of Education

by Predrag Cicovacki

The words ‘public’ and ‘private’ stand in opposition to each other. What is publicus pertains to the community as a whole, and what is privatus pertains to an individual. While the public is open to common use or benefit, what is private is closed to the public; it may indeed be quite secret. What is public is sanctioned by all or most people, and what is private is controlled by an individual.

Since the terms ‘public’ and ‘private’ are opposed, it is to be expected that public and private values are so as well. The goal of this paper is to analyze whether this opposition creates a genuine or a merely apparent conflict, and to see how this conflict can be resolved. More specifically, I will study the tension that seems to exist between the conceptions of education expressed in Plato’s early dialogues (referred to as Socrates’ conception of education) and those set forth in Plato’s Republic (referred to as Plato’s conception of education).

In book II of the Republic Plato argued that an important feature of education consists in imposing a certain set of values upon the youth. Plato saw education as a process through which publicly accepted values were integrated and internalized. To a significant degree this process occurs through mimesis (imitation) which makes it important to attend to both what these values are and to how they are taught. In this context, Plato criticized Homer, Hesiod, and other poets for telling false stories of the Gods (and heroes) and for not holding these beings accountable to a higher standard of justice. When children exposed to this kind of poetry grow up, they "externalize" and perpetuate the same inappropriate public values. (This is why Glaukon and many others suspected that injustice was preferable to justice.) Adult citizens shape their polis in accordance with the values they believe in, i.e., the values they internalized as children. There is close reciprocity between education and culture. The values that are imposed upon the youth are those which they, as adults, will find to be vital for the preservation and further development of that culture. It follows that the values to be instilled in the youth should be decided upon by some public authority.

By contrast, in the early Socratic dialogues, in Plato’s portrayal of Socrates as a man and a teacher, the emphasis is on another feature of education which appears to be in conflict with Plato’s conception of education in the Republic. Socrates frequently argued that personal growth is a central feature of the educational process. The ideal of paideia for Socrates was a mature human being. The process of becoming a mature human involves developing a capacity for independent thought. It involves an ability to question authority and publicly accepted values; a matured individual can make his own way in life, and contribute actively to his community and culture.

The clash between these conflicting models of education poses a dilemma. The polis has to impose a certain set of publicly accepted values in education, and yet this very education, the process of nurturing a mature human being, seeks to instill an ability (and freedom) to question authorities and publicly accepted values. How could this apparent conflict be resolved?

There seem to be four possible responses (i) Denying that one of these goals is essential for education. (ii) Admitting that they are both essential and somehow reconciling them. (iii) Showing how their coexistence may lead to some new qualitative integration. (iv) Revealing that these are not two independent features of education but only two different aspects of the same thing.

Let us consider each of the options separately. There is some textual support for the thesis that Socrates and Plato each believed that only one of the mentioned features is essential for education, and that the other could (should?) be eliminated. Moreover, it may seem that Socrates and Plato disagreed as to what is essential to education. For instance, Socrates said very little about accepting traditional values and upheld the individual as the center of moral authority. He encouraged his friends to challenge accepted values and authorities. Indeed, this was what brought about his trial and execution. Socrates was found guilty for not believing in the deities celebrated by the polis, for introducing new deities, and for corrupting the youth.

By contrast, in the Republic Plato said very little about a possibility (or significance) of an individual citizen challenging the structure and the accepted values of his ideal polis. If we read Plato’s Republic literally, this perfect polis sets out to be totalitarian! Individual citizens were forced to internalize its values and behave in accordance with them, but not to challenge them.

Although such an interpretation is possible, I believe that it misrepresents the views of both Socrates and Plato. While in the Apology Socrates stands against publicly accepted values, we see in the Crito that public values must in some cases override private preferences. Socrates did not think it just to put his own private interests and preferences above the law itself. Hence the Apology and the Crito deal with two different conceptions of public and private values. In one case public values are identified with what the majority accepts as valuable, and in the other with what is official and legal. Similarly, in one case private values are identified with the peculiar and individual preferences of every human being, and in the other with what is intuited as proper for every human being. The lesson seems to be that when a private citizen’s awareness of what is good for every human being is at variance with the popular misconceptions of the majority, justice requires that he should oppose the majority. Yet when purely personal interests or preferences stand against the laws (sanctioned by the gods), justice is on the side of the laws.

Plato obviously wanted the citizens of his polis to accept and defend a system of values most conducive to the well-being of the entire polis. Yet he did not want them to accept that value system because it was simply imposed on them. Through an appropriate educational process, the citizens would ideally come to accept their value system because they come to realize (internally) that it is the best. This process had to include a fair deal of questioning and challenging. Indeed, the very fact that dialectic is called the highest point of the educational process strongly suggests that that even the most fundamental assumptions and values could be challenged (cf. Republic, 533cd).

Hence, I do not believe that Socrates and Plato wanted to deny either that paideia was conducted from the point of view of certain publicly accepted values, or that education essentially involved questioning and challenging. Both of these features had to be present in education. The only question has to do with how their coexistence is possible.

The Athenian democracy of Classical times provided one answer to this question. It presented a model, a possible compromise, between a set of publicly accepted values and the freedom to challenge and question these values. The key for an understanding of this compromise is in the role which laws played. The Athenian citizens believed that their laws were the foundation of society insofar as law embodied ancient traditions and gave a precise form to time-honored custom. The Greeks believed that the rule of law was essential. Their laws were not too irksome, they did not interfere with their freedom. The Assembly was the place where every issue could be openly discussed and every public figure could be criticized or praised. Why didn’t this compromise between publicly values and individual liberty satisfy Socrates and Plato?

Socrates found out that freedom of speech did not prevent shallowness, misunderstandings, and misconceptions in the views of his fellow citizens concerning the most important questions of human life. It may even be that freedom of speech covered up carelessness about the real issues, and a deep incoherence concerning the traditionally accepted cardinal virtues. What is romantically imagined, with less than perfect hindsight, as a liberal political regime was a chaotic mess to Socrates and Plato. This less sanguine perspective is confirmed by the events surrounding the trial and execution of Socrates. While it is likely that many Athenians saw this trial as an unfortunate and tragic event, Plato concluded from it that the Athenian society suffered "from an incurable disease - incurable, that is, unless a reform of quite extraordinary proportions could succeed."

This reform began with Socrates. Through tireless examination of his fellow citizens he found evidence of their moral confusion. Its source lay in misapprehensions and deceptions about the true nature of traditional values. Besides carelessness and ignorance in the behavior and value judgments of his fellow citizens, Socrates noticed an exaggerated preoccupation with worldly power, bodily pleasures and material possessions. Socrates himself argued that what is good for a human being could not be determined by simply following one’s immediate impulses and desires. Unlike his fellow citizens, Socrates viewed the question ‘what is good for me?’ not as what seems pleasurable at a given moment to a particular individual, but according to what is best for me as a human being. Socrates insisted on seeking an arete for man qua man.

No definite answer to this question was ever offered by Socrates. Quite the contrary. Socrates professed his ignorance and tried to confuse and perplex his interlocutors by showing that they could not answer this all important question either. In doing so, Socrates seemingly (and temporarily) even intensified a conflict between private and public values. He did so deliberately because he realized that a state of perplexity and an awareness of ignorance are necessary steps toward acquiring real insights and knowledge. What makes life worth living according to Socrates is, however, neither a discovery nor a realization of any definite doctrine. What makes life worth living is not the result of examination, not the success of examination, but the examination itself. More precisely, the value of life consists not in the achievement of a certain goal but in a proper orientation of character – a certain attitude toward one’s life. It is an attitude of openness, of questioning and inquiring, of trying to avoid self-deception. This is the attentive stance that a human should assume when facing conflicts of private and public values. It is how we mature.

From the point of view of Plato’s Republic, the Socratic reform was headed in the right direction, but it was not sufficiently radical. Socrates correctly insisted on the universal aspect of all values, including private values; questions about the goodness and excellence of a human being can only be raised in the broader context of goodness and excellence qua human being. Socrates also correctly emphasized the communal aspect of all values, including private values; the milieu in which values are defined and in which they can be exercised is the polis. (Man is by nature a political animal.) Yet for Socrates the communal aspect of values made individual virtue abrasive and non-cooperative. Socrates saw the highest value of human being in the ability and strength to be an individual, despite the obstacles posed by society.

Plato tried to show in the Republic that this view is correct only when individuals live in an unhealthy and imperfect society. The reforms Socrates initiated should not be limited to individuals but must include the entire polis. Plato thought that, once such a radical reform is completed, the relationship of private and public values gets a different foundation and can be seen in a new way. In a healthy polis where justice rules, no fundamental conflict between private and public values would arise. In Plato’s polis, there would be no conflict between an individual as a person and as a citizen, for his interests as person and as citizen would be identical.

In the ideal polis there would be cooperation rather than an abrasive opposition of private and public values. This does not mean that problems would never arise. It is impossible to prevent differences; no matter how healthy and just individuals and society become, the health and justice of a community cannot be known by counting conflicts. It should rather be assessed by how it deals with conflict.

In this point Plato not only followed Socrates but also was able to give Socrates’ idea of growth a broader and deeper application. It was not accidental that Plato insisted on a close analogy between the soul of an individual and the structure of society, i.e., between virtue in an individual and justice in society. Neither was it coincidental that Plato thought of his polis in terms of an organism (Republic, 462d). The inner harmony of an organism, i.e., its health and justice, is not imposed once and forever. On the contrary, an inner harmony of an organism can always be disturbed, and would have to be restored again. The proper healing of a wound requires change and adaptation, it requires inner growth not continual external correction. No matter how healthy an individual is and no matter how well organized society is, its life requires continual growth and reintegration. Such an educational process almost inevitably generates conflicts and problems. These conflicts are initiated in the educational process with the idea that old and unnecessary tissues must be detected and rejected, so that new and healthier cells may replace them. Only through the growth of individuals can society flourish. While spiritual death certainly results from the inability to grow, the slower effects of physical death are surely not far behind.