On the Socratic Education
An Introduction to the Shorter Platonic Dialogues
By (author) Christopher Bruell
Publication date:
03 June 1999Length of book:
240 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersDimensions:
236x154mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9780847694013
Can the education which so many search for today on our college campuses be found in the works of a past author? On the Socratic Education: An Introduction to the Shorter Platonic Dialogues uncovers the education that Socrates sought on his own behalf and, in so doing, made available to others. Sixteen dialogues are discussed, each considered on its own, but also placed within the context of Plato's account of the Socratic quest. The aim of the book is to make Socrates' investigation and resolution of the questions that still concern us as human beings more accessible to serious contemporary readers.
This outstanding work provides the most penetrating analysis I have yet encountered of the precise goals and methods of that educational activity in which Socrates so fully and fruitfully engaged for the benefit of himself and others. The author proceeds through an interpretation, tightly and economically focused on this theme, of the shorter Platonic dialogues—many of which have never before received so serious and so illuminating an exegesis. . . . The scholarship is meticulous, the contribution—to the fields of Plato studies, educational theory, classical philosophy, and political philosophy—truly major.