Reading Plato S Dialogues To Enhance Learning And Inquiry

This scholarly volume proposes protreptic as a radically new way of reading Plato’s dialogues leading to enhanced student engagement in learning and inquiry. Through analysis of Platonic dialogues including Crito, Euthyphro, Meno, and Republic, the text highlights Socrates’ ways of fostering and encouraging self-examination and conscionable reflection. By focusing his work on Socrates’ use of protreptic, Marshall proposes a practical approach to reading Plato, illustrating how his writings can be used to enhance intrinsic motivation amongst students, and help them develop the thinking skills required for democratic and civic engagement. This engaging volume will be of interest to doctoral students, researchers, and scholars concerned with Plato’s dialogues, the philosophy of education, and ancient philosophy more broadly, as well as post-graduate students interested in moral and values education research.

In this volume, Cotton examines Plato's ideas about education and learning. With a particular focus on the experiences a learner must go through in developing philosophical understanding, the book argues that a reader's experience can be parallel in kind and value to that of the interlocutors we see conversing in the dialogues, in constituting learning. The study suggests that, just as Socratic conversation acts as a context for the interlocutors development of dialectical virtues, so the corpus of Plato's works presents an arena for readers to progress through the different stages of learning, providing them with the stimuli appropriate to their philosophical advancement at each point and encouraging them to take increasing responsibility for their own learning. Accordingly, the study proposes that the shape of the corpus, and the changes we observe between early, middle, and late dialogues, are best interpreted with reference to the changing needs of receivers at different stages of their philosophical development. Individual chapters focus on characterization, argumentation, structure and unity, plot, and myth as means by which the dialogues encourage their readers to engage in this productive and distinctive way.

Offers an alternative interpretation and defends a radically new view of Plato's method of argument in the early dialogues.

Rich in drama and humour, they include the controversial Ion, a debate on poetic inspiration; Laches, in which Socrates seeks to define bravery; and Euthydemus, which considers the relationship between philosophy and politics. Together, these dialogues provide a definitive portrait of the real Socrates and raise issues still keenly debated by philosophers, forming an incisive overview of Plato's philosophy.

This book develops for the readers Plato’s Socrates’ non-formalized “philosophical practice” of learning-through-questioning in the company of others. In doing so, the writer confronts Plato’s Socrates, in the words of John Dewey, as the “dramatic, restless, cooperatively inquiring philosopher" of the dialogues, whose view of education and learning is unique: (1) It is focused on actively pursuing a form of philosophical understanding irreducible to truth of a propositional nature, which defies “transfer” from practitioner to pupil; (2) It embraces the perennial “on-the-wayness” of education and learning in that to interrogate the virtues, or the “good life,” through the practice of the dialectic, is to continually renew the quest for a deeper understanding of things by returning to, reevaluating and modifying the questions originally posed regarding the “good life.” Indeed Socratic philosophy is a life of questioning those aspects of existence that are most question-worthy; and (3) It accepts that learning is a process guided and structured by dialectic inquiry, and is already immanent within and possible only because of the unfolding of the process itself, i.e., learning is not a goal that somehow stands outside the dialectic as its end product, which indicates erroneously that the method or practice is disposable. For learning occurs only through continued, sustained communal dialogue.

Moral education is an enduring concern for societies committed to the value of justice and the wellbeing of children. What kind of moral guidance do young people need to navigate the social world today? Which theories, perspectives, values, and ideals are best suited for the task? This volume offers educators insight into both the challenges and promises of moral education from a variety of ethical perspectives. It introduces and analyses several important developments in ethics and moral psychology and discusses how some key moral problems can be addressed in contemporary classrooms. In doing so, Moral Education in the 21st Century helps readers develop a deeper understanding of the complexities of helping young people grow into moral agents and ethical people. As such, researchers, students, and professionals in the fields of moral education, moral psychology, moral philosophy, ethics, educational theory, and philosophy of education will benefit from this volume.

In Plato's Apology, Socrates says he spent his life examining and questioning people on how best to live, while avowing that he himself knows nothing important. Elsewhere, however, for example in Plato's Republic, Plato's Socrates presents radical and grandiose theses. In this book Sandra Peterson offers a hypothesis which explains the puzzle of Socrates' two contrasting manners. She argues that the apparently confident doctrinal Socrates is in fact conducting the first step of an examination: by eliciting his interlocutors' reactions, his apparently doctrinal lectures reveal what his interlocutors believe is the best way to live. She tests her hypothesis by close reading of passages in the Theaetetus, Republic and Phaedo. Her provocative conclusion, that there is a single Socrates whose conception and practice of philosophy remain the same throughout the dialogues, will be of interest to a wide range of readers in ancient philosophy and classics.

These dialogues contain the core concepts of Platonic philosophy and serve as a good introduction to the legacy of Socrates and philosophy in the golden age of Greece. In the first of the dialogues Euthyphro and Socrates discuss and try to define allegiance. Euthyphro charges his father of murder of one of his workers; as Socrates is also being charged with impiety he hopes to learn a thing or two from Euthyphro. Apology is Plato's version of Socrates's speech at his trial in his own defense. Crito in the third dialogue discusses with Socrates the power of justice and offers to help Socrates escape from prison. In Meno, Socrates and Meno cover virtue, and whether or not this is something that can be taught and if there is a common virtue in everyone. And finally, Phaedo, who was present at Socrates's death, relates what happened in his final moments.