Education and the free society
Education and the free society

Summary/Abstract: three basic experiences in the history of education and by drawing some conclusions from them. I start, of course, from the premise that without freedom, no education is possib le. And let me defi ne ‘education,’ somewhat brutally, as the activity of sustaining, extending, and transmitting the culture of a civilisation. These three activities, of course, cannot be clearly distinguished: each involves the other. The fi rst moral and social philosopher was Socrates, who drew on a tradition that owed much to earlier thinkers, called, signifi cantly, ‘pre-Socratics.’ Socrates promoted a bracing scepticism about both gods and majorities, and the Athenian democracy put him to death for it in 399 BC. Those early dialogues in which Pla to represented Socrates are in themselves an excellent education in the logic of inquiry. In particular, Socrates insisted on demanding clarity about the object of discussion as the precondition for advancing understanding. In Socratic thought, philosophy consisted in a critical examination of the ideas we all use in making sense of the world we live in. It was a crucial element in this inquiry that we ought not to be impressed by the fact that everybody accepts the belief being examined. Truth was not a matter of counting votes. The enormous signifi cance of Socra tes is that his life and his teaching united to make him not only an exemplar but virtually a martyr in the cause of knowledge. His submission to the verdict of the Athenian people (rather than taking the opportunity to run away from Athens) was itself based on a point of logic – namely, that the very life one leads implies a principle of conduct. To belong entails submitting to the law.

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