Isocrates, and that originating with Socrates. For Isocrates, the value of education is
derived from a political doctrine, and thus education is considered to be a means to
attaining the conception of justice articulated in that doctrine. For Socrates, education has
its own, intrinsic value, and any attempt to subordinate education to any political doctrine
is unjustified. In his view, then, the degree to which education remains autonomous in a
regime is a measure of the justice of that regime. In other words, for Socrates and Plato
there is a proportional relation between the autonomy of education and the justice of the
regime; the more politicized education becomes, the less just the regime, and vice versa.
I will show that Socrates and Plato defend education as preparation for the first
stage of philosophic conversion by presenting it as a measure of, as opposed to a means
to, justice. The paper will be divided into two parts. First, I will show how the conflict
between philosophy and politics in the Apology is a conflict over education. Second, I
will show how Socrates (and Plato) defends education as a preparation for philosophy.
The “slander and envy” of the many
On the porch of the king, where Socrates has gone to receive his indictment,
Euthyphro claims that he and Socrates are both laughed at because of their respective
claims to have a special relation to the divine things; Socrates for his assertion that he is
visited by a daimonion, and Euthyphro for his self-proclaimed god-given ability to
predict the future (3c). Socrates draws out the distinction between his own activity and
Euthyphro’s in his reply:
My dear Euthyphro, being laughed at is perhaps no matter. For in fact the
Athenians, as it seems to me, do not much care about someone whom they
suppose to be clever, unless he is a skilful teacher of his own wisdom. But their
2
Convention