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The Academy became the model for what a real university should be: a place of honest inquiry, moral formation, and resistance to every ideology, as thinkers from antiquity to Newman have affirmed.
I begin my Introduction to Philosophy course by reading Socrates’ defense of the philosophical way of life. Democratic Athens had found him guilty of corrupting the youth, of making the weaker argument defeat the stronger, of not believing in the gods of the city. These are serious charges, but as Plato later argued, they were sham charges designed to hide the shame of all those whose errors were revealed by the Socratic art of question and answer.
In our own day, Charlie Kirk inspired the wrath against him because, like Socrates, he challenged conventional wisdom through the power of public debate. (A wise person welcomes correction, but most of us resent it.)
Now at his trial, Socrates foretells that should the powers set against him succeed in killing him, they would only unleash dozens more Socrates. Go ahead and sentence me to death, he said, but in doing so, you won’t silence the philosophical voice of conscience: It will only grow louder and more persuasive.
What happened, however, was even more powerful than Socrates guessed. Whereas Socrates wandered about the marketplace and questioned people, Plato set down roots and established a school, called the “Academy,” which worked out answers — a move that was so significant for Western culture that to this day the name of his school has been equated with the highest enterprise of learning.
Continued below.
www.ncregister.com
I begin my Introduction to Philosophy course by reading Socrates’ defense of the philosophical way of life. Democratic Athens had found him guilty of corrupting the youth, of making the weaker argument defeat the stronger, of not believing in the gods of the city. These are serious charges, but as Plato later argued, they were sham charges designed to hide the shame of all those whose errors were revealed by the Socratic art of question and answer.
In our own day, Charlie Kirk inspired the wrath against him because, like Socrates, he challenged conventional wisdom through the power of public debate. (A wise person welcomes correction, but most of us resent it.)
Now at his trial, Socrates foretells that should the powers set against him succeed in killing him, they would only unleash dozens more Socrates. Go ahead and sentence me to death, he said, but in doing so, you won’t silence the philosophical voice of conscience: It will only grow louder and more persuasive.
What happened, however, was even more powerful than Socrates guessed. Whereas Socrates wandered about the marketplace and questioned people, Plato set down roots and established a school, called the “Academy,” which worked out answers — a move that was so significant for Western culture that to this day the name of his school has been equated with the highest enterprise of learning.
Continued below.
How Plato Turned Socrates’ Death Into a Blueprint for True Learning
The Academy became the model for what a real university should be: a place of honest inquiry, moral formation, and resistance to every ideology, as thinkers from antiquity to Newman have affirmed.
