A Philosophical Investigation of Ancient Greek Paideia as Presented in Plato’s Symposium
© 2005 Jason St. John Oliver Campbell
Introduction
Commentators of Plato’s Symposium rarely recognize the importance of archaia paideia
in understanding Socrates’ critique of the various educational models presented in the dialogue.1
I will show how Socrates contests these models by proposing that education consist of
philosophy. On this interpretation, ancient Greek pedagogy culminates in a philosophical
education. For this new form of education, the dialogical model supplants the traditional
practices of kléos and poetic mimēsis, inextricably bound to archaia paideia — as the traditional
form of education. Rather than offering an analysis of Plato’s Symposium in terms of Eros, I will
attempt to correlate each speaker within the dialogue with the educational model represented.
Thus, our investigation serves to define and criticize the various educational models presented in
the first five dialogues of Plato’s Symposium.
Phaedrus: The Homeric Epic
In Phaedrus’ speech, the techniques of epic poetry are employed in praising Love. Within
the Symposium, he represents the shortcomings of an education in the epic tradition. The hero, at
the core of Homeric epic, is distinguished from the gods, as “Homeric epics operate on two
planes, which form entirely separate worlds – the world of men and the world of gods”
(Trypanis, 1977, p. 79). Phaedrus begins his speech with the claim that Love is a great god
(178a7) and argues that there is no genealogy for the god of Love (178b). Unbegotten, the god of
Love serves as the “creative principle,” wherein “all our highest good” is derived (178b5-c2).
1 The term Old Education or Philosophy proper, also know as the Superior Argument, in contrast to New
Education or “sophistry”, also known as the inferior Argument, is fully explicated in Aristophanes’ Clouds. The
term Old Education is a translation of the Ancient Greek