ABSTRACT
Isocrates is one of the most remarkable and influential figures in the history of human thought. The influence of his ideas in the history of historical writing, rhetoric, the visual arts, music, religion and theology, political science, philosophy and, above all, education in Europe, North America, North Africa and the Middle East are well established and widely known outside Educational Studies. P.H. Hirst assumed that educational philosophy must have originated with the canonical Athenian philosophers, and so asserted that liberal education and the liberal arts originate with Aristotle. An articulation of the logical structure of formal education is neither exhaustive nor prescriptive of the whole of educational philosophy, policy and practice. Normative methodology in education is inseparable from the question of whether education is a subordinate enterprise or an autonomous enterprise. The political doctrines and educational prescriptions differ but the doctrinal conditional deduction (DCD) normative method is identical in all cases.
