ABSTRACT
The introduction of the concepts of the soul and of reality reminds us that the Greek doctrine of liberal education was sustained by certain philosophical and metaphysical views. The end of education in classical Greek times was the formation of the perfect citizen, because it was through the city state that the Greeks realised themselves. Now the fully developed political sense of the great Greek philosophers involved, as a necessary and essential element in the right ordering of the state, the notion of hierarchy: some were born to rule, others to be ruled. This chapter distinguishes some important elements which characterised the classical expositions of the doctrine of liberal education. Sustained by a metaphysic of man and a philosophy of the state, in both of which the notion of hierarchy plays a crucial role, the notion of liberal education comprises both a curriculum and an attitude of mind towards it, has termed its social tone or manner.
