ABSTRACT
In ancient Greece, Socrates and Plato understood and recognized the important connection between knowledge and the good life. It is no exaggeration to say that the relation between knowledge and the good life, in different ways (depending on how one understands both knowledge and the good life), has determined the direction of educational thought ever since. If the forming of reliable knowledge about the world is considered a precondition both for living well and for ensuring successful human coexistence, then it seems that these goals hinge, at least in part, on a good education based on a solid ethical foundation. In this sense, all education begins and ends in moral education. From this perspective, the very reason for striving to understand the world we live in better is so we may live better lives, both individually and collectively. Since conceptions of morality differ widely, however, it should come as no surprise that education comes in many different forms. It follows from this that one of the major challenges of any systematic account of education concerns how, more precisely, one is to conceive of the link between the good life of the individual and the establishing and sustaining of a flourishing community. This challenge has motivated radically different accounts of how to best conceive of the relationship between the teacher and the student and between the education of the individual and the shaping of society at large. It has also given rise to different views on how to best understand the relation between the acquisition of knowledge and our ability to live fulfilling lives in accordance with this knowledge.
