ABSTRACT
This book in the Curriculum Studies Series is a close reading of Plato’s dialogues, incorporating etymology with the goal of elucidating a unique understanding of “Socratic learning” in terms of what I refer to as a “Socratic curriculum” ( currere ) inspired by phenomenology and philosophical hermeneutics. The interpretation emerges from an ontological perspective and develops a notion of learning or Being-educated as finite human transcendence. I embrace the position that all forms of human learning are limited, and I defend this claim by showing that all human endeavors, intellectual, educative, or otherwise, unfold within the ontological context ( human condition ) structured and bounded by finitude . Typically, scholars reading Plato’s Socrates as educator focus on either the programmatic view of education that Plato gives in both the Republic and Laws, or they attempt a scholarly defense of Socrates as a teacher in terms of a non-traditional and unique pedagogue. Although my reading is focused primarily on the process of learning occurring in the elenchus-dialectic-the unfolding of the Socratic curriculum ( currere ) or the instantiation of Being-educated-I include interpretations espousing the Socrates-as-teacher model against which I mount a substantial critique. The view of Socrates that emerges from my reading is “non-doctrinal” or “non-traditionalist,” which indicates that this interpretation is not a treatise on Plato’s Socrates’s view of education in relation to a systematic and formalized metaphysics, epistemology, or axiology.
