The Education of the Philosopher in Plato’s Republic
Studying one, two, or even three dimensions (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, respectively) may help a student negotiate a classroom, but it brings no one any nearer to contemplating Being itself, which is what Socrates claims these studies do.
The following extract suggests an alternative, but is too short to name it explicitly.
That Being Not Said
Socrates may insist at every step that they should lay down laws to teach these fields of study in such a way that the mind is provoked to think about ousia, but it is a fact that these studies do not inherently provoke the mind to rise above ephemeral matters. If these studies are to be taught in the way Socrates envisages, they require an additional element which would provoke the mind to think about ousia. It follows that, despite the inordinate amount of space devoted to these fields of study, they are no more or less important than other fields of study treated in a way that provokes thought about ousia.
Extract from Chapter 6, ‘The Digression’, in Ivor Ludlam (2014), Plato’s Republic as a Philosophical Drama on Doing Well, p. 194.
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