Teaching Philosophy

Volume 22, Issue 4, December 1999

Comic and Tragic Interlocutors and Socratic Method

Teaching is often framed in terms of performance: an orator stands before a crowd, attempting to capture attention and to deliver material prepared in advance. This analogy falls apart, however, when one considers the extent to which teaching is a dialogical endeavor. Looking to the Meno, the Symposium, and the Republic, this paper offers an interpretation of these texts which deepens our understanding of Plato’s theory of education. First, a Platonic view of education recommends a view of educators not as imparters of wisdom upon passive recipients, but as mediators of student growth. Second, the tragic and comic nature of the above Platonic dialogues suggests that the content of a lesson will always be inflected by the personal characters of the students and teacher. This has direct implications for how philosophers approach their task as teachers, the most notable being that the personal characters and classroom dynamics are factors which must be taken into account in the formulation and development of effective pedagogical methods.