Reconceptualizing Plato’s Socrates at the Limit of Education

<p>Bridging the gap between interpretations of Third Way Platonic scholarship and phenomenological-ontological scholarship this book argues for a unique ontological-hermeneutic interpretation of Plato and Plato’s Socrates. <em>Reconceptualizing Plato’s Socrates at the Limit of Education</em> offers a re-reading of Plato and Plato’s Socrates in terms of interpreting the practice of education as care for the soul through the conceptual lenses of phenomenology philosophical hermeneutics and ontological inquiry. </p><p>Magrini contrasts his re-reading with the views of Plato and Plato’s Socrates that dominate contemporary education which for the most part emerge through the rigid and reductive categorization of Plato as both a realist and idealist in philosophical foundations texts (teacher education programs). This view also presents what he terms the questionable Socrates-as-teacher model which grounds such contemporary educational movements as the Paideia Project which claims to incorporate through a scripted-curriculum with Socratic lesson plans the so-called Socratic Method into the Common Core State Standards Curriculum as a technical skill that can be taught and learned as part of the students’ critical thinking skills. After a careful reading incorporating what might be termed a Third Way of reading Plato and Plato’s Socrates following scholars from the Continental tradition Magrini concludes that a so-called Socratic education would be nearly impossible to achieve and enact in the current educational milieu of standardization or neo-Taylorism (Social Efficiency). However despite this he argues in the affirmative that there is much educators can and must learn from this non-doctrinal re-reading and re-characterization of Plato and Plato’s Socrates.</p>