If Plato’s extended metaphor of the mind as depicted by the city rings true, every human mind has the capacity to train its Guardians, curb the appetitive part of the soul, and live on the grassy plains in the sun above the cave. It’s a question of true learning.

When Eva Brann describes a liberal education, she speaks from a lifetime of living as a guardian of liberal learning, someone whose vocation has been her entire life. With a razor-sharp mind and oceans of patience, she has ushered generation after generation of students down into Plato’s cave and up into the light, drawing them toward the pursuit of truth. She describes a liberal education as a “participatory activity in which learners on various levels, made effectively equal under the aspect of the magnitude of the task, together achieve a sort of intimate distance with each other — intimate in the closeness of the cooperation, distant by the exclusion of improper invasions of privacy; teaching affects the intellect, it does not finger the soul” (Brann, “Liberal Education”, 2). Brann’s approach to liberal education appears to greatly reflect both Plato’s Republic and Meno in many ways, are there significant differences in the intended outcome, the method of teaching, and the intended audience?

Plato establishes his model of education to train the Guardians in a thoroughgoing transformation:

Education isn’t… putting knowledge into souls that lack it, like putting sight into blind eyes…. [T]he power to learn is present in everyone’s soul and that the instrument with which each learns is like an eye that cannot be turned around from darkness to light without turning the whole body. This instrument cannot be turned around from that which is coming into being without turning the whole soul until it is able to study that which is and the brightest thing that is, namely, the one we call the good. Education is the craft concerned with doing this very thing this turning around, and with how the soul can most easily and effectively be made to do it. (Republic, VII, 518c-d, ed. John Cooper, Hackett, 1997)

While Brann suggests that the soul is not “fingered” in the discussions, Plato says that the soul is the object of the actions, indeed the prime object to be turned around and redirected by education.

The courses of study outlined in the Republic form the curriculum classical schools have emulated ever since: The trivium and the quadrivium: grammar, logic, and rhetoric, followed by arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. While the first three fields of study grant facility in the use of language and clarity of thought, the latter four offer a glimpse into the complexity of the created world which can be rendered more comprehensible through mathematical formulas that repeat themselves throughout creation. Although the quadrivium in the Republic concludes with astronomy to awaken the sense of wonder, the Liberal Arts curriculum at St. John’s College focuses on plane geometry and solid geometry, “which give a rational account of the cosmos, of well-ordered nature” (Brann, 12). These studies approach the music that takes the mind soaring to the original sense of the Music of the Spheres, “because the most spectacular such motions, seen in heavens, were thought to move in systems (Greek ‘harmonies’) and to generate heavenly consonances” (Brann, 12).

Harmony in the heavens has a counterpart in the harmony of the human soul. Plato recognized the important influence harmony has on human development: “The right kind of love is by nature the love of order and beauty that has been moderated by education in music and poetry” (Republic, III, 403a). He goes on to say, “Education in music and poetry are important because rhythm and harmony permeate the inner part of the soul more than anything else, affecting it most strongly and bringing it grace” (III, 401e). And indeed, the course of studies in liberal education Brann describes encompasses the study of music, tones, harmony, composition, and even singing.

What is the purpose of a liberal education? Here Plato and Brann appear to differ. In the model city of the Republic, the Guardians are given a specific kind of education to form them for their responsibilities protecting the city. Guardians must be philosophers and of rare character, selected early in life when they demonstrate exceptional abilities. The formation they receive is not only intellectual but moral. They must engage in “the most important subjects,” the acquisition of virtue: justice, moderation, courage, and wisdom (VI, 504e). Students must engage in hard work, physical training, listening, and inquiry. Professor Brann paints a very different picture in her depiction of a liberal education. “The prime object, its be-all and end-all, is happiness” (Brann, 3). It is emphatically neither to teach students to think — a patent impossibility — nor to make them ‘productive citizens’ — a dangerous wish until you know what they’ll produce…. [T]he four years conventionally assigned to such education should themselves be gloriously happy — always remembering that true happiness requires the heightening delimitation of occasional agony, confusion, and even despair”( Brann, 3). She goes on to delineate the intention of such an education starkly from the almost utilitarian understanding of the Guardian’s education that Plato presents. The “aim of Liberal Education is… not a utility, a means, but lived for its own sake. So liberal schooling must be a present experience of fulfillment, and the acquisition of the unwearying habit of thoughtful happiness” (Brann, 3). Here we see a very different appraisal of the purpose of such an education. The model of learning in the Republic is to eventually produce people who are capable of ruling the city. The education of the Guardians must be undertaken by people who are courageous, self-controlled, pious, and free — that they may be imitated for the good (Republic, III, 395c). For Plato, the purpose of education is to prepare to serve. For Brann, it is to experience life fully. The life of the mind is where meaning becomes clearest, honed on Great Books with unfading beauty. “Liberal learning should raise us out of ourselves. The Greek word for that condition is ekstasis. Such learning should be, on occasion, a soberly ecstatic experience” (Brann, 5).

These viewpoints of the purpose of a liberal education appear to be altogether different. In fact, Brann goes on to say that “this education….is carried on in a free spirit, neither constrained by utility nor by ideology” (Brann, 6). Plato’s model city in the Republic certainly appears to be constructed by an ideology of his own making. But that is not the purpose of liberal education engaged in by Professor Brann, who says explicitly, “liberal education is inherently not a kind of training for practical use” (Brann, 7). One of the marked differences between Plato and Brann is the explicitly political purpose of the education put forth in the Republic. Plato is laying out a blueprint for training future leaders of the city, whereas Eva Brann wants education to have nothing to do with political projects. “[E]ducation should not be preoccupied with current evils and their eradication. That project requires political engagement and usually involves ideology. Ideology, pre-packaged thinking, does not belong in a community of learning: political philosophy, yes; politics, no” (Brann, 4). Her discernment has been honed over generations of students asking the same questions again and again about how to improve the world. “Some human works are best learned by doing. Improving worldly conditions is not among these. A time of receptive learning should precede active intervention; first shape yourself, then society; in particular form views about what makes for human contentment, then interfere judiciously” (Brann, 4). So, we seem to have a gulf between the two in describing the purpose of liberal education. Even though the goals appear to be quite different, let us turn to the means of education both of these great thinkers engage in. How do they educate? What is their pedagogical method? The means of communication in liberal learning, both for Brann/St. John’s and Plato/Socrates, is primarily face-to-face conversation. It does seem that the style of conversation Socrates leads in his dialogues is often different than that which takes place in a Brann/St. John’s seminar. We see the Socratic style demonstrated in the Meno.

The conversation of the Meno ranges across questions of virtue, color, shape, rhetoric, geometry, immortality of the soul, learning, teaching, recollection and much more. Socrates spends much time in the dialogue detaching Meno from his superficial understanding of virtue. After a series of questions examining what virtue is, individual virtues, virtue in public affairs, the dialogue appears to return to where it began. Socrates again asks Meno what is virtue (Meno, 79b, Grube/Hackett)? It now appears that Socrates has accomplished the first goal of his process. He has guided Meno to the point where Meno must let go of his preconceived notions and stop repeating the opinions of others. Meno admits that:

I think you are bewitching and beguiling me… so that I am quite perplexed… you seem… to be like the broad torpedo fish, for it too makes anyone who comes close and touches it feel numb, and you now seem to have had that kind of effect on me, for both my mind and my tongue are numb…. (Meno, 80a)

Now Socrates appears to have an opening to guide Meno towards wisdom, or at least a truer understanding of what is at stake in seeking truth. He is bringing Meno to appreciate that acknowledging one’s ignorance is required before true learning may commence. Socrates has demonstrated that like understanding, real knowledge must be worked for and cannot be attained without a serious assessment of foundational assumptions. Socrates admits that this applies to himself:

Now if the torpedo fish is itself numb and so makes others numb, then I resemble it… for I myself do not have the answer when I perplex others, but I am more perplexed than anyone when I cause perplexity in others. (Meno, 80d)

To be perplexed, to admit we live in a perplexing world, seems to be at the heart of learning. This appears to be interwoven in Brann’s thought and that of Socrates. Wrestling with perplexity is an opportunity to think deeply. Seemingly a goal of the Meno is to show what is necessary for a person to free oneself from preconceptions and opinions so that a journey of discovery, reason, and learning may take place. Socrates offers to form a community of learning when he says: “I want to examine and seek together with you what it may be” (Meno, 80d). Socrates will not leave Meno alone to make this journey, if only Meno will join him. Brann would certainly agree with Socrates: “since the school is a community of learning; we mean to have our studies and our talk in common” (Brann, 16).

In Socrates’ examination of the slave boy Socrates appears to be the boy’s guide to reasoning, not just a partner in conversation. This examination allows Socrates to offer a further demonstration of the key elements of his “method.” He introduces the boy to the process of reasoning through a mathematical problem and brings him to the point of openly acknowledging that he does not know (when the boy previously thought he did). These two lessons parallel Socrates’ work with Meno earlier in the dialogue. Are we totally convinced that the slave boy “remembers” the information about the square? That he “remembers” what he has never been taught? It seems critical to Socrates that Meno accepts that what the slave boy is experiencing is related to the divine and immortality of the soul. Why?

Then if the truth about reality is always in our soul, the soul would be immortal so that you should always confidently try to seek out and recollect what you do not know at present—that is, what you do not recollect? I do not insist that my argument is right in all other respects, but I would contend at all costs both in word and deed as far as I could that we will be better men, braver and less idle, if we believe that one must search for the things one does not know, rather than if we believe that it is not possible to find out what we do not know and that we must not look for it. (Meno, 86b-c)

Socrates does not cease arguing for the importance of the soul in questions of virtue and learning. He suggests that virtue is “among the things existing in the soul.” (Meno, 87b) Socrates offers that the “qualities of the soul” include “moderation and justice, courage, intelligence, memory, munificence, and all such things” (Meno, 88a)? If these are the qualities of the soul then “one may say this about everything: all other human activities depend on the soul, and those of the soul itself depend on wisdom if they are to be good” (Meno, 88e). Reason and faith appear to be inseparable in the Meno. Socrates has worked to shake Meno down to his core. Then, after stripping Meno’s arrogance down to a torpedo fish induced numbness, Socrates proceeds to emphasize the immortality of the soul and its role in “remembrance.” Where does this “gift” come from?

But if we were right in the way in which we spoke and investigated in this whole discussion, virtue would be neither an inborn quality nor taught, but comes to those who possess it as a gift from the gods which is not accompanied by understanding…. (Meno, 99e)

In the Meno Socrates makes the case for the efficacy of reason and faith. Socrates answers Meno’s opening question by offering the path to virtue and wisdom. Socrates has much to teach us when it comes to admitting our ignorance, asking thoughtful questions, and using reason to better understand the world, and ourselves. In the Meno his methodology seems to have many similarities to Brann/St. John’s seminars with the striking difference that, in the Meno, Socrates is not only asking questions but often appears to be subtly offering answers.

In the Brann/St. John’s seminars, and that of similar institutions of liberal learning, the Tutor poses a thoughtful question that should elicit a number of possible answers and then sits back to let the participants wrestle with it, stepping in if the discussion derails or to pose a new question. The participants are left to wrestle with the question, sometimes correctly, often not so. But they wrestle together in an attempt to find the truth. As Dr. Brann explains, “The mode of togetherness fitting this education is conversation —not argument, debate, or discussion but ‘talking together taking turns’ (con-vers-ation), speaking and listening. Domination, winning, does not fit, but there is room for self-respect and pride such as comes from mutual attention and admiration” (Brann, 4-5). The rules of engagement are to listen well, remain civil at all times, and be willing to explain oneself. If one disagrees, do not become disagreeable. Tether one’s remarks to the text and treat the text charitably. Focus on the question “Is it true?” The Great Books are called so because they truly are great, inexhaustible treasures unfolding beauty with every encounter. Learning takes place in the dialectic with the text, and with one another in a discussion. Plato affirms this, when he writes in the Republic, “Reason grasps truth through the use of dialectic” (VI, 513c). The pursuit of truth, goodness and beauty ennobles the human soul and a shared conversation that genuinely seeks them has a value that transcends the moment. Plato continues, adding that “the form of the good is the most important thing to learn about and that it’s by their relation to it that just things and the others become useful and beneficial” (VI, 505e). Dialectic “has the power to awaken the best part of the soul and lead it upward to the study of the best among the things that are, just as before, the clearest thing in the body was led to the brightest thing in the bodily and visible realm” (VII, 532c). Thus, it is process of dialectic that has the transformative power to awaken the mind and lead it out of darkness into the light.

But in the process of learning how to discuss effectively, some may misuse the power or dialectic. Every Tutor has experienced that, and it is nothing new. Plato writes that “when young people get their first taste of arguments, they misuse it by treating it as a kind of game of contradiction. They imitate those who’ve refuted them by refuting others themselves, and, like puppies, they enjoy dragging and tearing those around them with their arguments” (VII, 539b). This is an egregious offense, in Plato’s eyes. If someone “continuously, strenuously, and exclusively devotes himself to participation in arguments” you must “make them go down into the cave again,” where “they will be tested to see whether they will remain steadfast.” How long must they remain in the cave? The answer is shockingly harsh. “Fifteen years” (VII, 540b). So here we have another marked difference. It would be impossible to enforce a fifteen-year penalty on students who abuse the art of dialectic to turn it into aggressive argumentation (although some would undoubtedly like to!).

One of the marked differences between the educational model in the Republic and a school or college devoted to liberal learning is the censorship that Plato imposed on literature: he banned the poets. Why did he do such a thing? The education of the Guardians is to foster the virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. It seems that the depiction of the gods given by Homer in the Iliad and The Odyssey renders them as petty, squabbling, inconsistent, self-seeking, and unreliable. In other words, they are depicted as inconstant as man is — lacking in prudence, frequently unjust, cowardly on occasion, and wildly intemperate. So, if the education of the Guardians is to preserve the noblest in their character and protect them from corruption, how could they be assured of pristine character if the poetry they read depicts divinity as corrupt in all these ways? If the moral compass cannot be oriented heavenward, then where should it seek true North? Plato’s solution for this is to simply banish the poets altogether, rather than attempt to correct the error in their works. The syllabus of St. John’s College, and similar institutions of liberal learning, includes all manner of disputation on the Good, the gods, the God, and the absence thereof. That does, in fact, leave students perplexed about the nature of Truth, but commitment to freedom of thought requires that conflicting voices be heard in the Great Conversation. “Johnnies come knowing nothing and they leave knowing that they know nothing,” remarked a friend of St. John’s but not a fan of their program (Brann, 7).

The aim of the program for Liberal Learning extends beyond forming the leaders of the ideal city. It is not to educate a narrow elite, but instead to lead any and all souls out of the Cave and into the light. It even acknowledges that some students may make (hopefully) temporary returns to the Cave. And it is based on the assumption that any and every mind has the capacity to leave the darkness. This was certainly the assumption of Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan when they first implemented the program now used at St. John’s. They truly hoped, along with Mortimer Adler, that such a Great Books education could free the minds of thousands of students, regardless of their prior academic training, and lead them all into the light. Or at least engage students in a thoughtful discussion of the tension between darkness and light.

Was their vision based on an a completely different view of man and his capabilities to learn? The answer may lie in the extended metaphor upon which Plato builds his ideal city. Is he truly laying out a blueprint for an authoritarian government? Or is Plato laying out an elaborate metaphor for self-governance by the enlightened mind, as he seems to indicate at the beginning of the Republic? In Book II, as he discusses the difficulty in considering justice and injustice in the individual, he proposes using a larger scale, like reading larger letters on a larger surface, by considering all things for a city instead. “So, if you’re willing, let’s first find out what sort of thing justice is in a city and afterwards look for it in the individual, observing the ways in which the smaller is similar to the larger” (II, 369a). In the rest of the book is Plato playing out this metaphor of the city to ascertain what justice is for the individual?

If that is true, then the discussion of the education of the Guardians applies not merely to the elite in the model city, but to every individual who has Guardians at work in his own mind and soul, helping him to discern wisely. Every soul has its own rational, appetitive, and spirited parts that must be kept in balance.  Every mind and soul need to learn to see clearly and weigh the appetites that may be attempting to overwhelm reason. Plato seems to indicate that this is the case when he writes:

One who is just does not allow any part of himself to do the work of another part or allow the various classes within him to meddle with each other. He regulates well what is really his own and rules himself. He puts himself in order, is his own friend, and harmonizes the three parts of himself like three limiting notes in a musical scale – high, low, and middle. He binds together those parts and any others there may be in between, and from having been many things he becomes entirely one moderate and harmonious (IV, 433e).

If this is indeed the case for every individual, Plato seems to be advocating this kind of education for every mind willing to learn. Every mind and soul that has lived in the cave of the mind needs to acknowledge its own blindness, deception, and short-sightedness. And every mind has the capacity to come out of the cave, come into the light of reason, and seek the transcendent truth.

Plato points us toward the possibility of choosing well one’s own destiny, at least as it regards the life of the mind, by ending the Republic with the myth of “that of a brave Pamphylian man called Er, the son of Armenias, who once died in a war” (X, 614b). In this story every soul is given the opportunity after death to choose the next form it will inhabit. For each soul, whether coming from the opening from Heaven or Earth, the “responsibility lies with the one who makes the choice” (X, 617e). Are Plato, Socrates, and Eva Brann messengers like Er? If they are this may be their message of liberal learning:

if someone pursues philosophy in a sound manner when he comes to live here on earth and if the lottery doesn’t make him one of the last to choose, then, given what Er has reported about the next world, it looks as though not only will he be happy here, but his journey from here to there and back again won’t be along the rough underground path, but along the smooth heavenly one. (X, 619d-e)

And that is indeed the view of education embodied by St. John’s and put into practice by Eva Brann in her long and distinguished career of leading souls out of the cave and into the light. This is what education does. “Education is derived from the Latin ‘continuative’ (duration-indicating) verb educate, ‘to keep on leading out” presumably from the dark cave of ignorance” (Brann, 6). The tutor may serve as Vergil to the student’s Dante, leading through the Inferno upwards through the Purgatorio, toward Paradiso. The learning across four years of curricula encompasses “texts, traditions, and conceptions,… the treasures — and tragedies — of one’s civilization” (Brann, 6). This liberal education “is carried on in a free spirit, neither constrained by utility nor by ideology” (Brann, 6).

If Plato’s extended metaphor of the mind as depicted by the city rings true, every human mind has the capacity to train its Guardians, curb the appetitive part of the soul, and live on the grassy plains in the sun above the cave. It’s a question of true learning.

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