Plato

Aristotle

Aristotle was Plato's student and later a critical successor, developing his own philosophy while deeply respecting and revising Plato's ideas.

Socrates

Plato was Socrates' devoted student, recording and expanding upon Socratic dialogues as the foundation of his own philosophy.

Rousseau

Rousseau drew on Platonic ideas about education and the ideal state, adapting them to his own theories of natural development.

The Democratic Conception in Education

Dewey discusses Plato's educational philosophy, noting that Plato saw education as discovering aptitudes and training them for social use, but limited his view to a fixed number of classes and capacities.

The Implications of Human Association

Dewey references Plato's definition of a slave as one who accepts from another the purposes that control his conduct, using it to critique situations where workers lack understanding or personal interest in their socially serviceable activities.

III: The Platonic Educational Philosophy

Plato's educational philosophy is the central focus; he is credited with first consciously teaching that education should discover and train natural aptitudes for social use, though his views were limited by a static, class-based conception of individuality.

The “Individualistic” Ideal of the Eighteenth Century

Plato exercised a great influence upon Rousseau, linking the eighteenth-century ideal of nature to earlier philosophical traditions.

Education as National and as Social

Referenced for his ideal of equating individual realization with social coherence, but constrained by a stratified class society.

Summary: The Democratic Ideal in Education

Plato's philosophy is critiqued for making a class rather than the individual the social unit, compromising an otherwise formally similar democratic ideal.

III: Applications in Education

Referenced indirectly through the discussion of fixed, externally imposed aims that neglect individual capacities, contrasting with Dewey's emphasis on democratic and intrinsic growth.

Natural Development and Social Efficiency as Aims

Referenced in the context of industrial education, where Dewey warns of an unconscious revival of the defects of the Platonic scheme without its enlightened method of selection.

Social Efficiency as Aim

Dewey references Plato's scheme of education, noting that modern industrial education risks an unconscious revival of its defects without its enlightened method of selection.

Experience and Thinking

Referenced indirectly through the Greek dilemma about learning: either we already know or we don't, making learning impossible—a formal logical puzzle that Dewey critiques.

Play and Work in the Curriculum

Cited for his analysis of knowledge based on crafts like cobblers and carpenters, illustrating the Greek unity of art and science.

The Place of Active Occupations in Education

Dewey references Plato's analysis of knowledge based on the arts of cobblers, carpenters, and musicians, illustrating the unity of art and science in early Greek thought.

XIX: Labor and Leisure

Plato is mentioned in the context of deprecating the learning of geometry and arithmetic for practical ends, reflecting the ancient Greek view of liberal versus utilitarian education.

Summary

Referenced implicitly through the Greek origins of the division between liberal and practical education.

XX: Intellectual and Practical Studies

Plato is cited for his identification of experience with practical concerns and reason with higher, spiritual knowledge, and for his view that philosophers should rule based on rational intelligence.

The Opposition of Experience and True Knowledge

Plato is cited as a key philosopher who identified experience with practical concerns and reason with eternal truth, and who argued that philosophers should be kings to ensure rational intelligence governs human affairs.

The Modern Theory of Experience and Knowledge

Plato's view of experience as habituation and reason as reform is contrasted with the modern reversal.

Experience as Experimentation

Referenced implicitly through the Greek view that practical activities like cobbling could not yield true knowledge, contrasting with the experimental method.

Physical and Social Studies: Naturalism and Humanism

Plato is discussed as connecting knowledge of man and society to knowledge of nature, subordinating literary studies to mathematics and physics in the interest of humanistic ends.

The Historic Background of Humanistic Study

Plato is discussed as making right knowledge of man and society depend on knowledge of nature, subordinating literary studies to mathematics and physics.

The Place of Vocational Aims in Education

Dewey references Plato's principle that education should discover what each person is good for and train them to mastery, though he criticizes Plato's limited conception of socially needed vocations.

III: Intelligence and Character

Dewey discusses the Socratic-Platonic teaching that identifies knowledge with virtue, noting that Plato held that true knowledge of the good is achieved only through prolonged education and practical discipline.