7.8: Selecting Students for Philosophy

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See 535a-537d. “People’s souls are much more likely to give up during strenuous studies than during physical training,” Socrates thinks, since the pain is more personal, being peculiar to the student and not shared with his or her body. So it will be important to identify students who have a natural aptitude for the kind of abstract thinking involved in philosophical training. Because children learn more easily than older people, Socrates recommends introducing the preliminary mathematical subjects early, and “not in the shape of compulsory instruction,” but through play. This will make it easier to determine which children are naturally suited for intellectual pursuits. Besides, “a free person should learn nothing slavishly,” and “no compulsory instruction remains in the soul” anyway. Later, after the age of twenty, those chosen to go on to higher education are to study “the subjects they learned in no particular order” as children, and bring them “together into a unified vision of their kinship with one another and with the nature of what is.” Socrates considers this challenge (achieving a unified understanding of mathematical subjects and their relation to the forms) to be “the greatest test for determining who is and who is not naturally dialectical.” Indeed, the ability to achieve this sort of understanding is just what he thinks it is to have a talent for philosophical inquiry.

When Socrates suggests at 535a that philosophy students should, as far as possible, be good-looking, what could he be thinking? (Consider 402d and 403c.) Does the body indicate anything important about the soul?
Is it true that people give up more readily in hard study than in physical training? If so, is it because the pain of studying “is more their own,” and therefore more profoundly discouraging?
How can mathematics be taught through play?
Is it true that “no compulsory instruction remains in the soul”?
How is skill at giving an account and surviving refutation related to skill at achieving a unified understanding of things?