Isocrates, teacher of philosophía

Abstract

This paper presents the teaching of Isocrates (436-338 BC), Plato’s contemporary Athenian author, and his conceptions about the form and purposes of paideia or education, which he called, as a whole, philosophía. To this end, the list of students Isocrates supposedly had, the popularity of his school and the testimony by other authors of antiquity on his educational influence are described. After that, the isocratic definition of philosophía is discussed: sometimes presented as an intellectual commitment coupled with experience, at other times as the culture or paideia created by Athens, a city where logos, in its double meaning of reason and discourse, occupied a place of exceptional importance. Finally, I move from this general definition of philosophía to that presented and professed by Isocrates in his school, which, according to him, was the only one to fully deserve the title of philosophía, defined as a deliberate educational procedure. Then the philosophía of Isocrates and its most important principles are presented: dóxa or opinion, empeíria or experience, and the kairós or occasion, pointing out the reasons for this option, the expected results of such educational program, and how such principles appear in what we would call its pedagogical methods, among which Isócrates’ practice of submitting his own works to the criticism of his students, in a form of discussion or debate that nowadays we would call a seminar, stands out.