The Search for True Moral Authority

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Recommended: Plato's views on education

In reading The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, one is struck by the two major political education ideals described in the book: the Spartan regime, praised by the Lacedaemonian king Archidamus, and the Athenian ideal, supported by Pericles, the Athenian ruler. Socrates discusses both of these regimes in Plato’s Republic in an attempt to make a statement about what constitutes true and effective education. After close analysis, it is clear that Socrates does not support either educational ideal. Instead, Socrates rejects both regimes—the Athenian because it has no real guidance and thus cannot produce wise and just people, and the Spartan because despite all its rigidity, it still does not truly train people to be wise and just. In The Republic, it is also apparent that Socrates is giving his own idea of what real education is as opposed to the Spartan and Athenian ideals: Learning under a true moral authority.

In The Peloponnesian War, the two regimes are described as opposites: severity versus freedom. The Spartans believe that the best political education, that which rears the most superior of men, consists of being educated with "too little learning to despise the laws, and with too severe a self-control to disobey them" (Thuc. 1.1.84)1 and of being "brought up not to be too knowing in useless matters" (Thuc. 1.1.84). For them, "the superiority lies with him who is reared in severest school" (Thuc. 1.1.85). The Athenians, on the other hand, say that "while in education, where our rivals [the Spartans] from their very cradles by a painful discipline seek after manliness, we live exactly as we please, and yet are just as ready to encounter every legitimate danger" (Thuc. 2.6.39). They produce men who only have the...

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...e awakened and brought to see the truth. This involves another force acting on us as some sort of guide, and a wonderful education puts one in contact with all sorts of potential guides: great books, powerful teachers, and fascinating people. It is our responsibility to search for the god with the most integrity and the most sincere purpose among all those we encounter, just as it is our responsibility to act with integrity and purpose as students. So what do arithmetic and Zeus have in common? Neither can make us morally pure, but both can start us on our quest in search of the true moral authority, as we struggle to learn more about the universe and ourselves.

Works Cited

1. Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, trans. John H. Finley, Jr. (Random House, Inc., 1951).

2. Plato, The Republic, trans. Allan Bloom (HarperCollins Publishers, 1968) Book IV, 431c-d.

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