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  • Chapter 3 - Early Learning in Plato, Republic 7

  • Edited by Gábor Betegh, University of Cambridge, Voula Tsouna, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Book:
    Conceptualising Concepts in Greek Philosophy
    Published online:
    25 April 2024
    Print publication:
    02 May 2024, pp 56-73

  • Summary

    In ‘Early Learning in Plato’s Republic 7’, James Warren provides an analysis of Socrates’ account of the sort of early learning needed to produce philosopher-rulers in Republic 7 (521c–525a), namely a passage describing a very early encounter with questions that provoke thoughts about intelligible objects and stir up concepts in the soul. Warren explains how concepts of number, more specifically the concepts ‘one’, ‘two’, ‘a pair’, and so on, play an essential role in these very early stages of the ascent towards knowledge, and he stresses the continuity between the initial and very basic arithmetical concepts and the concepts involved in more demanding subjects taught in later stages of the educational curriculum. On this account, Socrates is prepared to ascribe to more or less everyone an acquaintance with some, albeit elementary, intelligible objects. This, in turn, can shed some light on broader debates in Platonic epistemology about the extent to which all people – not just those whom Socrates calls philosophers – have some conceptual grasp of intelligibles.