Tag: Socrates

Exploring Our Educational Ideals: Following along Gulliver’s Travels

Since its publication in 1726, Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift has been a popular read both for its initial audience as well as for generations of readers since. In my most recent reading of this travelog with our Enlightenment Humanities class at Clapham School, I was struck by Swift’s thoughts on education. Excavating the claim he is making about education can be difficult as the book is an overt satire of English literature and society. Yet, the point he is making can stimulate our thinking about education today, particularly as we think about the values inherent in our educational renewal

Continue reading
Socrates in front of the Academy in Athens

The Flow of Thought, Part 8: Restoring the School of Philosophers

In my last article, The Flow of Thought, Part 7: Rediscovering Science as the Love of Wisdom, I made a case for the value of re-envisioning natural science as philosophy. While science might never come to mind today when philosophy is discussed, this was not always the case. The association of Solomon with the type of wisdom that includes nature lore provides a biblical example. Likewise, the great philosopher Socrates was mocked in his own day by the playwright Aristophanes for having his head in the clouds of speculation about the natural world. Although this claim was untrue—Socrates was almost

Continue reading