소크라테스의 교수법에 나타난 교육 개혁- 소크라테스적 아이러니와 증여로서의 교육을 중심으로

Abstract

In this paper, I set out not only to explain away apparent contradictions between direct statements related to his disavowal of knowledge and of teaching by exploring the teaching method of Socrates but also to examine the educational reformation of Plato to change the traditional education system. In order to solve the above problem, there will be discussed an analytic work to correct the old misconception rooted in ‘Socratic irony’. Moreover, it will be demonstrated that in Plato’ statement that Socrates practising “Socratic method” of achieving moral improvement of interlocutors besides never taking pay is an authentic teacher, Plato’s invention of a new “philosophy” based on a gift economy includes the program of educational reformation. When we go back to the Greeks, we discover that the intention to deceive, so alien to our word for ‘irony’, is normal in its Greek eirōneia. But it is analyzed that there is an alternative use of eirōneia which is completely free of an intentional deceit and is used at times by Socrates in Plato. Besides, I will show that Subsidiary in the use of the parent word in classical Greece, eirōneia as a mockery without the least intention of deceit now becomes the standard use. As a result, it will be argued that Socrates played the critical role in the mutation of eirōneia into irony as a speech used to express a meaning that runs contrary to what is said. It is explored that unlike ‘simple irony’ such as ‘eirōneia with an intentional deceit’ and ‘mocking eirōneia’, Socrates’s disavowal of knowledge and of teaching is intelligible only as a ‘complex ironies’, what is said both is and isn’t what it meant. For example, when Socrates professes to have no knowledge he both does and does not mean what he says. In contrast to divine wisdom the human knowledge of Socrates seems to be identical to ignorance, but in another sense of knowledge identical to JTB(justified true belief) there are many propositions he does claim to know. On the other hand Socrates’ parallel disavowal of teaching should be understood not in the conventional sense of teaching as ‘knowledge transfer’ but in the sense of teaching related to an elenctic argument to make his interlocutor him aware of his own ignorance. Next, it is indicated that the remarkable difference between the Socratic manner of teaching and the Sophists’ method of teaching consists in if one takes pay for wisdom. Socrates’ assertion never to have been anyone’s teacher at 33a5 in Apology turns out to be that he charged no fee for conversing with other people. The Sophistic practice of selling wisdom for money were notorious and the sophists’ physicalist model of transferring goods from one person to another simply should not apply to “goods” such as wisdom and virtue. In addition, in having Socrates declare himself “the god’s gift”(Apology 30d-c) to the city, Socrates is situated in a distinctive gift economy instead of a market economy based upon exchange attempted to show in connection with the preliminary discussion in Republic I between Socrates and Thrasymachus. Finally, it is concluded that Socrates’ philosophizing as a free spirit resulted from the intellectual attitude of “philosophy” as a gift. The central concern of Socrates’ life is “care for the soul.” The limit and meaning of Socratic teaching based on a gift economy for “care for the soul” is drawn from Plato’s program of educational reformation both ensuring educational sphere never reduced to logic of capital and solving the educational problems fettered to a market economy.