"A Gift from the Gods": The Education of the Phronimoi in Plato

The abiding interest in Plato's views about the education of human beings (paideia) has resulted in a vast, meticulous, and penetrating body of secondary literature. Most commentators, however, have chosen to participate in the traditional discussions of education's end, the modes of learning, and the methods of correct training. The author of the present dissertation significantly departs from this trend in order to explain what Socrates might mean by the proposition offered in Meno that successful education is like a gift from the gods. Instead of concentrating on the ultimate end of education, the author outlines an argument in the first chapter for a mediate political goal of education, namely, the formation of competent citizens. In the second chapter he presents a set of necessary but not sufficient conditions to reach this aim and subsequently explains why even when all the necessary conditions are satisfied they may still lead to a failure. This approach reveals an implicit logic of education in the works of Plato.