Abstract

In this paper, I will look at two passages from the discussion of education in Book VII of Plato’s Republic: 523b-524d and 537e-539d. These passages, when taken together, present a puzzle for the coherency of the educational programme Socrates describes. Both discuss contradiction. One says that contradiction is educationally edifying, the other, that it is corrupting. This sounds like a contradiction about contradiction. As far as I know, no one has noticed this puzzle before. By the end of this paper, I hope to have not only provided a solution to the apparent contradiction about contradiction that is compelling, but also one that shows that this puzzle, which might at first have seemed restricted to a textual issue about the educational programme in the Republic, is in fact one that has far reaching implications for a range of Plato’s theories across several dialogues. Along with education, corruption, and contradiction, I will discuss Plato’s theory of psychology, and his theory of forms.