Lebenskünstler

In Plato’s view, it is not what we learn about art that is most important, but what we learn from it. For him, education in art is education by art.

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In describing what the craft of education involves, Socrates is not simply drawing an analogy between the body and the soul…To see what is requires not just the reasoning part but an investment of all the parts of the soul. It is not just thought that is brought to bear on reality. You need to take desire and emotion along with you, turn the whole soul around, or you will not really see what lies before your eyes. If Thoreau warns us against the reduction of vision to merely perception, Plato warns us against the reduction of reason and thought to detached cognition…the philosopher loves the Forms with a passion that surpasses that of the lovers of sights and sounds…He studies the Forms in the way that one might gaze – with wonder and awe – at the stars…He does not just think philosophically, he lives philosophically, from the inside out…

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…that it cannot be calculated, or manipulated, or controlled, does not mean that it cannot be practiced. This practice is philosophy, as Plato would have us envision it…

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Being a complete person, in Plato’s sense, does not being a pure reasoner. It means being fully alive…