Plato in the Academy

Abstract

The failures of the Socratic method and the reasons for those failures may or may not have been what consciously motivated Plato to establish the Academy in about 387. He, like Gorgias’s student Isocrates only three years before, may have been responding to the abhorrent condition of education in Athens, described by Isocrates in Against the Sophists:

If all who are engaged in the profession of education were willing to state the facts instead of making greater promises than they can possibly fulfil, they would not be in such bad repute with the lay-public.As it is, however, the teachers who do not scruple to vaunt their powers with utter disregard of the truth have created the impression that those who choose a life of careless indolence are better advised than those who devote themselves to serious study.(291.1,Norlin tr.)