Is Socrates the Ideal Democratic Citizen?(Critical Essay‪)‬

In extremis, radical reflection and civic reverence might indeed appear to be irreconcilable, yet the founder of all inquiry reconciled them precisely in his death: He was condemned to die because he refused to cease asking questions, and he was executed because he declined to flout his city's laws by running away. --Eva T.H. Brann, Paradoxes of Education in a Republic From time immemorial, the most penetrating students of politics from Plato, Aristotle, and Rousseau to Nietzsche have revealed and pondered the fundamental tension between politics and philosophy or, stated differently, order and freedom. A regime--any regime--must establish and maintain a measure of political order to sustain itself. If the regime is oppressive, however, the citizens are liable to revolt and destroy the conditions prerequisite to political order. But if the regime is unwilling or unable to shape and constrain the beliefs (and hence the actions) of its citizens, then it will fail in maintaining the conditions necessary for political order. (1) This tension is paramount not only in the foremost practical problem of founding the regime, but also in the vital educational problem of preserving the regime. If a regime is to persist, then it must devise, or exploit, a form of education that yields citizens willing and able to support the regime. Education is therefore a necessary foundation for political order as well as for philosophy, which for its flourishing depends upon the sustenance (and tolerance) that comes only in the presence of some degree of order.