Retracing The Origin:a Philosophical Interpretation Of Plato's Paideia

Traditional myth is the product of our ancestors' fantasy in their observations of the mysterious changes in the universe,whose essence lies in the human exploration of the origin of life and their imagination of the ideal lifestyle.In an era of word of mouth,the responsibility of paideia from generation to generation is undertook by those myths.Represented by Hesiod's “The Book of God”,it is the divine origin explored by ancient Greek myth that opens up and establishes the foundation for the custom and culture of ancient Greeks,whose religious life is formed by the mystery of the divine origin and whose political life is shaped by its divineness.With the later extensive use of characters,the tragic poets also inspire people to think about the difficulties of real life intentionally in their transformation of various myths,by which the sincerity and preciousness of human emotions are also conveyed,despite the manifestations of the supremacy of gods.It can be said that in the era of tragic poets,the remembrance of divine origin is still preserved in the myths.However,with the increasingly admiration of rhetoric,myths turn into a tool for sophists in their chasing after personal reputation and interests.In this way,the wanton retracing of the traditional myth subverts the traditional paideia of ancient Greek.In the era of sophists,the divine origin of the myths are lost entirely.With the oblivion and lossof the divine origin,the traditional paideia of ancient Greek decreases gradually as well,together with the increasing chaos of the order of the state.This is precisely the predicament of paideia faced by Plato.In order to solve this predicament and reconstruct the order of Athens,Plato returns to the exploration of origin on the basis of his criticism to the poets and sophists,and reconstructs the divine origin,that is,“the idea of good” by the way of mythos and logos.Everything in the world is an imitation of a specific idea,therefore,Plato establishes a new view to the world and the soul on the basis of his “idea of good”,which is also his highest goal of paideia.Plato reunites the harmonious state politics and holistic individual souls,and thus opens up a new way of paideia.With the oblivion of origin,the basic situation of human's soul is like a cave.Therefore,in the process of reconstructing origin,the starting point of paideia is to recognize one's own limitations.The essence of paideia is the turn of the soul,thus the process of paideia completes the ascendance from the deep of the cave to the outside world.The recognition,turn and ascendance is united in the ascendance of the soul,that is to say,in the exploration of origin,the individual soul starts from the viewing of images to the idea itself through concrete objectives and mathematics,and his cognitive style also transits from imagination and opinion to reason and rationality.The ultimate goal of ascend is todescend,that is,after getting the knowledge of origin in the process of ascendance,one has to descend to the cave and bring the origin back to the present,thus helps to reconstruct the political order of the state,and achieve the wholeness of one's own soul.On his path of paideia,dialectics is applied by Plato to explore the origin,that is,to approach the idea itself more closely in the repeated circulation of questioning and conclusion.In addition,dialectics is also the fundamental method of Plato's philosophical paideia,which is to help the individuals recognize the ignorance of their own,and motivate them to seek knowledge by the way of dialectical dialogues.Through the analysis of the specific dialectical dialogue,this paper puts forward that,the core of the dialectical dialogue is to return to the beginning constantly and open the chamber of individual souls under the premise of leisure,and thus achieve self-paideia of individuals in their remembrance.The problem of paideia that Plato faces is also the fundamental predicament of individual in the era of technology.Individuals are estranged from the nations and human history by the oblivion of origin,which causes human life to be narrow.Therefore,the retracing of origin and nourishment of individual life with the spring of national culture is the key to the integrity of human beings.It is also in this sense that learning is recollection.