Plato, Foulcalt, and Oakeshott, Essay Example

As we go through life, we learn, we gather information, we process this information, and this becomes our “education.” If not used regularly, this information, this education, becomes stagnant, and dormant. Like physical exercise, we must use this information in order for it to remain viable and accessible, just as muscle strength does.

If you teach a child how to read, but limit their access to books, the ability to read is, for all intents and purposes, useless. The ability to read must be exercised in order to become- and remain- viable. The child may remember how to read, but without having any information to read, the function of reading is useless. Education is not something that exists in a vacuum; it must be practiced and exercised routinely and regularly in order for it to be useful. Education is only valuable if it is exercised on a regular basis,

I would argue that having a narrowly-educated, yet balanced, mind offers one the ability to become a master in a specific, targeted area of learning. Time and money spent on a vast and broad array of knowledge that may never be useful could well be seen as time and money wasted, if this knowledge is simply going to be forgotten due to lack of use.

As one who considers myself an empiricist, I hold the view that all idea come to us through experience and practice, either through the five external senses or through such inner sensations as pain and pleasure; thus, all knowledge is ultimately derived from experience.

If a child is taught not to touch fire because it will burn them, there is no association between the concept of “burning” and the actual experience, the actual pain, of being burnt. Only though the actual experience can the child learn to make that association, and only then can true knowledge be achieved. A child who is simply told not to touch fire will never actually obtain the knowledge of why not to touch the fire.

As a rationalist, Plato would argue that reason has precedence over other ways of acquiring knowledge. According to Plato, the ability to learn is inherent in every person, in that person’s soul, while Oakeshott argues that self-consciousness is the condition of the human intellect.  While the wording may be different, Plato and Oakeshott both arrive at similar conclusions about the inherent ability for the human sould to seek and acquire knowledge.

In Plato’s “The Allegory of the Cave,” he suggests that there are two different forms of vision, a “mind’s eye” and a “bodily eye.” The “bodily eye” is analogous to the physical senses. While ensconced in the cave, the prisoners rely only on this bodily eye. The “bodily eye” relies on sensory perceptions about the world in order to determine what is reality. Metaphorically speaking, the cave is a physical world filled with imperfect images. This world is filled with distorted images about reality. The mind’s eye represents a higher level of thinking, an internalization of rational thought contained in the mind. This eye does not exist physically in the cave, but rather in the greater reality of the world; its true power is realized outside of the confines of the cave. Inside the cave, the prisoners believe that the shadows they see on the wall are actual reality. Their “bodily eye” tells them that this world is real because their senses perceive so. Plato suggests that the senses do not perceive actual truth, but he gives examples that may suggest otherwise. Thus, Plato agrees that education and learning come from external experiences and sensations.

Oakeshott viewed education as “liberal” in the sense that it lebareted mankind from being sheltered, and from allowing us to carry self-imposed limitations on our self-understanding. Plato would agree with Oakeshott; the prisoners in the “Allegory of the Cave” only rely on their “bodily eye,” and any information they learned from their mind’s eye is lost through misuse and ignorance.

Oakeshott says that the greatest threat to education is the movement to make education narrowly “relevant,” in the sense that it serves no greater purpose than to prepare us to be “role-performers” in a predetermined, and ultimately confining “social system.” Plato would disagree that it is the greatest threat, because any progress towards truth, no matter how narrow, is ultimately a positive, beneficial function.

In “Truth and Power,” Michel Foulcalt revisits and reexamines the major theoretical trends and resolutions of his career. He is a thinker who knows no bounds of subject or field; his ideas and concepts stretch from language and literature to psychology and physics. He speaks in concrete linguistic currencies that are legal tender everywhere: truth and power. In all of his works, he traces the way truth and power are interwoven trough all of man’s activities, through all of history. Some of his most interesting studies of human nature took place in prisons and asylums, where the most rigid and unbreakable of all human power systems have been put into place. Combining that which he has learned from psychology, politics, science, archaeology, sociology, theology, and so many other fields of interest, Foulcalt has synthesized a unique perspective on the nature of many and his capacity for learning, and the ways in which power and control flow between and among humans depending on their associations and relationships to one another..

Plato and Foulcalt believe both in power and knowledge; however they both have different perspectives on the matter. Their thoughts differ on how power and knowledge is gained, yet I some ways they arrive at similar conclusions while taking different paths to get there. Plato would say the job of the politicians is to keep the people happy. It’s their job to control the people. In order to control the people one must be in power. The cave is a good example of that. The Politicians are in control of the prisoners in the cave. All the power and control is located inside the cave. The people in power control what the prisoners learn and what they should believe. As for the men in the cave, they are chained up from head to toe. They do not know what to learn or think. Staring at a wall looking at shadows, these men believe whatever the politicians tell them to believe, for they have no other knowledge besides that which they are told. This form of knowledge is ultimately so limiting as to be practically valueless.

Foulcalt, perhaps more so than any of the greatest thinkers of his or any age, took an incredibly broad view in terms of his philosophical underpinnings. While some philosophers looked at life through this or that narrow lens, Foulcalt sprinkled art into his science and science into his art. As he saw it, everything overlapped in one way or another on everything else. Ultimately, though, Foulcalt’s prime philosophy was about power; about how man gained power, and about how he wielded power. From this power flowed everything else. Plato, while less concerned with the specificities of the acquisition of power, would likely have agreed, at least in practical and pragmatic terms, that this power was at the root of all human existence. Even education, which Plato valued so highly, was often the sole reserve of the powerful. This was, as Plato likely viewed it, entirely unfair, yet it was a fact nonetheless. Education, knowledge, and power, have always been inextricably intertwined, and are likely to remain that way as long as man seeks power.

Works Cited

Foulcalt, Michel. “Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings.” (1980): n. pag. Web. 20 Oct 2010. <http://www.citeulike.org/user/kfoswald/article/798470>.

“Plato.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . 2009. Web.

Oakeshott, Michael Joseph. Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays. First ed. LONDON: Metheun, 1977. Print