Isocrates’ praise of the power of language
Critical remarks on a core text shaping Western higher education
If we ask about where Western ideas of higher education came from, scholars (egs: Marrou, Kimball, Muir) now agree that the orator-teacher Isocrates — a contemporary of Plato — was every bit as important, if not more important, than the better-known philosopher.
Isocrates ran a school of rhetoric in Athens from c. 393 BCE, which trained students how to speak well in public. His ideal was a kind of eloquent orator-citizen, fit to lead others in democratic states, through his abilities to deliberate well on practical-political matters, and to sway audiences to his perspectives. Such an ideal would enjoy a long history, notably reascending to prominence in the Italian renaissance.
Isocrates’ importance comes from his position that such an orator-citizen would need not simply the arts of rhetoric, which had been taught by the sophists. As well as a sharp mind which could be honed by studies in “dialectic” (discussion, logic, critical thinking), they would also need acquaintance with the best poets (the study long known as “grammar”, up to our “grammar schools”) and historians.
It would only be at the end of antiquity that the trivium of three studies (from whence our “trivial”, note)…