to the student that something is the case. And it seems correct to express the experience in the
passive voice. The teacher and student are actively engaged, they are working, but the actual
moment in which something is learned just unpredictably happens. We can see this in the fact that
sometimes the method works and sometimes it does not: in any group of students, it is common for
some to see something that others among them do not. There is an air of mystery over the whole
thing.
We can discern from Plato’s dialogs that the mystery is owing in part to the fact that the
knowledge sought is transcendent. In Plato’s account, human beings live in a“between”state: we
exist in empirical reality, but we also participate in the eternal reality of reason. He refers to edu-
cation as a process of recollection because he wants to indicate that we are capable of knowledge
that is not reducible to the empirical world (which is the realm of instrumental reason). But Plato
advances this idea through the medium of myth (rather than offering a“theory”or“doctrine,”as is
often attributed to him) because this kind of education is not reducible to a discursive theory by its
very nature. His idea of recollection points us toward the mysterious reality of education toward
transcendence as he experiences it.
In the wake of the modern philosophers mentioned above, Kant attempts to recapture a similar
conception of the human being and, by extension, education. Neither Kant’s personal disposition
nor his philosophy exhibits much to suggest he was a friend of mystery or myth or transcendence.
A partisan of the Enlightenment, he strove to test everything against the“touchstone”of reason, and
he appears to want to discard everything that cannot pass the test. He often demonstrates his desire
to undermine and dismiss all superstition, enthusiasm, dogmatism–thus he circumscribes religion
“within the boundaries of mere reason.”
Yet, even in Kant there is the occasional spark, a rhetorical flourish, or a moment of admission
that exhibits the presence of the mysteries. Kant was reportedly quite taken when he read Rousseau,
he marvels at the“starry heavens above me,”the“moral law within,”^1 and the shining power of
virtue.^2 Moreover, there are moments in his thought showing that not everything can be resolved
into reason, such as his treatment of freedom, the moral law, and even grace.
Perhaps Kant’s commitment to human dignity grounded in freedom and reason stands out most
prominently in this regard. Kant himself is trying to stop instrumentalism from overtaking the
person in modernity by emphasizing that our participation in freedom and reason transcends the
mechanical nature of the empirical world, as he understands it. Thus, Kant does embrace mystery
insofar as he recognizes that we cannot offer a complete account of the human being. He
acknowledges this in his own language in terms of freedom, because he recognizes that freedom is
not free if it can be explained. Thus, Kant does remain open to mystery in a way similar to Plato, as
he also recognizes that human beings are not exhaustively contained within empirical reality. Thus,
Kant, like Plato, advocates for the Socratic method as the only possible way of educating human
beings in those matters that concern their participation in a reality that transcends the empirical
world. The Socratic method is not merely a technique, but the necessary path by which teachers can
respect the humanity of their students while leading them toward moral and intellectual trans-
formation and growth.
Socratic Method and Recollection in Plato
The bulk of this chapter will be devoted to analyzing Kant’s remarks on recollection and the
Socratic method. However, to show how Kant is recovering a Socratic mode of education, it will be
useful to present first a brief summary of Plato’s account of the Socratic method. In Plato’s dialogs,
we find Socrates employing question-and-answer and other forms of exchange (including spee-
ches, storytelling, myth-making, etc.) to lead others, usually non-philosophers, toward wisdom and
virtue. He also seems to modify his approach to meet different pupils or interlocutors where they are
along the path toward these ends. Thus, he is harsh with the corrupt and dangerous Callicles,
60 Steven F. McGuire