LAUSR

In this book, Jonas and Nakazawa provide a wide-ranging and thorough discussion of two broad, interrelated topics: Plato’s theory of moral education, and the application of the Platonic theory of moral education to contemporary classrooms. Jonas and Nakazawa offer clear and careful analyses of dialogues throughout the whole of the Platonic corpus, taking measured stances on controversial issues in Platonic scholarship which are relevant to scholars working both within and outside of topics having to do with moral education. In addition to the analyses of these issues in ancient philosophy, the authors offer concrete and viable strategies for contemporary educators who seek to provide moral education for their students within this Platonic framework. Part One of this book is situated in the discourse of ancient philosophy. In Chapters One and Two, they address Plato’s purported intellectualism in the early and middle dialogues, arguing that, contrary to the intellectualist charge, Plato considers there to be three dimensions of full knowledge of a virtue: cognitive, affective, and conative. Then, in Chapter Three, the authors discuss Plato’s views concerning the development of this full knowledge, specifically the notions of habituation and rehabituation, and in Chapter Four, Jonas and Nakazawa examine Plato’s notion of dialogue as having the potential to create epiphanies, or glimpses of virtue that prompt the individual to seek out that rehabituation. In Chapter 5, they discuss this notion of epiphany in more detail, along with the modes of engagement Socrates uses in the dialogues to produce epiphanies in his interlocutors. In Part Two of the book, Chapters Six and Seven, Jonas and Nakazawa turn to the contemporary context, taking insights from Plato’s theory and applying them to contemporary classrooms in pluralistic democracies. In so doing, they engage carefully and thoroughly with contemporary educational theory and examples of educational practices. They propose several strategies that contemporary educators can employ to induce epiphanies in their students, as well as ways in which educators can support and motivate those students through the rehabituation process. Jonas and Nakazawa conclude, in the final chapter of the book, with a comparative discussion of their Platonic theory of moral education, positioning the Platonic theory as a viable, even preferable alternative to others, such as the neo-Aristotelian. A major virtue of this book is its relevance to scholars working on topics outside the domain of moral education. For instance, they take a unitarian approach to interpreting the dialogues, offering an argument in the introduction in support of this approach more generally, along with addressing potential developmentalist objections throughout the British Journal of Educational Studies Vol. 69, No. 4, 2021, pp. 499–500