Spiritual foundations of lifelong learning in Socratic pedagogics

This paper drawing on Plato's Apology will first highlight four areas of Socratic pedagogy: knowledge of one's ignorance and aporia; questioning and the divine; self-knowledge and spiritual realization; and, the cultivation of virtue in the moral domain. It is contended here that these four related areas constitute the spiritual foundations of lifelong learning in Socratic pedagogics and their actualization forms a prerequisite for benefiting public life and forwarding the common good. This paper maintains that through dialogical endeavors Socratic inquiry necessitates an ongoing spiritual transformation of the whole person enabling thus a renewed understanding of 'lifelong learning'. Ignorance, aporia, questioning and philosophical activity in Socratic pedagogics valorizes a transformed understanding f education by activating processes of change, processes of learning anew the meaning of searching and re-searching all areas of life, particularly those that take place in ordinariness and everyday. Learning in the Socratic sense invokes wonder, eros and enthusiasmos for the renewal of knowledge and community through the passion for continual education, that unceasing investigation and search for the meaning of life of teaching and learning, of self and others. Ans this in accordance to the original meaning of re-search (viz. paideia) as constant search for the transformation of the person and culture, assuring the advancement of civilization. Most importantly, it is claimed that the accomplishment of lifelong learning in Socratic pedagogics involves an existential approach to questioning and the regeneration of self for the benefit of social and public life.