EDUCATION AS THE AWAKENING OF THE SOUL: A COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHICAL STUDY OF J. KRISHNAMURTI AND PLATO

Education is conventionally understood as the systematic cultivation of knowledge, along with competence and social preparedness. Yet beneath this pragmatic conception lies a more primordial philosophical question concerning the kind of human being education aims to produce. If education merely transmits information, then it may unwarrantably produce competency without wisdom, conformance without conviction, and intellect without insight. There is an additional role of self-reflection and passion to create more answers to matters of concern in human life. The educational philosophies of Plato and J. Krishnamurti are of much importance as they highlight the rejection of the idea that education is only a means to gather information. Both their educational philosophies have special relevance as they saw education as a potential horizon of change to the human being rather than just an expansion of the intellect. While being separated by more than two millennia and located within fundamentally different intellectual, cultural, and philosophical scopes. While Krishnamurti views education as the awakening of intelligence through freedom from the known; aspects of conditioning, fear, comparison, psychological authority, and mechanical thought, Plato on the other hand views paideia as the turning of the soul from the realm of appearance toward intelligible reality and ultimately toward the Good. Their views on education, knowledge, truth, freedom, discipline, authority, the teacher, moral growth, and the connection between societal order and individual change are all compared philosophically in this research study. It contends that Plato and Krishnamurti's rejection of education as just the transmission of knowledge and their emphasis that true education must change the nature of awareness are where they most closely align. The nature of the transformation, however, is where they diverge most which is, Krishnamurti insists on direct observation without psychological reliance on authority or doctrine, while Platonic education has a clear metaphysical and ethical telos in the Good. Thus, Krishnamurti views education as an awakening in which the mind becomes conscious of its own training, whereas Plato views it primarily as an elevation and reorientation of the soul. According to their conversation, education is a philosophical experience that forces people to consider the more profound question of what it means to live a genuine life rather than just preparing them for life.