Utrum Isocratea de bene conformato animo disciplina ad alumnorum utilitates solum accommodata sit

The purpose of this paper is to present the views of Isocrates on human excellence as a result of the educational process. The author examines some passages in Isocrates’ speeches, in which the well formed human virtue seems to be changeable and still dependent on the pupils’ social position. Apart from the fact that this virtue occurs as a faculty of seizing each opportunity to speak in a relevant way, it also appears to be once a kind of patience in bearing any success as well as any misfortune in the same manner, and, at other times, it presents itself as a type of activity of the mind, which seeks the best solutions to different problems of the State. It is argued that in the view of Isocrates, despite some relevancy in his model of human excellence, which must be adapted to the future social tasks of each of his pupils, human perfection always entails three most important values. Apart from speaking well at the right time and living agreeably with other people, this perfection is based, to a large extent, on some form of seriousness and a gravity of the mind, which remains totally independent of any opportunities of time.