Paideia

Anthony Wachs

Paideia is a rich word that originally meant child rearing.[1] Eventually, it was “connected with the highest areté possible to man: it was used to denote the sum-total of all ideal perfections of mind and body.”[2] Paideia is used, and weakly translated in its broadest sense, to mean “civilization, culture, tradition, literature, or education. But none of them really covers what the Greeks meant by paideia.”[3] Plato defines the essence of “all true culture, or paideia…as ‘the education in areté from youth onwards, which makes men passionately desire to become perfect citizens, knowing both how to rule and to be ruled on a basis of justice’.”[4] In other words, “The nearest equivalent to our concept of culture in the Greek world is the word paideia—education in the highest sense, which guides a human being to genuine humanity. In Latin the same idea is expressed in the in the word erudition: a man is freed from roughness [ex + rudis] and is trained in true manliness.”[5]

Rhetoricians today can learn from the Greek understanding of paedeia. Before we can create a true/good paideia we must first have an idea of what genuine humanity is.[6] We must ask ourselves: “Are religious skepticism and indifference, and moral and metaphysical ‘relativism’, which Plato opposed so bitterly and which made him a fierce and lifelong opponent of the sophists, essential elements of humanism?”[7] If the answer to this question is no, then we must ask ourselves why these have become essential elements of our discipline’s paideia. If the answer is yes, then current paideia of indifferentism and relativism should be applauded and nourished. Essentially, before we ourselves are paideia[8] and create paideia we must first engage in philosophy. “To put it in Platonic terms, everything depends on man’s ability to tell the real good from the mere appearance of good, the true from the false.”[9] Philosophy must guide our paideia, not vice versa.[10] “The experience of the past century, with its heavy toll of war and violence, culminating in the planned extermination of whole peoples”[11] provides insight into the results of paideia guiding philosophy.

Bibliography

Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to H.E. Mary Ann Glendon New Ambassador of the

United States of America to the Holy See, given Friday, February 29^th 2008.

Isocrates I. David C. Mirhady & Yun Lee Too, Trans. Austin: U of Texas P, 2000.

Jaeger, Werner. Paideia:The Ideals of Greek Culture. v1. New York: Oxford University Press, 1939.

________. Early Christianity and Greek Paideia. Cambridge, MA.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1961.

Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal. On the Way to Jesus Christ. Trans. Miller, Michael J. San Francisco Ignatius Press, 2004.

Walker, Jeffery. Rhetoric and Poetics in Antiquity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

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[1] Jaeger, Werner. Paideia:The Ideals of Greek Culture. v1. New York: Oxford University Press, 1939, p. 5, 286.

[2] Ibid., 286.

[3] Ibid., v.

[4] Ibid., 113.

[5] Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal. On the Way to Jesus Christ. Trans. Miller, Michael J. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004, p. 44.

[6] To not do so would be extremely irresponsible. It would be like attempting constructing a chair without knowing what a chair is; the chances of actually building a chair in this manner are beyond slim.

[7] Jaeger, 1939, 301.

[8] Paideia also refers to the quality or character of being educated.

[9] Jaeger, Werner. Early Christianity and Greek Paideia. Cambridge, MA.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1961, p. 65.

[10] For Isocrates, and the other sophists for that matter, philosophy and truth are products of hē tōn logōn paideia (culture of discourse). The education that Isocrates offers at his school is called logôn paideia (discourse education) (Walker, 29).

[11] Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI to H.E. Mary Ann Glendon New Ambassador of the United States of America to the Holy See, given Friday, February 29^th 2008.