From Paideia to High Culture. Imelda Chlodna-Blach
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the ultimate purpose of his or her life and form it according to this purpose.
In the third part of the book, I shall present, on the one hand, the reasons and circumstances of the emergence of so-called popular culture, and, on the other hand, the views of the selected authors from the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, who opposed those tendencies and championed high culture. As we shall learn, they employed the term “high culture” in a variety of contexts. Among the thinkers who devoted a great deal of work to the issues of high culture is Matthew Arnold (1822–1888), whose collection of essays, Culture and Anarchy, is considered to be one of the first works in English addressing these questions. In turn, authors such as José Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955), Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888–1965), and Dwight Macdonald (1906–1982) believed that because of the tendency to remove the division between high and low culture, high culture is virtually brought down to the level of low culture, and, consequently, the former falls apart. Another advocate of high culture was Roger Scruton (1944–2020), who noticed that now, more than any time before, it needs to be saved and preserved. High culture was also addressed by Walter Benjamin (1892–1940), whose 1935–1936 essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction became very influential, and later by Theodor Adorno (1903–1969).
After discussing their views, I shall analyse the anthropological and philosophical approach to culture represented by the members of the Lublin School of Philosophy – Karol Wojtyła (the future Pope John Paul II; 1920–2005) and Mieczysław Albert Krąpiec (1921–2008). Although both those thinkers approached the idea of culture using slightly different philosophical perspectives, each of them defined culture as a way of existence characteristic of human beings, which makes it possible to bring the human capability for action to a level on which it is revised to the greatest possible degree, to the optimum potentiae, the highest level. Even if their approaches differ in details, both these thinkers define the human being as the creator of culture. Thus, they meet at the point which ←14 | 15→appears to be the centre of the reflection of culture, namely – the conviction that culture is an indispensable context of human life.
In the Bibliography, I provide both source literature and auxiliary literature. The listed publications include both source texts (of Greek and Roman authors) and later contributions (from the nineteenth century and later). I also list numerous Polish, English, German, French, and Spanish studies concerning the issues discussed in this book. It seems that no one other book so far has provided such a comprehensive elaboration of the problem of philosophical and anthropological foundations of the dispute about culture.
The analyses and insights presented herein can be inspiring for contemporary research on the issues concerning culture. This is even more important given the fact that contemporary studies of culture are dominated by sociology (cultural anthropology) and psychology, which lack a deeper philosophical perspective, let alone one stemming from the realistic tradition.
The metaphysical and anthropological perspective presented in this book provide a new philosophical explanation of high culture as the crowning form of culture as such. I shall demonstrate that, in order to resolve the dispute about culture, one needs to ultimately resolve the dispute about the human being, that is, to find the answer to such questions as: What is the actualization the human being’s potential? And what does it mean to live in a human way? The emphasis on the existential structure of the human being equips us with an objective criterion with which to assess various cultures and cultural forms. This way, we obtain a very elaborate tool for the study of human culture. This tool shall allow us to meaningfully answer the question, which of those forms make us more human, and explain which are a threat to us and why. Therefore, the issues analysed in this dissertation are crucial for the understanding of culture, its various definitions and theories, both contemporary and those developed in the past.
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1 See: W. Tatarkiewicz, A History of Six Ideas, trans. Ch. Kasperek, Warsaw 1980, p. 37.
Chapter 1 Classical culture – towards perfection
1. From valour to magnanimity – the way of the Greeks
1.1. THE OLD NOBILITY MODEL OF EDUCATION
What we call culture today has its beginning as early as with the Greeks. They were distinguished by the extraordinary skill of inquiry into the laws governing reality. This skill is visible in all aspects of their lives – in the way they thought, spoke and acted, in various directions of artistic creativity. The Greeks looked for laws in the essence of things and tried to follow them in their lives. They comprehended particular facts in the light of a single vision, which in turn explained their place and purpose as a part of a certain whole. It can be clearly seen in one of the greatest achievements of the Greek genius, namely philosophy. It is an expression of that very ability to notice the unchangeable order which is the basis of everything that happens and changes in nature and in the human world. The philosophical sense of the Greeks consisted in the fact that they were able to discover the universal laws at the basis of human nature and point to the norms stemming from those laws in the fields of personal actions and in the order of the society.
The Greeks used their knowledge of the natural rules of human life and the inherent rights governing its physical and spiritual forces when studying the issues of culture and education. Both of the indicated terms were of similar meaning for the Greeks. At that point, education started to be understood as a type of effort aimed at the specified – everlasting and universal ideal model of man. That ideal model was achieved through the development of all fields of human life (the so-called integral education), which was supposed to be made possible by culture. Hence, the main purpose of culture was to perfect the human being. Initially, the Greek ideal model of humanity developed within one – aristocratic class and later acquired a universal meaning.
As Werner Jaeger indicates, the Greeks were the first to believe that education must be a process similar to construction. At the same time, the greatest work of art for which that nation heard a calling was the living human.1 Therefore, ←17 | 18→they compared education to artistic, plastic shaping while taking into consideration the model of the idea existing in the artist’s mind. Only after understanding education this way can we refer to it using the term “formation” in its actual meaning, in which it first appears in Plato’s works for the first time, as a visualisation of education procedures.2
The transmission of culture hinged upon the creation of an ideal model which had certain characteristic features. There was a certain ideal model of man, at which the entire process of education was aimed. The characteristic feature of those times was the fact that the focus was not on the practical aspect of that process.
The Greeks distinguished the “transmission of culture” from “education” understood as techné – professional skills and abilities, craftsmanship. These two processes stem from different sources.3 Here, culture is seen as a consciously nurtured ideal model of human excellence. Culture understood in this way is expressed in the entire human character – both in his external behaviour and actions and in his inner attitude. That line of conduct, as well as the internal attitude are not caused by accident, but are the result of conscious effort leading towards a specific goal. Such preparation begins in an inner social circle, within a noble layer of a given nation. In terms of aristocratic origin, the Greek – classical kalos kagathos resembles the English ideal model of a gentleman.4 Initially, both those terms referred to an ideal representative of a higher class of a chivalrous character. The history of the Greek culture, i.e. the process of shaping the Greek national personality begins within the old Hellenic nobility with the formation of a specific ideal model of man of the higher rank, which the education of the nation’s elite aims at. Over time, when the place of the upper class of knights started to be occupied by a middle-class society, adopting the same ideal model, it became a universal good and a generally followed formula.
In