From Paideia to High Culture. Imelda Chlodna-Blach
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life must be ordered, both in the realm of desire (pleasure, unpleasantness) – moderation, and in terms of the warlike feelings (fear, anger) – valour. Finally, our relationships with other people as well as with the society as such need to be organized. This is the place for three types of justice – distributive, commonly shared and replaceable. It is this harmonious cooperation of all the indicated virtues in man that ensured a complete, integral development of a person.
Thus, the Greek culture-paidéia was an education of man, the work of the human reason oriented at an accomplishment of a certain ideal, the development of a more perfect man. The principle of the Greek culture was not individualism but humanism in the sense of shaping a proper human character and true humanity. It was only in the Greek culture that education was deliberately targeted at a specific human ideal and not only at the preparation for a profession or the formation of one social layer within a single nation.64
Over time, due to Thucydides, Aristophanes and sophists, the reflection on the notion of paidéia became deeper. It started to be identified with a comprehensive encyclopaedic education – énkýklos paidéia, providing with a practical preparation for living in a society. Isocrates, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle significantly contributed to the understanding of this concept by pointing to ethical issues of the arising model of education: “[…] they put less emphasis on the practical aims of education but they valued ethical and, in a broader sense, philosophical education instead, which they regarded as the most effective instrument of shaping a perfect man. In this way paidéia became the central concept within the pedagogical reflection, with clear anthropological implications.’65
The educational trends that occurred under the conditions created by a democracy – in the writings of Plato, Isocrates and Xenophon – still referred to the old aristocratic tradition and the ideal model of areté characteristic for it.66 It is indicated in the postulate of Plato that the best education is the condition and the justification of elite governments and the indicated education requires ←32 | 33→in turn the best natural conditions as a basis for its development to take place67. Plato thought that birth was of significant importance during the formation of elites since only the best could give birth to the best ones. The indicated view had its origin in the old Greek noble ethics. The nobles believed in the existence of innate values, constituting the core of any true virtue and therefore they sought to preserve the priceless blood heritage.68
1.3.1 Plato – from an ideal to an idea
Plato based his ideas concerning paidéa on a former, old, Greek concept. He claimed that the new elite, composed of the representatives of the highest areté, could be created through a purposeful natural selection.69 His philosophical interpretation of education can be found both in the works such as the State and the Laws. In the first of the works, Plato considered the highest level of paidéa, whereas in the second one, he analyzed the indicated process from the earliest childhood.70 In the Laws he observed that the main element of paidéa was a proper pre-school education.71 What is to be achieved and perfectly mastered by a grown-up person should be awakened in the soul of a child already at the indicated stage. He pointed to the dependence of the complete areté in every field from the conditions under which man was raised. Education denotes teaching areté. It begins in childhood and awakens in us the desire to become good citizens.72 Plato opposed the true paidéa to vocational training and he called it a training to reach spiritual perfection. Professional skills are only tools and means to higher aims. In the Laws he pointed out that the proper understanding of the nature of paidéa was the basis of all legislation. Considering its essence, Plato placed man within the state and related the value of individual education to his or her ability to cooperate with others. The precepts of law in the state are the signs of the operation of logos to which man should subordinate first of all. Paidéia relies on subordinating the soul to the logos.73 Therefore, the ideal of ←33 | 34→paidéa is finally the self-control and not the control exercised by others (which was the case in Sparta).74
In Laws, Plato strongly emphasized the relationship between the word paidéia and pais – a boy or a child.75 He thereby indicated that the education starts at an early age, in childhood, when the process of harnessing desires through reason begins. He divided children’s education into stages. Children who are 3–6 years of age should be engaged in playing only. However, punishments should not be avoided at that time.76 Moreover, children should not be forced to play. Nannies should be employed to monitor their behaviour. Both boys and girls under 6 should be taught by women. Coeducation was obligatory by that age, later children were separated.77 When it came to exercise, Plato recommended dancing and wrestling, with the exception of everything that was not useful for later military training.78 All the recommendations were aimed at developing the free and refined style. Therefore, the tendency to underline the importance of the development of the military spirit dominated in Plato’s theory. The common military conscription was the legal basis for the civic life in the Athenian democracy. It was a natural condition of freedom enjoyed by every citizen of the state.79
The education in the early childhood was limited almost exclusively to controlling the feelings of pleasure and pain. Paidéia understood in this way became the pedagogy.80 Over time, Plato more and more strongly emphasized the belief that the success of later education depends on the effects of the first efforts taken in childhood to shape the character. It is necessary to start a possibly early shaping of the desires of a child so that he or she could learn to love good and hate evil as early as possible.81 Plato was inclined to believe that the first stage of areté, appearing already in childhood, is paidéia. In so doing, he strongly emphasized the role of education claiming that no one could get the best out of one’s own logos if he or she had not been earlier prepared for that by someone else’s logos – a teacher or a parent. Any areté is based on the harmony of a rational perception and habit. Paidéia denotes shaping an attitude towards pleasure and ←34 | 35→pain, and thus, shaping the character, on which, in turn, the indicated harmony is founded.82 It therefore concerns the right relationship between desires and intellect.
A general idea concerning the fact that the philosopher’s duty is to shape the character was expressed by Plato in the State, whereas the issue of building the character in the strictest sense of the word was tackled by him in the Laws. He wondered how the ethos should be shaped in the early adolescence. He paid attention to musical education – singing and dancing, as extremely important elements of the ancient Greek culture. Plato regarded them as the basic components of education since they were connected with accustoming children to the right pleasures from an early age. He emphasized that education took place by means of sensitivity to harmony: “And further, because omissions and the failure of beauty in things badly made or grown would be most quickly perceived by one who was properly educated in music, and so, feeling distaste rightly, he would praise beautiful things and take delight in them and receive them into his soul to foster its growth and become himself beautiful and good.’83 A young man discovering the existence of rhythm and harmony develops moral and aesthetic sense in himself.84 According to Plato, the rhythmic movement and the harmonious choral singing provide the grounds for education. As he claimed: “the well-educated man will be able both to sing and dance well […] he keeps right in his feelings of pain and pleasure, welcoming everything good and abhorring everything not good.’85 Plato meant both the ethical and aesthetic beauty here. He strongly stressed the unity of ethics and aesthetics in art. Particularly, in dance that he considered to be a model of art.86 It should be emphasized at this point that the basis of beauty was the harmony of the soul, namely, the moral beauty and secondarily the beauty of appearance, i.e. the aesthetic beauty.
According to Plato, such art, or more broadly – culture, that is to have an educational function, should be free of any interference by reformers or the restorers and of individual preferences or taste.87 He believed that the measure of artistic ←35 | 36→value was not the pleasure given to a casual recipient but joy aroused in the best recipients, the ones who had been appropriately trained or even in man who is ranked the highest in terms of excellence and culture. The main assumption