From Paideia to High Culture. Imelda Chlodna-Blach

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      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 of education was the belief that moral patterns were immutable and that the institutions dedicated to creating good traditions were permanent. Plato emphasized that any change was dangerous (excluding the change of something wrong) both in the climate and in the physical, spiritual or mental constitution.⁸⁸

      Teaching music and gymnastics constituted an initial stage of paidéa. However, Plato indicated that they were insufficient as they referred to what was transient (gymnastics) and provided no knowledge (music). On the other hand, the professional skills supply only the purely artisanal information, not contributing to the formation of character at all. Therefore, the more perfect kind of knowledge to be acquired only by reason is the knowledge of numbers, namely arithmetic.⁸⁹ The place it occupied in the educational system of Plato made him treat it as a humanistic science since without knowing it man was not man.⁹⁰ Therefore, Plato stressed the educative qualities of both arithmetic and mathematics in general, including geometry or mathematically cultivated astronomy⁹¹. They were to stimulate thinking. Their practical use was less important for Plato than the theoretical function which relied on the development of mind. The high demands set up by mathematics for learners were the reason why it was treated as a tool for educating the intellectual elite. There was another level of knowledge in the system of Plato – the highest stage of paidéa, to which mathematics was a prelude, a preparatory exercise (propaidéia).⁹² That higher level was represented by dialectics (the art of conversation) which grew out of the Socratic discourse.⁹³ It allowed, to reach the essence of every object and finally “the good in itself,” which was an end to what the mind could perceive, on the path of rational understanding. Moreover, it gave the possibility to justify one’s ideas. The period ←36 | 37→of dialectical education should last fifteen years. The greatest advantage of the highest level of paidéa – teaching “the discipline that will enable one to ask and answer questions in the most scientific manner’⁹⁴ – is, according to Plato, the fact that it teaches man to be conscious and intellectually sensitive. This is what, in the opinion of Plato, constitutes the higher education.

      Plato proposed the virtue of justice in place of the hitherto highest virtue, such as valour.⁹⁵ The analyses of justice and its functions in an ideal state reflect Plato’s ideas on the soul and its parts presented in enlargement as the image of the country and its states.⁹⁶ The principle of justice saying that everyone should do what he or she is supposed to do constitutes, according to Plato, the essence of areté, consisting of the fact that each element of the whole and every part of it perfectly fulfils its function.⁹⁷ Plato refers here to individual parts of the human soul. Justice bases here on the fact that each of them performs its own duties.⁹⁸ These parts corresponded to three states in the country. Each of the states had its characteristic virtue: the rulers should be wise⁹⁹, the warriors should be brave¹⁰⁰, whereas the workers ought to possess the virtue of wise self-control (sóphrosyné) because they were expected to be obedient to the higher states.¹⁰¹ Thus, they were supposed to voluntarily surrender to the better ones. Plato stressed that it was justice that made all other virtues valuable.¹⁰²

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      The implementation of Plato’s universal system of education was to take place in the state. The state is indispensable for the existence of education.¹⁰³ He treats them as a framework and a background for the activities performed in the areas of education. There is a mutual dependence between Plato’s educational system and his concept of the state – without paidéa, there is no ideal polis, which, in turn, facilitates the formation of a perfect man in line with the principles of paidéa. Therefore, the entire structure of Plato’s state is based on the proper education.¹⁰⁴ In Laws, Plato stressed the fundamental significance of paidéa in the state. The law constitutes the tool for education. The entire human nature, being the core of the full development of personality, is the model for that education.¹⁰⁵ The proper ethos of the state should rely on a healthy spiritual structure of an individual. Plato stressed the primacy of paidéa over the practical policy. The first one is a prerequisite for the second one, and not conversely. Plato created a complete system of basic education which was the so-called paidéia of the people and the basis of a higher education. He emphasized the significance of travelling for cultural reasons. Their aim was to learn about other cultures and civilizations both in the aspect of science developed by them and everyday life. His programme was based on the former aristocratic ideal regarding the complete shaping of the human character. The indicated ideal model of areté was applied in the education of people in the changed social and political conditions of the classical Greek city-state.¹⁰⁶ Moreover, Plato’s suggestion was the first systemically constructed educational project in the European culture.¹⁰⁷

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1.3.1. The Sophists – paidéia for everyone

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