jaeger paideia notes n quotes

Jaeger Paideia Notes n Quotes

Jaeger, Werner

Paideia: the Ideals of Greek Culture

Translated by Gilbert Highet

Volume 1 (1945), and 3 (1944)

New York, 1944; Oxford University Press

Vol 3, 136 Isocrates

“But Isocrates’ education was meant for the whole polis; he tries to persuade its citizens to undertake enterprises which will make themselves happy and free the rest of the Greeks of their present troubles.”

Jaeger discussing Panegyrics

Vol 1 Education defined xiii

“Education is the process by which a community preserves and transmits its physical and intellectual character.” Jaeger’s definition

Notice the simplicity, but it has physical as well as intellectual. Very clear, basic and obvious.

Vol 1 xiii Jaeger explications “The natural process of transmission from one generation to another ensures the perpetuation of of the physical characteristics of animals and men…”

is it legitimate to extend or reinterpret his definition so that there is a broader reading of physical? From the defintion there, it is obvious Jaeger says specifically what me means. But still…

Vol 1 xiii “His [man’s] peculiar nature, a combination of body and mind, creates special conditions governing the maintenance and transmission of his type, and imposes on him a special set of formative processes, physical and mental, which we denote as a whole by the name of education. Education, as practised by man, is inspired by the same creative and directive vital force which impels every natural species to maintain and preserve its own typ; but it is raised to a far higher power by the deliberative effort ofhuman knowledge and will to attain a known end.”

Wow! Notice the emphasis on the physical here and how it is balanced with the intellectual.

Jaeger’s general conclusions


Vol 1 Xiii education is a function of the community, for the community is the source of all behaviour.

Vol 1 Xiv “And, since the basis of education is a general consciousness of the values which govern human life, its history is affected by changes in the values current within the community.”

Currently, the valuing of physical health and condition is clearly sunk or sinking. So, we need to work in adjusting and changing that. By working to demonstrate change in those areas, we have the potential to change the community’s valuing of health and fitness. And if we can adjust or adapt the community, then education will follow suit.

Start with adults who demonstrate the viability, the practicality of being healthy and being fit, and then that can start to shape popular education. But when the community clearly does not value health or fitness, then there is little to no way that public institutions, which are usually expressions of the public will, will follow suit.

Vol 1 Xvii “They [the Greeks] believed that education embodied the purpose of all existence of both the individual and the community. At the summit of their development, that was how they interpreted their nature and their task.

“And it was ultimately in the form of paideia, ‘culture’, [sic] that the Greeks bequeathed the whole achievement of the Hellenic mind to the other nations of antiquity.”

Vol 1 xxii “They [the Greeks] were the first to recognize that education means deliberately moulding human character in accordance with an ideal.”

Working in pursuit of an ideal shape, form or understanding.

Vol 1 xxiii “By discovering man, the Greeks did not discover the subjective self, but realized the universal laws of human nature. The intellectual prinicple of the Greeks is not individualism but ‘humanism’, [sic] to use the word in its original and classical sense. … It meant the process of educating man into his true form, the real and genuine human nature. That is the true Greek paideia, sopted by the Roman statesman as a model.”

Vol 1xxiv Universal Ideal

“It starts from the ideal, not from the individual. Above man as a member of the horde, and man as a supposedly independent personality, stands man as an ideal; and that ideal was the pattern towards which Greek educators as well as Greek poets, artists, and philophers always looked. But what is the ideal man? It is the universally valid model of humanity which all individuals are bound to imitate.


We have pointed out that the essence of education is to make each individual in the image of the community; the Greeks started by shaping human character on that communal model, became more and more conscious of the meaning of the process, and finally, entering more deeply into the problem of education, grasped its basic principles with a surer, more philosopohical comprehension than any other nation at any other period in history.”

Figure out how to summarize that, but it helps to establish/clarify what the Greek educational ideal is, after whom or what they were shaping folks and/or targeting their education.

Vol 1 xxiv Greek standard was not fixed or final

Vol 1 xxv Jaeger claims that “The Greek mind owes its superior strength to the fact that it was deeply rooted in the life of the community.”

An important point to make, especially in terms of being involved with the community and athletic—getting involved with people and being fit.

Vol 1 xxvii “They [the Greeks] considered that the only genuine forces which could form the soul were words and sounds, and—so far as they work through words or sounds or both—rhythm and harmony; for the decisive factor in all paideia is active energy, which is even more important in the culture of the mind than in the agon which exercises physical strength and agility.”

I am not sure what to do with the above, but it seems important—especially the active energy and emphasis on words and sounds.

Vol 1, 3 techne as skills/traditions, as opposed to the cultural education that helps the man fulfill his ideal

Vol 1 3-4 “Culture is shown in the whole man—both in his external appearance and conduct, and in his inner nature. Both the outer and the inner man are deliberately produced, by a conscious process of selection and discipline which Plato compares to the breeding of good dogs.”

Again, the importance of the physical and the intellectual.

Vol 1 4 according to Jaeger, paideia did not occur before the fifth century

Vol 1 5 first instances were used akin to child rearing

Vol 1 5 “But the idea of arete is the quintessence of early Greek aristocratic education.”

“…its oldest meaning is a combination of proud and courtly morality with warlike valour.”

Ordinary men don’t have Arete, only the aristorcracy—an attribute of the noblemen.


Surpassing strength and prowess were natural basis for leadership ( near quote)

Vol 1 6 Usually arete denoted the strength, skill, and valour ofa warrior/athlete

Vol 1 7 sense of duty is aidos

jaeger paideia notes n quotes

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