The term paideia. Paideia. From the history of European culture (Sergey Averintsev). The Doctrine of "Paideia"

• Specialty HAC RF09.00.11
• Number of pages 161

Chapter 1. The concept of "paideia" and "humanitas" in the ancient tradition.

1.1. Greek paideia and the difference between pedagogy and psychogogy.

The development of education in antiquity.

Pedagogy and psychogogy.

Paideia and Greek Science.

The concept of paideia in Plato and Isocrates.

Higher education in the Hellenistic era.

The transformation of the Greek paideia in the Hellenistic era.

1.2. "Humanitas" and paideia.

Humanitas" by Cicero.

The crisis of Cicero's "humanitas" and the educational ideal of Seneca.

Chapter 2. Western and Eastern European Renaissance: individualism and synergy.

2. 1. Formation of the Western European paideia.

Humanistic paideia.

The problematic of the concept of the Renaissance personality.

Personality" as a basic humanitarian concept.

2.2. Formation of the Eastern European paideia.

Synergistic meaning of education.

Difference between Western and Eastern Renaissance.

Russian philosophical thought and the development of the principle of synergy in it.

Chapter 3. Philosophical and religious education as the main aspects of personality formation.

3.1. The history of the concept of "education".

3.2. Specificity of religious education.

Philosophy and Religion. Cultural status of religious education.

The problem of freedom and choice of religious education in a secular school (on the example of Norway).

Pedagogy and psychogogy in religious education.

Introduction to the thesis (part of the abstract) on the topic "Paideia as a personality education"

Similar theses in the specialty "Social Philosophy", 09.00.11 VAK code

• Socio-Philosophical Analysis of the Problems of the Formation of Religious Identity in Modern Religious Education 2011, candidate of philosophical sciences Geranina, Galina Aleksandrovna

• Philosophy of education as a sociocultural phenomenon 2005, Doctor of Philosophy Zaborskaya, Marina Grigorievna

• Philosophical and methodological foundations of the humanization of education

• Philosophical and methodological foundations of the humanization of education 2000, Doctor of Philosophy Rubantsova, Tamara Antonovna

• Humanitarianization of the education system: socio-philosophical aspect 2012, Doctor of Philosophy Avdeeva, Elena Aleksandrovna

Dissertation conclusion on the topic "Social Philosophy", Uemlyanina, Elena Sergeevna

List of references for dissertation research candidate of philosophical sciences Uemlyanina, Elena Sergeevna, 2002

Please note that the scientific texts presented above are posted for review and obtained through original dissertation text recognition (OCR). In this connection, they may contain errors related to the imperfection of recognition algorithms. There are no such errors in the PDF files of dissertations and abstracts that we deliver.

Teachings that include ontological, epistemological, axiological and praxeological aspects become relevant for education.

It is these aspects that actualize the cultural and educational space in the context of ancient Greek paideia and bring the educational ideas of the sophists closer to the educational ideas of Plato and Aristotle, it is these aspects that are the link that contributes to the process of self-organization of the educational space, where the pedagogical views of the sophists and the ontological views of Plato find common ground.

In these teachings, two value orientations of education are fighting for influence, one of which is based on the paradigm of instrumental and technical rationality, where a person is a means to achieve rational goals, the second is based on the paradigm of humanism, within which the individual and his interests are considered as the highest value.

These two orientations originate in ancient Greece, developing and interpreting both the educational ideas of the sophists, aimed at the need to educate a “capable” and “strong” person, and the educational ideas of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, the basis of which is the ideal of kalokagathia, self-knowledge and self-improvement of the individual.

The ideal of culture and education was expressed both in the sophistic school and in the ideas of the great Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and was designated by one main goal - the desire to build a new society based on the spiritual development of citizens. But if, for example, Plato saw the achievement of this goal in the philosophical comprehension of truth, then the sophists - in rhetorical education. The Sophists, on the one hand, Socrates and Plato, on the other, designated the two poles of the ancient Greek paideia - extraverted and introverted, while Aristotle indicated the middle path, which did not contradict the formation in Ancient Greece of the two main ideals of education, which for Plato are contained in the ideal of wisdom, for sophists - as a result of practical success, Zelinsky F.F. History of ancient culture. St. Petersburg, 2005 - P.104.

The ancient Greek paideia, which developed in two directions and laid the foundation for classical education, is not only a certain moment of universal cultural development, it is, first of all, a form that has become established in its maturity, in accordance with which the ancient pedagogical tradition unfolded, transformed into the ideal of Western and Eastern European educational thoughts.

The Doctrine of "Paideia"

The modern world is considered to be centered around Hellenic culture; numerous facts that make Greek antiquity absolutely unique and at the same time familiar and fundamental for Europeans confirm that it was in ancient Greece that both education and culture in the high sense of the word arose. "Paideia" includes both concepts.

However, the Greeks could not express themselves in this way. The terms "education" and "culture" came from Latin, and the Greek word "paideia" began to be used in Greece from the time of Pericles, after it had existed in the language for many centuries and was ready to give its most visible fruits, entering into life. the entire population.

The proposed innovation was that, thanks to intuition, the formation and development of the individual did not occur by chance and not by the will of the gods: everything was simultaneously connected with the “nature” of the individual, whose task was to achieve an understanding of his nature. These terms may seem too banal today, but such an understanding of nature can truly be equated with the Copernican revolution in a world in which all important events were seen as supernatural. They were the concepts that paved the way for the emergence of two of the most prominent signs of the Western world: the secular nature of its worldview and attention to the individual.

The Greeks, quite naturally, endowed her with the ability to satisfy those needs for universal laws of order that traditional deities could less and less embody. Pindar - whose voice in poetry can be considered a synthesis of Greek culture at its peak - argues, for example, that the vast amount of knowledge typical of a poet is bestowed by nature, while a person who has received his knowledge through incredible efforts can be compared to a crow that appeared before the eagle of Zeus (II, "Olympian", 86-88). He exclaims: "Become the way nature created you!" ("Pythian", 72). He argues that the highest man is the one who is naturally endowed with brilliant abilities, who got them without any effort on his part (III, "Nemean" 40-41). When we hear these words, we understand that they contain both heroic poetics and an aristocratic moral code, as well as an archaic version of the natural concept of the world.

"Individuation" is a "natural need", and to prevent it by lowering the level of collective standards is to harm the vital activity of the individual. Since individuality is a primary psychological and physiological reality, it is expressed by psychological means Polevoi V.M. Art of Greece. Ancient world. M., 1970 - S.121.

In the Greek universe with its gods, who, unlike the biblical God, did not possess the art of creating people in their own image and likeness, metaphysical nature was ready to take on the empty role of the omnipotent creator and creator. However, this placed the individual for the first time in a space in which one could interact with fate, and not just passively submit to it.

Already in the VI century. BC, when belief in traditional gods was still quite stable, the philosopher Xenophanes was able to say: “The gods did not reveal to mortals the original order of things; but mortals in a long search discover it.” Just as Pindar's beliefs seem to anticipate the Jungian ideal of developing the inner potential of the individual, so the growing fascination with the idea of ​​nature (the study of which gave hope for the establishment of those laws of order that lay outside the realm of fading religion) was in some ways very much like a delight, with which early depth psychologists welcomed the idea of ​​the unconscious. The existence of the unconscious, like the existence of nature, cannot be proved by direct observation, so although these phenomena cannot be called fiction, their existence cannot be considered a proven fact. But when proposed as a hypothesis, the "nature" of classical antiquity (the impersonal and invisible essence that underlies all living things) and the unconscious of modern psychology (the impersonal and invisible essence that underlies all mental life) become objects of faith, for they lead to more adequate and understandable explanations of a large range of phenomena included in the life we ​​perceive.

With all precautions - and it is quite clear that caution is necessary when considering the common characteristics inherent in such widely separated cultural systems - it seems that the idea of ​​the unconscious raises the suspicion that the unconscious is a modern analogue of this way of becoming aware and comprehending new hypotheses. , which made possible the emergence of the idea of ​​"nature" among the Greeks. It can be assumed that each of the listed ideas in a specific way, suitable for its time and society, formulates a general archetypal idea. In this case, it can be assumed that the ideal, which found its expression in the statements of Pindar, as well as the activation (realization) of this ideal in the practice of "paideia" are the product of an ancient system of values, very similar to those aspirations, the goal of which today is individuation, and not healing. In both cases, the attitude is determined by a belief in the forces of nature (“Individuation represents a natural need...”), but with the concomitant understanding that improperly cultivated nature - nature without culture, in the original sense of the word - remains a wild jungle. To think of individuation as culture - in the light of the original meaning of the word "culture", which found its expression in "paideia", and then lost in the modern world (perceiving culture in an external sense or in the sense of acquiring something that is outside of us, and not in the form of the discovery of what a person "is" within himself) - means, as it was said at the beginning, to see it involved in the cross-fertilization of the cultural situation and the mental life of the individual Culturology: / Comp. A.A. Radugin. - M.: Center, 2007. - P.139.

In the world of archaic Greece, the individual determined his place in such a cycle of individuation and acculturation (acculturation) - this cycle in which the individual exerts a personal influence on the culture that sets the general parameters of his life - mainly with the help of "glory". All major documents relating to the era lying between the age of Homer and the 5th century. BC e., tell us that the highest achievements of the Hellenes were glory and fame. Such aspirations did not contain the modern meaning given to these concepts. For the Greeks, fame was not something ephemeral, it was not the glory that modern media has taught us to be - it was its complete opposite. To gain fame was to secure a place in the memory of future generations. And memory among future generations in a society not accustomed to history was the only guarantee to continue its existence in time: it allowed the preservation of symbols and values, thanks to which the past could provide stability to the institutions of the present and future, as well as give character to the individuals living in them.

Beyond this, in a world in which religion had nothing to do with any real system of ethics (the ethics associated with the religion of the ancient Greeks contained at best a number of prohibitions, but did not include descriptions of the nature of good, positive actions), examples of people who justly deserved fame cast a single but powerful ray of light that penetrated the darkness of the struggle against fates that were almost inevitable. To follow such an example, one had to imbue it with new meaning through what we would call the process of individuation. As an example to follow, a person could choose a hero; however, he was well aware that he and the hero had different destinies (“moira”), different parents and different natural talents. A man could use an example as a source of inspiration, but the light he gave off had to be used to explore a new, own path. So, before the onset of the era when philosophy and monotheism began to offer clear and sublime ethical criteria (but at the same time abstract, general and immovable), namely in archaic, and partly in classical Greece (approximately from the 8th century BC to 5th century BC), activity was driven solely by narratives about the actions of other people, and the individual emotions that such narratives aroused in listeners. Here we are dealing with a heroic ethic that did not respect abstract rules; she followed beautiful images and was guided by the desire for fame Culturology: / Comp. A.A. Radugin. - M.: Center, 2007. - P.146.

The people of ancient Greece had very little freedom of action; we see that they lived in the power of superstition, seized by the fear of witchcraft, with faith in an irresistible fate. We find this fatalism in Homer, in tragedies, and even in Herodotus, whom we nevertheless perceive as the ancestor of the historical concept. We are of a view that strangely ignores the possibility that the lack of clear abstract rules for identifying good, positive actions, and institutions empowered to propagate such rules (particularly in a religious direction), forced the ancient Greeks to live in a terrifying state of total freedom. , theoretically much superior in this sense to our own. Their attitude to proud loneliness and tragic resignation meant, then, the point at which they sought refuge from such crushing freedom. We should not be misled by the existence of such religious institutions as the authoritative and universally recognized Oracle of Delphi. The oracle at Delphi gave specific answers - in cipher form - to individual questions, but did not set out attitudinal principles or general rules of conduct (apart from well-known sayings, for example, "Know thyself" or "A little good", which may have met the needs of a small number people inclined to introspection and self-discipline, but, undoubtedly, these statements were too abstract for the general population).

The feeling of desperate loneliness experienced by the Greeks in connection with moral problems led to the further strengthening of superstition and increased the conviction that the gods were untrustworthy, malicious and envious. But this ethical gap, as well as the fears and accidents inherent in such a state of heightened freedom, could lead to the emergence of "paideia". "Paideia" was the problem of cultivating one's own discipline and culture - and, above all, internal culture - in the most perfect psyche that existed in the ancient world, but at the same time it was a psyche that could not determine good or positive actions to which one should tune oneself.

In late antiquity, the sophists often transformed "paidea" into an overly complicated form of learning, but in the earlier period it played an important role and was very similar to the form of growth observed in modern analysis. In the absence of universal and reliable rules, deep identification with exemplary models, both real and imaginary, contributed to inner maturation: maturation took place in the process of searching for an individual's own myth, which is so close to the Jungian school today. These models were the objects of psychic projections, or transferences, which extended or perfected the function of the father, or rather replaced the function of the father, for the Hellenic father played a rather minor role in the education of his sons. Undoubtedly, the "paideia" was most complete when there was an encounter with an ideal figure (an example is the myth of the hero), as well as with a real present model (such as a teacher), which helped the youth to develop an inner image, otherwise this the image might seem too unattainable.

gr. pais - child) - education, culture as a way of forming an independent, developed personality, capable of exercising civic duties and making a conscious choice in the political struggle and when voting in the national assembly. The Greek term "paideia" includes both direct education, training, and in a broader sense - education, education, enlightenment, culture.

Great Definition

Incomplete definition ↓

Paideia

from the Greek pais - child) education, culture as a way of forming an independent, developed personality, capable of exercising civic duties and making a conscious choice in the political struggle and when voting in the national assembly. A feature of Greek education as a culture (paideia) is the conscious formation of a person in accordance with the intelligible image of an ideal person. Awareness of values ​​(polis, civil) and ideals (free man) - gives the Greek idea of ​​fundamental importance not only in the history of education, but also in the history of European culture as a whole. Education is carried out both in the plane of awareness of the normative requirements of society, and self-awareness - the formation of the value views of the individual. As Werner Jaeger notes, “without the Greek idea of ​​culture, there would be neither antiquity as a historical era, nor the Western European world of culture in general.” The Greek term "paideia" means both directly education, training, and in a broader sense - "education". In these (far from all possible) meanings, not only the idea of ​​the connection between education and upbringing is expressed, but also the idea of ​​a deep, intimate relationship between upbringing and training, a strong mastery of a skill, where this connection becomes especially clear, then we are talking about the "politics of technology" - civil a skill necessary for every full-fledged citizen of the policy. But it is precisely this “handicraft” side of the Greek “pay-deia” that indicates, on the one hand, the intellectualistic nature of ancient culture and education: one who has mastered certain skills is regarded as an “expert” (behavior is evaluated in terms of knowledge - Achilles “like a lion, about the ferocities only thinks”, the terrible cyclone Polyphemus “knew no law”); on the other hand, it opens before our admiring gaze its aesthetic foundations, where education, enlightenment and culture are always objective, directly material as man-made works of art. The plastic nature of the Greek "paideia" is emphasized by its ever-renewable essence - it is the river of life, into the waters of which, as Heraclitus noted, one cannot step twice, this is a fleeting youth and childhood. The very concept of "education - paideia" contains some elements and even a certain structure as a system in which both the original and the result are coming as something integral - the formation of a person. The Greeks created a unique system of education in which not a professional in a certain field is formed, but a person as a person with defined value orientations. Undoubtedly, this appeal to man is the enduring humanistic value of the ancient understanding of culture, which is based on the ideal of man, which is the goal of the cultural process. The main values ​​of the Greek paideia go beyond the actual pedagogical sphere and are formed as norms and models in the context of culture. The starting point is the aristocratic type of culture, which is based on deep genealogical traditions (often the heroes of Homer are descended from the gods). But beauty, physical perfection and even physical superiority over others and the resulting aristocratic virtues are usually associated with nobility of origin: the ability to defend one's honor in battle, to distinguish oneself and achieve glory, "glory to heaven." Virtues are inherited, but for this they must be defended in battle, the only school of life available to the Homeric aristocrats. Paideia presupposes, first of all, military training, but the provision of part and glory is connected with it. Thus, the main link of "kalokogation" is laid - the unity of physical and moral (intellectual) perfection, which is the basis for the polis system of education. In the policy, "military virtues" are supplemented by "civilian" ones, and the path to them ran through many years of "schole". “The ultimate goal of educational work in the many years of the Athenian school was, first of all, the awareness of oneself as a full member of the elected wealthy Athenian society” (G. E. Zhurakovsky). At the grammarian, the child learned to read and write, got acquainted with Greek literature. The teaching of music complemented the school of grammar, as many verses were recited to music. From the age of 12, the boys attended the Palestra and did gymnastics. In the gymnasiums, the musical and gymnastic arts are combined in the form of youth competitions in both, and with a gathering of spectators, who were free citizens; in turn, when discussing state affairs, young people became listeners and spectators. Actually, the purpose of education is the preparation of citizens, which is why the grammarian and cytharist are followed by the pedotribe, and at the age of eighteen the test of civic prowess began. The problem with Greek education was that, as Socrates noted on this occasion, the preparation of citizens did not fit into the framework of vocational education: in case of need, all the men of the city became warriors and politicians. All this constituted, in fact, the humanitarian practice of the ancient "paideia", which determined the main content of ancient culture. This educational process was not limited to mastering the sum of norms and requirements, it was a preparation for social life in accordance with a fairly wide range of norms and requirements, which were regarded by the Greeks as their “wise inventions” - “noma” (laws). This was the goal of education and culture: to develop in a person a reasonable ability of judgment and an aesthetic sense of beauty, which allowed him to gain a sense of proportion and justice in civil and private matters.

The word "paideia" was used by the Greeks to denote culture. If at first this word was used only in a social and everyday context, in relation to a child who needs to be educated and brought up so that he enters the world of adults, in relation to his school teachers, then a miracle happens. This word begins to characterize “a business that occupies people for life. A person who has entered paideia in the new, second sense of the word is taught and educated by teachers chosen by him, but also a person educates and educates himself - all his life, to the very end. And this paideia already includes philosophy, poetry, rhetorical prose, mathematics, and so on.

“A great event has taken place: a new unity has arisen, constituted by philosophy, belles-lettres, arts, mathematics, astronomy. All this has received a certain name that covers all this unity, all this is paideia ... "

First, I want to fulfill my promise to start the lecture with questions that I did not have time to answer last time. But I became convinced that one of the questions was not related to the course, and besides, being interesting in itself, it exceeded my competence: does the form of Easter, as it is prepared in our homes for Easter, have a symbolic meaning? The second question concerned my agreement or disagreement with Rozanov's reflections on the Greeks and Jews, and their opposites on the topic in which I, being a person who is easily embarrassed, realized that the only thing I could do was to immediately transfer the conversation to a slightly different plane. The point is that same-sex perverted love that does not lead to offspring, strictly prohibited in the Old Testament, was legalized for the Greeks and to some extent turned into an object of sublimation and a cultural symbol.

The Old Testament is very deeply connected with the ideas of the promise of God to people. In the Old Testament, this promise is associated with the carnal, biological attachment of generations. With the fact that children are born, and the promise is passed from parents to children, that the people of God are at the same time a people who have accepted the teaching, and at the same time a people united by the ties of a common origin. This is a people, from the point of view of the Old Testament, fundamentally different from all other peoples. This sense of the extraordinary, incredible importance of the succession of generations is, of course, a theme that cannot be imagined to be absent from the Old Testament. There, each episode is not isolated, not by itself, but through the connection of generations is due to a great plan. And this is the difference between the Old Testament and what I once spoke to this audience about the Greek epic.

The epic, as it were, does not end with anything, it does not have a future substantially connected with its epic plot, threads leading from its epic plot to the future. This is felt extremely strongly in the Iliad, the most central and fundamental product of Greek culture. On the contrary, in the Old Testament we encounter what in our worldly language we would call a short story. These novelistic plots are interesting in themselves: the plot of Joseph the Beautiful in the book of Genesis, the plot of Ruth in the book Ruth. Each of these plots does not exist in the Old Testament on its own. It's not just that the beautiful, wise and innocent Joseph first suffered, suffered for his innocence, much like Hippolytus in the tragedy of Euripides, and then (unlike Hippolytus) experienced a turn in his fate for the better and became the second person after Pharaoh in Egypt. It's not the plot line that matters. The fact is that Joseph has a mission from his kind, ancestors, the people of God. We must not forget that later, during the Exodus, Joseph's remains will be carried by his descendants from Egypt to the Holy Land.

And the story of Ruth is not just the story of how a young woman, in a somewhat unusual and very touching way, ended up as the wife of a venerable, pious old man. The last words in the book "Ruth" are about how, after several generations, it turned out to be connected with the birth of King David, that is, the beginning of that dynasty was given, which not only takes its place in history, but with which the messianic interpretation is connected. Therefore, the form of the biblical perception of history, which is not specific to the Bible as a literary monument, but filled with special meaning and content in the Bible, is, as I said, a form of family promise. Because from the very beginning, from the creation of the world and man, from the first guilt, from the first murder, only such a form can contain God's plan concerning the fate of mankind as a whole.

On the contrary, the most classic work of the Greek historiographical genre, Thucydides' History, refuses to talk about any past, about any history, except that which he himself was a contemporary. Because he can find out these events first-hand, from witnesses and eyewitnesses, and even rechecking the testimony of witnesses. But Thucydides is the pinnacle of Greek scientific approach to history. This does not mean, of course, that the Greeks were such unhappy, God-forsaken people that they do not at all appreciate the hope given to each generation of people at the birth of children, that they do not value the family at all. For a Greek citizen, it was a civil and in a sense (in pagan terms, of course) a religious duty to leave offspring. But this duty is not intertwined for the Greeks, at least of the classical era, with the spiritual vocation of man. For the Greek, there is a kind of gap and gap between one and the other. In this respect, the fact that the Greeks, in the person of several of their geniuses, allowed themselves to appreciate perverted love is very characteristic. It's a word you can't throw out of a song. Romantic love, love that causes sublimation, the transition from the creative to the spiritual, for a Greek of classical times, alas, is more often love outside of marriage than within marriage, and more often love is perverted than natural.

In the interweaving of functions within this culture, it turned out that marriage has the utilitarian function of reproducing the human race. Not even so much the human race as the citizens of such and such a city. In philosophical thinking, the Greeks could reach the concept of the “human race”, but for an ordinary, normal Greek, only his civil community existed, and it was precisely this community that had to be made eternal in historical time. It was necessary that Greek culture reached the time of the Roman Empire, to the time when Christianity already existed in the world, so that the Greek pagan Plutarch could connect love for a woman, moreover, love in marriage with the spiritual values ​​​​of a person, and not just with civil and tribal values. And so that Plutarch (I repeat, being a pagan), who had not heard anything about the biblical commandments condemning adultery or infidelity in marriage, could say spontaneously, from the depths of his soul and from his very intimate and very personal experience of a happy man in marriage (namely, Plutarch was ) the following words. He was able to call a man who knew only one woman all his life, not good, not kind, not moral, but happy, just happy. But in order for these words to be uttered, it was necessary for mankind to reach the 2nd century of our chronology, so that Christian preachers would already walk the earth, whom, by the way, Plutarch did not listen to. But this is a completely different matter.

Returning to the topic of the structuredness of Greek culture in time, I would like to say that at that time the score was not for centuries, but for decades, if not for years. A poet, sculptor or architect, who lived less than 20 years later than his predecessor, was already in a different atmosphere, breathed a different air and was inside a different historical and cultural plot. True, it must be borne in mind that such a temporal structuredness of Greek culture was not preserved throughout antiquity. It is impossible to answer the question exactly when such structuredness begins. Everything went slowly and gradually in the course of the archaic centuries - the 7th, 6th centuries before the beginning of our chronology. But then time seems to thicken, and the difference between generations becomes sharper, more essential, more and more distinct. The culmination of this condensation falls on the second half of the 5th century and the 4th century. When does it end? For the general history and the history of culture, which is usually considered as part of the general history, the era of Alexander the Great, Alexander the Great, who died in 323 BC, is considered the boundary.

Then the Roman era begins, when Greek culture develops not only in Greek cities, metropolitan cities and colonies, but also in the spaces of the Middle East, conquered by the sword of the Macedonians for Greek culture and the Greek language. But the rhythm of the development of Greek culture has not yet lost its way. In this sense, the first decades of the Hellenistic era directly continue the trends of the previous decades. In the first half of the 3rd century (in 271 or 270 BC), Epicurus dies. In the same era when Epicurus taught, the Stoics also teach. There are schools of thought that arose no later than the 3rd century, and these schools can be greatly transformed. The Platonic school, the Academy, also passes a difficult path of development. The most conservative and unchanging were the Cynics and the same Epicureans. But fundamentally new schools do not appear until the 3rd century AD. During this period, development loses its intensity.

This does not mean that in subsequent centuries there is no specificity that would distinguish one era from another, one period from another, in the end, the life of one generation from the life of another generation. In particular, one can say about such an important phenomenon as sophistry, which arose during the time of the Roman Empire. But in general, Greek culture, starting from late Hellenism, loses this substantial fullness and saturation approximately during the transition from the 3rd century to the 2nd. Further, Greek culture lives largely under the influence of the found forms, which are perceived, enriched, developed, but do not turn into something radically new to the extent that it was before. When we look at the 5th and 4th centuries, we see that not only new forms, new teachings, new trends, new stylistic possibilities are emerging. During this period, culture becomes culture in a fundamentally new sense. With some risk, one can say that not only until the end of antiquity, but in the course of a number of subsequent epochs, the most general concept of culture in its ultimate embodiment remains basically stable. After all, the concept of culture is a concept for which a term has yet to be found. In the New Age, people talk about upbringing, about learning. But the understanding of culture is not just a way of influencing new generations of people, their upbringing and education, but as a kind of cultural reality in which there are, for example, different disciplines, different areas and domains. Such as philosophy, divided into schools, literature, divided into types, primarily poetry and prose, and so on. For this, something had to happen, happen.

The Greeks used the word "paideia" to designate culture, the same root as the Greek word for "child". Of course, this is not accidental. Once again, we must remember that concepts arise from real, everyday, universal phenomena. And the first object of application of paideia in this, not immanently cultural, but social and everyday sense, is a child who must be taught and educated so that he enters the world of adults. In this original sense, the concept of paideia is still an everyday ability to behave. Paideia in this sense is also among the Spartans, who have no philosophy and practically no literature. But there is that same Spartan upbringing that teaches a man to be courageous, persistent, laconic, and so on.

But then the Greeks begin to use the word paideia in a completely different sense, although they do not stop using it in the original sense. Paideia in a new sense is by no means an occupation for children and for those who teach children - not for nannies, teachers. A teacher in Greek usage is a slave assigned to a child like a nanny. This word meant not only school teachers, it characterizes the business that occupies people for life. A person who has entered paideia in the new, second sense of the word is taught and educated by teachers chosen by him, but also a person educates and educates himself - all his life, to the very end. And this paideia already includes philosophy, poetry, rhetorical prose, mathematics, and so on. One scholar has compiled, as we would say, a bibliographic list or reference book of "Persons who have become famous in all areas of Paideia." When we encounter such verbal usage, we are no longer talking about raising children, but about completely different things. A great event took place: a new unity arose, made up of philosophy, belles-lettres, arts, mathematics, astronomy. All this has received a certain name that covers all this unity, all this is paideia. People who in these areas can, within the framework of a classification that is understandable to everyone, be collected in one group and separated from all other people. These are different people, ranging from politicians to artisans.

I apologize for the little historical anecdote. In pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg (later Petrograd) there was a well-known artistic and literary cafe, which was called the Stray Dog. The regulars of the Stray Dog, people of literature and art, divided all of humanity into two categories. First, they themselves, that is, artists, people of art. All the rest were called pharmacists. The regulars of the Stray Dog were very proud that they would not make any exception for any famous commander or politician, no matter if they were a courtier or an oppositionist, or anyone, they were all pharmacists.

The Greeks, of course, would never have recognized such a division of mankind. The Greeks would never agree that the artist is the highest appointment. They put the civilian figure or the commander much higher. And the appointment of a philosopher was also a very significant heroic facet for them. Yes, and people of art were valued by them in different ways. A civil poet or orator is one thing, but a lyric poet who composes trinkets of love, or a sculptor who makes eyes instead of addressing the intellect and spirit directly, is quite another. It is significantly lower in the hierarchy. Plutarch, already mentioned today, specifically notes in the introduction to one of his Biographies that a capable young man who has seen the best sculptures of Phidias, or who enjoys love poems, is nevertheless an inferior person.

In itself, the idea of ​​culture, very strictly hierarchically arranged, by no means subordinate to aesthetic values ​​as the highest values, by no means equalizing “all genres except boring”, but still united from top to bottom in its quality of paideia, different from everyday, civil, political , religious and so on - this is the great discovery of the Greeks. A discovery from which there is a direct path to the European and modern European concept of culture up to the extreme forms of aestheticism. Although the Greeks themselves, even at the time of the decline of their citizenship, did not go so far.

Paideia is a kind of unity, but a structural unity. This means that one can recognize literature as an autonomous reality. And in this case, genres are defined and described not on the basis of life or cult situations, not on the basis of the life context, but on the basis of literary reality itself. In some situations, this was not the case: cult hymns were built into cult situations, we have already said that this happened at funerals, and so on. But Aristotle in the Ethics even describes tragedy on the basis of its purely literary properties. I say “even tragedy” because tragedy is a dramatic genre, and in Greek life it was very closely connected with cult reality. Tragedies were staged during the religious festivals of Dionysus. And simply because in order to embody tragedy as a text written for the theatre, the reality of the theater is necessary. In any case, this is not the number of a literary genre, even if we separate the tragedy from the cult and theatrical realities with which it was inextricably linked. But Aristotle stipulates that he digresses from the musical and staging aspects of tragic art and focuses on the literary as such. Accordingly, with the birth of paideia, a new type of person appears, a new role. This is the role of an unrecognized genius.

The unrecognized genius, which is so perceived in the consciousness of subsequent epochs, in the consciousness of some of his contemporaries and in his own, is a completely new phenomenon. And to clarify this role, of course, we must focus on its difference from the role of the more ancient, more eternal paideia. In any era, a good artist could, with some reason or no reason, believe that the public was unfair to him. And this situation does not distinguish the Greek era from others. Such an artist is different from a good or self-described craftsman whose skill, for some reason, has not been sufficiently appreciated. Let's say two gunsmiths make weapons. The products of one are more seductive, more readily bought, but perhaps the weapons of another gunsmith are stronger and more reliable, and withstand the test in battle better. Then the second artisan has the right to believe that he is being treated unfairly. But this is not because he is an unrecognized genius, but because he is just a good craftsman with whom a misunderstanding arose. This misunderstanding is caused by the fact that there are always differences between those qualities of a thing that lie on the surface and those that are hidden, are deeper, and therefore are not immediately captured by a not very intelligent consumer.

In the same way, since the phenomenon of the sage arises, the teaching of wisdom, which has a greater or lesser religious character, such a prophet or sage, who is a prophet and a sage because some depths of life were opened to him, closed to the eyes of other people, can feel that he is not well understood. He may feel or actually become a victim of persecution, but a misunderstood prophet is one thing, and an unrecognized genius is a very, very different thing. The prophet is not understood because he obeys the voice of God, the voice of some secret wisdom. His vocation may have a religious and personal understanding of the deity, which is what happened to the religious prophets. Or less religious, less related to his relationship to his personal god, as in the cases of the sages of ancient China. But in any case, the prophet or sage listens and obeys not only himself. And that is why he withdraws from contact with his contemporaries, because in no case does he prefer his individuality to them, but his impersonal and transpersonal wisdom - or vocation. In the case of a prophet, this is most certain; the prophet generally does not speak for himself. But to some extent, a sage like Confucius speaks or wants to speak not from himself either.

An entirely different case is the genius who recognizes himself as a genius within an autonomous paydeia. He prefers his thoughts, his artistic pride, his taste, his paradoxical and perceived as paradoxical ideas about moral categories. All this he prefers to the tiresome, tasteless, insipid life of the civic community to which he belongs. Therefore, he is doomed to conflict and at the same time he is looking for conflict. He also feels that he will be recognized in the future. We must not exaggerate the importance of this type. The idea of ​​progress, so characteristic of us, was on the whole alien to the ancient consciousness, just as it remained alien to subsequent epochs, up to the modern European. This era is strikingly different from previous ones in that the idea of ​​progress is very important for it. The unrecognized genius feels, although he does not think in modern categories of progress, that the future is his, the change in tastes is moving in the direction in which he is going, and that he is ahead of changes in public taste.

In this sense, a classic example of an unrecognized genius for all ages is, of course, Euripides. As befits an unrecognized genius, Euripides is the hero of many anecdotes. The unrecognized genius irritates his contemporaries, but they are very interested in him. He asks for scandal, he may suffer external failures, but he does not risk being overlooked. It certainly doesn't threaten him. The anecdotes paint Euripides as a solitary, misanthropic, reading lover. When we say "lover of reading", we must be aware that this is a completely new role. Before the eyes of history, in a very visual, tangible way for researchers of the history of culture, in Greece in the second half of the 5th century and then in the 4th century there is a shift from a predominantly oral culture to a bookish culture. The Greeks (I mean, of course, full-fledged free citizens) were a people among whom literacy was very common. But for a long time, the Greeks rather did not write, but wrote down. Literacy even in the era that preceded the actual Greek history, in the Mycenaean era, served to record any, including commercial documentation. Literacy retains such very, very utilitarian functions even later. By the way, the transition from the oral state of the law, in which the interpretation of laws was in the hands of aristocrats, who transmitted them from memory, like oral tradition, to the writing of laws, was very important. And written laws are a very important prerequisite for Greek democracy. But it's still a utility feature. As for poetry, even in Xenophon in the 4th century, when the transition to that culture, not only the tool, but also the symbol of which the book became, was just completed, but not yet completed, we read such a dialogue. Someone bought a scroll with Homer's poems. They ask him: are you going to be a rhapsodist or something? That is, a written record of Homer's poems is needed by people whose profession is the public performance of this poem. Therefore, the rhapsodist needs to have in his house a scroll with Homer's poems; a school teacher who teaches children the same Homer, this scroll is also necessary.

But an educated person had no need to have scrolls at home. Socrates was told how he read the book of Heraclitus. It can be seen that in the life of Socrates there were not so many, if not few, cases where he took a scroll and read a book. We see the figure of Socrates (stylized, of course, by Plato and Xenophon) all the time on the street, in the shade of a canopy or tree, talking to acquaintances and strangers. This is a culture of conversation, a culture of oral speech. Speeches were listened to in the square, learned by heart and remembered from the voice. Culture already had writing as its help, but precisely as help. The word lived primarily as an oral, sounding word.

The record was just a record. Kind of like how we record music in our world. There are many people who can read music, but music exists for us primarily as sounding music. This is how the word lived in Greece. But then there is a transition to a culture of readers, and one of the first readers, one of the first owners of the library was Euripides. It must be said that the library of the Greeks was not very extensive. Euripides amazed his contemporaries by preferring the society of scrolls to the society of people.
I'll give you two numbers. Euripides was a younger contemporary of Sophocles, they died in the same year. In competitions in which places were distributed only to first, second and third, Sophocles took first place 20 times, and never last. Euripides only won first place five times, and a number of his most famous masterpieces, including the tragedy Medea, took last place - it was a complete failure. But at the same time, the descendants preserved only seven tragedies of Sophocles and 19 dramatic works of Euripides - 18 tragedies and one drama. The numbers speak for themselves. Euripides might have expected that although the spectators and judges gave him the last place, his works would be preserved more zealously than the tragedies of his greatest rivals.

I received a note with a question. “You said the pagans worship demons and powerful gods. I take the religious and philosophical searches of the pagans very seriously. After all, such gods cannot lead to the creation of such masterpieces. I don't remember saying that. If you asked such a question to any of the Fathers of the Church, he would probably answer that the Greek masterpieces grew from the sources of God's gift to man. God gave man a mind, various intellectual abilities and skills. This is on the one hand, and on the other, I think I said that according to the New Testament teaching, the pagans in some way know God and moral laws. This knowledge is given to man just by virtue of the fact that he has mental abilities.

With regard to this question, what can we add to this, in our agreement with the Church Fathers? Probably something they could say too. In Greece, religion as everyday paganism, as a system of cults, myths, on the one hand, and religious quests, affected by the influence of philosophy and poetry, on the other, diverged very early. True, we must make a small reservation that we do not know the doctrines of Greek paganism, which may have been the most profound. We do not know for the reason that these were mystery doctrines, and we can only guess about the content of the religious Greek sacraments.

Greek paganism had a feature that most of the ancient peoples of the East did not have. Greek life and Greek culture quite early took such paths that the function of the priest as a performer of rituals and minister of everyday religiosity, on the one hand, and the function of moral-religious and any other teaching, on the other, had very little in common with each other. "Very little in common" does not mean that they never coincided in anything. After all, a priest could be a person with philosophical interests. But in this case, it was his own business. He could more or less impress his contemporaries in a way to combine his priesthood and his religious and philosophical interests. But this was by no means imputed to the duties of his rank. In contrast to how the ministers of all religions based on the doctrine are charged with the duty of at least a minimal knowledge of this doctrine in its dogmatic and moral part. Some people, slaughtering sacrificial animals, spoke ritual words, wore ritual clothes, and so on. Others asked the question: is there a divine principle in depth, in truth? To what extent this was exactly so, the people of antiquity themselves testify.

In Cicero we find a classification of three religions. The civil religion is the religion of the priests. The religion of the poets. And the religion of philosophers. There are also religious truths. In the archaic era, poets tried to find some kind of synthesis between the civil religion and the religion of the philosophers, just hatching. True, in the history of Greek culture, this was a very brief moment. Say, the moment of Aeschylus is the first half of the 5th century, then it was no longer possible. But let us hear how it sounds even in Aeschylus. The prayer of the tragic choir begins with him with these words: Oh, Zeus, whoever you are (that is, two points are immediately introduced: a religious name and a philosophical question)! If you want to be called by such a name, decide the question: does it please the god to whom Aeschylus addresses that Aeschylus calls him Zeus? And under this condition, subconditionally (he says: if you want to be called by that name), I call you that. And then God is spoken of as the last word after a long and painful search. Having tried everything, says Aeschylus, I cannot find anything like you, like this unknown god, who can, or maybe not, be called Zeus. I will not find anything like you, if you really need to throw off a vain burden.

These words of the most religiously profound of the Greek poets express very well his religious situation. And here we, just like the Christians of the early times, can answer that he both knows and does not know the true monotheistic faith. He literally talks about it himself. And it’s hard not to remember, with these words of Aeschylus, the words of the Apostle Paul, when he turns to the Athenians and says: I will tell you about the One whom you honor, not knowing.

As for India, the relationship between cult and religious-philosophical quests is fundamentally different. If only because in Indian life, culture and religion there are much more searches than in Greek, respectively, life, culture and religion. But India has a common feature with Greece insofar as the Indian religious culture, like the Greek one, is arranged in such a way that extremely heterogeneous phenomena, extremely different spiritual and moral levels, are equally united by the concept of religion. And because the organization of religious culture excludes in India, perhaps even more than in Greece, the choice between monotheistic theses and the most vulgar everyday polytheism. If an ascetic and a sage in India at the top of his deepening contemplates the absolute, that is religion. If morally completely absurd pagan rites are performed, for example, ritual murders, which the British, and then the Indian administration, took out with such difficulty in India, all this is equally a religion for the Indian consciousness. Because the difference between the pagan consciousness is not that it excludes some monotheistic insights, teachings, theses, and so on. It is very difficult to find a polytheistic system which does not include, at some level, what, when brought into sequence, would not be monotheism. Only now paganism excludes this sequence.

The monotheist, in order to become himself, must go through the experience of absolute choice. Unlike the components of monotheism in the pagan system, monotheism necessarily includes some kind of militant challenge to everything that is not it. We come across words in the Bible that we don’t recognize by intonation, they don’t look like either a calm teaching that, generally speaking, there is a God who created heaven and earth, or the praise of this God, or reflection, or anything else. . “Hear, Israel! The Lord your God is the only Lord!” You must keep in mind that in the original, where we put the word Lord, there is a proper name. Here is that Lord, that God whom we call by His only, indescribable name, He is one. And man is faced with an absolute choice - either before the recognition of this unity, or before a plurality that is ready to include the unity of its higher levels.
One more addition. Because of this, it is the monotheistic religions that go through the painful experience of religious intolerance.

After going through this experience, people of all three monotheistic religions should become wiser, because they should understand that the violence of faith does not solve anything. Because you can't force someone to make the right choice. They must become wiser in the sense that they must become more patient with people of a different church. This patience is not exactly what people usually mean when they talk about tolerance. Patience, renunciation of violence - this is the lesson that it is time to learn, and which people learn with difficulty even in our time. But the rejection of cruelty, the rejection of violence, the rejection of slandering someone else's faith, the requirement of intellectual honesty when talking about someone else's faith, all this is one question. But the question of absolute choice is another matter entirely. I must say that although in the history of the monotheistic faith and, alas, Christianity, there are very regrettable and shameful pages associated with the practice of religious intolerance, religious violence, one should not assume that the absence of the idea of ​​choice in other systems automatically guarantees the absence of violence. It's just that violence in cultures of a non-monotheistic type exists on its own, it is a function of unfreedom, and not a product of the problem of absolute choice. For example, in China in relatively recent times, I'm afraid to make a mistake, at the end of the last century or at the beginning of ours, people who practiced one of the types of yoga were simultaneously destroyed. This bloodshed is no less, and probably numerically greater, than on St. Bartholomew's night. And there is such a psychology behind it: it's not that there is any absolute choice between one faith and another faith, traditional Chinese culture could never understand this mood of choice, but simply, if people are not free, the authorities can have any ideas about what to forbid. So the absence of the idea of ​​absolute choice does not make people angels.

But this is a completely different story.

Sergey Averintsev - Paideia

The system of education and training in ancient Greece, aimed at creating an ideal citizen of the policy; also - the corresponding category of Greek philosophy.

In Greece, education was not legally obligatory, but it was implied that parents should give it to their children; his program included an intellectual, physical and musical component. Paideia as a system of education was based on the Greek ideal kalokagatii, which implies a combination of physical and moral virtues, the harmony of the soul, mind and body. Another important element of the social life of the Greeks, which naturally entered the system of upbringing and education, was agon - a competitive beginning, the spirit of rivalry, competitive struggle, the desire for victory and glory. In various Greek city-states, local features of paideia existed, for it was most directly connected with the state structure and social life of the policy.

For ancient Greece, two systems of raising and educating children are usually distinguished - Spartan and Athenian. Spartan ἀγωγή (upbringing, way of life) was more militarized, because it meant the education of a future warrior only. From the age of 7, the future Spartiate went through a system of public education in the agel detachments, where the living conditions were truly Spartan: the children slept on a hard bed made of reeds they collected with their own hands, walked barefoot, never took warm baths, ate half-starved, communicated and spent time only with each other. friend, etc. As Plutarch notes: “They learned literacy only to the extent that it was impossible to do without it, otherwise all education was reduced to the requirements to obey unquestioningly, endure hardships and prevail over the enemy” (Lyc., 16, translation by S. P. Markish). Particular attention was paid to choral singing - Spartan songs ignited courage and called for a feat. From time to time, children were taken to sissitia as if to a school for the development of the mind: there they listened to the conversations of adult Spartans and learned a special manner of expressing their thoughts “in laconian” (i.e. concisely) - sharply, succinctly, gracefully and - most importantly - in few words. They were subjected to various tests, including ritual flogging on the altar of Artemis-Orthia: Plutarch claims that he himself saw more than one case of boys dying, unable to withstand the scourging (ibid., 18).

In Athens, as in most Greek cities, the schools were private. In elementary school (from the age of 7), where the child was taken by a special slave teacher, the children studied with a grammar teacher, comprehended literacy, reading, writing, read the poems of Homer and Hesiod, the poems of Solon and Theognid, Aesop's fables. The children also studied with a citharist teacher, with whom they learned hymns in honor of the gods, sang ritual songs; the citharist also taught them to play musical instruments - lyre or cithara. So the students prepared for musical agons, and for participation in various religious polis celebrations, in which a musical program was necessarily implied, and for singing at home holidays and symposiums. In the spirit of kalokagatiya there were also diligent physical education and sports. Under the guidance of a pedotribe teacher in the palestras, the boys went in for gymnastics, competed in running, jumping, javelin and discus throwing. Upon completion of schooling, the young men underwent compulsory service as ephebes, serving in garrisons and border Attic fortresses. They still trained with the pedotrib, and military training was in charge of a special didascal instructor. The ephebes were also taught classes in rhetoric, philosophy and music. Having completed his compulsory service and entered into full citizenship rights, the young Athenian could continue his education by listening to local and visiting philosophers - teachers of wisdom - and orators, attending the famous Athenian gymnasiums.

Women's education in Athens was of a home, family nature, there were no schools for girls, although we know that in some Greek policies there were special educational institutions for girls (Lesbos) or schools attended by children of both sexes (Teos). Girls were taught to read and write, but the emphasis, of course, was on housekeeping and women's needlework. They also studied music, singing and dancing, which was necessary for participation in various religious festivals. The Spartan system of raising girls had its own specifics, different from other Greek policies. Its purpose was to prepare the future mother of a Spartan warrior, so much attention was paid to gymnastics, running and strength competitions. Judging by the examples given by the authors, Spartan women could express themselves in Laconian no worse than their husbands (Plut. Lyc., 14; 25).