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
There occurred some changes at that time in the understanding of the ideal model of the human perfection. The old noble model of education was based on the belief that areté was available only to those who, in a certain way, kept it in themselves as given from above, inherited from their divine ancestors. Contrary to the aristocratic system, the new urban system brought with itself the concept of political arête independent of the noble origin.
Therefore, the modern city-state firstly seized and universalised the physical areté of the nobles by providing all with gymnastic exercises and also – determined a goal to achieve the spiritual virtues that were inherited by the nobility from their ancestors, and which prepared it for the political leadership by means of appropriately structured education.108 Thus, as Jaeger observes: “[…] the great educational movement, which distinguished the fifth and fourth centuries and which is. the origin of the European idea of culture, necessarily started from and in the city-state of the fifth century.’109 At the beginning and in the middle of the fifth century, there was a concept of education which regarded knowledge – being the factor that dominated the cultural life of the epoch – as the force capable of shaping man. Thus, efforts were made to overcome the existing belief in the advantages of blood for the benefit of the postulate to base areté on knowledge.110 The initiators of this concept were the sophists, supported by public opinion, feeling the need to widen the horizons of an average citizen and raise the individual culture of individuals to a higher level.111 The sophists came to Athens in the epoch of the democracy development during the age of Pericles.112
The task of the sophists was to train political leaders (not the folk masses). In the past, it was the job of the noble class but the sophists introduced new rules. They especially emphasized the art of speech since they thought that the ability to speak in a persuasive way on each subject could be learnt. Jaeger, pointing to ←39 | 40→the ambiguity of the Greek word logos (speech – thought – reason), observed that the sophists’ way of teaching encompassed both the formal and material skills.113 The rationalisation of educating for the political life was at that time only one of the stages of rationalisation of the entire life.114 Facing the fact that the cult of knowledge and reason became a general phenomenon, the ethical values had to be moved to the background in favour of the intellectual values. The educational tasks at which the sophists aimed were therefore subordinated to the intellectual aspect of the human nature. They were convinced that they could teach areté.
The important contribution of this epoch was the introduction into the ideal of areté of all the values that Aristotle later called in his ethics the intellectual virtues (dianoethical) – dianoetikai aretai115 – and tried to combine them with the ethical virtues of man into a whole of a higher rank.116 The ability to clearly differentiate between technical skills and knowledge from the proper culture is also due to the sophists. The famous sophist Protagoras placed the education of man at the centre of the whole life. The stress put on ethical and political elements should be emphasized here since it was important to link all the higher forms of culture with the idea of the state and the society in the classical period of the Greek history.117
Thus, sophistry formulated an ideal of culture called “humanism” based on the previous development of the Greek thought. As Jaeger notes, “our ideal of “universal” culture originated in the civilisation of Greece and