The Great Tradition: Classic Readings on What It Means to Be an Educated Human Being
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The Great Tradition: Classic Readings on What It Means to Be an Educated Human Being
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Overview
Since antiquity, the Great Tradition has defined education first and foremost as the hard work of rightly ordering the human soul, helping it to love what it ought to love, and helping it to know itself and its maker. In the classical and Christian tradition, the formation of the soul in wisdom, virtue, and eloquence took precedence over all else, including instrumental training aimed at the inculcation of "useful" knowledge.
Edited by historian Richard Gamble, this anthology reconstructs a centuries-long conversation about the goals, conditions, and ultimate value of true education. Spanning more than two millennia, from the ancient Greeks to contemporary writers, it includes substantial excerpts from more than sixty seminal writings on education. Represented here are the wisdom and insight of such figures as Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, Seneca, Cicero, Basil, Augustine, Hugh of St. Victor, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Erasmus, Edmund Burke, John Henry Newman, Thomas Arnold, Albert Jay Nock, Dorothy Sayers, C. S. Lewis, and Eric Voegelin.
In an unbroken chain of giving and receiving, The Great Tradition embraced the accumulated wisdom of the past and understood education as the initiation of students into a body of truth. This unique collection is designed to help parents, students, and teachers reconnect with this noble legacy, to articulate a coherent defense of the liberal arts tradition, and to do battle with the modern utilitarians and vocationalists who dominate educational theory and practice.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781935191568 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Skyhorse Publishing |
| Publication date: | 01/15/2009 |
| Edition description: | 2nd Edition |
| Pages: | 690 |
| Sales rank: | 555,415 |
| Product dimensions: | 7.00(w) x 9.90(h) x 1.70(d) |
| Age Range: | 3 Months to 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
THE GREAT TRADITION
Classic Readings on What It Means to Be an Educated Human BeingISI BOOKS
Copyright © 2007 ISI BooksAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-933859-25-5
Chapter One
Platoc. 427-347 B.C.
Neither must we cast a slight upon education, which is the first and fairest thing that the best of men can ever have. The Laws
For many centuries, the Greek standard of excellence in education was embodied in Homer's epic poetry. The Greeks revered the relationship between Athena (in the form of Mentor) and Telemachus in The Odyssey and between Phoenix and Achilles in The Iliad. The philosophical tradition in classical education, however, begins with Plato. Plato founded his Academy in Athens in 387, and Aristotle was among his students and later faculty. Plato's developing reflections on education can be found in the Republic, Statesman, Phaedrus, Sophist, Gorgias, Laches, Protagoras, and The Laws. Few of Plato's dialogues fail to touch in some way on education. He spoke mostly through the voice of his teacher Socrates; indeed, most of what people think they know about Socrates comes from his most famous student. Socrates himself left behind no treatise and no dialogue, but through Plato he shaped the West's enduring conception of education. In Werner Jaeger's summary of Socrates' teaching, "Education is not the cultivation of certain branches of knowledge.... The real essence of education is that it enables men to reach the true aim of their lives" (Paideia, II, 69). That "true aim" requires turning toward the unseen realm of the good, the true, and the beautiful. The twentieth-century political philosopher Eric Voegelin noted that for Plato "education is the art of periagoge, of turning around" (see the reading from Voegelin found later in this anthology). Education is properly understood as the care and perfection of the soul. Excellence (arete) is not primarily excellence of skill but excellence of virtue.
The Selections
Plato's Republic as a whole contemplates the nature of justice and the well-ordered city, but nearly every page also comments on education in the ideal state. Choosing a representative sample from the Republic is almost impossible. The end of Book V through the beginning of Book VI (included here) differentiates between true knowledge and mere opinion and consequently between true and false philosophers. The well-known "Allegory of the Cave" from Book VII summarizes many of Plato's presuppositions and introduced into history a powerful metaphor of sight that would shape educational discourse for centuries to come. While the Republic is concerned with justice in the literal city, it is primarily concerned with justice in the city of the soul, an inner city attuned with the order of the heavenly city. The Laws, a work from late in Plato's career, returns to the persistent questions about the nature and purpose of paideia-an untranslatable word that encompasses the total formation of a human being. In the excerpt from Book VII included here, the "Athenian" and Cleinias discuss reverence for tradition and regulations for the education of young boys. The Athenian is speaking.
A fuller estimation of Plato's contribution to the West's philosophy of education must include the dialogues Laches and Protagoras. In both of these, Socrates takes up the question of whether virtue can be taught. Socrates urges "that every one of us should seek out the best teacher whom he can find, first for ourselves, who are greatly in need of one, and then for the youth, regardless of expense or anything. But I cannot advise that we remain as we are. And if anyone laughs at us for going to school at our age, I would quote to them the authority of Homer, who says, that 'Modesty is not good for a needy man.' Let us, then, regardless of what may be said of us, make the education of the youths our own education" (Laches, 201).
from the Republic
Book V
Once more [said Socrates] let me ask: Does he who desires any class of goods, desire the whole class or a part only?
The whole.
And may we not say of the philosopher that he is a lover, not of a part of wisdom only, but of the whole?
Yes, of the whole.
And he who dislikes learning, especially in youth, when he has no power of judging what is good and what is not, such an one we maintain not to be a philosopher or a lover of knowledge, just as he who refuses his food is not hungry, and may be said to have a bad appetite and not a good one?
Very true, he said.
Whereas he who has a taste for every sort of knowledge and who is curious to learn and is never satisfied, may be justly termed a philosopher? Am I not right?
Glaucon said: If curiosity makes a philosopher, you will find many a strange being will have a title to the name. All the lovers of sights have a delight in learning, and must therefore be included. Musical amateurs, too, are a folk strangely out of place among philosophers, for they are the last persons in the world who would come to anything like a philosophical discussion, if they could help, while they run about at the Dionysiac festivals as if they had let out their ears to hear every chorus; whether the performance is in town or country-that makes no difference-they are there. Now are we to maintain that all these and any who have similar tastes, as well as the professors of quite minor arts, are philosophers?
Certainly not, I replied; they are only an imitation.
He said: Who then are the true philosophers?
Those, I said, who are lovers of the vision of truth.
That is also good, he said; but I should like to know what you mean?
To another, I replied, I might have a difficulty in explaining; but I am sure that you will admit a proposition which I am about to make.
What is the proposition?
That since beauty is the opposite of ugliness, they are two?
Certainly.
And inasmuch as they are two, each of them is one?
True again.
And of just and unjust, good and evil, and of every other class, the same remark holds: taken singly, each of them is one; but from the various combinations of them with actions and things and with one another, they are seen in all sorts of lights and appear many?
Very true.
And this is the distinction which I draw between the sight-loving, art-loving, practical class and those of whom I am speaking, and who are alone worthy of the name of philosophers.
How do you distinguish them? he said.
The lovers of sounds and sights, I replied, are, as I conceive, fond of fine tones and colours and forms and all the artificial products that are made out of them, but their mind is incapable of seeing or loving absolute beauty.
True, he replied.
Few are they who are able to attain to the sight of this.
Very true.
And he who, having a sense of beautiful things has no sense of absolute beauty, or who, if another lead him to a knowledge of that beauty is unable to follow-of such an one I ask, Is he awake or in a dream only? Reflect: is not the dreamer, sleeping or waking, one who likens dissimilar things, who puts the copy in the place of the real object?
I should certainly say that such an one was dreaming.
But take the case of the other, who recognises the existence of absolute beauty and is able to distinguish the idea from the objects which participate in the idea, neither putting the objects in the place of the idea nor the idea in the place of the objects-is he a dreamer, or is he awake?
He is wide awake.
And may we not say that the mind of the one who knows has knowledge, and that the mind of the other, who opines only, has opinion?
Certainly.
But suppose that the latter should quarrel with us and dispute our statement, can we administer any soothing cordial or advice to him, without revealing to him that there is sad disorder in his wits?
We must certainly offer him some good advice, he replied.
Come, then, and let us think of something to say to him. Shall we begin by assuring him that he is welcome to any knowledge which he may have, and that we are rejoiced at his having it? But we should like to ask him a question: Does he who has knowledge know something or nothing? (You must answer for him.)
I answer that he knows something.
Something that is or is not?
Something that is; for how can that which is not ever be known?
And are we assured, after looking at the matter from many points of view, that absolute being is or may be absolutely known, but that the utterly non-existent is utterly unknown?
Nothing can be more certain.
Good. But if there be anything which is of such a nature as to be and not to be, that will have a place intermediate between pure being and the absolute negation of being?
Yes, between them.
And, as knowledge corresponded to being and ignorance of necessity to not-being, for that intermediate between being and not-being there has to be discovered a corresponding intermediate between ignorance and knowledge, if there be such?
Certainly.
Do we admit the existence of opinion?
Undoubtedly.
As being the same with knowledge, or another faculty?
Another faculty.
Then opinion and knowledge have to do with different kinds of matter corresponding to this difference of faculties?
Yes.
And knowledge is relative to being and knows being. But before I proceed further I will make a division.
What division?
I will begin by placing faculties in a class by themselves: they are powers in us, and in all other things, by which we do as we do. Sight and hearing, for example, I should call faculties. Have I clearly explained the class which I mean?
Yes, I quite understand.
Then let me tell you my view about them. I do not see them, and therefore the distinctions of figure, colour, and the like, which enable me to discern the differences of some things, do not apply to them. In speaking of a faculty I think only of its sphere and its result; and that which has the same sphere and the same result I call the same faculty, but that which has another sphere and another result I call different. Would that be your way of speaking?
Yes.
And will you be so very good as to answer one more question? Would you say that knowledge is a faculty, or in what class would you place it?
Certainly knowledge is a faculty, and the mightiest of all faculties.
And is opinion also a faculty?
Certainly, he said; for opinion is that with which we are able to form an opinion.
And yet you were acknowledging a little while ago that knowledge is not the same as opinion?
Why, yes, he said: how can any reasonable being ever identify that which is infallible with that which errs?
An excellent answer, proving, I said, that we are quite conscious of a distinction between them.
Yes.
Then knowledge and opinion having distinct powers have also distinct spheres or subject-matters?
That is certain.
Being is the sphere or subject-matter of knowledge, and knowledge is to know the nature of being?
Yes.
And opinion is to have an opinion?
Yes.
And do we know what we opine? or is the subject-matter of opinion the same as the subject-matter of knowledge?
Nay, he replied, that has been already disproven; if difference in faculty implies difference in the sphere or subject-matter, and if, as we were saying, opinion and knowledge are distinct faculties, then the sphere of knowledge and of opinion cannot be the same.
Then if being is the subject-matter of knowledge, something else must be the subject-matter of opinion?
Yes, something else.
Well then, is not-being the subject-matter of opinion? or, rather, how can there be an opinion at all about not-being? Reflect: when a man has an opinion, has he not an opinion about something? Can he have an opinion which is an opinion about nothing?
Impossible.
He who has an opinion has an opinion about some one thing?
Yes.
And not-being is not one thing but, properly speaking, nothing?
True.
Of not-being, ignorance was assumed to be the necessary correlative; of being, knowledge?
True, he said.
Then opinion is not concerned either with being or with not-being?
Not with either.
And can therefore neither be ignorance nor knowledge? That seems to be true.
But is opinion to be sought without and beyond either of them, in a greater clearness than knowledge, or in a greater darkness than ignorance?
In neither.
Then I suppose that opinion appears to you to be darker than knowledge, but lighter than ignorance?
Both; and in no small degree.
And also to be within and between them?
Yes.
Then you would infer that opinion is intermediate?
No question.
But were we not saying before, that if anything appeared to be of a sort which is and is not at the same time, that sort of thing would appear also to lie in the interval between pure being and absolute not-being; and that the corresponding faculty is neither knowledge nor ignorance, but will be found in the interval between them?
True.
And in that interval there has now been discovered something which we call opinion?
There has.
Then what remains to be discovered is the object which partakes equally of the nature of being and not-being, and cannot rightly be termed either, pure and simple; this unknown term, when discovered, we may truly call the subject of opinion, and assign each to their proper faculty,-the extremes to the faculties of the extremes and the mean to the faculty of the mean.
True.
This being premised, I would ask the gentleman who is of opinion that there is no absolute or unchangeable idea of beauty-in whose opinion the beautiful is the manifold-he, I say, your lover of beautiful sights, who cannot bear to be told that the beautiful is one, and the just is one, or that anything is one-to him I would appeal, saying, Will you be so very kind, sir, as to tell us whether, of all these beautiful things, there is one which will not be found ugly; or of the just, which will not be found unjust; or of the holy, which will not also be unholy?
No, he replied; the beautiful will in some point of view be found ugly; and the same is true of the rest.
And may not the many which are doubles be also halves?-doubles, that is, of one thing, and halves of another?
Quite true.
And things great and small, heavy and light, as they are termed, will not be denoted by these any more than by the opposite names?
True; both these and the opposite names will always attach to all of them.
And can any one of those many things which are called by particular names be said to be this rather than not to be this?
He replied: They are like the punning riddles which are asked at feasts or the children's puzzle about the eunuch aiming at the bat, with what he hit him, as they say in the puzzle, and upon what the bat was sitting. The individual objects of which I am speaking are also a riddle, and have a double sense: nor can you fix them in your mind, either as being or not-being, or both, or neither.
Then what will you do with them? I said. Can they have a better place than between being and not-being? For they are clearly not in greater darkness or negation than not-being, or more full of light and existence than being.
That is quite true, he said.
Thus then we seem to have discovered that the many ideas which the multitude entertain about the beautiful and about all other things are tossing about in some region which is half-way between pure being and pure not-being?
We have.
Yes; and we had before agreed that anything of this kind which we might find was to be described as matter of opinion, and not as matter of knowledge; being the intermediate flux which is caught and detained by the intermediate faculty.
Quite true....
Book VI
And thus, Glaucon, after the argument has gone a weary way, the true and the false philosophers have at length appeared in view.
I do not think, he said, that the way could have been shortened.
I suppose not, I [Socrates] said; and yet I believe that we might have had a better view of both of them if the discussion could have been confined to this one subject and if there were not many other questions awaiting us, which he who desires to see in what respect the life of the just differs from that of the unjust must consider.
And what is the next questions? he asked
Surely, I said, the one which follows next in order. Inasmuch as philosophers only are able to grasp the eternal and unchangeable, and those who wander in the region of the many and variable are not philosophers, I must ask you which of the two classes should be the rulers of our State?
(Continues...)
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Table of Contents
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS....................XIIIINTRODUCTION....................XV
PLATO from the Republic....................4
from the Laws....................16
XENOPHON from the Memorabilia....................30
ISOCRATES from Against the Sophists....................40
from the Panathenaicus....................43
from the Antidosis....................44
ARISTOTLE from the Nicomachean Ethics....................56
from the Politics....................59
CICERO from Pro Archia Poeta....................68
from De Oratore....................70
from The Orator....................79
from De Partitione Oratoria....................82
from De Officiis....................83
VITRUVIUS from The Ten Books on Architecture....................87
SENECA from "On Anger"....................92
from "On the Private Life"....................94
"On Liberal and Vocational Studies"....................98
QUINTILIAN from the Institutes....................107
TACITUS from A Dialogue on Oratory....................129
PLUTARCH from "On Bringing up a Boy"....................134
"On the Student at Lectures"....................142
PHILO from On the Special Laws....................155
from On Mating with the Preliminary Studies....................156
from On the Life of Moses....................159
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA from Christ the Educator....................164
from the Stromateis....................169
ORIGEN A Letter from Origen to Gregory, Bishop of Caesarea....................177
Gregory Thaumaturgus, "Oration and Panegyric Addressed to Origen"....................179
BASIL THE GREAT "To Young Men, on How TheyMight Derive Profit from Pagan Literature"....................182
Gregory Nazianzen, "Funeral Oration on the Great St. Basil"....................188
JOHN CHRYSOSTOM from the "Address on Vainglory and the Right Way for Parents to Bring Up Their Children"....................192
JEROME Letter to Eustochium....................207
Letter to Magnus, an Orator of Rome....................208
Letter to Laeta....................211
AUGUSTINE from the Confessions....................214
from On Christian Doctrine....................224
CASSIODORUS from Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning....................229
GREGORY THE GREAT from Homilies on the Book of Ezekiel....................238
ALCUIN front Charlemagne's "Capitulary of 787"....................244
Alcuin on St. Peter's School, York, 732-86....................245
Letters....................247
RHABANUS MAURUS "Education of the Clergy"....................250
HUGH OF ST. VICTOR from the Didascalicon....................256
JOHN OF SALISBURY from the Policraticus....................268
from the Metalogicon....................281
THOMAS AQUINAS Letter to Brother John....................287
from On the Teacher....................288
BONAVENTURE from The Journey of the Mind to God....................300
PETRARCH Letters....................304
PIER PAOLO VERGERIO from The Character and Studies Befitting a Free-Born Youth....................313
CHRISTINE DE PIZAN from The Book of the Body Politic....................325
LEONARDO BRUNI On the Study of Literature....................333
AENEAS SILVIUS from The Education of Boys....................343
ERASMUS from The Antibarbarians....................354
from On Education for Children....................360
from The Education of a Christian Prince....................364
MARTIN LUTHER from To the Councilmen of All Cities in Germany....................372
ULRICH ZWINGLI Of the Upbringing and Education of Youth in Good Manners and Christian Discipline....................383
JUAN LUIS VIVES from The Transmission of Knowledge....................394
THOMAS ELYOT from The Book Named the Governor....................408
PHILIP MELANCHTHON "Preface to Homer"....................420
JOHANN STURM from The Latin Letters of Roger Ascham and Johann Sturm....................433
JOHN CALVIN from Institutes of the Christian Religion....................442
Commentary on Titus 1:12....................446
ROGER ASCHAM from The Schoolmaster....................448
THE SOCIETY OF JESUS from Ratio Studiorum....................459
JOHN MILTON from Of Education....................468
GIAMBATTISTA VICO "On the Proper Order of Studies"....................477
from On the Study Methods of Our Time....................485
The Academies and the Relation between Philosophy and Eloquence....................488
EDMUND BURKE from Letter to a Member of the National Assembly....................492
EDWARD COPLESTON from "Reply to the Calumnies of the Edinburgh Review Against Oxford, Containing an Account of Studies Pursued in That University"....................499
THOMAS ARNOLD from "Rugby School-Use of the Classics"....................515
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN "Discourse V," from The Idea of a University....................522
"Christianity and Letters," from The Idea of a University....................533
IRVING BABBITT from Literature and the American College....................540
PAUL ELMER MORE "Academic Leadership"....................561
A. G. SERTILLANGES from The Intellectual Life....................573
ALBERT JAY NOCK from The Theory of Education in the United States....................580
SIMONE WEIL "Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God"....................589
C. S. LEWIS "On the Reading of Old Books"....................596
DOROTHY SAYERS "The Lost Tools of Learning"....................602
T. S. ELIOT from Notes Towards a Definition of Culture....................617
CHRISTOPHER DAWSON from The Crisis of Western Education....................627
MICHAEL OAKESHOTT "Learning and Teaching"....................636
ERIC VOEGELIN "On Classical Studies"....................652
SOURCES AND PERMISSIONS....................659
PUBLISHER'S NOTE IN HONOR OF CHARLES H. HOEFLICH....................669
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