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 Rome. In that sense, then, humanism is essentially a creation of the Greeks.’118
The most significant creation of the sophists is the fully conscious concept of culture per se. It resulted from the Greeks striving for – through poetry and philosophy – the formation of an authoritative ideal model of man.119 It made them realize the deeper meaning of the idea of education. The creation of an abstract concept of culture took place when the subject of the conscious educative work (paideuein) ceased to be solely a child (pais) but it started to be – primarily – an adolescent man, from the moment when people became aware of the fact that there was no definite age limit that, when reached, would stop the inner ←40 | 41→development of an individual. It was the moment when the paidéia of an adult came to existence.120 Therefore, the paidéia proposed by the sophists differed in this aspect from the Greek education model that ended when a lad reached the age of majority. It included everything that positively shaped a human being – a citizen (polites) – for a specific purpose, closely associated with a political activity.121
The sophists put great emphasis on the shaping of man, which underlined any rational organization of life. They attempted to synthetize two opposing models of education: the tradition of the noble nurture (based on the belief in the nobility of blood) and political and democratic concept of bringing up (based on a rationalistic point of view).122 The value of man was no longer constituted by blood inherited from gods since then, but by the human nature subjected to nurture.
The sophists stressed the importance of the question: what is the relationship between the “nature” of man and the possibility of exerting a purposeful impact on it through education? The new concept of man, proposed by them, who was not shaped by nature (physis) or origin in a definite and positive way but by education, was crucial in that context.123
They maintained that nature (physis) constituted the basis on which any education had to be based. Education, however, took place through teaching (didaskalía), learning (máthesis) and by exercise (áskesis), due to which what had been learnt became the second nature. Basing on the medical perception of human nature, they worked out a concept according to which nature constituted the whole composed of a body and soul but a special focus was given to the spiritual organization of man. Protagoras noticed that every individual was subjected to a pedagogical influence from an early age. At school, in turn, a pupil learns by heart the works of good poets and music, which accompanies him when he is reciting the poems of lyrical poets, and gymnastics. When a young man graduates from school and enters the stage of practical life, the proper civic education began. The differences between the old noble paidéia and a new civic education are clearly seen at this point. The entire noble education, starting with Homer, is dominated by the concept of a model.
There were two aspects of paidéa: substantial and formal. In the substantial aspect, the sophists taught what showed man his place in a social group, in polis, ←41 | 42→and, in addition, enabled him to act in a good, fair and beneficial way for polis, and thus for himself: what is the state, law, what are ethical and moral standards, what is their origin, what is the nature of man? In the formal aspect, they taught how to acquire and use knowledge to accomplish a goal being, which, by definition, is the welfare of the polis and one’s own prosperity.124
The following question should be asked: how did the sophists justify the possibility or even the necessity of education? First, by pointing to the necessary assumptions of the state and society (it was about, among other things, the civic education); second, they derived it from political and moral common sense. Protagoras proved that every man was trying to provide his children with possibly the most thorough education and that, in fact, everyone who did not even think about it, provided some education; third, they considered the problem in the context of the relationship between nature and art in general, in particular, the educative art. They pointed to its indispensable role in completing the existing nature. As they emphasized, on the one hand, it was necessary to know the human nature, on the other hand, however, it was important to have the knowledge on the proper methods of “cultivating” it. Moreover, they underlined that “the essential thing is to begin work at the right moment, the most educative moment, which in the human species is childhood, when nature is still pliable, and whatever is learnt is absorbed, easily but permanently, by the soul.’125
The essence of education perceived in this way was explained on the basis of land cultivation as a typical example of perfecting nature due to skilful human practices. Excellent yields can be expected only where the right conditions are met! Even the deficits of the poor nature can be removed at least partially when the suitable cultivation is applied in the form of education and exercise (and therefore the broadly understood culture). On the other hand, even the most beautifully equipped nature
