Dwie drogi starożytnej paidei

The principle of the Greek culture is not individualism but humanism consisting in bringing up a human’s proper character, the real humanity. Such humanism determined the framework of the Greek paideia to which the point of departure is not an individual but a human being as an idea, standing beyond the autonomy of the self and beyond a human being as a member of a community. The tradition owes the bringing of the classical education to maturity and its final form to two masters – Plato and Isocrates. Plato’s education aims at upbringing of a man or a group of disciples united in the Academy, constituting an elite unavailable to the most of the community. On the other hand, according to Isocrates, the goal of education was mastering of the word and the way to express it; therefore, he would put special emphasis on the learning of rhetoric, which was closely connected with ethics. Both educators stressed the value of individual education, in their schools great emphasis was put on the master-disciple relation. However, despite this individualism in education, the common view of nurture, and therefore of the ideal, is characterized by strong elitism in case of Plato, and by egalitarianism in case of Isocrates. The tradition of Greek education, as realized by Isocrates, was continued by the Romans, which is reflected, most of all, in Cicero’s writing