Education in Europe- 3

From the Protestant Reformation

to the Nineteenth Century

Despite their many differences, both Protestants and Catholics taught the new Renaissance humanistic curriculum in their Latin schools at the pre-university level. Each simply added religious instruction to the classical curriculum. Indeed, from about 1550 until the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789, the most important pre-university schools in Europe were schools with strong connections to religious institutions. In Catholic Europe the Jesuits and other religious orders founded in the sixteenth century and devoted to teaching dominated Latin education, the schooling that prepared boys for university study, the professions, and leadership roles. Latin schools organized by and under the direction of princes, cities, and religious leaders did the same in Protestant lands. Educational opportunity for girls expanded slowly in these centuries. Some new religious orders of women in Catholic Europe offered schooling for girls. A large number of female religious convents educated Catholic girls as long-term boarders. Parents sent a girl to a convent for several years for an education that included singing, sewing, and good manners. She emerged educated, virtuous, and ready to marry. Some girls decided to remain as nuns, sometimes to further their educations. Indeed, professed nuns living in convents had a higher literacy rate and were consistently better educated than laywomen. Church organizations also sponsored charity schools for poor girls in which they learned the catechism, vernacular reading and writing, and sewing. The situation was similar in Protestant Europe.

Although Martin Luther (1483–1546) strongly endorsed schooling for both boys and girls, the Protestant Reformation did not result in greater educational  opportunity for girls and probably not for boys. Churches in Protestant lands did provide some free education in Sunday Schools and charity schools, and parents emphasized home Bible instruction. Girls in wealthy families often had tutors in both Catholic and Protestant Europe. Enlightenment philosophes began to attack church schools and, to a limited extent, the humanistic Latin curriculum, in the eighteenth century. They offered an alternative vision. They wanted the state, not churches, to organize schools, appoint teachers, and regulate studies. Children should study the national vernacular language as well as Latin and national history. The state should ensure that children were taught good morals based on fundamental ethical truths, because good morals were essential for the well-being of society. But schools should not teach religious doctrine. Enlightenment school reformers put greater emphasis on practical skills, and they sometimes argued for increased schooling for girls. Finally, they

wanted to provide more free elementary education for the population as a whole but stopped short of endorsing universal education. However, very little changed, because rulers gave only half-hearted support for educational change.

Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Education

In the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, national governments introduced much change into the

schools. Governments across western Europe decreed that all children, boys and girls, must go to school to a certain age, which was gradually raised. The schooling was not extensive; the elementary curriculum consisted of reading, writing, arithmetic, and, outside France, religion. Governments provided more, but never enough, schools and teachers. Nevertheless, the children of the working classes, the peasantry, and girls as a whole made impressive gains across western Europe in the nineteenth century. For example, a French law of 1882 required schooling for all boys and girls between the ages of six and thirteen. As a result, literacy rates in France for the whole population, men and women, rose from 60 percent in 1870 to 95 percent in 1900. Eastern Europe and Russia lagged behind but still made progress. State governments took control of schools from the churches but continued to teach Catholic or Protestant religious doctrine except in France. They added vernacular literature and national history in the secondary school without eliminating Latin. However, the secondary school classical curriculum remained the privilege of the children

of the upper and professional classes and the only path to the university.

Late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century state schools pursued cultural, national, social, and ideological goals as well. Every national school system taught one version of the national language, that of its most accomplished authors, even though most children spoke regional dialects. They taught patriotic national history. For example, Italian schools, after the unification of the peninsula under one government in 1870, made a national hero of Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807–1882), the irregular military leader of the struggle for unification. Students across Europe wrote essays on patriotic topics. Governments believed that the primary purpose of universal elementary schooling was to raise honest, hardworking, useful citizens, devoted to family and country, but who would not rise above their station in life. The use of schools to teach political and social values reached its most extreme form in the schools of the Communist Soviet Union (1917–1991), Fascist Italy (1922–1943), and Nazi Germany (1933–1945). The ideology of the state, militarism, devotion to country, and loyalty to the regime were the order of the day in their schools. The most important innovations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were several kinds of nonclassical secondary schools. At the highest level they combined limited ancient language instruction with considerable scientific and technical education. The graduates seldom went on to the university, but could attend advanced technical schools. Some countries developed nonselective secondary schools that offered vocational and practical training for workers who would basically follow instructions. These practically oriented schools were modern variations of the vernacular literature and commercial arithmetic schools of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance although there does not seem to be a direct link. The educational system that most emphasized technical education was that of the Soviet Union. After the 1917 Russian Revolution, the Communist government of the 1920s discarded the previous curriculum of humanistic studies and religious education in favor of life education that attempted to teach children about farming and trades by having them care for plants and animals and by operating tools. By the 1930s the Soviet school system concentrated on turning out the engineers, technicians, and workers needed by a country moving from a rural economy to one of heavy industrialization directed by the central government. Although Soviet education never succeeded in creating a classless educational system—sons and daughters of Communist officials, members of the government, and professional classes enjoyed more educational benefits than others—it greatly increased and improved education for the sons and daughters of the working class and peasantry. It also expanded educational opportunity in science, medicine, and engineering for women.

Despite the innovations, western European education remained divided into two streams through the first two-thirds of the twentieth century and remained to some extent into the early twenty-first century. The classical secondary school continued to educate the upper classes of Europe, even though classical Latin no longer had practical use beyond a limited number of scholars. But pedagogues and national leaders, with a few exceptions, believed that learning ancient languages and literatures best enabled boys and some girls to realize their potential. They believed that the classical curriculum benefited the student regardless of his or her future career because it developed the individual. The concept was called Bildung (cultivation) in German, culture générale in French, and liberal education in English. It was a modern version of the goals of Greco-Roman and Renaissance education.

Of course, the classical curriculum of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries had practical rewards as well. Only the graduates of the classical secondary school went on to universities and won high civil service positions. They could enter the professions of law, medicine, and theology and lead the nation. The classical secondary schools continued to select and serve a privileged elite.

A series of democratic reforms swept across European state education between the 1960s and the 1990s. They were designed to give all students some kind of secondary school graduation certificate and to increase the number of university or university-level students. They also tried to dilute the social exclusivity of the classical secondary schools and to break their monopoly on elite education. The reforms aimed at making it possible for more sons and daughters of the working classes to enter university and become leaders of the nation. It remains to be seen what the long-term effects will be.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PRIMARY SOURCES

Humanist Educational Treatises. Edited and translated by Craig W. Kallendorf. Cambridge, Mass., and London; Harvard University Press, 2002.

Quintilian. The Institutio oratoria of Quintilian. With an English translation by H. E. Butler. 4 vols. 1920. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, and London: Heinemann, 1958–1960.

SECONDARY SOURCES

Blackburn, Gilmer W. Education in the Third Reich: A Study of Race and History in Nazi Textbooks. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985.

Bonner, Stanley F. Education in Ancient Rome: From the Elder Cato to the Younger Pliny. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977.

Brizzi, Gian Paolo. La formazione della classe dirigente nel Sei- Settecento: I seminaria nobilium nell’Italia centro-settentrionale. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1976.

Farrell, Alan P. The Jesuit Code of Liberal Education: Development and Scope of the Ratio Studiorum. Milwaukee, Wis.: Bruce, 1938.

Grendler, Paul F. Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300–1600. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.

Grew, Raymond, and Patrick J. Harrigan. School, State, and Society: The Growth of Elementary Schooling in Nineteenth-

Century France: A Quantitative Analysis. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991.

Holmes, Larry E. The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse: Reforming Education in Soviet Russia, 1917–1931. Bloomington: Indiana  University Press, 1991.

Kennedy, George A. A New History of Classical Rhetoric. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994.

Marrou, Henri-Irénée. A History of Education in Antiquity. Translated from the French. 3rd ed. by George Lamb. New York:

Sheed and Ward, 1956.

Martin, Christopher. A Short History of English Schools, 1750–1965.Hove, U. K.: Wayland, 1979.

Melton, James Van Horn. Absolutism and the Eighteenth-century Origins of Compulsory Schooling in Prussia and Austria. Cambridge, U.K., and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Riché, Pierre. Education and Culture in the Barbarian West, Sixth through Eighth Century. Translated by John J. Contreni.

Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1976.

Strauss, Gerald. Luther’s House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978.

Williams, George L. Fascist Thought and Totalitarianism in Italy’s Secondary Schools: Theory and Practice, 1922–1943. New York: P. Lang, 1994.

Paul F. Grendler

Education in Europe- 2

From the Renaissance to the Enlightenment

The Renaissance created an educational revolution by adopting a classical curriculum for its Latin schools. This happened in Italy in the fifteenth century and in the rest of Europe in the sixteenth century. Renaissance Latin schoolmasters discarded the medieval curriculum, with a handful of exceptions at the primary school level, in favor of the works of Virgil, Cicero, Terence, Julius Caesar (c. 100–44 B.C.E.), and other ancient authors. Most were Latin; Greek authors were introduced as teachers of Greek became available. These ancient authors taught grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, and moral philosophy, which together comprised the studia humanitatis (humanistic studies) based on the standard ancient authors in Latin and, to some extent, in Greek. The classical humanistic curriculum remained the core of Latin education for the elite of Europe well into the twentieth century.

The Latin that Renaissance students learned was very different from the clear and functional but seldom elegant medieval Latin. Renaissance students learned to write Latin in the ornate and complex style of Cicero, as found in his Epistolae ad familiares (Letters to friends) and his speeches, which had been unavailable in the Middle Ages. Humanist pedagogues sought guidance on ancient education from the Institutio oratoria (Institutes of oratory) of the Roman teacher of rhetoric Quintilian (c. 35–100 C.E.). Italy adopted the classical Latin curriculum in the fifteenth century, and the rest of Europe followed in the sixteenth.

 The Renaissance humanistic curriculum promised more than learning to read and write like the ancients. Italian and northern European humanists argued in a series of pedagogical treatises that reading the classics would teach boys, and a few girls, wisdom as well as eloquence. The classics would inspire readers to live honorably and well. If well instructed, they would do what was morally right and would be loyal to family, city, and country. The goal was humanitas, the knowledge of how to live as cultivated, educated members of society. However, the Renaissance humanists papered over a basic contradiction. Western European Christianity viewed salvation after death as the ultimate goal of life. But ancient pagan authors as Cicero, Terence, and Virgil did not teach readers

to love enemy and neighbor and to seek union with God. The texts of ancient Greek and Rome emphasized education for this life. They endorsed worldly ambition so long as it was achieved by legitimate means, and they featured acts judged sinful by European Christians. Nevertheless, Renaissance educators convinced themselves that the classics and Christian doctrine taught an identical morality of honesty, self-sacrifice for the common good, perseverance, and family and civic responsibility. The restoration of the pagan classics inserted a secularism into European schooling that never disappeared, however much Catholic teaching orders and Protestant schoolmasters emphasized religious doctrine and practice. From the Renaissance onward, the classical secondary school was the center of European elite education. Educational leaders and probably the majority of society believed that learning ancient languages and literatures offered examples of the highest human culture in the original language, developed mental discipline, and imparted good moral and civic values.

EDUCATION IN EUROPE- 1

EDUCATION IN EUROPE

European pre-university education began its long odyssey with Homer. The social and literary values expressed in his poetry informed Greek education, which became the basis of Roman education. The Renaissance revived ancient literary texts and educational programs, which were modified and

adapted in subsequent centuries. European humanities education still embraces in part ancient Greco-Roman educational ideals and goals. 

Greek Education

The great poems the Iliad and the Odyssey believed by the ancient Greeks to have been composed by Homer during the eighth century B.C.E. contained the fundamental idea of Greek education, that the ideal warrior must also be eloquent. He won battles of words as well as arms. Homer made the point by inserting many formal speeches into his poems. And Greek children later memorized long sections of the Iliad and the Odyssey.

In the seventh and sixth centuries B.C.E. an educational program for aristocratic males of gymnastics, music, and letters developed. Then the Sophists, the first professional educators, appeared in the second half of the

fifth century B.C.E. to teach well-born Athenian youths between the ages of thirteen and seventeen. Learning how to be an effective orator became the most important goal of education for Athenian males destined to rule. Simultaneously, a series of directives and principles that could be taught and learned replaced bservation and imitation as the means to the goal. Then Isocrates (436–338 B.C.E.) added the view that the study of Greek literature and history would inculcate the right moral and civic virtues in upper-class Greek males.

Greek education reached full development in the fourth century B.C.E. The Greeks passed this form of education to the rest of the known world during the Hellenistic period, which began with the conquests of Alexander the Great (r.336–323) and lasted through the fourth century C.E. A Greek boy attended a primary school from about age seven to fourteen and learned to read, write, do a little arithmetic, and participate in music and gymnastics. In the secondary school the student read the classics of Greek literature, especially the poet Homer and the tragic dramati st Euripides (c. 484–406 B.C.E.). He also read in whole or part other authors in the Greek literary tradition, such as the epic poets Hesiod (fl. c. 700 B.C.E.) and Apollonius

of Rhodes (3rd century B.C.E.), the lyric poet Callimachus (c. 305–240 B.C.E.), the tragedians Aeschylus (525–456 B.C.E.) and Sophocles (c. 496– 406 B.C.E.), and the comedians Menander (342–292 B.C.E.) and Aristophanes (c. 450–c. 388 B.C.E.). He also read the histories of Herodotus (c. 484–c. 420 B.C.E.), Xenophon (428–354 B.C.E.), and Thucydides (c. 460–c. 400 B.C.E.). But which texts received most attention is difficult to determine. The most important part of the secondary school curriculum was rhetoric, learning how to write and speak well. The program consisted of practice, followed by writing various kinds of works, and then constructing formal speeches according to rules. The goal was to produce the educated upper-class Greek male who could express himself well and persuade others.

The Greeks also had higher schools for those who wished to learn more in specialized branches of  knowledge. Plato ’s Academy, founded about 380 B.C.E. and lasting until 529 C.E. albeit undergoing many changes, had no fixed curriculum. It probably emphasized extended philosophical discussions on a variety of topics, including rhetoric. The Lyceum or Peripatetic School founded in 335 by Aristotle (384 –322 B.C.E.) began with the purpose of collecting and studying scientific research and had a strong philosophical and scientific orientation. Theophrastus (c. 370–c. 288 B.C.E.) led the Lyceum after Aristotle’s death, and it endured until the third century C.E. Alexandria in Egypt became famous for its museum and library (founded c. 280 B.C.E., destroyed in or about 651 C.E.) and as a center for higher scientific learning. None of the above schools offered organized formal education. Rather, they were centers of learned men who attracted followers.

 Roman Education

Education in the early centuries of the Roman Republic consisted primarily of fathers passing on family traditions and skills to their sons. After reaching adulthood at the age of sixteen, the young man came under the guidance of an older man who groomed him in public speaking and other useful skills for a career as a member of a republic. He also served in the army because he would in time be expected to command troops. By the middle of the second century B.C.E., when Rome ruled a far-flung empire, formal education had developed. Greek educational ideas and practices influenced Rome, as they did the rest of the Mediterranean world. The education of upper-class Romans was Greek schooling that later became Latin. The conquest of Greece aided this process by producing Greek slaves, some much better educated than their Roman masters. A Greek slave tutored the child in simple reading until he went to elementary school at six or seven to be taught reading, writing, and arithmetic. At twelve or thirteen the boy went to a secondary school, where he studied mostly Greek literature until the middle of the first century B.C.E. Upper-class Romans were bilingual at this time. Then, after the lifetime of Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.E.), who had popularized Greek pedagogical and philosophical ideas in his many works, Roman schools became Latin. Students read the great Roman poets Virgil (70–19 B.C.E.) and Horace (65–8 B.C.E.), the historians Livy (59 B.C.E.–17 C.E.) and Sallust (86–35 or 34 B.C.E.), the comic dramatist Terence (186 or 185 –?159 B.C.E.) and, of course, Cicero, whose treatises systematized Greek rhetorical instruction. While Greek remained part of the curriculum, bilingualism declined.

The highest level of Roman education began at about the age of sixteen and focused on rhetoric. As in Greek education, the goal was to learn to speak and write effectively as needed in public life and the law courts. If

anything, the emphasis on oratory in Roman schools was stronger than in Greek schools because other parts of the Greek curriculum, such as music and athletics, were eliminated, and the Romans had little interest in science and philosophy. Roman schools used rhetoric manuals that systematized Greek rhetorical instruction. Greco-Roman education prepared upper -class males for leadership roles. Educators hoped to give their students the proper civic and moral values based on the traditions and literature of the Greek city or Roman state. They tried to educate the person rather than impart knowledge. Above all, Greco-Roman education taught rhetoric, a practical skill for future leaders of self-governing societies in which the spoken word meant a great deal. The emphasis on rhetoric continued even after Rome had become a dictatorship ruled by the will and whims of emperors. Despite the great mathematical, medical, philosophical, and scientific ccomplishments of ancient Greece, Greco-Roman education did not stress these.

Education of Women in Greece and Rome

 Little is known about the education of girls and women in Greece and Rome. It is likely that educational opportunity for girls was limited in Greece, but a little more available in Rome. During the Roman republican period ending in 27 B.C.E., it is likely that upper-class mothers who were able to do so taught their sons and daughters reading and writing in Latin and Greek. During the Empire at least a few girls studied alongside boys in primary and secondary schools outside the home. The poet Martial (c. 40–c. 104 C.E.) mentioned boys and girls studying together in what must have been secondary-level schools. For most girls formal education probably ended with marriage in the early to mid-teens. Nevertheless, the fact that many Roman wives and mothers played roles in Roman imperial politics suggests that they were reasonably well educated, and that more schooling was available for upper-class girls than can be documented. The rest of the

population, male and female, below the elite in both Greece and Rome probably received no education or learned only rudimentary skills.

Medieval Education

The Roman educational system disintegrated as the empire declined in the fifth and sixth centuries. Church institutions of the early Middle Ages (c. 400–c. 1000) were forced to establish schools to train future churchmen. Bishops established schools attached to their cathedrals to train priests for their dioceses. Religious orders organized schools in their monasteries to educate young members of the order. An unknown number of parish priests taught boys from the parish or town. In each case the primary purpose was to train future clergymen, although church schools often enrolled boys who would not become clergymen. The curriculum was limited to learning medieval Latin, which differed from classical Latin, the Bible and other

religious works, a little bit of arithmetic, and skills such as chanting needed to perform church rituals. After 1100, many more Latin grammar schools appeared. Supported by towns as in Italy or endowments in England, they educated both future clergymen and lay boys. These schools developed a more sophisticated Latin curriculum that included reading manufactured verse texts of pious sentiments, grammar manuals and glossaries, and a little bit of ancient poetry, especially passages from Virgil’s Aeneid. At the secondary level they taught ars dictaminis, the theory and practice of writing prose letters by following the principles found in medieval manuals. The latter offered rules for prose composition derived from Cicero’s De inventione and the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium, both written in the first century B.C.E. Upper-level students, especially those beginning university study, might also study introductory logic or dialectic, a key part of Scholastic method. 

A new kind of school teaching vernacular literature and commercial mathematics and bookkeeping skills appeared in Italy in the second half of the thirteenth century. These schools taught little or no Latin, but did teach popular vernacular texts, often stories illustrating the benefits of Christian virtues and the terrible consequences of vices. The commercial mathematics (called abbaco) and bookkeeping skills were quite

complex. The vernacular schools educated boys who would become merchants or otherwise enter the commercial world. Other parts of Europe, especially Germany, had vernacular schools in the sixteenth century, which probably means that they began in the Middle Ages, but little is known about them. Outside Italy vernacular schools did not teach t he sophisticated commercial mathematics and bookkeeping skills of Italian vernacular schools until much later. These modest vernacular schools marked a new departure in European education because they educated boys for secular nonprofessional and nonuniversity careers. They marked the beginning of a separation between Latin humanistic education for the elite, universitybound

student and a practically oriented education for the rest who would enter the world of work. This division lasted through World War II (1939–1945) and is still found in Europe in some measure.

History of ideas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyeRZnmcYGc

Greek Sophists

Sophists

The growing demand for education in 5th century BCE. Greece called into existence a class of teachers known as sophists. They were a professional class rather than a Greek school or a category of Greek philosophy, and as such they were scattered over Greece and exhibited professional rivalries. The educational demand was partly for genuine knowledge, but mostly reflected a desire for spurious learning that would lead to political success. They wandered about Greece from place to place, gave lectures, took pupils, and entered into disputations. For these services they exacted large fees, and were, in fact, the first in Greece to take fees for teaching wisdom. Though not disgraceful in itself, the wise men of Greece had never accepted payment for their teaching. The sophists were not, technically speaking, philosophers, but, instead taught any subject for which there was a popular demand. Topics included rhetoric, politics, grammar, etymology, history, physics, and mathematics. Early on they were seen as teachers of virtue in the sense that they taught people to perform their function in the state. Protagoras of Abdera, who appeared about 445 BCE. is named as the first Sophist; after him the most important is Gorgias of Leontini, Prodicus of Ceos and Hippias of Elis. Wherever they appeared, especially in Athens, they were received with enthusiasm and many flocked to hear them. Even such people as Pericles, Euripides, and Socrates sought their company.
The most popular career of a Greek of ability at the time was politics; hence the sophists largely concentrated on teaching rhetoric. The aims of the young politicians whom they trained were to persuade the multitude of whatever they wished them to believed. The search for truth was not top priority. Consequently the sophists undertook to provide a stock of arguments on any subject, or to prove any position. They boasted of their ability to make the worse appear the better reason, to prove that black is white. Some, like Gorgias, asserted that it was not necessary to have any knowledge of a subject to give satisfactory replies as regards it. Thus, Gorgias ostentatiously answered any question on any subject instantly and without consideration. To attain these ends mere quibbling, and the scoring of verbal points were employed. In this way, the sophists tried to entangle, entrap, and confuse their opponents, and even, if this were not possible, to beat them down by mere violence and noise. They sought also to dazzle by means of strange or flowery metaphors, by unusual figures of speech, by epigrams and paradoxes, and in general by being clever and smart, rather than earnest and truthful. Hence our word “sophistry”: the use of fallacious arguments knowing them to be such. Early on Sophists were seen to be of merit as people of superior skill or wisdom, as we find in Pindar and Herodotus. We learn from Plato, though, that even in the 5th century there was a prejudice against the name “sophist”. By Aristotle’s time, the name bore a contemptuous meaning, as he defines “sophist” as one who reasons falsely for the sake of gain.
With the revival of Greek eloquence, from about the beginning of the second century CE., the name “sophist” attained a new distinction. At that time the name was given to the professional orators, who appeared in public with great pomp and delivered declamations either prepared beforehand or improvised on the spot. Like the earlier sophists, they went generally from place to place, and were overwhelmed with applause and with marks of distinction by their contemporaries, including the Roman Emperors. Dion Chrysostom, Herodes Atticus, Aristides, Lucian, and Philostratus the Elder belong to the flourishing period of this second school of sophists, a period which extends over the entire second century. They appear afresh about the middle of the fourth century, devoting their philosophic culture to the zealous but unavailing defense of paganism. Among them was the emperor Julian and his contemporaries Libanius, Himerius, and Themistius. Synesius may be considered the last sophist of importance.

Pre-Socratic Philosophy

   What we like to think of as "philosophic thought" first appears in Greece in a poem, Theogony , written by Hesiod about 725 B.C.; the Theogony retells the myths of the gods and speculates in part about the origins of things and the order of the universe. What we generally call "Greek philosophy" was almost certainly derived by the Greeks from Egyptian culture, particularly natural science (physics and math) which preoccupied Greek thought up to the time of Plato. The Greeks seem also to have derived much of their philosophical theology from the Egyptians as well. These are not modern interpretations of Greek philosophy; the ancient Greeks themselves claim without dissension that their philosophy comes from Egypt. Whether the Greeks travelled to Egypt or whether the Egyptians colonized or visited Greece at some point (which is what the ancient Greeks thought) is a difficult question to answer.
   Nonetheless, in the latter half of the fifth century, a group called the Sophists ("those with wisdom") shifted the inquiry away from natural science and towards the nature of morality and society. Socrates follows in the footsteps of the early Sophists in making ethics his primary topic; with this and with Plato's overwhelming concern with ethics, Greek philosophy became primarily concerned with ethical and civic virtue. A knowledge of the ideas of their predecessors is the best way to approach Plato and Aristotle. These early Greek philosophers who preceded Socrates, the Pre-Socratic Greek philosophers, are divided up into several schools.
   The Milesian or Ionian School. Miletus, on the coast of Ionia in Asia Minor, in the 6th century was a prosperous trading center with numerous colonies; its government was aristocratic, and no divinely-backed King or priesthood dominated society and learning. In order to explain the origin of things and the nature of change and motion, the philosophers in Miletus sought to discover or describe one primary, material substance as the base or elemental foundation of all natural objects and the source of all motion; Thales (early 6th century) postulated that this primary substance was water, Anaximander defined the primary substance as "the unlimited" or "the indefinite" (in Greek: apeiron ), Anaximenes defined it as air.
   The Pythagoreans. Pythagoreanism began towards the end of the 6th century in the Greek cities in southern Italy; this school sought an intellectual foundation for a certain religious way of life, and was more abstract and mathematical than the Milesians (and much more heavily influenced by Egyptian thought). Much of their thought remains completely obscure and impenetrable. They principally sought to purify the soul by strict rules of life; they believed in metempsychosis (the transmigration of souls to animals and even plants); and they found the essential unity of things to lie not in a physical substrate but in number and numerical relations. For the Pythagoreans, the one thing that formed the substrate of all the infinite things in the universe was number .
   Later Philosophies. The most important of the later thinkers who developed these early ideas were:
   Xenophanes of Colophon (born in Ionia; settled in Southern Italy; lived c. 570-c. 475) ridiculed the anthropomorphic gods of Greece and believed in one great God, which was not physical but was all mind (in Greek: nous ), moving all things by the force of his spirit without himself having to move (since mind was not physical, it couldn't move).
   Heraclitus of Ephesus (in Ionia; contemporary with Xenophanes) saw change as the unity of all things; he took movement or the contrary tension of things (such as a taut bow, which is potential movement because of the opposing forces at work) as forms of the mutual resolution of opposites. The unity underlying all change and opposition, but not existing outside of change and opposition, Heraclitus alternatively called the Logos or God. With Parmenides, Heraclitus is perhaps the most important philosopher before Plato, for the idea that nothing transcends change threw a monkey wrench in Greek speculation about physics and metaphysics and has formed the foundation of Western thinking ever since.
   Parmenides of Elea (in Southern Italy; active in the first half of the fifth century) founded the Eleatic School and taught that Being (or Existence) must be unchanging and unmoving, and so the changing world registered by our senses has no reality whatsoever and cannot be known at all (how can you "know" an illusion?). Only reason, without the senses, can lead us to the truth about existence, which neither moves nor changes nor has any parts. This is diametrically opposed to Heraclitus's view, and like Heraclitus's thought, the Eleatic school effectively mucked up Greek speculation about the nature of things for quite a few decades. However, the Parmenidean idea of the nature of reality would become the basis of Plato's thinking and would later become the foundation of the Christian theology of God.
   Zeno of Elea, a pupil of Parmenides, produced famous paradoxes which were essentially arguments supporting Parmenides's views. Just about all of Parmenides's contemporaries thought his theories a bit kooky and logically impossible. Zeno attempted to show that those people who believed that things move, change, and have discrete parts are the ones subscribing to kooky theories by demonstrating that motion and divisibility were logically impossible. Zeno's best-known paradox is the race between Achilles and the tortoise, in which Achilles may never catch a tortoise if it's given a head start ina race. For before he caught up to the tortoise, Achilles would have to reach a point half-way from his starting point and the tortoise, then he must go half-way again, and so to infinity. No matter where Achilles is in relation to the tortoise, he still has an infinity of half-way points to cross, so he can never catch up to the tortoise.
   Empedocles of Acragas (in Sicily; active mid-5th century) tried to reconcile the views of Heraclitus and Parmenides by identifying four basic elements (which become the standard elements up until modernity): earth, water, air, and fire. These elements remain unchanging but combine to form the changing and moving world of our senses.
   Anaxagoras (of Athens; perhaps 500-428) taught that all things come to be from the mixing of innumerable tiny particles of all kinds of substance, shaped by a separate, immaterial, creating principle, Nous ("Mind"). Nous is not explicitly called divine, but has the qualities of a creating god; Nous does not create matter, but rather creates the forms that matter assumes.
   The Atomists, Leucippus (about whom almost nothing is known) and Democritus (of Abdera, in Thrace, born about 460), held that void (space with no matter) exists (against the Eleatics, who held that what is not there cannot exist) and that this void contains an infinite number of indivisible units (atoma , which means "indivisibles") which are undifferentiated in material but different in size and shape. By random movements they form vortexes, in which similar atoms come together and form the sensible world. This theory was taken over later by the Hellenistic philosopher, Epicurus.
   The Sophists. The Sophists were professional teachers who, for a fee, would undertake to teach their students how to get ahead in the world. Socrates was often allied with them by his contemporaries, but his purposes were, in some respects, different. The best-known Sophists were Protagoras, Gorgias, and Hippias, who were significant original thinkers. To get a position of importance, especially in a democracy, one had to have oratorical skill, strength in debate, and a knowledge of law and politics; one would need to know how to manage property and maybe run the State, and know something of music, astronomy, math, physics, and so on. The Sophist equipped one to be a leading citizen, and supplied answers to help people live in a world whose reality had been somewhat undermined by the Pre-Socratics. Philosophers of antiquity have nothing but bad things to say about the Sophists (even though it is extremely likely that Thucydides adhered to Sophistic principles) and we share this attitude. However, despite all we say about the origins of the modern university in Plato and Aristotle, the modern university owes more to Sophistic principles than any other philosophical school. Perhaps the most important Sophistic idea is a brand of skepticism: human affairs, ethics and politics, do not admit of certain knowledge so that good arguments can be made on either side of an argument . This view will dominate later antiquity and modernity and the exercise of arguing on both sides of the question (called in Latin, in utrumqem partem ) is one of the principal aspects of Western education from the Roman Republic to the twentieth century.
   A big question that concerned the Sophists and their critics was: how is virtue (areté) acquired? Can it be taught? These aren't ivory tower questions, such as the nature of Nous , but were vital in a society where power was shifting from the "well-bred" aristocrats to the less educated masses. Answers involved two different principles which are essential for understanding Greek thought: physis , "the unchanging," "fundamental existence," or "nature" (we get the word "physics" from this term: physics in the Greek world is primarily the study of "the unchanging" and secondarily the study of "nature") and nomos , "custom," "the changing," "convention," or "law," and includes morality, tradition, and state laws, all of which are subject to change or revision.
   This dichotomy is a little like that between "nature" and "nurture." However, what the Greeks meant by physis is a bit different from our idea of "nature" or "natural." Physis designated what remained constant (like the gravitational constant) and so could not be changed; however, sometimes the Classical Greeks use this term to mean something like "nature." From the third century onwards, physis will mean something closer to our idea of "natural law." For the Greeks the scope of the dichotomy between nomos and physis applied to practically everything, and it entered into questions such as: do gods really exist (physis ), or are they only a conventional human belief (nomos )? Are class divisions or gender divisions natural (physis ) or artificial (nomos )? Is justice an inborn characteristic of humanity (physis ), or a convention invented by the weaker as a defense against the stronger (nomos )? Is it natural for the stronger to rule the weaker? Is it "natural," or merely self-evident, for all men to be created equal . . .?
   Both nomos and physis may be considered good or bad. Nomos brings progress in society (as in Pericles's Funeral Oration or the American Constitution); but if laws are only valid by nomos they may be changed with circumstances, and may conflict with physis. Physis justifies universal laws ("honor thy father and thy mother") and the equality of rich and poor, men, women, and slaves; but can also justify considering the laws of the State an unnatural limitation on individuals, to be observed only when transgression is likely to be found out. For instance, I could justify breaking the law by appealing to some universal right or some universal law; when governments defend "freedom fighters" rebelling against other governments, they are appealing to some universal, unchanging law that is greater than the laws of an individual state.




©1996, Richard Hooker

For information contact: Richard Hines
Updated 6-6-1999

Great Thinkers on Self-Education: Socrates

June 2, 2009 by Jamie
Filed under Great Thinkers on Self-Ed

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Who is Socrates?
Socrates (c 470 BC – 399 BC) was a renowned Greek teacher, now recognized as the father of Western philosophy. During his life, Socrates often disrupted the status quo by questioning the public and creating controversy. His views on knowledge and truth have influenced the way many people view learning.
Socrates preferred conversational teaching and didn’t leave a single record behind. As a result, all of the “quotes” from Socrates we have today are actually from the writings of his students (primarily Plato and Xenophon).
Eventually, Socrates was accused of failing to recognize the gods of the city and corrupting the youth through his teachings. According to Plato’s Apology, Socrates took a strong stand at the trial despite his awareness of the potential consequences. He was ultimately sentenced to death and willingly drank a cup of poisonous hemlock instead of attempting to escape with his friends.
Socrates’ Educational Philosophy
Socrates had a lot to say about knowledge and wisdom. On the topic of self-education, he believed that:

• Wisdom begins in admitting your own ignorance.
• Self-knowledge is the ultimate virtue.
• People can arrive at truth through questioning.

Admitting Ignorance
Today, many teachers will pretend to know more than they actually do. Socrates, however, would readily admit his own ignorance. In fact, he believed that recognizing this lack of knowledge set him apart from other thinkers. “I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing,” he explained.
In the Apology, Socrates meets many wise politicians, poets, and artisans. Each time he realizes that he is better off because he is aware of his own ignorance. After visiting with a wise and well-regarded man, Socrates said, “Although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything really beautiful and good, I am better off than he is, – for he knows nothing and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know.” By admitting his ignorance, Socrates freed himself to question the status quo and the so-called common sense beliefs of his fellow Athenians.
The Virtue of Self-Knowledge
Socrates believed that knowledge was the ultimate virtue, best used to help people improve their lives. “The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance,” he said. Socrates believed that people made immoral choices because they did not have knowledge. Unless they examined their lives and gained wisdom, people would continue to make mistakes in ignorance.
Instead of valuing money and worldly prestige, Socrates honored knowledge. Even when his life was on the line, he proclaimed:

“While I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting any one whom I meet and saying to him after my manner: You, my friend – a citizen of the great and mighty Athens – are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honor, and reputation, and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard at all?

Socrates urged people to care more about developing their own understanding, knowledge he believed would lead to both goodness and happiness.
Truth through Questioning
Socrates’ greatest contribution to fellow learners is his theory of questioning, now called the Socratic Method. To gain true knowledge, Socrates believed that an issue must be broken into smaller questions. The answers help the thinker recognize contradictions and distill the truth.
In Xenophon’s The Economist, Socrates discusses this method with another thinker:

“Really, Ischomachus, I am disposed to ask: “Does teaching consist in putting questions?” Indeed, the secret of your system has just this instant dawned upon me. I seem to see the principle in which you put your questions. You lead me through the field of my own knowledge, and then by pointing out analogies to what I know, persuade me that I really know some things which hitherto, as I believed, I had no knowledge of.”

Today, the Socratic Method is used by many learners in more formal settings. Teachers of humanities and law often apply it to help students evaluate their thinking. The Scientific Method is even said to be an ancestor of Socretes’ style of questing.
How Socrates Made a Difference
In the modern world, many learners rely on Socrates’ philosophies. His style of questioning, recognition of ignorance, and belief in the value of self-examination / knowledge still resonate with many independent thinkers.
Steve Jobs once said that he’d trade all his technology for an afternoon with Socrates. Many learners would do the same.
Further Reading
Apology by Plato – A monologue based on Socrates’ trial.
The Ethics of Socrates – A basic outline of Socrates’ beliefs and philosophies.
Socrates in Wikipedia – A general overview of Socrates’ life and history.
Socrates: Philosophical Life – A detailed look at the philosopher’s experiences and positions.
Socrates on Self-Confidence – A 24-minute video focusing on Socrates’ ideas about standing up for your beliefs.