Aristotle and Ancient Educational IdealsDavidson, Thomas
Philosophy
Aristotle and Ancient Educational Ideals
Davidson, Thomas
Aristotle, 384 BC-322 BC; Education, Greek
Such, in brief, is Quintilian's school-programme. It has no place for
physical science (except Astronomy), for manual training, or for
physical exercise. Play is, indeed, permitted as a necessary recreation,
and gymnastics and physical training (παιδοτρίβεια) are recommended in
so far as they are necessary to enable the budding orator to move and
to gesticulate gracefully; but that is all. "Nothing can please that is
not becoming."
As soon as he is ready, the young aspirant for oratorical fame passes
into the hands of the rhetorician, under whom he learns all the arts,
and acquires all that knowledge, necessary to fit him for his
profession. No kind of knowledge, and no moral excellence ought to be
foreign to the orator. Quintilian is very severe upon the philosophers
for claiming, in their title, to be, in an exceptional way, lovers of
wisdom, and maintains that the true orator is the truly wise and good
man. He is surely superior to the philosopher, who turns his back upon
the world and manifests no interest in human affairs. Moreover,
"philosophy may be simulated; eloquence cannot."
The closing chapter of the last book of Quintilian's work treats of the
orator after his retirement from public life. He is to devote himself to
writing and to the study of art, science, and philosophy. The picture is
charming; but it ends with death, and there is nothing beyond. God may
be defined for oratorical purposes; but his existence is a matter of
conjecture.
In Quintilian we have the highest type of the civic man living under a
cosmopolitan despotism. His defects--his pedantry, his servility, his
externality, his worldliness--are only such as are natural to a good man
placed in this position, without any outlook upon a higher existence.
CHAPTER III
PLOTINUS AND PHILOSOPHIC EDUCATION
The material body, which is subject to motion, change, dissolution,
and division, requires an immaterial principle to hold and bind it
together in unity. This principle of unity is the soul. If it were
material, it would require another principle of unity, and so on _ad
infinitum_, till an immaterial first were reached, which would then
be the true soul.--Ammonius Saccas.
Intelligible things, when they are united with other things, are not
changed, as corporeal things are when they are united with each
other, but remain as they are, and what they are. Soul and body are
intimately united, but not mixed. The soul can separate and withdraw
itself from the body, not only in sleep, but also in thought. As the
sun illuminates and yet remains itself a separate light, so is the
soul in its relation to the body. It is not in the body as in place;
rather the body is in it and of it.--_Id._
One's duty is to become first man, then God.--Hierocles.
Neither Schelling nor Baader nor Hegel has refuted Plotinus: in many
ways he soars above them.--Arthur Richter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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