What is Paideia

It all started in greece

Definition of PAIDEIA (py-dee-a)

From the Greek pais, paidos. The upbringing of a child (related to pedagogy and pediatrics). In an extended sense, it is the equivalent of the Latin humanitas (from which we get the humanities), signifying the general learning that should be the possession of all human beings. It had to do with the shaping of the Greek character, and was a concept at the center of the Greek educational genius which is the secret of the undying influence of Greece upon all subsequent ages.

Paideia: “—the classical Greek system of education and training, which came to include gymnastics, grammar, rhetoric, poetry, music, mathematics, geography, natural history, astronomy and the physical sciences, history of society and ethics, and philosophy—the complete pedagogical course of study necessary to produce a well-rounded, fully educated citizen.”—Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind, pp. 29-30.

Expressions like civilization, tradition, literature, culture, education are aspects of paideia, but all of these must be included and brought into a unity in the concept.

Paideia in the Greek sense aimed at the creation of a higher type of man. The Greeks alone made men. By discovering man, they didn’t discover the subjective self, but realized the universal laws of human nature. The principle of the Greeks is not individualism but humanism--humanitas--in a noble and weighty sense. Paideia meant the process of educating man into his true form, the real and genuine human nature.

Paideia starts from an ideal, not from an individual. This ideal of MAN was the pattern and model toward which all Greek educators and poets, artists and philosophers always looked. It was this universal ideal, this model of humanity which all individuals were to imitate. As this ideal was to be embodied in the community, and the goal of education was to make each person in the image of the community.

Plato’s primary directive for philosophy focused on the strenuous development of the intellect, the will, and the body, motivated by a ceaseless desire to regain the lost union with the eternal, for the recollection of the IDEALS is both the means and the goal of true knowledge. Education, therefore, for Plato is in the service of the soul and the divine. Under Plato, the classical paideia assumed a deeper and metaphysical dimension in his Academy, holding forth the ideal of inner perfection realized through disciplined education. Tarnas, 42-3.

(from: https://www3.dbu.edu/naugle/pdf/institute_handouts/paideia/notes.pdf )