Jaeger Paideia Vol 3 Ch 2

Read for 5364; notes from a print out of scanned text; relocate page numbers

Rivals rhetoric and philosophy are rooted in poetry (46)

for Isocrates, rhetoric was the best solution to the post-Periclean age

Discussion and persuasion as a way to handle all of the chaos.

Isocrates sought, like platonic Socrates, to

"initiate much-needed reformation in some other way than by entering an active career as an orator in the assemblies and the law courts."

Consider using the above in terms of addressing/ applying paideia or expanding it outside of the schools and working in non-traditional environments of gyms, dojos, etc.

"The new rhetoric had to find an ideal which could be ethically interpreted and which at the same time could be translated into practical political action."

In Isocrates, form and content were inseperable.

Isocrates attacked philosophers for not trusting their own students.

"Perfect eloquence must be the individual expression of a single critical moment, a kairos, and its highest law is that it should be wholly appropriate. Only by observing these two rules can it succeed in being new and original."

Note this in order to attempt to improve my own work.

"Naturally, Isocrates' view of the educational value of rhetoric is defined by this conception of its true character. Being an act of creation, oratory in its highest ranges cannot possibly be taught like a school subject. And yet he holds that it can be employed to educate young men: because of his own peculiar view of the relation between the three factors which, according to the pedagogic theories of the sophists, are the foundation of all education. They are: (1) talent, (2) study, and (3) practice."

This could be compared to martial arts training--how similar are current teachers/schools in their applications? How distant? Has much changed?

"For Iscorates, the real difficulty of rhetoric is in the "right choice, commixture, and placing of the 'ideas' on each subject, in the selection of the correct moment, in the good taste and appropriateness with which the speech is decorated with enthymemes, and in the rhythmic and musical disposition of the words."

Use the above for me. Refer to these writing tips again.

"Here, the general Greek idea, that education is the process by which the whole man is shipaed, is enunciated independently of Plato, and variously expounded in such imagery as 'model' or 'patttern', 'stamp', 'imitate.' The real problem is how this process of 'shaping' can be converted from a beautiful image into a practical reality--that is, what is to be the method of forming the human character, and ultimately what is the nature of the human intellect."

Greeks on education as interpreted by Jaeger. Important

"For him [Isocrates], rhetorical training is worked out simply by Opinion, not by Knowledge. But he frequently claims that the intellect possesses an aesthetic and practical faculty which, without claiming absolute knolwedge, can still choose the right means and the right end. His whole conception of culture is based on that aesthetic power."

I am not sure what to do with this, but it seems important.

"The superiority of rhetoric, as Isocrates conceives it, is that it is entirely political culture. All that it has to do to attain spiritual leadership in the state is to find a new approach to life and its problems."

Rhet bashes philosophy. Bomb to drop.