Abstract

Although Gadamer's study of Greek paideia has been virtually ignored in the scholarly literature, I argue that it is central to his philosophy of education. Gadamer singles out three kinds of paideia: traditional, sophistic and philosophic. Traditional paideia, grounded in an unaware habit or disposition of the soul, was vulnerable when sophistic paideia brought reasoned argument against it. This 'new' paideia originally supported traditional notions of the just and the good with its conscious art of argumentation and pragmatic enhancement of success. But this paideia also undermined conventional morality by arguing that it is only convention, thereby corrupting the youth of Athens by appealing to the untrammeled desire for power. Philosophical paideia takes its bearings from the sophistic as its deepest opponent and counterimage. It turns out, however, that the two are virtually indistinguishable. Both bring thinking to consciousness; both are rhetorical arts; both create confusion; and both are subject to the 'weakness of the logoi.' In the end, the difference between them rests not on distinctions of reason, but the intent of the reasoner. This conflict of paideias is relevant to the situation of education today. Problems of narrow technical perspective and the broadest ideological manipulation are directly traceable to sophistic paideia. Thus, Gadamer points to hermeneutical praxis as 'the heart of all education that wants to teach how to philosophize.'