Jas Elsner's essay, "Paideia: Ancient Concept and Modern Reception",
was brought to my attention by an e-mail with the caption:
"PDF By Jas Elsner <updates@academia-mail.com>", and
led me to recapitulate my thoughts about Werner Jaeger 
and his exposition of Paideia.

The threshold issue is one of definition.
The term Paideia has a wide spectrum of meaning.
My own interpretation of Paideia 
is rooted in the Septuagint: Isaiah 53:5
αὐτὸς δὲ ἐτραυματίσθη διὰ τὰς ἀνομίας ἡμῶν καὶ μεμαλάκισται διὰ τὰς ἁμαρτίας ἡμῶν παιδεία εἰρήνης ἡμῶν ἐπ᾽ αὐτόν τῷ μώλωπι αὐτοῦ ἡμεῗς ἰάθημεν

the key words being: παιδεία εἰρήνης ἡμῶν ἐπ᾽ αὐτόν
which are translated in KJV Isaiah 53:5
"the chastisement of our peace was upon him";
and Luther's 1545 Bible:
Die Straffe ligt auff Jm / Auff das wir Friede hetten 

Having learned from Goethe:
"Denn dass ein Wort nicht einfach gelte
Das müsste sich wohl von selbst verstehn."
I have no difficulty in harmonizing among themselves,
παιδεία of the Septuagint,
chastisement in the King James Version
Luther's translation of παιδεία as Straffe, 
Jaeger's interpretation of παιδεία, as Bildung, 
and Cicero's, as Humanitas.
To catalyse this harmony I need only neutralize the presumptive
ethical, esthetic and intellectual virtues implicit in Bildung 
and Humanitas by prepending the prefix "Ein" to "Bildung" 
thereby translating Bildung into Einbildung 
with its colloquial meaning: conceit vanity illusion fantasy.
[My father often commented on what he perceived as my arrogance
with the assertion: "Eine Bildung muss der Mensch haben."]
Humanitas is readily incorporated into my perspective
when translated as humanness rather than as humanity.

Implicit in Werner Jaegers assertions of the significance of Paideia
in Ancient Greece, is the assumption that our reconstructions of the
past can be objective and realistic, and that at least the
diligent scholar will be able to tell "what it was really like."
I cannot agree.
It seems to me that Leopold von Ranke must have been dreaming
when he proposed that history should be written, 
"wie es eigentlich gewesen,"
To me, my past is compelling only in my dreams.
If, when I am awake, the realities my childhood, of my adolescence,
the uncounted actualities of even one hour that has elapsed
on any day of the more than 92 years of my life 
are inaccessible to me,
if I cannot even recollect or reconstruct what was on my mind 
only a few minutes ago this morning when I awoke, 
how can I possibly ask any one to believe that I can give an
account of Ancient Greece 2500 years ago?
That I or anyone else should be able to recover or to recapitulate
the past as it really was, "wie es eigentlich gewesen",
is an illusion. Because the past is irrevocably inaccessible,
history can never be other than the telling of stories.
Geschichte schreiben ist nichts als Geschichten erzählen.
No verbal "historical" account can avoid or escape
the characterstics of myth, where
I define myth as purportedly substantive communication
about an inaccessible past, an account
unavoidably molded and modified by
the mind of the communicating individual 
and by the language that is inherently socially engendered.
The assertion that all accounts of the past 
are essentially mythological, 
entails as its corollary 
that history is beyond truth and falsehood,
jenseits von Wahrheit und Lüge, 
and that of conflicting histories
none can be deemed false and none can be deemed true.

Other presumption to which I can no longer subscribe are unconditional
standards of arete, of virtue, of the good and of the beautiful.
It is an admission which I make with apology and embarrassment
when I remember that I was once adamantly persuaded by the 
validity of Plato's assertion of absolute beauty and of an absolute
good, and of Kant's proclamation of a categorical imperative.
The critical review of almost any debatable political or military
decision persuades me that in the course of a long life, 
criteria of virtue, of paideia, of Bildung have become for me unreal.
I now consider all ethical and cultural coordinates,
such as of truth and justice, to be tentative and illusory.
I refer to Anaximander to corroborate my conviction 
that existence and guilt are inseparable.

"Ἀναξίμανδρος [...] λέγει δ' αὐτὴν μήτε ὕδωρ μήτε ἄλλο τι τῶν καλουμένων εἶναι στοιχείων, ἀλλ' ἑτέραν τινὰ φύσιν ἄπειρον, ἐξ ἧς ἅπαντας γίνεσθαι τοὺς οὐρανοὺς καὶ τοὺς ἐν αὐτοῖς κόσμους· ἐξ ὧν δὲ ἡ γένεσίς ἐστι τοῖς οὖσι, καὶ τὴν φθορὰν εἰς ταῦτα γίνεσθαι κατὰ τὸ χρεών· διδόναι γὰρ αὐτὰ δίκην καὶ τίσιν ἀλλήλοις τῆς ἀδικίας κατὰ τὴν τοῦ χρόνου τάξιν, ....
Simplicius, Comments on Aristotle's Physics (24, 13)

                 Mea Culpa
  
Du weißt's! Nicht nötig ist's, dass ich's dir sage:
Die Zeit bringt Schuld mit jedem ihrer Tage.
Ich bin bereit die Schuld auf mich zu nehmen,
sie fortzutragen durch mein kurzes Leben.

Nicht was ich tue, was ich bin ist Schuld.
Die Schuld ist nicht die Tat, sie ist das Sein.
und deshalb gibt es nicht Vergütung und kein
Büßen. Erträglich wird's nur durch Geduld.

Auch mit Bekenntnis ist es nicht getan.
Bekennen selbst ist Schuld. Sieh mich nur an!
Denn mit Bekennen mache ich mich groß.
Die Schuld ist unentrinnbar, lässt nicht los.

So ist's, und endlich ausgesprochen sei:
Leben ist Schuld, erst Sterben macht mich frei.

                     aus "Sonette an Chronos"


That having been said,
I need to explain why my scepticism of history does not
extend to "Paideia" as the literary and intellectual work of art 
to which Professor Jaeger devoted much of his life, 
and which stands as an enduring monument to his humanity and to his goodness.
Werner Jaeger died sixty-two years ago in 1961 at age 73. 
I had first heard of him in 1946, during my first year in Harvard College. 
I didn't enroll in his undergraduate course in Greek literature
in translation, because I wanted to read the texts in the original language. 
Instead I took elementary and intermediate Greek courses
with other instructors. We read the Anabasis and Antigone. 
But when I was awarded a prize for my academic work, 
I rewarded myself by choosing as my gift the three volumes of Paideia.

Six years later, having completed college and a year of
graduate study in Comparative Literature.
I had married and was enrolled in medical school.
My wife was supporting us by teaching at the Buckingham School
in Cambridge. Among her students was Therese Jaeger,
and at a parent-teachers meeting Werner Jaeger
met Terry's teacher, by whom he was so charmed that he
instructed his wife Ruth to ask us, my wife and myself, 
to dinner in their spacious house in Watertown. 
After the meal, he invited me into his study to inquire about
my studies. I told him about my interest in literature and philosophy
and my enthusiasm about my work with Karl Viëtor.
Then, in the question with which he replied: 
"Ja, was ist denn eigentlich dieser Viëtorismus?"
I thought I heard faint echoes of loneliness and envy.
Before we left, Professor Jaeger had invited me
to visit him in his study in Widener Library.
I don't remember how often I availed myself of his generosity,
but some of the things he told me are etched in my memory.
I explained that in the absence of meaningful schooling in the
backwoods of Virginia where I had grown up, I had become self-taught.
Then with disarming humility he told me that the same had happened to him.
"Herodot war mein Gymnasium." When I asked Professor Jaeger about philosophy, 
he recounted to me how Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Möllendorf, in reply to a
similar question, had once admonished him: 
"Junger Mann, eh Sie zu philosophieren beginnen,
machen Sie erst einmal ein Paar Konjekturen." When we were
talking about his teacher Paul Natorp, and I asked him about his reaction
to Natorp's account of the Sceptics, Jaeger said, 
"Das hatte ich ganz vergessen."
He told me how he had gone from Marburg to Berlin 
to study with Wilhelm Dilthey, 
whom he described as being inundated with incomplete manuscripts,
having succumbed to old age and alcohol. 
That was the juncture at which Wilamowitz had discovered 
Jaeger's facility in Greek and recruited him to the Classics.
On at least two occasions Professor Jaeger invited me for lunch 
to the Window Shop, a German restaurant on Brattle Street
near Harvard Square, which provided 
congenial employment for German refugees, and
Viennese cuisine for its customers.
I remember Wiener Schnitzel 
as a luxury which I never allowed myself before or after.

At the time, I was in Harvard Medical School, which like other Harvard
departments, was generous in not policing attendance at lectures. 
Exercises in the
afternoons were devoted to clinics, for the presentation to students
of "interesting cases". Even then I was appalled and offended by the
violation of the patients' privacy. More to the point, different instructors
presented the patients unselected,
as they appeared in the clinics. Since many patients
had the same illness, there was endless repetition of the same
symptoms, the same diagnosis, the same dogma,
a patient post Caesarian section could not be subsequently trusted
with normal delivery, even a small malignancy required
radical mastectomy, etc. It seemed that the greater the uncertainty 
of prognosis,
the more hazardous the disease and the contemplated treatment, the more
dogmatic and passionate were the teachers' assertions. Sceptics are
considered heretics in the religion of science.

Such were the clinics from which I absented myself in order
to participate in the seminars to which Professor Jaeger had invited me.
They were three in number: on Aristotle's Metaphysics, on the Greek hymns,
and on Longinus' Peri Hypsous. I remember Professor Jaegers referring to
me with gentle irony as "ὁ ἰατρός" who had lost his way into 
a classics seminar.
Jaeger's demeanor at these exercises was in remarkable contrast 
with that of my college teacher Karl Viëtor  
who had at one time hired me as his research assistant to excerpt 
from the late 19th Century periodical literature,
references to Nietzsche for a book he was preparing to write.
Viëtor's lectures were theatrical presentations of great effectiveness.
He confided to me that originally 
he had prepared himself for his career with elecution lessons. 
Jaeger, on the other hand, made no rhetorical efforts at all. 
He spoke informally, 
as if conversing with individual visitors to his office. 
His opening sentence in the Metaphysics seminar 
has hovered unforgettably over
all my literary efforts in the ensuing seventy years. To his assembled graduate
students and to the visiting ἰατρός,
Jaeger said simply: 
"Now I will teach you how to read." 
He then proceeded to collate each sentence, 
each phrase and sometimes each word, 
with instances in other sections of the Metaphysics,
letting the text speak for itself without any attempt at comprehensive
construction or interpretation; all this consistent with his contention
that the text (which he had edited for the Oxford University Press) was 
not the presentation of an organized thesis, but a random collection of
notes.

In the seminar on the Greek hymn, I remember being impressed with
the melodiousness of Professor Jaegers reading some of the hymns
of Callimachus and some of the Homeric Hymns and with the "edle Einfalt
und stille Größe" of his interpretations.

For the seminar on Longinus' Περì Ὕψους
(Peri Hypsous,) in response to Professor Jaegers request
that I make a presentation about the Sublime, das Erhabene, 
in German literature,
I gave a short talk about Hölderlins poem Die Eichbäume:

Die Eichbäume

Aus den Gärten komm ich zu euch, ihr Söhne des Berges!
Aus den Gärten, da lebt die Natur geduldig und häuslich,
Pflegend und wieder gepflegt mit dem fleißigen Menschen zusammen.
Aber ihr, ihr Herrlichen! steht, wie ein Volk von Titanen
In der zahmeren Welt und gehört nur euch und dem Himmel,
Der euch nährt' und erzog, und der Erde, die euch geboren.
Keiner von euch ist noch in die Schule der Menschen gegangen,
Und ihr drängt euch fröhlich und frei, aus der kräftigen Wurzel,
Unter einander herauf und ergreift, wie der Adler die Beute,
Mit gewaltigem Arme den Raum, und gegen die Wolken
Ist euch heiter und groß die sonnige Krone gerichtet.
Eine Welt ist jeder von euch, wie die Sterne des Himmels
Lebt ihr, jeder ein Gott, in freiem Bunde zusammen.
Könnt ich die Knechtschaft nur erdulden, ich neidete nimmer
Diesen Wald und schmiegte mich gern ans gesellige Leben.
Fesselte nur nicht mehr ans gesellige Leben das Herz mich,
Das von Liebe nicht läßt, wie gern würd ich unter euch wohnen!

My exposition was received, like the other contributions to the seminar,
without criticism and without praise. It was only some years later,
that I was embarrassed
to discover having overlooked an essay, "Das Erhabene in 
der deutschen Literatur," in Karl Viëtor's book "Geist und Form"
which even then stood on my shelves. Of late, however, I conclude
that my referring to Die Eichbäume as a model of the interpretation
of the sublime by the Weimar classicists was altogether apposite.
What impresses me as remarkable today as I review my memories
of the seminar, is Professor Jaeger's implicit, if not 
explicit assumption that the profound existential
meaning we assigned to the sublime in 1952, 
should have remained constant over the course of twenty centuries
for the many writers who commented on it, comparable to the apparently
rhetorical meaning of the Sublime for the author of Peri Hypsous
in 100 CE. Perhaps Professor Jaeger's imputation of an
unchanging meaning to Peri Hypsous was analogous to his reliance
of an unchanging meaning of Paideia for the authors of pre-Socratic Greece,
of the Hellenistic Period and even of early Christianity,
as he intimated in his last publication:
Early Christianity and Greek Paideia, 
Cambridge, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1961,
where he cited even Jesus of Nazareth as an exponent of Paideia.

If Werner Jaeger were alive today, I might be at a loss of words.
I would want that nothing I might say should hurt his feelings,
but I could not deny that my understanding of his Paideia, or
should I write, of our Paideia, had changed. As I observed him,
Werner Jaeger's professional existence at Harvard was lonely.
His competence, so much greater than that of his colleagues,
isolated him.
Some of them were openly contemptuous of his work.
Eric Havelock considered Paideia a mantle for fascism.
Willard van Orman Quine denied students in the Philosophy Department 
academic credit for work they did with Jaeger.

Jaegers last words in "Early Christianity and Paideia" suggest to me
that he and I could now agree that Wilamowitz' subordination of
philosophy to philology was a mistake. Not all of us can be
philologists, but none of can live without breathing,
or without thinking, or without philosophy, however much the
pretentiousness of that word might embarrass us. 
I am confident that if Jaeger were living today, 
his presence would so modify my thoughts, 
that when I explained them to him, 
we would be united in agreeing with the statement 
that Goethe inscribed into Ottilie's Tagebuch: 
"Gegen die großen Vorzüge eines anderen
gibt es kein Rettungsmittel als die Liebe."

Havelock

ὁ ἰατρός

4Fvrwar er trug vnser kranckheit / vnd lud auff sich vnser Schmertzen / Wir aber hielten Jn fur den /der geplagt vnd von Gott geschlagen vnd gemartert were. 5Aber er ist vmb vnser Missethat willen verwundet / vnd vmb vnser Sunde willen zuschlagen /Die Straffe ligt auff Jm / Auff das wir Friede hetten /Vnd durch seine Wunden sind wir geheilet.
 διδόναι γὰρ αὐτὰ δίκην καὶ τίσιν ἀλλήλοις τῆς ἀδικίας κατὰ τὴν τοῦ χρόνου τάξιν,

Simplicius, Comments on Aristotle's Physics (24, 13):
"Ἀναξίμανδρος [...] λέγει δ' αὐτὴν μήτε ὕδωρ μήτε ἄλλο τι τῶν καλουμένων εἶναι στοιχείων, ἀλλ' ἑτέραν τινὰ φύσιν ἄπειρον, ἐξ ἧς ἅπαντας γίνεσθαι τοὺς οὐρανοὺς καὶ τοὺς ἐν αὐτοῖς κόσμους· ἐξ ὧν δὲ ἡ γένεσίς ἐστι τοῖς οὖσι, καὶ τὴν φθορὰν εἰς ταῦτα γίνεσθαι κατὰ τὸ χρεών· διδόναι γὰρ αὐτὰ δίκην καὶ τίσιν ἀλλήλοις τῆς ἀδικίας κατὰ τὴν τοῦ χρόνου τάξιν, ποιητικωτέροις οὕτως ὀνόμασιν αὐτὰ λέγων. δῆλον δὲ ὅτι τὴν εἰς ἄλληλα μεταβολὴν τῶν τεττάρων στοιχείων οὗτος θεασάμενος οὐκ ἠξίωσεν ἕν τι τούτων ὑποκείμενον ποιῆσαι, ἀλλά τι ἄλλο παρὰ ταῦτα· οὗτος δὲ οὐκ ἀλλοιουμένου τοῦ στοιχείου τὴν γένεσιν ποιεῖ, ἀλλ' ἀποκρινομένων τῶν ἐναντίων διὰ τῆς αἰδίου κινήσεως."
 
Schiller Götter Grienchenlands

Schöne Welt, wo bist du? Kehre wieder
Holdes Blüthenalter der Natur!
Ach, nur in dem Feenland der Lieder
Lebt noch deine fabelhafte Spur.
Ausgestorben trauert das Gefilde,
Keine Gottheit zeigt sich meinem Blick,
Ach, von jenem lebenwarmen Bilde
Blieb der Schatten nur zurück.

Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–1768)
Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (1764)
Der einzige Weg für uns groß, ja wenn es möglich ist, unnachahmlich zu werden, ist die Nachahmung der Alten, und was jemand von Homer gesagt, daß derjenige ihn bewundern lernet, der ihn wohl verstehen gelernet, gilt auch von den Kunstwerken der Alten, sonderlich der Griechen.

Philhellenismus

Wannsee Konferenz
https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1945/debate.htm
In early May 1945, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, with the approval of President Harry S. Truman, formed an Interim Committee of top officials charged with recommending the proper use of atomic weapons in wartime and developing a position for the United States on postwar atomic policy.  Stimson headed the advisory group composed of Vannevar Bush, James Conant, Karl T. Compton, Under Secretary of the Navy Ralph A. Bard, Assistant Secretary of State William L. Clayton, and future Secretary of State James F. Byrnes.  Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Arthur Compton, and Ernest Lawrence served as scientific advisors (the Scientific Panel), while General George Marshall represented the military.  The committee met on May 31 and then again the next day with leaders from the business side of the Manhattan Project, including Walter S. Carpenter of DuPont, James C. White of Tennessee Eastman, George H. Bucher of Westinghouse, and James A. Rafferty of Union Carbide.  

President Harry S. Truman, November 1945 At the May 31 meeting, Lawrence suggested that a demonstration of the atomic bomb might possibly convince the Japanese to surrender.  This was rejected, however, out of fear that the bomb might be a dud, that the Japanese might put American prisoners of war in the area, or that they might manage to shoot down the plane.  The shock value of the new weapon could also be lost. These reasons and others convinced the group that the bomb should be dropped without warning on a "dual target" -- a war plant surrounded by workers' homes.  On June 6, Stimson informed President Truman (right) that the Interim Committee recommended keeping the atomic bomb a secret until Japan had been bombed.  The attack should take place as soon as possible and without warning.  Truman and Stimson agreed that the President would stall if the Soviet Union asked about atomic weapons in the upcoming meetings to be held at Potsdam and that it might be possible to gain concessions from the Soviet Union later in return for providing technical information.  

Joe 1, the first Soviet atomic test, August 29, 1949.The Interim Committee also discussed the postwar fate of atomic energy. At the May 31 meeting, they concluded that the United States should try to retain superiority of nuclear weapons in case international relations deteriorated.  Most present at the meeting thought that atomic secrets should be protected for the present, though they conceded that the United States monopoly could not be held long. The meeting with the industrialists confirmed their view that the United States had a lead of three to ten years on the Soviet Union in production facilities for bomb fabrication.  There had been some discussion of free exchange of nuclear research for peaceful purposes and the international inspection system that such an exchange would require.  Stimson told Truman that the Interim Committee was considering domestic legislation and that its members generally held the position that international agreements should be made in which all nuclear research would be made public and a system of inspections would be devised.  In case international agreements were not forthcoming, the United States should continue to produce as much fissionable material as possible to take advantage of its current position of superiority.  


Not all the scientists of the Manhattan Project were satisfied that their voices had been heard in decision-making about the bomb.  They had built the bomb and thought they had a right to help determine how it was to be used. The Scientific Panel of the Interim Committee was supposed to be the connection between the scientists and the policymakers, but after the scientists of the Met Lab were briefed by Arthur Compton on June 2 about the Interim Committee's conclusions, the Met Lab decided to create a "second opinion."  The result was the Committee on the Social and Political Implications of the Atomic Bomb, which was chaired by James Franck and included Glenn Seaborg and Leo Szilard.  Its report argued that postwar international control of atomic power was the only way to stop the arms race that would be inevitable if the United States bombed Japan without first demonstrating the weapon in an uninhabited area.  Oppenheimer, Fermi, Compton, and Lawrence (the Scientific Panel) disagreed with the Franck Report, however, and concluded that no technical test would convince Japan to surrender.  On June 21, the Interim Committee concurred.  The bomb would be used as soon as possible, without warning, and against a war plant Generals Leslie Groves and Thomas Farrellsurrounded by additional buildings.  As to informing the Soviet Union, the Committee concluded that Truman should mention at Potsdam that the United States was preparing to use a new kind of weapon against Japan.


However, it's estimated roughly 70,000 to 135,000 people died in Hiroshima and 60,000 to 80,000 people died in Nagasaki, both from acute exposure to the blasts and from long-term side effects of radiation.Jul 25, 2022

Vielleicht sollte es heißen nicht Phänomenologie des Geistes, sondern
Phänomenologie der Paideia, wo der Glauben den Geist durch den Glauben
an die Bildung, an eine geisteswissenschaftlich beurkundete Paideia 
ersetzt wird.

"Es wird daher in den Hauptabteilungen dieser Wissenschaft, 
die wieder in mehrere zerfallen, das Bewußtsein, 
das Selbstbewußtsein, die beobachtende und handelnde Vernunft, 
der Geist selbst, als sittlicher, gebildeter und
moralischer Geist, und endlich als religiöser in seinen
unterschiedenen Formen betrachtet." 
"Worin
könnte mehr das Innere einer philosophischen Schrift ausgesprochen
sein als in den Zwecken und Resultaten derselben, und wodurch diese
bestimmter erkannt werden als durch ihre Verschiedenheit von dem, was
das Zeitalter sonst in derselben Sphäre hervorbringt?  Wenn aber ein
solches Tun für mehr als für den Anfang des Erkennens, wenn es für
das wirkliche Erkennen gelten soll, ist es in der Tat zu den
Erfindungen zu rechnen, die Sache selbst zu umgehen, und dieses
beides zu verbinden, den Anschein des Ernstes und Bemühens um sie,
und die wirkliche Ersparung desselben.--Denn die Sache ist nicht in
ihrem _Zwecke_ erschöpft, sondern in ihrer _Ausführung_, noch ist das
_Resultat_ das _wirkliche_ Ganze, sondern es zusammen mit seinem
Werden; der Zweck für sich ist das unlebendige Allgemeine, wie die
Tendenz das bloße Treiben, das seiner Wirklichkeit noch entbehrt, und
das nackte Resultat ist der Leichnam, der sie hinter sich gelassen."
Hegel Phänomenologie