From Jan Elsner Date: February 14, 2023 Subject: re:Paideia Very interested in your thoughts, and so nice to know of a person who knew Jaeger. A great man caught in appalling times... You may be interested in this piece by Stan Burstein (he doesn’t entirely agree with me, and in one respect has changed the historical picture of when WJ wrote what in relation to when it was published). Oddly, in the work of one who was so influenced by Neoplatonism and its Christian versions, Jaeger did probably convince himself (perhaps on the model of Wilamowitz who really did believe you could restore the correct text of an author 2500 years dead) that he could access real history and real concepts as they were in ancient Greece (hence a paideia that was Bildung as the Germans understood it between Winckelmann and the advent of Adolf Hitler): yet his Neoplatonics would have told him that no representation or symbol or enormous project in 3 volumes is ever the thing or can access it…. Here Friedländer’s written aside ‘ecco! Tell it Hitler!’ in his copy, is telling and precise as a thesis on the inevitable contemporaneity of all our philosophical and historical thinking (the thesis of the philosophy of history promoted by Benedetto Croce at about the same time as Jaeger was working) – just look at today’s culture wars and woke/anti-woke aberrations… I am honoured you should put my piece on your website! I researched the issue (not being a real scholar of Jaeger) and wrote the paper because I could not understand what everyone in Classics meant by paideia (a word used repeatedly) and needed to discover (via Jaeger and Marrou) what the two founding theorists of the topic meant (i.e. Bildung of the C19, i.e. Humanism) and how that remains the meaning, almost certainly incorrectly for the ancient world, even if no one believes it or is troubled to redefine! Best wishes to you Jaś From: Ernst J Meyer Date: Tuesday, 14 February 2023 at 02:11 To: Jas Elsner Subject: Paideia Ernst Jochen Meyer 174 School Street Belmont MA 02478 USA ernstmeyer@earthlink.net http://ernstjmeyer.ddns.net February 13, 2030 Professor Jaś Elsner jas.elsner@ccc.ox.ac.uk Dear Professor Elsner, Your essay, "Paideia: Ancient Concept and Modern Reception", was brought to my attention by an e-mail with the caption: "PDF By Jas Elsner ". Thank you for permitting it to be sent to me. Seventy years ago, Werner Jaeger befriended me at Harvard, and his exposition of Paideia subsequently became a focus of my emotional and intellectual development. As I read and reread your essay, I recapitulate various ideas that have gone through my mind in the intervening years; and accustomed as I am to indulging in imaginary conversations with authors whose works I read, and accustomed as I am to exploring my mind by committing my thoughts to writing, I made and filed on my website at: http://ernstjmeyer.ddns.net/div01/d230213_01_Notes_on_Paideia such notes about my understanding of Paideia as I could compose offhand without further research. I respectfully ask that you advise me of any objection you might have to my also filing on my website at http://ernstjmeyer.ddns.net/div01/2230209_00_Paideia_ancient_concept_and_modern_recep.pdf a copy of your article. Permit me to thank you again for vividly reminding me of my past. Sincerely yours, Ernst Jochen Meyer