Homero y Sócrates: dos paideiai

Abstract

For the Greeks, wisdom made the man. That is to say that to become an adult and to be considered truly human, one had to be well educated, which presupposed intelligence, mastery of one’s passions, escaping luck’s dominion. From archaic times, Homer was the basis for this paideia, which we see challenged in the Fifth century, during the so-called Greek Illustration. In Hellenistic times, Homer became literature, and philosophy, a way of life. Socrates’ influence on this change was enormous. His life was his work; he didn’t have to write to demand a radical change of the city’s institutions. What was perhaps impossible to foresee was that those institutions didn’t admit change; that religion couldn’t endure attacks from sophistic relativism and philosophical discussion, and that custom couldn’t hold after so radical a change in the goal of education. Soul, considered by many Socrates’ invention, caused this change.