Böcker i Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture-serien

Treats paideia, the shaping of Greek character, as the basis for study of Hellenism to explain the interaction between the historical process by which Greek character was formed and the intellectual process by which they constructed their ideal of human personality.

The project of Greek culture in its heroic period was the creation of the perfect state-a goal that seemed within reach in the Athens of the fifth century B.C. But with the fall of Athens that prospect evaporated, and the result, which Werner Jaeger describes in this second volume of his magisterial three-volume study of Hellenism, was the spiritualizing of Greek culture-'the search for the divine centre.' Jaeger traces the growth of this new power in human culture from its early beginnings in the teachings of Socrates, to its natural climax in Plato's Republic.

The final volume of Werner Jaeger's three-volume Paideia begins at the same point as its predecessor--the fall of the Periclean empire--but pursues a different line of intellectual development.