Błąd Izokratesa (czyli o konserwatywnej polityce kulturalnej)
The Error of Isocrates (About Conservative Cultural Policy)

Summary/Abstract: RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The aim of the article below is an idea of the policy of culture, free both from the excessive intervention of the bureaucratic state and from the influence of the cultural coteries. THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: The research problem is to call an idea of the “cultural etatism” formulated by an ancient rhetorician Isocrates. The author speaks about an “error of Isocrates”, which – in his opinion – relied on the postulate of shaping the political and spiritual life of Greeks by the intervention of the polis . He applies this idea to an analysis of the policy of culture in the contemporary bureaucratic States. He carries out his argumentation on the ground of this analogy. THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: In the beginning the argument refers to the protectionism in the politics of the contemporary States. Then the object of examination is the notion of the political humanism, used by Werner Jaeger in his “Paideia”. The next step is a critique of the constructivism of Isocrates, who was guided by the idea of reconstructing Areopag as an educator of people in polis . Those two ideas will be handled as of no use in the context of the present time. RESEARCH RESULTS: The crucial conclusion of the argumentation is the thesis that the present day processes of globalization of culture debase the standards of education, whereas the suitable aims of cultural policy should be an integration of the community and also the reproduction of elites. The author argues that neither the political humanism nor the “cultural etatism are able to realize properly these aims. The first has been devastated by the present day bureaucratic policy of culture, whereas the “error of Isocrates” makes impossible nowadays the realization of neoisocratic idea. CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: Therefore the only reasonable way out of this situation seems to be the intentional activity of State, which aims its cultural policy to the specific objects, that is to say, which avoids cultural etatism and has its support in the free market. The author calls this strategy a “pseudo paideia”.

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