The Public Intellectual according to Choricius of Gaza, or How to Circumvent the Totalizing Christian Discourse
| Autor: | Jan Stenger |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2017 |
| Předmět: |
History
media_common.quotation_subject Christian faith Paideia 02 engineering and technology Secular education 010501 environmental sciences 01 natural sciences Ideal (ethics) Scholarship 020401 chemical engineering Aesthetics Law Sophist Sociology 0204 chemical engineering Classics Function (engineering) 0105 earth and related environmental sciences media_common |
| Zdroj: | University of Glasgow |
| ISSN: | 1942-1273 1939-6716 |
| DOI: | 10.1353/jla.2017.0024 |
| Popis: | In the funeral oration (Or. 8) for his teacher Procopius, the rhetorician\ud Choricius of Gaza pretends to respond to critics among the audience who\ud find fault with the devotion of the deceased sophist to classical scholarship\ud and insist on the precedence of Scripture and Christian faith. Addressing\ud these misgivings Choricius underscores Procopius’s theological studies as\ud well as charitable activities, to the extent that his teacher even compares to\ud priests and holy men. At first glance, this image seems to be evidence that\ud Choricius felt the need to comply with the totalizing Christian discourse at\ud the time. Yet numerous classical echoes, in particular references to Aelius\ud Aristides’s portrayal of Pericles and Demosthenes, demonstrate that the\ud orator’s ideal of the scholar as a public intellectual is largely based on traditional\ud paideia. This article, thus, argues that Choricius aims to maintain\ud in the Christian polis a central place for a secular education that, while not\ud opposed to religion, fulfills a vital function for the individual and society\ud as a whole. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
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