Werner Jaeger's 'Paideia'

Do you know how it is when you finally see something that that's all you can see?

Either in wonder that you hadn't seen it before, or in dismay that what you've finally seen had been there all the time and you hadn't seen it until now.

That's what I'm seeing.

I'm measuring what's just happened against what I wanted or hoped to have happened, and seeing that I should have seen what happened much sooner.

I see I should have published Thomas Fuller's Monsieur Ambivalence a year or two before I published it.

But if I had published Monsieur Ambivalence a year or two prior to publishing it, who knows what might have happened.

In any case, the world being everything that is the case (Wittgenstein) I didn't publish Monsieur Ambivalence until now.

It's the same book I could have published last year--the same words and pictures--but now it's brand new.

Thomas Fuller, author of Monsieur Ambivalence, gave two readings last week in San Francisco. He was both witty and profound, just like his book is both witty and profound. His publisher felt a little sorry that it had taken so long to bring the book into being, but was comforted by the fact that the book had a life at all, seeing that there were more people who responded to the book than there were people who didn't respond.

Last night at dinner, I asked Thomas Fuller what he's writing now, knowing that he's almost always writing. He said he's writing a book on "the classical world", and is writing it like he's "part pre-Socratic philosopher and part 21st century tourist trying to explain the classical world to someone I love."

In Werner Jaeger's book, Paideia (vol.1, p.393) Jaeger writes, "Suddenly the Greeks realized that grown men too could have Paideia."