Educational Guidelines from Antiquity – as Incentives for Contemporary Upbringing

Abstract

Upbringing is a complex life process of building and developing a human being following his/her characteristics. For the process of upbringing to culminate in the formation of intellectually and morally complete and independent people, the question has always arisen as to what it is that makes it effective. The main intention of this paper is to present and analyze fundamental educational guidelines devised and posited by famous philosophers of antiquity –Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle who focused on achieving personal autonomy, without neglecting the fundamental characteristics of socially acceptable frameworks of morality. The paper will present the development of fundamental educational ideas in antiquity, with special emphasis on building the authentic individual and the citizen as one of the main instruments of upbringing both in the past and today.