Werner Jaeger

Life

Jaeger was born in Lobberich, Rhenish Prussia. He attended school at Lobberich and at the Gymnasium Thomaeum in Kempen. Jaeger studied at the University of Marburg and University of Berlin. He received a Ph.D. from the latter in 1911 for a dissertation on the Metaphysics of Aristotle. His habilitation was on Nemesios of Emesa in 1914. At only 26 years old, Jaeger was called to a professorship with chair at the University of Basel in Switzerland. One year later he moved to a similar position at Kiel, and in 1921 he returned to Berlin. Jaeger remained in Berlin until 1936.

That year, he emigrated to the United States because he was unhappy with the rise of National Socialism. Jaeger expressed his veiled disapproval in 1937 with Humanistische Reden und Vortraege (Humanist Talks and Lectures), and his book on Demosthenes (1938) based on his Sather lecture from 1934. Jaeger's messages were fully understood in German university circles; the ardent Nazi followers sharply attacked Jaeger.

In the United States, Jaeger worked as a full professor at the University of Chicago from 1936 to 1939. He then moved to Harvard University to continue his edition of the Church father Gregory of Nyssa on which he had started before World War I. Jaeger would remain in Cambridge, Massachusetts, until his death.

The Canadian philosopher James Doull was among his students at Harvard.

Scholarly work

Both during his time in Germany, and in America, Jaeger produced many widely respected works. To begin with, Jaeger actually wrote two versions of his dissertation, one in Latin and one in German, on Aristotle's Metaphysics. Jaeger's edition of the Metaphysics was printed in 1957. Only two years after editing Gregory of Nyssa's Contra Eunomium (1921, 1960), Jaeger became famous with his 1923 groundbreaking study on Aristotle, Aristoteles: Grundlegung einer Geschichte seiner Entwicklung, which was translated into English in 1934 as Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of His Development. His theories largely remained undisputed until the 1960s. Jaeger founded two journals in 1925: Die Antike (1925–1944) and the influential review journal Gnomon (extant). Jaeger was the editor of the works of church father Gregory of Nyssa, Gregorii Nysseni Opera, editing Gregory's major work Contra Eunomium (1921, 1960). This edition is a major scholarly achievement and the philological foundation of the current studies on the Cappadocian Fathers.

Jaeger is perhaps best known for his multivolume work Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, an extensive consideration of both the earliest practices and later philosophical reflections on the cultural nature of education in Ancient Greece, which he hoped would restore a decadent early 20th century Europe to the values of its Hellenic origins.

Jaeger's last lecture, Early Christianity and Greek Paideia (1961) is a very impressive summary of his life's work covering nearly one thousand years of Greek philology, philosophy and theology from Homer, the Presocratic philosophers, Plato up to and including several Church Fathers. The Papers of Werner Jaeger are housed at the Houghton Library (Harvard University).

Interpretation of Plato and Aristotle

Jaeger's position concerning the history of the interpretation of Plato and Aristotle has been summarized effectively by Harold Cherniss of Johns Hopkins University. In general, the history of the interpretation of Plato and Aristotle has largely followed the outline of those who subscribe to the position that (a) Aristotle was sympathetic to the reception of Plato's early dialogues and writings, that (b) Aristotle was sympathetic to the reception of Plato's later dialogues and writings, and (c) various combinations and variations of these two positions. Cherniss' reading of Jaeger states, "Werner Jaeger, in whose eyes Plato's philosophy was the 'matter' out of which the newer and higher form of Aristotle's thought proceeded by a gradual but steady and undeviating development (Aristoteles, p. 11), pronounced the 'old controversy,' [which was] whether or not Aristotle understood Plato, to be 'absolut verständnislos.' (absolutely uncomprehending [of Aristotle]). Yet this did not prevent Leisegang from reasserting that Aristotle's own pattern of thinking was incompatible with a proper understanding of Plato." Therein Cherniss believed Jaeger to be contrary to Leisegang, and Leisegang was unsympathetic to compatibility between Plato and Aristotle in both (a) and (b) above.

Works