Clement of Alexandria and the Judgement of Taste

Abstract This book gives an account of Clement of Alexandria’s Paedagogus as a programme in the formation of the judgement of taste, and puts this in critical dialogue with some modern approaches to the judgement of taste and aesthetics. Its questions are framed in light of Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction, which was a landmark in 20th century scholarship on the theory of taste. However, I seek answers based on a study of Clement’s rhetoric and theology in the context of the Christian Second Sophistic, when Christians were experimenting with new ways of inhabiting the rhetorical and philosophical culture in the Greco-Roman world. The Paedagogus manifests Clement’s pedagogical method and rhetorical strategy at the early stages of Christian formation, when his audience are not yet ready for abstract philosophical argument. This was a time for forming their habits of judgement and preferences of ‘taste’, so as to ground preferences in daily life in deeper desires and aversions that are structured through relationship with God. This was an immensely important stage of formation: many people never got beyond this to the philosophical curriculum, and yet through engaging the ‘tastes’ of a wide audience, Christian leaders sought to spread the gospel, and indeed succeeded in doing so. Even for the intellectual elites, personal formation through preferences of taste was part of how they embodied their desire for God in this life, and the way they inhabited it through the sacramental and ascetic life of the church. Bourdieu’s sociological and anthropological approach proves fruitful for understanding aspects of Clement’s rhetorical method and purpose, but the study of Clement’s theological rhetoric in its cultural context points the way to a theological response to Bourdieu’s theory of taste.