The Liberal Arts
The term "liberal arts" is commonly used when discussing
the kind of learning that characterizes the education of men
and women suited to the privileges and obligations of a free
society. But exactly what those arts are may not be so well
known. The liberal arts are indispensable means for exercising
the power of thinking and for gaining access to the intellectual
tradition of civilization. They are traditionally divided
as follows:
The Trivium ("the three ways")
The Quadrivium ("the four ways")
- Geometry
- Astronomy
- Arithmetic
- Music
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"The liberal arts are not merely indispensable; they
are unavoidable. Nobody can decide for himself whether he
is going to be a human being. The only question open to him
is whether he will be an ignorant, undeveloped one, or one
who has sought to reach the highest point he is capable of
attaining. The question, in short, is whether he will be a
poor liberal artist or a good one.
The liberal artist learns to read, write, speak, listen,
understand, and think. He learns to reckon, measure, and manipulate
matter, quantity, and motion in order to predict, produce
and exchange. As we live in the tradition, whether we know
it or not, so we are all liberal artists, whether we know
it or not. We all practice the liberal arts, well or badly,
all the time every day. As we should understand the tradition
as well as we can in order to understand ourselves, so we
should be as good liberal artists as we can in order to become
as fully human as we can."
-- Robert Maynard Hutchins, former president of the University
of Chicago
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