The Gift of Education: Liberales Artes, Part Two

Last week, I discussed the etymology of the English word school and its roots in the leisure of Greek aristocrats. The word leisure was associated with school because only those with leisure time could afford it.

In a similar vein, the idea of the “liberal arts” denotes a privileged status required for their study. The making of an educated freeman in classical antiquity started with the three subjects of logic, rhetoric, and grammar (the Trivium). In the Middle Ages, the Quadrivium of music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy were added to the curriculum of university studies.

These seven liberal arts were rooted in the past of a slave society that, nonetheless, valued education and freedom of the mind. Only a freeman of sufficient moral, financial, and intellectual standing was supposed to engage in these pursuits.

In one sense, we can understand the notion of education as a freeing force. Man was bound to the earth by gravity until the development of science and technical arts were deployed to free him to soar heavenward.

However, this was not the freedom primarily meant by the classical figures who extoled the liberal arts. The main question of the educated man should not be “How can I build this machine of flight?” Rather, it should be “Ought I to build this machine and for what Telos is it meant?”

The freed mind sought a freedom toward some end and not a freedom unbound. This question has become clouded, however, because many mistake freedom as an end in itself. While man has no positive right to freedom used in harmful ways, the negative consequences of restraining him from certain harmful acts may outweigh the benefit of preventing the harmful action.

The conservative may consistently hold that liberty is not license and yet permit much immoral activity. The liberal arts were meant to shed some light on the wealth of knowledge so that he may act nobly, ethically, and wisely.

It is thus evident that the idea of the liberal arts meant both that which may be studied by a freeman and that which frees the inner man. Chains of iron had to be broken to free a slave, but chains of infinitely greater strength bind his mind.

There is a reason why slaves were not permitted to read in many cases. If you double the chains hanging from his hands, you may slow his escape, but if you take his capacity for liberated thought through virtuous study of the liberal arts, you have manacled his mind.

Stay tuned for the final installment of the Gift of Education series.