The Liberal Arts in the Aristotelian-Thomist Scheme of Knowledge

THE LIBERAL ARTS IN THE ARISTOTELIANTHOMIST SCHEME OF KNOWLEDGE I PROPOSE in the present study to do five things: 1) to raise the specifically philosophical problems which present themselves when one attempts to integrate the Stoicoriginated notion of " liberal arts " with the AristotelianThomist scheme of human knowledge, leaving aside the numerous historical and pedagogical problems connected with this Stoic notion; 2) to :review the general Aristotelian-Thomist scheme of knowledge, so as to discover the materials which supply an eventual answer to the philosophical problems listed in the first section; 3) to apply that Aristotelian-Thomist scheme of knowledge to the actual solution of each of those philosophical problems; 4) to raise the question how history and the humanities fit into either the notion of the liberal arts or the Aristotelian-Thomist scheme of knowledge and, in answering that question, to suggest a revision of the content of the quadrivium; 5) to indicate briefly that actual college and university practice in America is consistent with the revision of the quadrivium here proposed. I shall suggest that, so far as the content of the quadrivium goes, theory lags behind practice -a common enough situation in education where changes, necessitated by common sense, are disguised as the continuance of tradition through the simple device of employing an ancient rhetoric. The fact that the ancient rhetoric is totally inapplicable to the new realities bothers no one, for it is very easy first to blur the exact meaning of a given term, and then surreptitiously to make it mean exactly the opposite of its proper connotation. The situation becomes doubly absurd when the ancient theory and its rhetoric are themselves defective, and present practice is sound.1 1 I must at the outset acknowledge my indebtedness to the Rev. B. Mullahy, 481 482 JAMES V. MULLANEY I. THE PROBLEMS 1. The first problem which confronts anyone familiar with the Aristotelian-Thomist philosophy when he tries to understand the notion of the liberal arts is this: the phrase itself is quite meaningless, a patent contradiction in tenns. Liberal knowledge is theoretical knowledge, knowledge sought for its own sake.2 Art is productive knowledge, a proper account of how to make something, know-how regarding the transformation of external matter.3 Now just as an animal could not possibly be both rational and infra-rational simultaneously, so knowledge could not possibly be both theoretical and nontheoretical , but productive, simultaneously. 2. The second problem arises from the fact that the liberal arts-grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy-are neither arts nor liberal knowledge. They are not arts because, as we saw above, art is productive knowledge, a making which passes into external matter, as in the useful or fine arts. But the liberal arts do not make anything, transfonn no external matter. Neither are they liberal knowledge. For liberal knowledge, as we also saw above, is sought for its own sake but these logical and mathematical arts, called liberal, are sought for the sake, not of themselves, but of the theoretical knowledge to which they lead; hence the names trivium and quadrivium. They are propaedeutic, related as means to a further intellectual end.4 C. S.C., whose remarkable article, "The Nature of the Liberal Arts" (THE NEw ScHOLSSTICISM, XXII, [1949] 361-386) is the most intelligent analysis of this much discussed topic that I have ever read. I can merely raise the questions which begin where Fr. Mullahy leaves off. 2 Aristotle, Metaphysics, I, 2 (982 b 25); St. Thomas, In Boet. de Trin., q. 5, a. 8. 3 Aristotle, Ethics, VI, 8-7 (1139 b 14-H41 b 14); Meta., VI, l (1025 b 22-25); St. Thomas, Summa Theol., I, q. 57, a. 8. • Aristotle so views logic in Meta., H, 2 (995 a 12-14). Aquinas so views all of the liberal arts in In Boet. de Trin., q. 5, a. l, ad !il and 8. Naturally Aristotle has no position on the liberal arts as such, since this Stoic conception is altogether foreign to him. THE LIBERA!. ARTS IN THE ARISTOTELIAN-THOMIST 483 3. The third problem is that at least five of the seven liberal arts have no subject...