Glynis Ridley
Chair, Department of English
“The student well-versed in grammar could feel confident writing or speaking to his peers – or superiors. Instruction in logic allowed competing evidence to be weighed before taking action. Rhetoric (defined by Aristotle as “the art of persuasion”) was the most revered of the classical liberal arts, for the individual who understands what will move a particular audience to action wields an immense power. Rhetoric, logic, and grammar may look like antiquated terms, but the skills of clear, effective, and persuasive communication continue to be the most marketable – and transferable – ever taught.”
Whether the stage is a local, national, or international one, and whether one works within the academy or outside it, it’s clear that the value of a liberal arts education is under immense scrutiny – some would even say, attack. On both sides of the Atlantic, political pundits agree that electorates are being swayed by feelings rather than facts and divisive rhetorics pitting “us” against “them.” In this charged atmosphere, “out-of-touch elites” in “ivory towers” are being accused of bankrupting nations – morally and financially, and corrupting students with largely left-of-center ideologies while teaching nothing that will be of use in a competitive global economy. Perhaps many critics of a liberal arts education cannot get beyond the word “liberal,” with all the political baggage it brings.
The medieval originators of the modern western university would surely have been puzzled that modern critics of the liberal arts ignore the term’s origin: “liberal,” like “liberty,” comes from the Latin liber, meaning “free.” The phrase “liberal arts” therefore has its origin in the notion that those subjects taught as part of a liberal arts curriculum were the subjects necessary to master in order to be truly free, that is, to participate fully as a citizen in the workings of the state.
The first western universities recognized seven liberal arts: three core subjects in grammar, logic, and rhetoric (the trivium), and an additional four disciplines in arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music (the quadrivium). While the range of subjects considered to be liberal arts has grown, and while we might regard some of the foundational terminology as obsolete, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were written by men who believed passionately in the classical ideal that, in order to play a full part as a citizen, an individual should have a liberal education, that is, a way of thinking about the rights and responsibilities of a free man; a way of thinking quite independent of the acquisition of any technical skill or professional knowledge.
For the ancient Greeks and their later admirers who founded the great medieval universities, the original liberal arts were nothing less than the means by which men connected with each other, with the apparatus of the state, and with the biggest, most abstract and enduring questions that have ever been asked. The student well-versed in grammar could feel confident writing or speaking to his peers – or superiors. Instruction in logic allowed competing evidence to be weighed before taking action. Rhetoric (defined by Aristotle as “the art of persuasion”) was the most revered of the classical liberal arts, for the individual who understands what will move a particular audience to action on any given subject wields an immense power. Rhetoric, logic, and grammar may look like antiquated terms, but the skills of clear, effective, and persuasive communication continue to be the most marketable – and transferable - ever taught.
Having demonstrated a good grasp of these three subjects, a medieval student of the liberal arts would move on to arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music. Between them, these disciplines allowed measurement to be made of both the natural and man-made world, inferences to be drawn, and hypotheses to be formed. The fact that musical intervals can be expressed mathematically and that harmonies are predictable according to mathematical ratios made our ancestors believe that music is grounded in physical laws and therefore a complementary field of study to the other liberal arts concerned with measuring and understanding the natural world.
Today at UofL, the School of Music is separate from the College of Arts and Sciences, while A&S houses over 20 departments and units. Terminology has changed; fields of inquiry have diversified and expanded. The ‘liberality’ of those who gave us the liberal arts is understood to have been culturally constructed, limited by a series of historical moments with their own perceptions of class, gender, race, and sexuality.
But at their core, all A&S subjects engage with the age old questions posed by the original liberal arts: questions about the self that are both existential and physical; questions about the rights and responsibilities of rulers and ruled, each to the other; questions about the nature of the world around us, both that which is seen and that which can be known by other means. The exploration of these questions is a Liberal Arts education.
