Artes Liberales
The seven arts of the old curriculum, each a path through the texts
For a thousand years a free person’s schooling meant seven arts. Three taught the use of words: grammar, logic and rhetoric, the trivium. Four taught number: arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy, the quadrivium. They were thought of as the habits of mind that come before philosophy and theology, not as subjects to be finished. Each page below is a reading path, from a first text to the great ones, in the writers’ own words.
Why seven, and why in this order →
The trivium the arts of language
1GrammarGrammaticaThe art of speaking and reading correctly: letters, parts of speech, the reading of the poets.2LogicLogicaThe art of reasoning: terms, propositions, the syllogism, the detection of fallacy.3RhetoricRhetoricaThe art of persuading in public: finding what to say, ordering it, saying it well.
The quadrivium the arts of number
4ArithmeticArithmeticaNumber at rest: odd and even, ratio, proportion, the properties of numbers.5GeometryGeometriaMagnitude at rest: the figure, the proof, the measure of the world.6MusicMusicaNumber in time: the ratios that make a consonance, and the order they show in the world.7AstronomyAstronomiaMagnitude in motion: the heavens, their order and their cycles.
Where the arts lead on: Philosophy →
The numbers give the order of the old course. Each path can be read on its own.