What Are the Liberal Arts?
Three principles // seven arts in classic form // as opposed to what other arts // what do modern "liberal arts" colleges teach? // the second-dose theory of liberal arts
The liberal arts are those arts which:
Set you free (liberate you).
Shape your character to use that freedom well.
Do both of the things above in your particular society.
The rest of this post is just unraveling what these things mean in more detail.
The definition of the liberal arts
1) The liberal arts are those arts which set you free
“Being free” means “having the independent ability to understand and respond to reality.” You do not depend on someone else to tell you what is true about reality and what is not. You can figure it out for yourself, you can validate what you hear from others, you can bring others along to your views, and you can self-improve all of the foregoing abilities. Beyond even these bounds, you can learn to see the shape of your own ignorance.
This requires having a fundamental grip on language and numbers, from which all other human understanding blooms, and through which it is expressed.
2) The liberal arts shape your character to use your freedom
What good is knowing the truth if you do not have the courage to express it? What good is knowing how to read if you cannot get yourself to do it? What good is having access to all of human knowledge and craft if you do not explore it? What good is understanding how to build things without the spirit that distinguishes between negative-sum extraction and positive-sum production? What good is understanding what a healthy, strong body is, without the will to achieve it? What good is a quick mind and dazzling wit if you use it to belittle beauty and spit prejudice?
Humanity has more technical access to abundance and good living than individual capacity to reach out and use it. But this is not an immutable state of affairs.
What the liberal arts recognize is that it doesn’t matter if you have freedom if you cannot use it—that on the other side of freedom from is freedom to. That means actively using freedom for good things, and actively not using it for bad things.
Some of the hallmark skills of the liberal arts are cultivating good judgment and embracing discomfort.
The primary operational virtue of the liberal arts is courage: the practice of being true to reality. If you cannot be courageous, you will be run over by your tribe, by opposing tribes, by self-doubt, by anything and everything. Any of your potential good works or expressions will be contingent on the heckler’s veto or tribal imprimatur—by “enemies” and by friends who don’t want you to leave the bucket.
The second operational virtue of the liberal arts is integrity: loyalty to one’s understanding of reality. How is that different from courage? Well: you can be courageous in some areas of your life, but not others. Integrity is the uniform practice of it in all areas of your life. It demands that all virtues be practiced in all instances. It understands why a deficit of courage in one area of your life can interrupt and weaken its practice in another.
And so here we see the essence of the second characteristic of the liberal arts: to be truly free requires both an ordered mind and the physical and emotional habits of expressing that mind’s understanding of reality.
3) The liberal arts set you free, shape your character to use that freedom, and do both in your particular society
We all live in particular societies, which are made up of overlapping and interlocking sub-societies. All of these have histories, path dependencies, neuroses, and virtues.
And so living well requires being able to operate well in these societies. One must understand why society is the way it is, how it has been in the past, and how to build a model of where it might go in the future.
The first prong of the liberal arts, “setting you free,” focuses on methods of the mind.
The second prong of the liberal arts, “using that freedom well,” focuses on cultivating individual character.
And this third prong focuses on doing both of those things in one’s social context, with all its opportunities and constraints. Among other things, this third prong will dictate which language(s) you are trained in.
The implementation of the liberal arts
The liberal arts are implemented across:
Skills
Methods
Content
Broadly speaking, the master goal is “prudent thinking, wise action, and a beautiful soul.” But how do you get that? You train skills, the ability to do something, and methods (sub-skills), the ways in which to do those things. And you train these things on some kind of content. For example—
Skills (non-comprehensive): reading and writing.
Methods of reading: for children, learning to sound words out with phonics, learning to spell, repeating important vocabulary. For adults who are nominally literate: arranging your environment and controlling your focus. Reading is a composite skill, it is not automatically easy, and there are always more frontiers to conquer. A great book on reading methods is, appropriately, How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren (take a look at the table of contents).
Methods of writing include both technical capabilities in knowing what to write and how to arrange the words, and the virtues (namely courage) to actually do it.
Content: well, what does one read and write? While there is wide room for discretion, there are better and worse choices, and these follow from the definition of the liberal arts. For example: if you are at an American liberal arts school, and you graduate without knowing the structure and content of the American constitution, or basic American history, there is a very good chance your education has fatal deficits. The liberal arts are supposed to prepare you for life in your society. And so much of American life revolves around our constitution and history in one way or another. People certainly talk about it and make claims about it.
The form of the liberal arts
This is the form of liberal arts through courses. Further: how these courses are given form through integration into a whole curriculum.
Both individual courses and whole curricula are guided by scope (what you teach) and sequence (when you teach it). These are designed to aid in knowledge integration—the weaving of new information into a larger, whole understanding over time. The spiral theory of knowledge is another way of thinking about integration.
The most well-known form of the liberal arts, and one surefire way to answer the question “What are the liberal arts?” are the trivium and quadrivium:
Trivium: grammar, logic, rhetoric
Quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy
Here is Sister Miriam Joseph in her seminal The Trivium explaining these seven liberal arts in summary detail:
The liberal arts denote the seven branches of knowledge that initiate the young into a life of learning. The concept is classical, but the term liberal arts and the division of the arts into the trivium and the quadrivium date from the Middle Ages.
The trivium includes those aspects of the liberal arts that pertain to mind, and the quadrivium, those aspects of the liberal arts that pertain to matter. Logic, grammar, and rhetoric constitute the trivium; and arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy constitute the quadrivium. Logic is the art of thinking; grammar, the art of inventing symbols and combining them to express thought; and rhetoric, the art of communicating thought from one mind to another, the adaptation of language to circumstance. Arithmetic, the theory of number, and music, an application of the theory of number (the measurement of discrete quantities in motion), are the arts of discrete quantity or number. Geometry, the theory of space, and astronomy, an application of the theory of space, are the arts of continuous quantity or extension.
The Trivium: The three arts of language pertaining to the mind
Logic — art of thinking
Grammar — art of inventing and combining symbols
Rhetoric — art of communication
The Quadrivium: The four arts of quantity pertaining to matter
Discrete quantity or number
Arithmetic — theory of number
Music — application of the theory of number
Continuous quantity
Geometry — theory of space
Astronomy — application of the theory of space1
In other places, you will often varying formulations. For example:
The Trivium: The Language Arts
Logic — the art of non-contradictory identification
Grammar — the art of correct language
Rhetoric — the art of persuasion
The Quadrivium: The Mathematical Arts
Arithmetic — the methods of grouping discrete quantities
Music — numbers in time
Geometry — numbers in space
Astronomy — numbers in time and space
One might take this particular form of the liberal arts or leave it, but it’s a good conceptual anchor point. These original seven liberal arts, which emerged in the Medieval period, can still be seen in the outline of academies long after. For example, “physics” clearly emerged from astronomy, the so-called application of numbers to time and space.
This formulation of seven liberal arts also shows you what a good answer to the question “what are the liberal arts?” looks like. They are an integrated whole, and emerge from language and number. There is a principled theory behind them, and many curricular implementations one can examine.
It might shock people to know that, while there are definitive answers to the question “What are the liberal arts?” when referring to their form, there isn’t an undisputed answer to that question today. For someone working to apprehend these subjects for the first time, I have this advice: first understand the principles and implementation needs (the earlier parts of this essay) that foreground any actual forms one observes. The forms flow according to context, both societal and temporal.
The liberal arts as opposed to what other kinds of arts?
The liberal arts versus the utilitarian arts.
The liberal arts act upon an individual to set them free, cultivate their character, and pursue that which they like according to their mind and character. Utilitarian arts, by contrast, train a person to do a specific kind of task for someone else, whether that is a corporation, a state, or some other kind of master. Drawing blood, performing computations, or reviewing contracts would be utilitarian arts.
The modern world might also call this distinction “liberal versus vocational arts.”
This counterposition isn’t to say that one is good and the other is bad. But they require different things of a person, do different things to a person, and are aimed at different things.
The preparatory arts versus the architectonic arts
The liberal arts, especially in their formulation of trivium and quadrivium, are sometimes positioned as the basic, foundational, or preparatory arts. One must acquire mastery in them before going on to effectively study more advanced fields like history, law, medicine, or philosophy, which require an integrated deployment of the basic liberal arts.
You can see the outline of this in the modern American education system. Students generally must get a four-year degree (often from a “liberal arts college”) before getting a law or medical degree.
So, while history might be called a liberal art in the modern context, it relies on the other liberal arts to do well.
The unity of knowledge in the world
However: it is clearly true that many non-liberal arts require liberal arts skills to perform. For example, if you want to review contracts, you must know how to read and interpret what you’re reading (and the law is quite sensitive to grammar). If you want to draw blood, you must read the vials to verify your patient.
And perhaps, in the performance of a utilitarian art, you think of a better way to do it—which leads you to energetically pursue a reorganization of your field/business. That is a manifestation of the faculties and characteristics the liberal arts clearly aim at.
Another way to think of it: arithmetic is a liberal art. Computation is not. Scientific or philosophic thinking is a liberal art. Lab work is not. Exhorting people to join your startup is a liberal art. Processing the employee onboarding and cap table is not.
And while the liberal arts can be taught in school, some people naturally sharpen them as they live their lives, and even become great at them. The liberal arts are not just integrated into other arts or into life alongside other arts, but are naturally occurring arts in the world of human society. But most people, most of the time, could benefit from deliberate study. Here’s Sister Miriam Joseph again in The Trivium:
Each of the liberal arts is both a science and an art in the sense that in the province of each there is something to know (science) and something to do (art). An art may be used successfully before one has a formal knowledge of its precepts. For example, a child of three may use correct grammar even though the child knows nothing of formal grammar. Similarly, logic and rhetoric may be effectively used by those who do not know the precepts of these arts. It is, however, desirable and satisfying to acquire a clear knowledge of the precepts and to know why certain forms of expression or thought are right and wrong.”2
It’s worth emphasizing: one ought not get too hung up on sharp separations between liberal and other arts. They are all related in life, and motivation matters. Here’s Aristotle in his Politics:
(3) Now that those of the useful things that are necessary should be taught is not unclear, and also that not all should be taught: liberal tasks being distinguished from illiberal ones, it is evident that they should share in those of the useful things that will not make the one sharing in them vulgar. (4) One should consider a vulgar task, art, or sort of learning to be any that renders the body, the soul, or the mind of free persons useless with a view to the practices and actions of virtue. (5) Hence we call vulgar both the sorts of arts that bring the body into a worse state and wage-earning sorts of work, for they make the mind a thing abject and lacking in leisure. But it is also the case that, while it is not unfree to share in some of the liberal sciences up to a certain point, to persevere overly much in them with a view to proficiency is liable to involve the sorts of injury just mentioned. (6) It makes a difference, too, for the sake of what one does or learns something. What is for one’s own sake or for the sake of friends or on account of virtue is not unfree, while the person who does the same thing on account of others would often be held to do something characteristic of the laborer or the slave.3
The Confusing Cloud of Concepts (3C)
Perhaps you have a decent idea about what the liberal arts are at this point, or at least a directional inclination. But what, then, are these things: the Western canon, the classics, the humanities, and the Great Books?
Here’s what they are:
The Western canon is the collection of great, enduring, and influential works from Western civilization, often defined as something like the Greco-Roman Mediterranean civilization as it evolved through Europe and its offshoots in North America and elsewhere. There is no 100% definitive list, but there are definitely some “usual suspects” in every version of the canon, like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Saint Augustine.
The classics have two definitions. (1) Those works, languages, and histories which come from the “classical world” of Ancient Greece and Rome, and (2) those which which are “of the first class,” or of enduring value. A classic book could be ancient, or it could be Shakespeare, or it could be Gone with the Wind.
Great Books are classic (second sense) books that are of enduring value. There are many different implementations of Great Books curricula, but you might have heard of St. John’s Great Books program, which is the most famous one.
The humanities are things you study that make you more fully human, or are the things that only humans do (as opposed to animals or nature): like history, philosophy, and literature. The humanities are distinguished from the natural sciences (biology, chemistry) and technology, and do not include mathematics in the modern day. You can see how “humanities” and “liberal arts” get confused. I’d put it like this: the seven liberal arts have basic and more advanced forms. The language arts (the trivium) in their advanced forms often bloom into the things we call the humanities today. The mathematical arts (the quadrivium) in their more advanced forms often bloom into the things we call mathematics and science today. But realistically, most people who use the word “humanities” do not have a coherent concept in their head. You, reader, do not have to be like them.
The important things to remember here is that all of these words have fuzzy uses, and there are often multiple common meanings in circulation. What’s worse, many people only use these words in an associative fashion (on vibes) rather than a definitive fashion (with a concrete definition). But one can navigate this, do not despair.
What do modern “liberal arts” colleges teach?
Although there are exceptions, most places that call themselves “liberal arts colleges” do not teach the liberal arts well, and don’t even have a coherent concept of what they mean by “the liberal arts.” They offer hodgepodge course catalogs to students with insufficient guidance about what to take and why, and most students who exit those colleges could not: (1) tell you with confidence what “the liberal arts” are, or (2) pass an exam about the basics of their field with a 90% or above.
In the case of Harvard, especially its government degree, students certainly do not get a rigorous liberal arts education. It is not achievable by default; only exceptional students who buck the default curriculum according to some higher vision that presupposes the knowledge inherent in the degree they’re seeking can deviate from that. Generally, you can see my linked essay on Harvard’s government degree for a fuller, technical overview of why modern liberal arts degrees are incoherent at best, among other things.
Run for your life from the college president, administrator, or alumni who tells you their liberal arts degree “taught them how to think.” Strictly speaking, there is no problem with that—but those people often don’t even know what they mean by that phrase.4 They are parroting it from brochures, websites, and from each other. They do not know what was supposed to have happened to them in their liberal arts program.
You can run the test yourself if you get the chance. Ask “What are the liberal arts?” and don’t stop until you get a good, specific answer. Follow up with “How are those different from the humanities?” You get the picture.
Further: a vital component of the liberal arts is shaping character. This means a school needs to have explicit virtues (habits of character) that it prizes, and bring students into conformity with them. This could also be called “moral instruction,” and most colleges simply do not do this today, or do not do it well.
Finally: a liberal arts college should prepare students for the society they will enter. That means American liberal arts colleges should prepare students to enter American society (this does not mean avoiding works or topics that come from outside America). But essentially no liberal arts graduates know the passable basics of American government, law, politics, or history. They are often completely ignorant of the basics of their society. The Ivy League colleges are the worst offenders, in part because of their reputation for rigor, and otherwise because their graduates tend to occupy higher perches in society. But the distance between what those students know about American society upon graduation and basic proficiency is enormous.
The “second dose” theory of the liberal arts, and The Foundations of the Liberal Arts
I’m teaching Foundations of the Liberal Arts, which begins today. It is aimed at adults in New York City in 2025, coming from a relatively cohesive set of social backgrounds with common exposures to technology, especially phones. The implementation and form of the class is driven by a further constraint: it meets for 10 in-person sessions spread over 12 weeks.
This class (and The Foundations of New York) operate on a “second dose” theory of learning: people were exposed to the liberal arts when they were younger, but it takes a second exposure in adulthood to really take hold in a more enduring way. Why?
Because reading great literature (or learning about government) hits differently when you have lived the experiences in the book! And because adults who have lived some portion of life beyond early adulthood come to appreciate their own needs, desires, and identity, and have a vision for how they can productively use the insights and habits of the liberal arts.5 Further: adults in the modern era have forgotten how to actually read books and derive benefits from them, often because they don’t have mastery over their phone (they are not free). They need a “second dose” of the liberal arts to remind them of what they knew when they were younger, and to help them cultivate the virtue necessary to operate freely.
And the graduates of the class will, of course, be able to answer the question: “What are the liberal arts?”
Sister Miriam Joseph, The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric, “The Liberal Arts,” First Paul Dry Books Edition (2002), p.3.
The Trivium, pp.5-6.
Aristotle’s Politics, “Book 8, Chapter 3,” The University of Chicago Press (2013), p.224.
I’m not saying these people have to remember everything they’ve been taught. Rigorous learning trains the mind. But I don’t think that explains what’s happening here—usually they were just never taught things well in the first place, and rarely grappled in a way that leaves permanent, new habits on their mind and character. “Even if one forgets many of the facts once learned and related, the mind retains the vigor and perfection gained by its exercise upon them. It can do this, however, only by grappling with facts and ideas. Moreover, it is much easier to remember related ideas than unrelated ideas.” The Trivium, p.7.
This is not to say that you can’t get value out of a book that describes experiences you haven’t had yet—far from it. And as a former young person, I can absolutely say that reading beyond my experience helped me enormously.
Great article, thanks Daniel.