BARBARIC PROFESS lON The term "liberal" has its root in the Latin term "liberalis," which means "per taining to a free man." The emphasis in this definition In its classical sense, is on the word "free". This the term "barbarian" was syn- notion carries over into the onomous with "foreigner'," To French "libro4" and into the an ancient Greelg a barbarian English "liberate" and "li was anyone who did not speak berty." A "liberal" aoti- Greek, who did not worship vity is one that helps us to Greek gods, who did not fol- become free men. It is an low Greek customs, ancihence activity that liberates us who was not civilized. To from some state that is less an ancient Roman, to be a _bar- than human, some state of barian was to be one who lived slavery. In the original use outside of the civilizing in- of "liberal" in terms like fluence of the Empire, to be "liberal arts" or "liberal sci one who was outside of Roman ences," one referred to those law and tradition. Because arts and sciences "that were this term was usually applied considered worthy of a free by the Romans to the rude man,"as opposed to those ac wild Germanic, Gallic and Brit- tivities that are merely ser.- igh tribes of northern Europe, vile or mechanical. Later, the term "barbarian" came to this notion was expanded, and mean one who is savage. When the liberal arts and liberal we use the term "barbarian" to- sciences came to mean those day, we usually conjure imam activities directed to gen ges of rape, murder, and pil- eral intellectual enlargement lags, but that is not the pri- and refinement to those ac mordial meaning of the term. tivities that are not narrowly It is in the sense of "for-. restricted to the requirements signer" that the notion of of technical or professional a barbarian interests us here. training. But before we can One who did not speak Greek, fully appreciate the original or who did not follow Greek sense of the terms "liberal customs, was cut off ffom the arts," we must examine the civilizing influence of a How archetypal meaning of the term mer or a Hippocrates, a Euclid, "art". or an Aristotle, a Sophocles . If we hear the term "art" or an Apollonius. He could today, we most frequently think not benefit firm Greek-wis- of the fine arts - paintings mu dom because as a foreigner he sic, dance, etc. That is not, could not come to adequately however, that to which the word understand it in its original originally referred. The word sense. Similarly one who, "art" is rooted in the Latin "ar stood outside of the Roman tom", which means "skill". Spe-- Empire ' who..did - not speak La- cifically art meant "skill in tin, could not fully under- doing anything as a result of stand those values that root- knowledge and practise." In this ed Roman civilization. When sense art could mean skill in we,consider that Greek and building a house, in preparing Roman civilization is the found- a meal, or in planning a caw ation for our own, and when- thedral. What was important we consider further that edu- for an activity to be an art cation is the main tool by was that it be a form of ex which we teach those values cellence based on knowledge. that we intiritirom classi- It is not surprising, there cal Greece and Rome, it seems fore, that Aristotle counts worthwhile to ask whether or art as one of the intellec not mil. piesent - ,eppp;14 , 9449L AidnaatioxLiebohilitentwith by Richard Campbell Highacres Collegian - October 18, 1974, Page Three the classical ideal. Do the liberal arts, as they are presently taught at American universities, stand guard over the precious legacy of the best of Greek - Roman civ ilization, or do they reflect something foreign to that leg acy, some new form of barbar ism? ttia'l, Y4ures. But the term "art" also has several other important senses that we fail to empha size. When art meant "skill," it meant human skill as op posed to those forms of excel lence that may happen in na ture or by chance. It also meant the ability to apply the principles of a special science, that is, to apply the understanding one has of a kind of knowledge by displaying that knowledge in the excel lence of some work or object. It is later, during the mid dle ages, that the "arts" be bin to mean specifically air form of intellectual skill that is to be taught at uni versities. And it is only much later that it takes on the more common meaning of the fine arts. A better contempor ary sense of art for what is important in this essay is the sense employed when speak ing of an "artisan." Art, in that sense, means "craft," the skill in applying knowledge to the' creation of an entity, even if it is not the Sistine Ceiling or Don Giovanni. If we attempt to assess the original meaning of the "lib.. eral arts," they would seem to be "those skills that help to make man free." But it makes little sense to speak of free dom without asking from what we are being freed. The ob vious answer is that the liberal arts free us from forms of in tellectual slavery. They are the arts that liberate us from dogmatism, from prejudice, from parochialism, in short, from all forms of ignorance. Tnere are, however, many forms of ignorance, and one of them is blind orthodoxy. Such blind- ness is clearly the target of Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" in his Republic. Plato's theory of education, as ex pressed in that book and in other of his books, is consis tent with the true meaning of those arts we call liberal. He argues that in our ordi nary lives we all acquire, by accretion if not by direct education, opinions that we accept as true because we are too lazy or too stupid to in quire about them. Thus the philosophic life is nothing more than resolving to strug- CONTINUED NEXT PAGE
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