I appreciate the chance to think about the role of the fine and common arts in the liberal arts tradition. I don’t have well-thought-out ideas on this topic, so I thought I would offer a few reflections drawn from Plato, Aristotle, and Tolkien.

Plato suggests a close relationship between the fine arts and the common arts in his discussion of early education in The Republic [400]. Having developed his idea that education in music— story, harmony, and rhythm—forms graceful dispositions in the soul, Socrates suggests that the young should likewise become attuned to what is graceful and harmonious in every craft:

Surely painting is full of them, as are all crafts of this sort weaving is full of them, and so are embroidery house building, and also all the crafts that produce the other furnishings; so furthermore is the nature of bodies and the rest of what grows. In all of them there is grace or gracelessness. Mustn't we look for those craftsmen whose good natural endowments make them able to track down the nature of what is fine and graceful, so that the young, dwelling as it were in a healthy place, will be benefited by everything?

Surrounded by what is authentically beautiful, the young will develop an instinctive awareness of and repulsion from what is ugly in song, craft, and moral action. I can confirm this with many instances drawn from my youth. My aunt had a little treasure chest of family heirlooms that had some beautiful cameos among other jewelry—how precious they seemed to me! They definitely aroused in me a desire for the finer things of life. I was also affected by my public high school campus, which was designed by an architect influenced by both Jefferson’s Monticello and the buildings of the University of Virginia.

We should want the young to be surrounded by beauty in arts and crafts, even those things of ordinary use. But do they need to be trained to make them? Socrates expresses the judgment that musical education is sovereign among all the arts and crafts because of the direct and powerful effect it has on the emotions and, consequently, the character development of the young. On the other hand, he does not recommend that the guardians be taught painting or sculpting or carpentry.

Aristotle agrees (Politics VIII.5-6) that the young should be taught to sing, but only to the extent appropriate for an amateur, warning that some kinds of training in music can be degrading. They should learn to play the simpler musical instruments, but not those that demand or invite excessive training.

The right measure will be attained if students of music stop short of the arts which are practiced in professional contests, and do not seek to acquire those fantastic marvels of execution which are now the fashion in such contests, and from these have passed into education. Let the young practice even such music as we have prescribed, only until they are able to feel delight in noble melodies and rhythms, and not merely in that common part of music in which every slave or child and even some animals find pleasure.

Regarding drawing and the plastic arts, Aristotle thinks their contribution to education in virtue is minimal, mainly refining our appreciation of the human face and body. He does not promote the manual crafts, as he sees them to be degrading:

Any occupation, art, or science, which makes the body or soul or mind of the freeman less fit for the practice or exercise of virtue, is vulgar; wherefore we call those arts vulgar which tend to deform the body, and likewise all paid employments, for they absorb and degrade the mind.

All of this needs to be reconsidered in the light of Christ, and in the light of the democratic times in which we live. We are able to see nobility in the ordinary labor of the craftsman, and the carpenter, and the gardener. To be unable to make something beautifully useful seems a defect; to have contempt for those who are able is much worse. So it seems that the young should be taught some sort of craft; however, though some might have stronger claims than others, no one of them seems necessary. This places them in a different position than singing, which all should learn, as is also the case with the traditional liberal arts.

On the other hand, we can see how desirable it is for those who will become craftsmen to have been formed in the beauty of story and song. In Smith of Wooten Major, Tolkien described the effect of the enchanting beauty of Faerie on the work of his iron-worker:

He became well known in his country for his good workmanship. He could make all kinds of things of iron in his smithy. Most of them, of course were playing and useful meant for daily needs: farm tools, carpenter’s tools, kitchen tools and pots and pans, bars and bolts and hinges, pot hooks, fire dogs, and horseshoes, and the like. They were strong and lasting, but they also had a grace about them, being shapely in their kinds, good to handle and to look at.

But some things, when he had time, he made for delight; and they were beautiful, for he could work iron into wonderful forms that looked as light and delicate as a spray of leaves and blossom, but kept the stern strength of iron, or seemed even stronger. He sang when he was making things of this sort; and when Smith began to sing those nearby stopped their own work and came to the smithy to listen.

Andrew Seeley, PhD, is Director of Advanced Formation for Educators at the Augustine Institute, a co-founder of the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education, and the President of the Boethius Institute for the Advancement of Liberal Education. 

Andrew Seeley, Ph.D.
Director of Advanced Formation for Educators,
Visiting Professor of Philosophy

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