The common arts have a central and longstanding role in the tradition of liberal arts education. Also known throughout the tradition as mechanical, servile, or vulgar arts, the common arts are “the skills that provide for basic human needs through the creation of artifacts or the provision of services” (Hall, Common Arts Education, 31). Sometimes the distinction made between common and liberal arts is that the common arts are arts of the body whereas the liberal arts are arts of the mind. Even if one accepts this somewhat problematic distinction, the liberal arts tradition places high value on the education of the body as a precursor for the education of the mind. Furthermore, the common arts are integral to a holistic education given that, like the liberal arts, they are necessary for a life of human flourishing and virtue.

     Throughout the liberal arts tradition, numerous thinkers have emphasized the importance of physical training as part of a holistic education because all of us as human beings are embodied creatures. Plato, for example, begins his lengthy treatment of education in the Republic by arguing that education should begin with gymnastike for the body and mousike for the soul: “It [is] hard to find anything better than that which has developed over a long period—physical training for bodies and music and poetry for the soul” (Plato, Republic 326d7-e4). Gymnastic training for the Greeks included wrestling, running, jumping, training in warfare, and other exercises, while musical training included all the arts fostered by the muses to promote beauty and happiness. Plato is saying, in other words, that an initial training of the body (and soul) should come before the study of the liberal arts he discusses later, such as arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Aristotle similarly notes in the Politics that, “Education of the body must come before education of the mind” (Aristotle, Politics 1338b4-5).

  The Renaissance humanist Pier Paolo Vergerio likewise embraces a holistic understanding of education on the basis of the fact that, “A person is composed of soul and body” (Vergerio, “The Character and Studies Befitting a Free-Born Youth,” 9). For Vergerio, the two-pronged education for the soul and body is comprised of both letters and arms (or military training). He is explicit, however, that he considers both letters and arms to be liberal arts: “Among the studies and liberal arts of mankind are two in particular that have the greatest affinity with cultivating virtue and obtaining glory, namely, instruction in letters and arms” (ibid., 37). Later he refers to the study of arms and letters as “the most liberal and the most important of the arts” (ibid., 75). Thus, throughout the tradition, it has been recognized that the education of the body plays a central role in a liberal arts education.

     The common arts are furthermore unified with the liberal arts because, like the liberal arts, they are necessary for a life of human flourishing and virtue. The liberal arts are called “liberal” because they free us to be fully human. (The Latin word “liber” means “free.”)  The verbal arts of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, for example, are foundational for human language, reason, and persuasion. Without these we cannot live a fully human life. Similarly, the common arts are constitutive of what it means to live as a human being. We cannot live a fully human life, for example, without producing food, clothing, and shelter. Thus the common arts, like the liberal arts, are necessary for human flourishing.

     This unity between the common and liberal arts can be seen in Hugh of St. Victor’s 12^th-century work, the Didascalicon. According to Hugh, philosophy (the pursuit of wisdom) contains both “striv[ing] after the restoration of our nature” and “provid[ing] the necessaries required by our infirm part” (Hugh of St. Victor, Didascalicon 1.8). This philosophy is comprised of four categories: theoretical, practical, mechanical, and logical. Hugh thus includes the mechanical (or common) arts along with the liberal arts (and others) as various aspects of a unified pursuit. The mechanical arts, in other words, are united with the liberal arts in the human pursuit of wisdom. Thus, for Hugh, common arts like fabric making, armament, agriculture, hunting, and medicine (and he lists others in Didascalicon 3.1) are part of philosophy and constitutive of what it means to be fully human. To put it another way, finding or raising food, making clothes, building shelters, and other such common arts are necessary for human flourishing and virtue just as much as the liberal arts.

     Given the tradition’s understanding of the intimate connection between the common and liberal arts, we should not view education in the common arts as a merely vocational/technical training for those who are not going to get a liberal arts education. Rather we should follow the advice of Jacques Maritain: “From the very start, and, as far as possible, all through the years of youth, hands and mind should be at work together. . . . There is no place closer to man than a workshop, and the intelligence of man is not only in his head, but in his fingers too” (Maritain, Education at the Crossroads, 45). Matthew Crawford’s book Shop Class as Soulcraft is one 21^st-century testimony to the truth of Maritain’s claim. In my own life, I too have seen first-hand the intimate connection between the common and liberal arts through my work as a carpenter and woodworker. Only an integrated paradigm of education that includes the common arts as well as the liberal arts can ensure that both body and mind are being cultivated such that students truly can live fully human lives. The common arts have a central and longstanding role in the tradition of liberal arts education, and they should retain this role in our contemporary paradigm of education as well.

David Diener, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Education at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, and the Executive Director of the Alcuin Fellowship.

 
David Diener, PhD

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