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ON THE DIVISION OF THE ARTS A Compendium of Texts (c) 2013 Bart A. Mazzetti. § 1
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On the Division of the Arts. A Compendium of Texts.

Nov 08, 2014

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Bart Mazzetti

The manifold division of the arts found at the outset of Aristotle's Metaphysics, with the commentaries of St. Thomas Aquinas, as well as associated texts primarily from various members of the Laval School.
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ON THE DIVISION OF THE ARTS A Compendium of Texts(c) 2013 Bart A. Mazzetti.

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THE DIVISION OF THE ARTS ACCORDING TO ARISTOTLE. 1. An overview of the arts in the Aristotelian tradition. Cf. Marcus Berquist, Good Music and Bad. Excerpt from a lecture given at St. Thomas Aquinas College, Ojai, California, Oct. 1991:At the beginning of his Metaphysics, Aristotle divides art into three genera. 1 There are the arts which produce necessary and useful things, for example carpentry. These are called servile because they provide instruments of life and of the good life. Secondly, there are the arts which aim at recreation and delight, what we now call the fine arts. The poet and the musician seek to please, and yet this pleasure is not the end of life. Life is not for the sake of recreation and amusement. Thirdly, there are the arts whose end is knowledge, for example geometry. The proper end of geometry is to know about magnitude and figure. Such arts are called liberal because they befit a free man, having value in themselves, because in and of themselves they make us know something about something worth knowing. And knowing is, largely, the end of life. The difference between the first and the third of these genera is evident. In the first genus, knowledge is simply for the sake of the making. If we could have the product without the knowledge we would not bother about the knowledge. Whereas in the third case the end sought is the knowledge itself. But as regards the second genus, the fine arts, the contrast is not so clear. Middles, things in between, are always hard to define. But we can say this. The poet, the painter, and the musician, are like the carpenter in this respect at least: their knowledge is for the sake of some work. The art of the poet is for the sake of the poem that he composes or the play or the story, the art of the musician is for the sake of the composition that he makes, the art of the sculptor is for the sake of the statue, and so on. The end of these sciences is making, not knowing, and making is for the sake of the thing made. Nevertheless, when we consider the use of the products of these arts, the fine arts, we perceive a certain likeness to the liberal arts. For the use of the products is not use in the ordinary sense; its in being seen or being heard, that is to say, in some act of knowledge, and knowing something is not using it in the ordinary sense. Thus, when we listen to the poet or the musician, we are not using his product to bring about some further effect by means of it, but we are ourselves being affected. But this affecting is in the first instance a kind of knowing, involving maybe both sense and intellect. Thus we see why these arts are called fine, at least when compared with the servile arts. The use of the products, here, is a sort of knowing. Next, we ask what do these fine arts produce such that they should receive such a use? Aristotle, at the beginning of the Poetics, gives a kind of an answer. He says this: Our subject being poetry, I propose to speak not only of the art in general, but also its species and their respective capacities, and then he goes on a little bit further Epic poetry and tragedy, as also comedy, dithyrambic poetry, and most flute-playing and lyre-playing, are all, viewed as a whole, modes of imitation. But at the same time they differ from one another in three ways: either by a difference of kind in their means, or by differences in their objects, or in the manner of their imitation. From the discussion that follows in Aristotles text, we see that Aristotle also regards painting and sculpture to be modes of imitation. Aristotle, then, regards this to be a most general and fundamental difference between the fine arts and the other arts. Accordingly, an artist of this sort is essentially a maker of imitation. And thus Aristotle goes on to differentiate among the fine arts on this basis. These arts differ from one another by a difference in the objects imitated, the means of imitation, and the manner of imitation.1

Cf. I. 1 (981b 7982a 35), given below. ed.

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Cf. Mortimer J. Adler, The Great Treasury of Western Thought. 16.1 The Realm of Art:As used by almost all of the authors quoted, from the Greeks down to the end of the eighteenth century, the word art refers to skill in the making of anythinga shoe or a ship as well as a poem or a painting or, for that matter, a demonstration in mathematics or a political oration. The artist is a man who has a specific skill to some degree. Those who happen to make something without art do so entirely by chance. Since the word art is used to refer to the skill possessed by a maker; it is not used to refer to the thing he makes, the object he produces. That is a work of art. The terms thus used are not evaluative. They do not signify the achievement of excellence. Artists may have more or less skill; works of art may be more or less good. It is only in the last few centuries that the term art has become so restricted that it refers only to literary and musical compositions, paintings, and sculptures, and the like; it is even narrowed further in the familiar expression literature, music, and the fine arts, in which the last phrase refers exclusively to what hangs on walls, stands on pedestals, or is enclosed in cases. When the phrase fine art was coined (it makes its first appearance in the age of Immanuel Kant), it was used to distinguish one group of arts from all others, i.e., those arts the products of which are an end (Latin, finis) in themselvesto be enjoyed for what they are rather than used for some ulterior purpose. The basic points made in the discussion of art in general apply equally to the fine arts, the useful arts, and the liberal arts. Writers call our attention, for example, to the fact that a work of art may either have an enduring existence or be a transient process. A statue and a poem, like a house or a chair, endure in themselves after the artist has finished his work; not so the performance of an actor or a dancer on the stage, the speech of an orator, and the operation of a surgeon.

Cf. J.A. Oesterle, Art, The New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York, 1967). Vol. 1:There is no simple yet comprehensive definition of art; the word has in fact many meanings. The Greek and Latin equivalents (techne, ars) can include broadly everything customarily grouped under the label of fine art, and servile and liberal arts as well. Even when narrowed to fine art, the word retains ambiguity in at least two important respects. First, whatever community of meaning the various fine arts share, distinctive differences among them prevent the names remaining exactly the same in meaning; poetry and painting, for example, are not art in a wholly identical sense. Current usage tends to limit the meaning of art to painting and sculpturing. Second, within the context of fine art, art may signify the product of art, the creative process itself, or the experience of appreciating a work of art, sometimes referred to as aesthetic experience. This article deals with art from a broad, philosophical point of view, considering its definition and division, the notion of fine art, and problems associated with the latters finality. Notion of Art. In the Western tradition, the original meaning of art is skill in making; the word was used by the ancient Greeks to refer, first of all, to the crafts that satisfy basic human needs. Throughout the dialogues of Plato and the writings of Aristotle, this meaning of art is the basic one employed to explain all other skills, whether physical or mental. Art was also early recognized as a sign of a certain excellence, testifying to mans progress beyond what nature can provide. Aristotle accordingly points out that he who invented any art was naturally admired by men as being wise and superior to the rest. But as more arts were invented, and some were directed to the needs of life, others to recreation, the inventors of the latter were naturally always regarded as wiser than the former, because their branches of knowledge did not aim at mere utility (Meta. 981b 16-19). Art as the capacity to make

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according to sound reason (Eth. Nic. 1140a 20) was accordingly extended to what we now call liberal and fine art. The history of the meaning of art is the history of mans progress from making products immediately necessary for living to making things ordered to knowledge or enjoyment. This Greek conception of art dominated the Middle Ages and persists in modern times. Art and Nature. Craftsmanship enabled man to attain a grasp of the operations of nature, for he soon noted strong resemblances between the way he produces something and the way in which nature works. Much of Platos Timaeus seeks to render the pattern of the universe intelligible by comparison with mans own making, while still viewing nature as a work of divine art. In the Physics, Aristotle appeals to the making of a statue or a bed to help understand how natural change takes place. It is in this context of making as resembling natural processes that Aristotles often misunderstood dictum, art imitates nature, should first be grasped before it is applied to fine art. In another area, medicine, the understanding of nature in terms of art has been fruitfully pursued, as the writings of Galen and Harvey show. Nevertheless, however much art and nature resemble each other, and however much the understanding of one leads to an understanding of the other, they remain quite distinct. The likeness of the work of art exists first in the mind of the maker; the form of a living natural object, existing independently of the human mind, preexists in some other natural object. A chair comes from a mans mind, but the man himself comes from another man, from nature. Art and Science. The common notion of art as skill also distinguishes art from science, even though both arise from the human mind. Both art and science are knowledge, but art is ordered to something apart from knowledge itself, namely, the work produced. In art, therefore, knowing is for the sake of producing. In science, we seek to understand that something is so or why it is so. This distinction does not prevent some disciplines from being both art and science. For example, figures are constructed in mathematics, and thus there is both knowledge and production; at the same time what is produced is a subject of demonstration, and thus pertains to a science. Art and Prudence. Art also differs from prudence or practical wisdom, for although both involve reason, they are concerned with distinct kinds of activity: work and behavior. Art uses knowledge to produce a work; prudence uses knowledge to deliberate well and to arrive at decisions regarding what is to be done to ensure right behavior. Prudence therefore involves the moral order in a way that art does not; consequently, prudence is a moral as well as an intellectual quality in man. Art and Aesthetics. The narrowing of the meaning of art to fine art, and the corresponding resolution of a theory of art to aesthetics is a relatively modern contribution. The development of art in the Renaissance undoubtedly accelerated this tendency. Alexander Baumgarten, in the middle of the 18th century, is generally regarded as the first to try to construct a systematic aesthetics in the modern sense. True enough, Plato and Aristotle in ancient times, and various writers in the Middle Ages, made major contributions to what is now regarded as a philosophy of fine art. But in the last 200 years the fine arts have been approached in a quite different spirit, emphasizing an association of art and beauty and stressing the autonomy of fine art. In such a view, there is a distinct world of fine art and aesthetic experience; a special creative imagination and sensibility are thus required to appreciate the distinctive values found in such works. Kinds of Art. Art has been traditionally divided into liberal and servile. This division is basic, referring as it does to a difference in the work to be made. The most obvious type of makeable object is one that exists in external physical matter, for such matter is susceptible to receiving an artificial form; wood, for example, readily lends itself to being shaped into a table, a chair or a bed. It is equally evident that such making, initially at least, is the result of

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bodily effort on the part of the maker, and this feature characterizes such art as servile. Further, the action involved in such making is transitive, that is, an activity which, though originating in an agent, terminates outside the agent in some product that comes to exist in physical matter. These characteristics of servile art indicate, as suggested earlier, that the name art refers primarily to servile art; this priority is in the order of naming, not a priority of perfection. Liberal Art. Liberal art, therefore, is art in a less obvious sense. We are nonetheless familiar with the extension of the name liberal art; we are familiar also with the traditional division of the liberal arts into the trivium (logic, grammar, and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy). Liberal art is less evidently art because the making involved is not a transitive action, but immanent activity that both originates and terminates within the agent, forming the agent rather than some external physical object. The object of a wholly liberal art, therefore, is immaterial, found primarily in the mind or the imagination of the artist. Such an object does not involve making in the original sense, yet proportionally, there is an indetermination in the mind of man requiring that he set in order his means of knowing; for example, order is brought into mans thinking when he establishes what a proposition is or how we reason in a valid way. A syllogism, for example, is something we construct deliberately, in the manner of a mathematical figure, and not just spontaneously. Such constructions enjoy existence in the mind and imagination. We thus see the reason for calling such arts liberal, since the subjects and purposes of these arts pertain to the mind of man whereby he is set free from lack of order. We see also that although the name art first signifies manual craft, nevertheless, considering the work produced, liberal art is primary. Fine Art. Though the distinction of servile and liberal is basic, it is not particularly revealing in regard to fine art which, in fact, cuts across that division. Some fine arts are liberal; poetry and music, for example, would fall within the liberal division, for the poet and composer produce their works primarily by immanent action, and their works exist chiefly in the imagination.2 Other fine arts are servile in the sense that the objects made require external physical matter and labor for their existence; thus the painting is embodied on canvas and paint, the statue in stone, and the church in stone or brick. To appreciate the distinctive character of fine art, another division must be considered. From the standpoint of purpose, art is further divided into useful and fine. The useful arts pro-duce things to be enjoyed not in and for themselves, but for some other good. The servile arts would here be classified as useful. Liberal arts such as logic, grammar, and rhetoric could be termed useful in the sense they are not ends in themselves, but are sought as indispensable aids for bringing about knowledge, adequate expression, or persuasion. The productions of fine art are contemplated and enjoyed for their own sake (which does not preclude their also being ordered to another extrinsic end). The reason for this division can be shown in a painting, for example, that has a kind of significance inciting enjoyment of a form wholly lacking to a merely useful product, such as a shovel. The painting is viewed primarily for itself; any functional value it might have, e.g., its location in a particular area, is secondary. There is, moreover, a distinctive and unique type of enjoyment that arises in the viewing or hearing of a work of fine art consequent upon the equally distinctive type of contemplation realized in appreciating the work. Some prefer to make this point by saying that the end sought in the work of fine art is the contemplation and enjoyment of beauty, provided that beauty is taken in a properly aesthetic sense.2

Music, understood as a liberal art, is entirely distinct from the composing art which comes under poetica, whereas poetry as such in no way is a liberal art. On the former, see the additional excerpt from Marcus Berquist below; with respect to the latter, the fact that poetry has never been classified as a liberal art suffices.

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It is worth noting that mans preoccupation with beauty, pleasing form, design, and so on, carries over into many useful products of art, and hence the division into useful and fine should not be understood too rigidly. A shoe is clearly a product of a useful art, yet we find it both necessary and desirable that a shoe look good. As human beings, we project our desire for beauty of form onto objects around us as much as possible; in fact, very few products of human art, no matter how utilitarian they are, escape our passion for artistic enjoyment. We humanize our environment in precisely this way. Analysis of Fine Art. From an Aristotelian point of view, what sets off fine art from either liberal or servile is imitation. We have already noted that in a sense all art imitates nature, sometimes in appearance, sometimes in operation. What is peculiar to fine art is that imitation (and delight in imitation) is the immediate end sought in fine art, whereas imitation serves only as a means in liberal or servile art. The word imitation is subject to easy misunderstanding (representation might serve better for a modern reader). In any event, it is not to be identified with more or less literal copying. The tendency to identify them may originate in the fact that the most evident instances of artistic imitation occur in the visual arts where imitation is associated too readily with natural or photographic likeness. Artistic imitation by no means rests upon a complete dependence of the image upon some original in nature from which it proceeds. It always involves some degree of abstraction. There is equal, if not more, dependence of the image upon mans creative imagination and understanding. Such imitation should therefore be understood as creative. It is imitative in the sense that a work of art represents something other than itself, being some sort of sign or symbol; it thus has reference to some aspect of reality as we experience it. It is creative as well, for the mind and imagination of the artist is also a source, and indeed a more significant one. Hence no artist merely reproduces some aspect of reality; on the other hand, no matter how abstract or nonobjective the work of art, it cannot wholly escape reference to human experience of reality. Artistic imitation, therefore, is a broad notion ranging from the one extreme of approaching a somewhat literal representation of reality to the opposite extreme of retaining only a tenuous but still significant representation of some quality detected in reality. The history of painting and sculpturing reflects this movement within these extremes. It is realized also in proportionately different ways in other arts. In the poetic arts the object of imitation is the action and passion of men as reflected variously in the poem, the novel or the drama. One could say that the common object of all fine art is human action and passion; the differences among the fine arts come from the manner and means of imitation. Though music is sometimes regarded as a non-imitative art, the facts of musical history belie this observation. Music, of course, does not represent in a visual manner nor is it imitative in the sense that it copies natural sounds. Music represents the flow of passion, originally expressed in the intonation of the human voice, by means of tonal and properly musical progressions. The use of music to accompany drama or motion pictures obviously manifests this; more serious works, even the most abstract forms of musical composition, do so more subtly and with more elaborate technique. Even 20th-century music bears witness to such primal representational principles as tension and release, the expected and the unexpected, arousal and resolution. Finality of Art. Finality refers to a good or purpose; in art, this refers both to the purpose of the artist and to the work of art itself. Thus the artist can intend the work for propaganda or some other foreign end. The artist then acts as man rather than as artist, and this is one way art and morality may be related. In other words, over and beyond the good of art itself, the artist may be working for a morally good or bad cause; this consideration falls under the scope of prudence.

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Morality of Art. Art and morality may also be related within the work itself. Any work of art is an idea expressed by an image in the artists mind and in an appropriate sense medium. The power of art lies in its simultaneous appeal to the senses and the understanding. Whatever is universal in art is realized in this sense medium; the tragic hero, for example, is a type of man exemplified individually by his action, and with whom the spectators can identify themselves. Such a work of art images human nature in its various manifestations, and chiefly in its moral character. The artistic image, while not itself of a moral nature, can thus express man in some way acting as a moral agent. This is primarily so in poetic art and proportionally so in other arts. Consequently, an intrinsic relation between art and morality is evident in the following way. Whenever the work of art creatively represents something of human action and passion, the moral order enters into the work of art as a formal constituent, for human action and passion are voluntary, and voluntary acts are moral acts. Moreover, the moral order contributes to the delight, intelligibility, and beauty of much art. For example, the intelligibility and delight we find in a tragedy depend in great measure on grasping some moral grandeur in the action of the hero; the development of a musical composition images in tonal progression the movement of human passion at its finest, whether noble, tragic, or joyful. Hence it can be maintained that when a moral dimension enters into the construction of a work of art, the artist, as artist, has an obligation to represent as morally right what is morally right or what is morally wrong as morally wrong. As far as the relation of art and the moral order is concerned, then, what should be excluded from good art is the artists representing what is morally good as evil and what is morally evil as good; otherwise, he will be unconvincing as an artist and will fail to move us in the manner that is appropriate to art. At the same time, the intrinsic end of art cannot be overtly moral; art suffers when used merely to propagandize morality. It is one thing for a moral dimension to enter into the artistic representation; it is quite another to make the work of art specifically moral in its aim. We are thus led to recognize a finality of art which, in fact, is twofold. One end is the arousal and release of the emotions wherein lies the great appeal art has for man, for art represents the flow of emotional tension and release more skillfully than our normal experience usually permits. Aristotles notion of catharsis manifests this point in relation to tragedy. The cathartic end in art is instrumental, however in that it disposes us for the ulterior end of artistic contemplation and delight. Art and Contemplation. Artistic contemplation is a distinct kind of knowing, accompanied by a distinct type of delight, realized proportionately in the different arts. So far as this can be summarized generally, it is a knowledge of what need not be, rather than of what must be, and yet the work has its self-contained inevitability; it is an imaginative reconstruction of some aspect of reality and life we are familiar with; it is more intuitive than discursive; it bears on the singular, but in such a way that something universal is realized in it; it must be both concrete and abstract. It is knowledge especially appropriate to the human mode of knowing: an intimate union of sense and intellect, image and concept, imagination and understanding. Therein lies the source of special delight that accompanies this contemplation, which is at once an action of sense and intellectual appetite. There is the initial sense of delight accompanying the grasp of such qualities as color, tone, line, and sound. There is the intellectual delight attendant upon the grasp of order entering into the rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic construction of a musical composition, or of the order of elements in a work of sculpture or a drama. Most of all, however, such delight arises from seeing in a work of creative representation an object that is more expressly formed and more intelligible than the original referent. The action of the play is more intelligible and more significant than human action ordinarily is. The sound of music is better formed and more discerning than the sound of speech as normally expressive of passion.

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Artistic contemplation, constantly fluctuating between an image and an original, never exhausts the significance set in motion by the initial experience of the work of art. The unterminating character of this contemplation is the main reason we enjoy over and over again the same work, for new significance and vitality always emerge in enduring works of art, tantalizing the mind with promises of hidden meaning waiting to be uncovered. Such artistic finality, contemplation with its ensuing delight, constitutes the primary worth of art. For in the final analysis, the work of art is simply the worth of man himself as mirrored in his creative representations.

N.B. As Aristotles discussion at the outset of the Metaphysics makes clear, the first division of the arts is into those which have been found out for their usefulness and those which have not; the former comprehending what have come to be called the servile or mechanical arts, and the arts whose end is pleasure, the imitative or fine arts, as well as the logical sciences. As we shall endeavor to establish below, these species mutually exclude one another. The remarks of our author, then, are accordingly confused. On the question of music as a liberal art distinguished from the poetic art of music, cf. the following: Cf. Marcus Berquist, Good Music and Bad. Lecture given at St. Thomas Aquinas College, Ojai, California, Oct. 1991 (excerpt):There are three places in the course of study where music is considered. The first in the order of learning, is the liberal art of music, a part of the quadrivium, which examines music in the light of certain mathematical principles which it exhibits. Here, we first see in the order of learning that music is characterized by a reasonable order. We see in music a kind of unity and harmony between the passions and reason. This kind of order is a good thing to see at the beginning because it is proportioned to us. This is the easiest sort of order for us to see and appreciate. Even the young, without a great deal of experience, can apprehend an order of this kind. The next place that music would come up in the course of study is in a way analogous to Aristotles consideration of tragedy in the Poetics, as a mode of imitation. This would be a thorough or definitive consideration in terms of the proximate genus, which is imitation, and the specific differences, imitation of what? and by what means? We can contrast this with the kind of treatment youd have in a liberal art where you are applying a doctrine which is abstract and general to a particular subject matter, a doctrine which you have not derived from that subject matter, and from a consideration of its peculiarities, but from a more general and abstract consideration. The numerical ratios and proportions you study in harmony are common to music and other things as well. The third consideration of music in the course of study is in ethics and political philosophy. We find this, for example, in Book VI of Platos Republic, in Book II of his Laws, and in Book VIII of Aristotles Politics. Here, music is considered in terms of education. This is because, in the opinion of Aristotle and Plato and many others, music not only amuses and pleases, which is perhaps a sufficient reason for its being, it is a kind of recreation and rest from lifes effortful activities, but it is also dispositive. It has an effect on the soul for good or for ill. Therefore it pertains to ethics and politics to consider it. It pertains to education, which is concerned with the acquisition of virtue, which is of political and social as well as familial concern. We are all concerned that citizens be good men.

As we explain at length elsewhere, the work of the liberal art of music is to apply formal number to sounds as matter in order to understand such things as intervals, the consonances they make, and the scales composed of them. But the work of mousike techne, the art of music, is to produce an imitation naturally delightful to man by moving his passions in accordance with reason. 8

Cf. also Mortimer J. Adler, The Great Ideas: A Syntopicon of Great Books of the Western World (Chicago, 1952), Vol. I{I}, Chapter 1, Art (Introduction):Art THE WORD art has a range of meanings which may be obscured by the current disposition to use the word in an extremely restricted sense. In contemporary thought, art is most readily associated with beauty; yet its historical connections with utility and knowledge are probably more intimate and pervasive. The prevalent popular association reflects a tendency in the 19th century to annex the theory of art to aesthetics. This naturally led to the identification of art with one kind of art the so-called fine arts, beaux arts or Schne Kunst (arts of the beautiful). The contraction of meaning has gone so far that the word art sometimes signifies one group of the fine arts painting and sculpture as in the common phrase literature, music, and the fine arts. This restricted usage has become so customary that we ordinarily refer to a museum of art or to an art exhibit in a manner which seems to assume that the word art is exclusively the name for something which can be hung on a wall or placed on a pedestal. A moments thought will, of course, correct the assumption. We are not unfamiliar with the conception of healing and teaching as arts. We are acquainted with such phrases as the industrial arts and arts and crafts in which the reference is to the production of useful things. Our discussions of liberal education should require us to consider the liberal arts which, however defined or enumerated, are supposed to constitute skills of mind. We recognize that art is the root of artisan as well as artist. We thus discern the presence of skill in even the lowest forms of productive labor. Seeing it also as the root of artifice and artificial, we realize that art is distinguished from and sometimes even opposed to nature. The ancient and traditional meanings are all present in our daily vocabulary. In our thought the first connotation of art is fine art; in the thought of all previous eras the useful arts came first. As Huizinga points out, at the close of the Middle Ages, the connections between art and fashion were closer than at present. Art had not yet fled to transcendental heights; it formed an integral part of social life. As late as the end of the 18th century, Adam Smith follows the traditional usage which begins with Plato when, in referring to the production of a woolen coat, he says: The shepherd, the sorter of the wool, the wool-comber or carder, the dyer, the scribbler, the spinner, the weaver, the fuller, the dresser, with many others, must all join their different arts in order to complete even this homely production. In the first great conversation on art that presented in the Platonic dialogues we find useful techniques and everyday skills typifying art, by reference to which all other skills are analyzed. Even when Socrates analyzes the art of the rhetorician, as in the Gorgias, he constantly turns to the productions of the cobbler and the weaver and to the procedures of the husbandman and the physician. If the liberal arts are praised as highest, because the logician or rhetorician works in the medium of the soul rather than in matter, they are called arts only in a manner of speaking and by comparison with the fundamental arts which handle physical material. The Promethean gift of fire to men, which raised them from a brutish existence, carried with it various techniques for mastering matter the basic useful arts. Lucretius, writing in a line that goes from Homer through Thucydides and Plato to Francis Bacon, Smith, and Rousseau, attributes the progress of civilization and the difference between civilized and primitive society to the development of the arts and sciences: Ships, farms, walls, laws, arms, roads, and all the rest, Rewards and pleasures, all lifes luxuries, Painting, and song, and sculpture these were taught

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Slowly, a very little at a time, By practice and by trial, as the mind Went forward searching. At the beginning of this progress Lucretius places mans discovery of the arts of metalworking, domesticating animals, and cultivating the soil. Metallurgy and agriculture, says Rousseau, were the two arts which produced this great revolution the advance from primitive to civilized life. The fine arts and the speculative sciences come last, not first, in the progress of civilization. The fine arts and the speculative sciences complete human life. They are not necessary except perhaps for the good life. They are the dedication of human leisure and its best fruit. The leisure without which they neither could come into being nor prosper is found for man and fostered by the work of the useful arts. Aristotle tells us that is why the mathematical arts were founded in Egypt; for there the priestly caste was allowed to be at leisure. THERE IS ANOTHER ambiguity in the reference of the word art. Sometimes we use it to name the effects produced by human workmanship. We elliptically refer to works of art as art. Sometimes we use it to signify the cause of the things produced by human work that skill of mind which directs the hand in its manipulation of matter. Art is both in the artist and in the work of art in the one as cause, in the other as the effect. What is effected is a certain ennoblement of matter, a transformation produced not merely by the hand of man, but by his thought or knowledge. The more generic meaning of art seems to be that of art as cause rather than as effect. There are many spheres of art in which no tangible product results, as in navigation or military strategy. We might, of course, call a landfall or a victory a work of art, but we tend rather to speak of the art of the navigator or the general. So, too, in medicine and teaching, we look upon the health or knowledge which results from healing or teaching as natural. We do not find art in them, but rather in the skill of the healer or teacher who has helped to produce that result. Hence even in the case of the shoe or the statue, art seems to be primarily in the mind and work of the cobbler or sculptor and only derivatively in the objects produced. Aristotle, in defining art as a capacity to make, involving a true course of reasoning, identifies it with making as distinct from doing and knowing. Though art, like science and moral action, belongs to the mind and involves experience and learning, imagination and thought, it is distinct from both in aiming at production, in being knowledge of how to make something or to obtain a desired effect. Science, on the other hand, is knowledge that something is the case, or that a thing has a certain nature. Knowledge is sometimes identified with science, to the exclusion of art or skill; but we depart from this narrow notion whenever we recognize that skill consists in knowing how to make something. Even in speculative matters, writes Aquinas, there is something by way of work; e.g., the making of a syllogism, or a fitting speech, or the work of counting or measuring. Hence whatever habits are ordained to suchlike works of the speculative reason, are, by a kind of comparison, called arts indeed, but liberal arts, in order to distinguish them from those arts which are ordained to works done by the body, which arts are, in a fashion, servile, inasmuch as the body is in servile subjection to the soul, and man as regards his soul is free. On the other hand, those sciences which are not ordained to any suchlike work, are called sciences simply, and not arts. THE DISCUSSIONS OF ART in the great books afford materials from which a systematic classification of the arts might be constructed, but only fragments of such a classification are ever explicitly presented.

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For example, the seven liberal arts are enumerated by various authors, but their distinction from other arts, and their ordered relation to one another, do not receive full explication. There is no treatment of grammar, rhetoric, and logic (or dialectic) to parallel Platos consideration of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy in The Republic; nor is there any analysis of the relation of the first three arts to the other four traditionally organized as the trivium and the quadrivium. However, in Augustines work On Christian Doctrine we have a discussion of these arts as they are ordered to the study of theology. That orientation of the liberal arts is also the theme of Bonaventures Reduction of the Arts to Theology. Quite apart from the problem of how they are ordered to one another, particular liberal arts receive so rich and varied a discussion in the tradition of the great books that the consideration of them must be distributed among a number of chapters, such as LOGIC, RHETORIC, LANGUAGE (for the discussion of grammar), and MATHEMATICS. The principles of classification of the fine arts are laid down by Kant from the analogy which art bears to the mode of expression of which men avail themselves in speech, with a view to communicating themselves to one another as completely as possible. Since such expression consists in word, gesture, and tone, he finds three corresponding fine arts: the art of speech, formative art, and the art of the play of sensations. In these terms he analyzes rhetoric and poetry, sculpture, architecture, painting and landscape gardening, and music. A different principle of division is indicated in the opening chapters of Aristotles On Poetics. The principle that all art imitates nature suggests the possibility of distinguishing and relating the various arts according to their characteristic differences as imitations by reference to the object imitated and to the medium and manner in which it is imitated by the poet, sculptor or painter, and musician. Color and form, Aristotle writes, are used as means by some . . . who imitate and portray many things by their aid, and the voice is used by others ... Rhythm alone, without harmony, is the means in the dancers imitations . . . There is, further, an art which imitates by language alone, without harmony, in prose or in verse. Aristotles treatise deals mainly with this art poetry; it does not develop for the other fine arts the analysis it suggests. Aristotles principle also suggests questions about the useful arts. Are such arts as shoemaking and house-building imitations of nature in the same sense as poetry and music? Does the way in which the farmer, the physician, and the teacher imitate nature distinguish these three arts from the way in which a statue is an imitation, or a poem, or a house? The Aristotelian dictum about art imitating nature has, of course, been as frequently challenged as approved. Apart from the issue of its truth, the theory of art as imitation poses many questions which Aristotle left unanswered. If there are answers in the great books, they are there by implication rather than by statement. THE MOST FAMILIAR distinction between arts that between the useful and the fine is also the one most frequently made in modern discussion. The criterion of the distinction needs little explanation. Some of mans productions are intended to be used; others to be contemplated or enjoyed. To describe them in terms of imitation, the products of the useful arts must be said to imitate a natural function (the shoe, for example, the protective function of calloused skin). The imitation merely indicates the use, and it is the use which counts. But in the products of the fine arts, the imitation of the form, quality, or other aspect of a natural object is considered to be the source of pleasure. The least familiar distinction among the arts is implied in any thorough discussion, yet its divisions are seldom, if ever, named. Within the sphere of useful art, some arts work toward a result which can hardly be regarded as an artificial product. Fruits and grains would grow without the intervention of the farmer, yet the farmer helps them to grow more abundantly and regularly. Health and knowledge are natural effects, even though the arts of medicine and teaching may aid in their production. These arts, more fully discussed in the chapters on MEDICINE and EDUCATION, stand in sharp contrast to those skills whereby man produces the useful things which, but for

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mans work, would be totally lacking. In the one case, it is the artists activity itself which imitates or cooperates with natures manner of working; in the other, the things which the artist makes by operating on passive materials supplied by nature imitate natural forms or functions. For the most part, the industrial arts are of the second sort. They transform dead matter into commodities or tools. The arts which cooperate with nature usually work with living matter, as in agriculture, medicine, and teaching. The distinction seems warranted and clear. Yet it is cut across by Smiths division of labor into productive and nonproductive. The work of agriculture is associated with industry in the production of wealth, but whatever other use they may have, physicians and teachers, according to Smith, do not directly augment the wealth of nations. As another economist, Veblen, points out, their instinct of workmanship . . . disposes men to look with favor upon productive efficiency. If to the foregoing we add the division of the arts into liberal and servile, the major traditional distinctions are covered. This last division had its origin in the recognition that some arts, like sculpture and carpentry, could not effect their products except by shaping matter, whereas some arts, like poetry or logic, were free from matter, at least in the sense that they worked productively in symbolic mediums. But by other principles of classifycation, poetry and sculpture are separated from logic and carpentry, as fine from useful art. Logic, along with grammar, rhetoric, and the mathematical arts, is separated from poetry and sculpture, as liberal from fine art. When the word liberal is used to state this last distinction, its meaning narrows. It signifies only the speculative arts, or arts concerned with processes of thinking and knowing. The adequacy of any classification, and the intelligibility of its principles, must stand the test of questions about particular arts. The great books frequently discuss the arts of animal husbandry and navigation, the arts of cooking and hunting, the arts of war and government. Each raises a question about the nature of art in general and challenges any analysis of the arts to classify them and explain their peculiarities. THERE ARE TWO OTHER major issues which have been debated mainly with respect to the fine arts. One, already mentioned, concerns the imitative character of art. The opponents of imitation do not deny that there may be some perceptible resemblance between a work of art and a natural object. A drama may remind us of human actions we have experienced; music may simulate the tonal qualities and rhythms of the human voice registering the course of the emotions. Nevertheless, the motivation of artistic creation lies deeper, it is said, than a desire to imitate nature, or to find some pleasure in such resemblances. According to Tolstoy, the arts serve primarily as a medium of spiritual communication, helping to create the ties of human brotherhood. According to Freud, it is emotion or subconscious expression, rather than imitation or communication, which is the deepest spring of art; the poet or artist forces us to become aware of our inner selves in which the same impulses are still extant even though they are suppressed. Freuds theory of sublimation of emotion or desire through art seems to connect with Aristotles theory of emotional catharsis or purgation. But Freud is attempting to account for the origin of art, and Aristotle is trying to describe an effect proper to its enjoyment. The theories of communication, expression, or imitation, attempt to explain art, or at least its motivation. But there is also a conception of art which, foregoing explanation, leaves it a mystery the spontaneous product of inspiration, of a divine madness, the work of unfathomable genius. We encounter this notion first, but not last, in Platos Ion. THE OTHER MAJOR controversy concerns the regulation of the arts by the state for human welfare and the public good. Here, as before, the fine arts (chiefly poetry and music) have been the focus of the debate. It is worth noting, however, that a parallel problem of political regulation occurs in the sphere of the industrial arts. On the question of state control over the production and

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distribution of wealth, Smith and Marx represent extreme opposites, as Milton and Plato are poles apart on the question of the states right to censor the artists work. In this debate, Aristotle stands on Platos side in many particulars, and J. S. Mill with Milton. The problem of censorship or political regulation of the fine arts presupposes some prior questions. Plato argues in The Republic that all poetry but hymns to the gods and praises of famous men must be banned from the State; for if you go beyond this and allow the honeyed muse to enter, either in epic or lyric verse, not law and the reason of mankind, which by common consent have ever been deemed the best, but pleasure and pain will be the rulers in our State. Such a view presupposes a certain theory of the fine arts and of their influence on the citizens and the whole character of the community. Yet because both Plato and Aristotle judge that influence to be far from negligible, they do not see any reason in individual liberty for the state to refrain from interfering with the rights of the artist for the greater good of the community.

N.B. As we have seen, in the first text excerpted above, Marcus Berquist, speaking of the arts which aim at recreation and delight, identifies them with what are now called the fine arts; going on to cite Aristotle as his authority for concluding that they all agree in producing an imitation. In this regard, compare the following remark from his teacher, Charles De Koninck:To the first [I answer] that the property of the art of imitating delightfully is not preserved in a beautiful work of art as such, but in a delightful imitation. And so arts of imitating delightfully are abusively equated with those which are called fine arts. (NOTULA IN IA PARTIS Q. 1, A. IX, AD 1)

It is clear from this statement that De Koninck understood the term fine arts to be the same as the beaux arts, or the arts of the beautiful, and that these are not coextensive with the imitative arts. But how did he conceive the relationship between the two? Which was the genus and which the species?

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2. Aristotles consideration of the arts: their place in the rise of first philosophy, the definetion of art, and related matters. Cf. Aristotle, Metaph., I. 1-2 (980a 20- 983a) (tr. Malcolm Heath):[980a20] All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses. For even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves, and above all others the sense of sight; for not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things. By nature animals are born with the faculty of sensation, and from sensation memory is produced in some of them, though not in others. [980b] Therefore the former are more intelligent and apt at learning than those which cannot remember; those which are incapable of hearing sounds are intelligent though they cannot be taught (e.g. the bee, and any other race of animals that may be like it); and those which besides memory have this sense of hearing can be taught. The animals other than man live by appearances and memories, and have but little of connected experience; but the human race lives also by art and reasonings. Now from memory experience is produced in men; for the several memories of the same thing produce finally the capacity for a single experience. [981a] Experience seems pretty much like science and art; but really science and art come to men through experience - for experience made art, as Polus says, but inexperience luck. Now art arises when from many notions gained by experience one universal judgement about a class of objects is produced. For to have a judgement that when Callias was ill of this disease this did him good, and similarly in the case of Socrates and in many individual cases, is a matter of experience; but to judge that it has done good to all persons of a certain constitution, marked off in one class, when they were ill of this disease )e.g. to phlegmatic or bilious people when burning with fevers) - this is a matter of art. With a view to action experience seems in no respect inferior to art, and men of experience succeed even better than those who have theory without experience. (The reason is that experience is knowledge of individuals, art of universals, and actions and productions are all concerned with the individual. The physician does not cure man, except in an incidental way, but Callias or Socrates or some other called by some such individual name, who happens to be a man. If, then, a man has the theory without the experience, and recognises the universal but does not know the individual included in this, he will often fail to cure; for it is the individual that is to be cured.) But yet we think that knowledge and understanding belong to art rather than to experience, and we suppose artists to be wiser than men of experience (which implies that wisdom depends in all cases rather on knowledge); and this because the former know the cause, but the latter do not. For men of experience know that the thing is so, but do not know why, while the others know the why and the cause. Hence we think also that the masterworkers in each craft are more honourable and know in a truer sense and are [981b] wiser than the manual workers, because they know the causes of the things that are done. (We think the manual workers are like certain lifeless things which act indeed, but act without knowing what they do, as fire burns. But while the lifeless things perform each of their functions by a natural tendency, the labourers perform them through habit.) Thus we view them as being wiser not in virtue of being able to act, but of having the theory for themselves and knowing the causes. And in general it is a sign of the man who knows and of the man who does not know, that the former can teach, and therefore we think art more truly knowledge than experience is. For artists can teach, and men of mere experience cannot.

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Again, we do not regard any of the senses as wisdom; yet surely these give the most authoritative knowledge of particulars. But they do not tell us the why of anything - e.g. why fire is hot; they only say that it is hot. At first he who invented any art whatever that went beyond the common perceptions of man was naturally admired by men, not only because there was something useful in the inventions, but because he was thought wise and superior to the rest. But as more arts were invented, and some were directed to the necessities of life, others to recreation, the inventors of the latter were naturally always regarded as wiser than the inventors of the former, because their branches of knowledge did not aim at utility. Hence when all such inventions were already established, the sciences which do not aim at giving pleasure or at the necessities of life were discovered, and first in the places where men first began to have leisure. This is why the mathematical arts were founded in Egypt; for there the priestly caste was allowed to be at leisure. We have said in the Ethics what the difference is between art and science and the other kindred faculties; but the point of our present discussion is this, that all men suppose what is called wisdom to deal with the first causes and the principles of things; so that, as has been said before, the man of experience is thought to be wiser than the possessors of any sense-perception whatever, the artist wiser than the men of experience, the masterworker than the mechanic, [982a] and the theoretical kinds of knowledge to be more of the nature of wisdom than the productive. Clearly then wisdom is knowledge about certain principles and causes. [1.2] Since we are seeking this knowledge, we must inquire of what kind are the causes and the principles, the knowledge of which is wisdom. If one were to take the notions we have about the wise man, this might perhaps make the answer more evident. We suppose first, then, that the wise man knows all things, as far as possible, although he has not knowledge of each of them in detail; secondly, that he who can learn things that are difficult, and not easy for man to know, is wise (sense-perception is common to all, and therefore easy and no mark of wisdom); again, that he who is more exact and more capable of teaching the causes is wiser, in every branch of knowledge; and that of the sciences, also, that which is desirable on its own account and for the sake of knowing it is more of the nature of wisdom than that which is desirable on account of its results, and the superior science is more of the nature of wisdom than the ancillary; for the wise man must not be ordered but must order, and he must not obey another, but the less wise must obey him. Such and so many are the notions, then, which we have about wisdom and the wise. Now of these characteristics that of knowing all things must belong to him who has in the highest degree universal knowledge; for he knows in a sense all the instances that fall under the universal. And these things, the most universal, are on the whole the hardest for men to know; for they are farthest from the senses. And the most exact of the sciences are those which deal most with first principles; for those which involve fewer principles are more exact than those which involve additional principles, e.g. arithmetic than geometry. But the science which investigates causes is also instructive, in a higher degree, for the people who instruct us are those who tell the causes of each thing. And understanding and knowledge pursued for their own sake are found most in the knowledge of that which is most knowable (for he who chooses to know for the sake of knowing [982b] will choose most readily that which is most truly knowledge, and such is the knowledge of that which is most knowable); and the first principles and the causes are most knowable; for by reason of these, and from these, all other things come to be known, and not these by means of the things subordinate to them. And the science which knows to what end each thing must be done is the most authoritative of the sciences, and more authoritative than any ancillary science; and this end is the good of that thing, and in general the supreme good in the whole of nature.

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Judged by all the tests we have mentioned, then, the name in question falls to the same science; this must be a science that investigates the first principles and causes; for the good, i.e. the end, is one of the causes. That it is not a science of production is clear even from the history of the earliest philosophers. For it is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophise; they wondered originally at the obvious difficulties, then advanced little by little and stated difficulties about the greater matters, e.g. about the phenomena of the moon and those of the sun and of the stars, and about the genesis of the universe. And a man who is puzzled and wonders thinks himself ignorant (for this reason even the lover of myth is in a sense a lover of wisdom, for the myth is composed of wonders); therefore since they philosophised order to escape from ignorance, evidently they were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian end. And this is confirmed by the facts; for it was when almost all the necessities of life and the things that make for comfort and recreation had been secured, that such knowledge began to be sought. Evidently then we do not seek it for the sake of any other advantage; but as the man is free, we say, who exists for his own sake and not for anothers, so we pursue this as the only free science, for it alone exists for its own sake. Hence also the possession of it might be justly regarded as beyond human power. For in many ways human nature is in bondage, so that according to Simonides God alone can have this privilege, and it is unfitting that man should not be content to seek the knowledge that is suited to him. If, then, there is something in what the poets say, and jealousy is natural to [983a] the divine power, it would probably occur in this case above all, and all who excelled in this knowledge would be unfortunate. But the divine power cannot be jealous (nay, according to the proverb, bards tell a lie), nor should any other science be thought more honourable than one of this sort. For the most divine science is also most honourable; and this science alone must be, in two ways, most divine. For the science which it would be most meet for God to have is a divine science, and so is any science that deals with divine objects; and this science alone has both these qualities; for (i) God is thought to be among the causes of all things and to be a first principle, and (ii) such a science either God alone can have, or God above all others. All the sciences, indeed, are more necessary than this, but none is better. Yet the acquisition of it must in a sense end in something which is the opposite of our original inquiries. For all men begin, as we said, by wondering that things are as they are, as they do about self-moving marionettes, or about the solstices or the incommensurability of the diagonal of a square with the side; for it seems wonderful to all who have not yet seen the reason, that there is a thing which cannot be measured even by the smallest unit. But we must end in the contrary and, according to the proverb, the better state, as is the case in these instances too when men learn the cause; for there is nothing which would surprise a geometer so much as if the diagonal turned out to be commensurable. We have stated, then, what is the nature of the science we are searching for, and what is the mark which our search and our whole investigation must reach.

On the definition of art, cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, VI. 5 (1140a 1-24) (Oxford tr.):[1140a] The class of things that admit of variation includes both things made and actions done. But making is different from doing (a distinction we may accept from extraneous discourses). Hence the rational quality concerned with doing is different from the rational quality concerned with making; nor is one of them a part of the other, for doing is not a form of making, nor making a form of doing.

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Now architectural skill, for instance, is an art, and it is also a rational quality concerned with making; nor is there any art which is not a rational quality concerned with making, nor any such quality which is not an art. It follows that an art is the same thing as a rational quality, concerned with making, that reasons truly. All Art deals with bringing some thing into existence; and to pursue an art means to study how to bring into existence a thing which may either exist or not, and the efficient cause of which lies in the maker and not in the thing made; for Art does not deal with things that exist or come into existence of necessity, or according to nature, since these have their efficient cause in themselves. But as doing and making are distinct, it follows that Art, being concerned with making, is not concerned with doing. And in a sense Art deals with the same objects as chance, as Agathon says: Chance is beloved of Art, and Art of Chance. [20] Art, therefore, as has been said, is a rational quality, concerned with making, that reasons truly. Its opposite, Lack of Art, is a rational quality, concerned with making, that reasons falsely. Both deal with that which admits of variation.

On the difference between liberal and illiberal occupations, cf. Aristotle, Politics, VIII. 1-3 (1337a 81338b 7) (tr. B. Jowett):1 No one will doubt that the legislator should direct his attention above all to the education of youth; for the neglect of education does harm to the constitution The citizen should be molded to suit the form of government under which he lives.1 For each government has a peculiar character which originally formed and which continues to [15] preserve it. The character of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarchy creates oligarchy; and always the better the character, the better the government. Again, for the exercise of any faculty or art a previous training and habituation are required; clearly therefore for the practice of virtue. [20] And since the whole city has one end, it is manifest that education should be one and the same for all, and that it should be public, and not private- not as at present, when every one looks after his own children separately, and gives them separate instruction of the sort [25] which he thinks best; the training in things which are of common interest should be the same for all. Neither must we suppose that any one of the citizens belongs to himself, for they all belong to the state, and are each of them a part of the state, and the care of each part is inseparable from the care of the whole. In this particular as in some others the Lacedaemonians are to be praised, for they take the greatest pains about their children, and make education the business of the state.2 2 That education should be regulated by law and should be an affair of state is not to be denied, but what should be the character of1

Cp. v. 1310a 12-36. 2 Cp. Nic. Eth. x. 1180a 24. this public education, and how young persons should be educated, are questions which remain to be considered. As things are, there is [35] disagreement about the subjects. For mankind are by no means agreed about the things to be taught, whether we look to virtue or the best life. Neither is it clear whether education is more concerned with intellectual or with

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moral virtue. The existing practice is perplexing; [40] no one knows on what principle we should proceed should the useful in life, or should virtue, or should the higher knowledge, be the [1337b] aim of our training; all three opinions have been entertained. Again, about the means there is no agreement; for different persons, starting with different ideas about the nature of virtue, naturally disagree about the practice of it. There can be no doubt that children should be taught those useful things which are really necessary, but not all [5] useful things; for occupations are divided into liberal and illiberal; and to young children should be imparted only such kinds of knowledge as will be useful to them without vulgarizing them. And any [10] occupation, art, or science, which makes the body or soul or mind of the free-man 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. [15] There are also some liberal arts quite proper for a freeman to acquire, but only in a certain degree, and if he attend to them too closely, in order to attain perfection in them, the same evil effects will follow. The object also which a man sets before him makes a great difference; if he does or learns anything for his own sake3 or for the sake of his friends, or with a view to excellence the action will not appear [20] illiberal; but if done for the sake of others, the very same action will be thought menial and servile. The received subjects of instruction, as I have already remarked, 4 are partly of a liberal and party of an illiberal character. 3 The customary branches of education are in number four; they are (1) reading and writing, (2) gymnastic exercises, (3) music, to [25] which is sometimes added (4) drawing. Of these, reading and writing and drawing are regarded as useful for the purposes of life in a variety of ways, and gymnastic exercises are thought to infuse courage. Concerning music a doubt may be raised in our own day most men cultivate it for the sake of pleasure, but originally it was included [30] in education, because nature herself, as has been often said,4 requires that we should be able, not only to work well, but to use leisure well;3 4 a

Cp. iii. 1277b 3. 39-b3.

for, as I must repeat once again, the first principle of all action is leisure. Both are required, but leisure is better than occupation and is its end; and therefore the question must be asked, what ought we to do when at leisure? Clearly we ought not to be amusing ourselves, [35] for then amusement would be the end of life. But if this is inconceivable, and amusement is needed more amid serious occupations than at other times (for he who is hard at work has need of relaxation, and amusement gives relaxation, whereas occupation is always accompanied with exertion and effort), we should introduce amusements [40] only at suitable times, and they should be our medicines, for the emotion which they create in the soul is a relaxation, and from the pleasure we obtain rest. 3 But leisure of itself gives [1338a] pleasure and happiness and enjoyment of life, which are experienced, not by the busy man, but by those who have leisure. For he who is occupied has in view some end which he has not attained; but happiness is an end, since all men [5] deem it to be accompanied with pleasure and not with pain. This pleasure, however, is regarded differently by different persons, and varies according to the habit of individuals; the pleasure of the best man is the best, and springs from the noblest sources.3

Cf. Pol. VIII. 5 (1340a 1-12) and VIII, 7 (1341 a 32 ff.), which treats of this end, as well the related ends of education and katharsis. With respect to the latter, cf. my brief discussion at the end of this paper.

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It is clear then that there are branches of learning and education which we must study [10] merely with a view to leisure spent in intellectual activity, and these are to be valued for their own sake; whereas those kinds of know-ledge which are useful in business are to be deemed necessary, and exist for the sake of other things. And therefore our fathers admitted music into education, not on the ground either of its necessity or utility, for it is not necessary, nor indeed useful in the same manner as reading and writing, [15] which are useful in money-making, in the management of a household, in the acquisition of knowledge and in political life, nor like drawing, useful for a more correct judgment of the works of artists, nor again like gymnastic, which gives health and strength; [20] for neither of these is to be gained from music. There remains, then, the use of music for intellectual enjoyment in leisure; which is in fact evidently the reason of its introduction, this being one of the ways in which it is thought that a freeman should pass his leisure; as Homer says, But he who alone should be called6 to the pleasant feast, [25] and afterwards he speaks of others whom he describes as inviting The bard who would delight them all.7 The line does not occur in our text of Homer, but in Aristotles text it probably came instead of, or after, Od. Xvii. 383 7 Od. Xvii. 385.6

And in another place Odysseus says there is no better way of passing life than when men's hearts are merry and The banqueters in the hall, sitting in order, hear the voice of the minstrel.8 [30] It is evident, then, that there is a sort of education in which parents should train their sons, not as being useful or necessary, but because it is liberal or noble. Whether this is of one kind only, or of more than one, and if so, what they are, and how they are to be imparted, must hereafter be determined. 9 Thus much we are now in a position to say, [35] that the ancients witness to us; for their opinion may be gathered from the fact that music is one of the received and traditional branches of education. Further, it is clear that children should be instructed in some useful things for example, in reading and writing not only for their usefulness, but also because many other sorts of knowledge [40] are acquired through them. With a like view they may be taught drawing, not to prevent their making mistakes in their own purchases, or in order that they may not be imposed upon in the [1338b] buying or selling of articles, but perhaps rather because it makes them judges of the beauty of the human form. To be always seeking after the useful does not become free and exalted souls. 10 Now it is clear that in education practice must be used before theory, and the body be trained before the mind; and therefore boys should be handed over to the trainer, who creates in them the roper habit of body, and to the wrestling-master, who teaches them their exercises.8 9

Od. Ix. 7. An unfulfilled promise. 10 Cp. Plato, Rep. vii, 525 ff.

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3. St. Thomas Aquinas on certain matters pertaining to the arts. Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, In I Meta, lect. 1, n. 31 (tr. B.A.M.):LB1LC-1N.31 deinde cum dicit primum quidem comparat artem activam speculativae. et circa hoc duo facit. primo ostendit, quod ars speculativa magis est sapientia quam activa. secundo respondet cuidam obiectioni, ibi, in moralibus. ostendit autem quod primo dictum est, tali ratione. in quibuscumque scientiis vel artibus invenitur id propter quod homines scientes prae aliis hominibus in admiratione vel honore habentur, illae scientiae sunt magis honorabiles, et magis dignae nomine sapientiae. quilibet autem inventor artis habetur in admiratione, propter hoc quod habet sensum et iudicium et discretionem causae ultra aliorum hominum sensum, et non propter utilitatem illorum quae invenit: sed magis admiramur, sicut sapientem et ab aliis distinguentem. sapientem quidem, quantum ad subtilem inquisitionem causarum rei inventae: distingueentem vero, quantum ad investigationem differentiarum unius rei ad aliam. vel aliter, ab aliis distinguentem, ut passive legatur, quasi in hoc ab aliis distinguatur. unde alia litera habet, differentem. ergo scientiae aliquae sunt magis admirabiles et magis dignae nomine sapientiae propter eminentiorem sensum, et non propter utilitatem. LB1LC-1N.324

Then when he says, First, indeed, he compares active art4 to speculative.5 And with respect to this he does two things. First, he shows that a speculative art is more wisdom than an active one. Second, he responds to a certain objection, there, (where he says,) In the Morals.6 But he shows the first thing he said by an argument of this sort. In any sciences or arts where one finds that on account of which men characterized by knowing are held in admiration or honor before other men, those sciences are more honorable and more worthy of the name of wisdom. Now any discoverer of an art is held in admiration on account of this, that he has a comprehension, a judgment, and a discrimination of causes beyond the comprehension of other men, and not on account of the usefulness of what he discovered. But we admire him rather as wise and distinguishing from other things. Wise, in fact, with respect to the subtlety of his inquiry into the causes of the thing he has discovered, but distinguishing with respect to the investigation of the differences of one thing from another. Or otherwise, distinguishing from other things, as it may be read passively, as if to say, he was distinguished in this from others. For this reason, another text has differently. Certain sciences, then, are more admirable and more worthy of the name of wisdom because of their more eminent comprehension, and not because of their usefulness.

That is, a practical or doing art. Cf. Hugh of St. Victor, Didascalicon, II.1 (tr. Jerome Taylor, p. 62): [T]he practical may be called active, likewise ethical, that is, moral, from the fact that morals consist in good action. 5 That is, a considering or looking art. 6 I.e., the Nicomachean Ethics.

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cum igitur plures artes sint repertae quantum ad utilitatem, quarum quaedam sunt ad vitae necessitatem, sicut mechanicae; quaedam vero ad introductionem in aliis scientiis, sicut scientiae logicales: illi artifices dicendi sunt sapientiores, quorum scientiae non sunt ad utilitatem inventae, sed propter ipsum scire, cuiusmodi sunt scientiae speculativae. LB1LC-1N.33 et quod speculativae scientiae non sint inventae ad utilitatem, patet per hoc signum: quia, iam partis, id est acquisitis vel repertis omnibus huiusmodi, quae possunt esse ad introductionem in scientiis, vel ad necessitatem vitae, vel ad voluptatem, sicut artes quae sunt ordinatae ad hominum delectationem:

When, therefore, many arts had been discovered for their usefulness, of which certain ones are for the necessities of life, like the mechanic; but some for an introduction [or a leading] into the other sciences, like the logical sciences, those artisans were called wiser whose sciences were not discovered for their usefulness, but on account of the very knowing, of which sort are the speculative sciences.

And that the speculative sciences were not discovered for their usefulness is clear through this sign: since in everything of this sort already brought forth, that is, acquired or discovered, which can serve for leading into the sciences, or for the necessities of life, or for pleasure, as are the arts ordained for mans delight,

speculativae non sunt propter huiusmodi the speculative ones have been discovered not repertae, sed propter seipsas. for the sake of this sort [of end, necessity or pleasure], but for the sake of themselves [that is, for their own sakes]. et quod non sint ad utilitatem inventae, patet ex loco quo inventae sunt. in locis enim illis primo repertae sunt, ubi primo homines studuerunt circa talia. alia litera habet, et primum his locis ubi vacabant, id est ab aliis occupationibus quiescentes studio vacabant quasi necessariis abundantes. unde et circa aegyptum primo inventae sunt artes mathematicae, quae sunt maxime speculativae, a sacerdotibus, qui sunt concessi studio vacare, et de publico expensas habebant, sicut etiam legitur in genesi. And that they were not discovered for their usefulness is clear from the place where they were discovered. For those [sciences] were first discovered in the place where men first were eager in the pursuit of such things. Another text has, and first in those places where they were free from labor, i.e. resting from effort they were free from other occupations, as if to say, abounding in necessary things. And so the mathematical arts, which are the most speculative, were first discovered by the priests in the vicinity of Egypt, to whom it was permitted to be free from labor, and who were kept at the public expense, just as we also read in Genesis.

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LB1LC-1N.34 sed quia usus nomine artis fuerat et sapientiae et scientiae quasi indifferenter, ne aliquis putet haec omnia esse nomina synonyma idem penitus significantia hanc opinionem removet, et remittit ad librum moralium, idest ad sextum ethicorum, ubi dictum est, in quo differant scientia et ars et sapientia et prudentia et intellectus. et ut breviter dicatur, sapientia et scientia et intellectus sunt circa partem animae speculativam, quam ibi scientificum animae appellat. differunt autem, quia intellectus est habitus principiorum primorum demonstrationis. scientia vero est conclusionis ex causis inferioribus. sapientia vero considerat causas primas. unde ibidem dicitur caput scientiarum. prudentia vero et ars est circa animae partem practicam, quae est ratiocinativa de contingentibus operabilibus a nobis. et differunt: nam prudentia dirigit in actionibus quae non transeunt ad exteriorem materiam, sed sunt perfectiones agentis: unde dicitur ibi quod prudentia est recta ratio agibilium. ars vero dirigit in factionibus, quae in materiam exteriorem transeunt, sicut aedificare et secare: unde dicitur quod ars est recta ratio factibilium. But because the name of art was used, as it were, indifferently of both wisdom and science, lest someone think all these names to be synonyms signifying entirely the same thing, he removes this opinion and refers to the book of Morals, i.e. to the sixth book of the Ethics, where that in which wisdom, science, understanding, prudence and art differ has been stated. And (to put the matter briefly), wisdom, science, and understanding have to do with the speculative part of the soul, which he there names the scientific soul. But they differ because understanding is the habit of the first principles of demonstration; but science is of conclusions gathered from inferior causes; but wisdom considers the first causes. For this reason, in the same place it is called the head of the sciences. But prudence and art have to do with the practical part of the soul, to which it belongs to reason about contingent things that can be done by us. And they differ, for prudence directs in actions which do not pass over to external matter, but are perfections of the agent, for this reason prudence is there called right reason about doable things. But art directs in productions which pass over into exterior matter, as to build and to cut, for which reason art is called right reason about makeable things.

Cf. ibid., lect. 3, n. 6 (tr. B.A.M.):LB1LC-3N.-6 deinde cum dicit testatur autem probat idem per signum; dicens, quod hoc quod dictum est, scilicet quod sapientia vel philosophia non sit propter aliquam utilitatem quaesita, sed propter ipsam Then when he says, It is made known, however , he proves the same thing through a sign, saying that this that is said, namely, that wisdom or philosophy is not sought for the sake of some usefulness, but for the sake of the know-

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scientiam, testatur accidens, idest eventus, qui circa inquisitores philosophiae provenit. nam cum eis cuncta fere existerent, quae sunt ad necessitatem vitae, et quae sunt ad pigritiam, idest ad voluptatem, quae in quadam vitae quiete consistit, et quae sunt etiam ad eruditionem necessaria, sicut scientiae logicales, quae non propter se quaeruntur, sed ut introductoriae ad alias artes, tunc primo incoepit quaeri talis prudentia, idest sapientia. ex quo patet, quod non quaeritur propter aliquam necessitatem aliam a se, sed propter seipsam: nullus enim quaerit hoc quod habetur. unde, quia omnibus aliis habitis ipsa quaesita est, patet quod non propter aliquid aliud ipsa quaesita est, sed propter seipsam.

ledge itself, is made known by what has happened, that is, by the event, at which those inquirers of philosophy have arrived. For when in them nearly the whole [of the arts and sciences] were in existence, those which are for the necessity of life, and those which are for leisure, that is, for pleasure, which consists in a certain repose of life, and those which are also necessary for instructtion, as are the logical sciences, which are not sought for their own sakes, but as introductory to the other arts, then of such things prudence [ sophrosyne], i.e. wisdom, first began to be sought. It is clear from this that it is not sought for the sake of any necessity other than itself, but for the sake of itself. For no one will seek what he has. For this reason, because it is sought by all the other habits, it is clear that it is not sought for the sake of something other than itself, but for its own sake.

Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, In VI Ethic., lect. 3, n. 9-19 (tr. B.A.M.):LB6LC-3N.-9 deinde cum dicit contingentis autem etc., determinat de habitibus qui perficiunt intellectum circa contingentia. et circa hoc tria facit. primo ostendit duos esse habitus circa contingentia. secundo determinat de uno eorum, scilicet de arte, ibi, quia autem aedificativa etc.. tertio determinat de altero, scilicet de prudentia, ibi: de prudentia autem sic utique etc.. Then when he says, That which can have itself otherwise, however, etc., he determines about the habits by which the intellect is perfected with respect to contingent things. And with respect to this he does three things. First, he shows that there are two habits concerned with contingent things. Second, he determines about one of them, namely, about art, there, (where he says,) Since house-building, however, etc. Third, he determines about the other one, namely, about prudence, there, (where he says,) Concerning prudence, however, etc.

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dicit ergo primo, quod contingens aliter se habere dividitur in duo, quia aliquid eius est agibile et aliquid est factibile, quod quidem cognoscitur per hoc quod alterum est factio et alterum est actio. LB6LC-3N.10 et his possumus assentire per rationes exteriores, idest per ea quae determinata sunt extra istam scientiam, scilicet in ix metaphysicae; ibi enim ostensa est differentia inter actionem et factionem. nam actio dicitur operatio manens in ipso agente, sicut videre, intelligere et velle, factio autem dicitur operatio transiens in exteriorem materiam ad aliquid formandum ex ea, sicut aedificare, urere et secare. quia ergo habitus distinguuntur secundum obiecta, consequens est quod habitus qui est activus cum ratione, scilicet prudentia, sit alius ab habitu factivo qui est cum ratione qui est ars; et quod unus eorum non contineatur sub alio, sicut neque actio et factio continentur sub invicem, quia neque actio est factio, neque factio est actio. distinguuntur enim oppositis differentiis, ut ex dictis patet. LB6LC-3N.11 est autem considerandum quod quia contingentium cognitio non potest habere certitudinem veritatis repellentem falsitatem, ideo quantum ad solam cognitionem pertinet, contingentia praetermittuntur ab intellectu qui perficitur per cognitionem veritatis. est autem utilis contingentium cognitio secundum quod est directiva humanae operati-onis quae circa contingentia est.

He says therefore first, what happens to have itself otherwise is divided into two, because something of it can be done, and something can be made, which indeed is known through this, that one is making [or production] and the other is doing [or action].

And we can assent to this through exoteric accounts, i.e. through those things which have been determined outside this science, namely, in the ninth book of the Metaphysics; for there the difference between doing and making has been shown. For doing bespeaks an operation remaining in the doer [or agent] himself, as to see, to understand, and to will; making, however, bespeaks an operation passing over into exterior matter for the sake of forming something from it, as to build a house, to burn, and to cut. Therefore, because habits are distinguished according to their objects, it follows that a habit which is doing [or active] with reason, namely, prudence, is other than a making [or productive] habit which is with reason, which is art; and that one is not contained under the other, just as neither are doing and making contained under each other, since neither is doing making, nor making doing. For they are distinguished by opposite differences, as is clear from what has been said.

One must consider, however, that because knowledge of contingent things cannot have the certitude of truth, driving out falsehood, therefore, inasmuch as belongs to knowledge only, contingent things are passed over by the understanding which is perfected by knowledge of the truth. Knowledge of contingent things, however, is useful according as it is directive of a human operation which is concerned with contingent things.

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et ideo contingentia divisit tractans de intellectualibus virtutibus solum secundum quod subiiciuntur humanae operationi. unde et solae scientiae practicae sunt circa contingentia, inquantum contingentia sunt, scilicet in particulari. scientiae autem speculativae non sunt circa contingentia nisi secundum rationes universales, ut supra dictum est. LB6LC-3N.12 deinde cum dicit: quia autem aedificativa etc., determinat de arte. et primo de ipsa arte secundum se; secundo de arte per comparationem ad oppositum eius, ibi, ars quidem igitur etc.. circa primum duo facit. primo ostendit quid sit ars. secundo quae sit artis materia, ibi, est autem ars omnis etc.. primum manifestat per inductionem. videmus enim quod aedificativa est ars quaedam, et iterum quod est habitus quidam ad faciendum aliquid cum ratione. et nulla ars invenitur cui hoc non conveniat, quod scilicet sit habitus factivus cum ratione, neque invenitur talis habitus factivus, scilicet cum ratione, qui non sit ars. unde manifestum est quod idem est ars et habitus factivus cum vera ratione. LB6LC-3N.13 deinde cum dicit: est autem ars etc., determinat materiam artis.

And therefore he divides contingent things, treating about the intellectual virtues only according as they are joined to human operations. Wherefore only the practical sciences are concerned with contingent things inasmuch as they are contingent, namely, in particular. Speculative sciences, however, are not concerned with contingent things except according to universal notions, as was said above.

Then when he says: Since house-building, however, etc., he determines about art. And first about art in itself according to itself; second, about art through a comparison with its opposite, there, (where he says,) Art indeed, therefore, etc. About the first he does two things. First, he shows what art is. Second, what the matter of art is, there, (where he says,) Every art, however, is, etc. He manifests the first through induction. For we see that house-building is a certain art, and again, that it is a certain habit for making something with reason. And no art is found to which this does not belong, that, namely, it be a making habit with reason; neither is there found such a making habit, namely, with reason, which is not an art. Wherefore it is obvious that art is the same thing as a making habit with true reason.

Then when he says: Art is, however, etc., he determines the matter of art.

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et circa hoc tria facit: primo ponit artis materiam; secundo ostendit a quibus differat secundum suam materiam, ibi, neque enim de his etc.; tertio ostendit cum quo conveniat in materia, ibi, et secundum modum quemdam etc.. circa materiam autem artis duo est considerare, scilicet ipsam actionem artificis quae per artem dirigitur, et opus quod est per artem factum. est autem triplex operatio artis. prima quidem est considerare qualiter aliquid sit faciendum. secunda autem est operari circa materiam exteriorem. tertia autem est constituere ipsum opus. et ideo dicit quod omnis ars est circa generationem, id est circa constitutionem et complementum operis, quod primo ponit tamquam finem artis: et est etiam circa artificiare, id est circa operationem artis qua disponit materiam, et est etiam circa speculari qualiter aliquid fiat per artem. LB6LC-3N.14 ex parte vero ipsius operis duo est considerare.

And about this he does three things: first, he puts down the matter of art; second, he shows from what it differs according to its matter, there, (where he says,) For neither about these things, etc.; third, he shows with what it agrees in matter, there, (where he says,) And in a certain way, etc. About the matter of art, however, there are two things to consider, namely, the action itself of the artisan which is directed by art, and the work which is made by art. There is, however, a threefold operation of art. The first indeed is to consider how something must be made. The second, is to work on exterior matter. But the third is to constitute the work itself. And therefore he says that every art is concerned with generation, i.e. with the constitution and completion of a work, which h