The Great Freedom of the Liberal Arts

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Monk is still getting a nice ride out of Charlotte Simmons. Mr. Wolfe gives us a nice historical account for the term 'liberal arts.' I cannot recall coming across this particular explanation before. So much for Monk's education in the liberal arts!

Charlotte is explaining it to a student-athlete. And the reason why there are a lot of question marks is because Wolfe is illustrating how Charlotte speaks with that rather backward accent of the mountains and the south, tending to end her sentences with an ascending lilt, making her statements sound like questions:

“It's from Latin?” Charlotte was the very picture of kind patience. “In Latin, liber means free? It also means book, but that's just a coincidence, I think. Anyway, the Romans had slaves from all over the world, and some of the slaves were very bright, like the Greeks. The Romans would let the slaves get educated in all sorts of practical subjects, like math, like engineering so they could build things, like music so they could be entertainers? But only Roman citizens, the free people? - liber? - could take things like rhetoric and literature and history and theology and philosophy? Because they were the arts of persuasion - and they didn't want the slaves to learn how to present arguments that might inspire them to unite and rise up or something? So the 'liberal' arts are the arts of persuasion, and they didn't want anybody but free citizens knowing how to persuade people.”

It is a little something sweet to contemplate for we former Liberal Arts students who are living in the basement with the folks, or who are looking for their next office-temp job, or... who are content to lose themselves forever in the graceful power of books. At least one is gifted enough to persuade oneself.

xXx

The Great Freedom of the Liberal Arts

♠
Monk is still getting a nice ride out of Charlotte Simmons. Mr. Wolfe gives us a nice historical account for the term 'liberal arts.' I cannot recall coming across this particular explanation before. So much for Monk's education in the liberal arts!

Charlotte is explaining it to a student-athlete. And the reason why there are a lot of question marks is because Wolfe is illustrating how Charlotte speaks with that rather backward accent of the mountains and the south, tending to end her sentences with an ascending lilt, making her statements sound like questions:

“It's from Latin?” Charlotte was the very picture of kind patience. “In Latin, liber means free? It also means book, but that's just a coincidence, I think. Anyway, the Romans had slaves from all over the world, and some of the slaves were very bright, like the Greeks. The Romans would let the slaves get educated in all sorts of practical subjects, like math, like engineering so they could build things, like music so they could be entertainers? But only Roman citizens, the free people? - liber? - could take things like rhetoric and literature and history and theology and philosophy? Because they were the arts of persuasion - and they didn't want the slaves to learn how to present arguments that might inspire them to unite and rise up or something? So the 'liberal' arts are the arts of persuasion, and they didn't want anybody but free citizens knowing how to persuade people.”

It is a little something sweet to contemplate for we former Liberal Arts students who are living in the basement with the folks, or who are looking for their next office-temp job, or... who are content to lose themselves forever in the graceful power of books. At least one is gifted enough to persuade oneself.

xXx