Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 B.C.– A.D. 65), also called Seneca the Younger or Seneca the Philosopher, was born into a distinguished and well-to-do family in Spain. His father (known as Seneca the Elder) was an imperial Roman official who became a noted authority on forensic and political rhetoric. Though suffering from ill health throughout his life, the son traveled to Rome to study law, politics, and philosophy and to Egypt to study geography and natural science. Honed by this education, his natural speaking talent and mental acumen enabled Seneca to rise rapidly through the imperial bureaucracy; and he became a leading figure in the Senate by A.D. 37. But in 41 the consort to the new emperor Claudius (10 B.C.– A.D. 54 )arranged to have him banished to Corsica, where he spent the next eight years writing works in Stoic philosophy and circulating them to a small group of friends and acquaintances. Among these was a letter that Seneca wrote to his mother, Helvia, telling her to comfort herself in his absence by returning to her liberal studies.85
In 49 Agrippina, wife of Claudius, arranged for Seneca to be recalled to Rome, inducted into high office, and appointed tutor of her twelve-year-old son, the future emperor Nero (A.D. 37–68) Upon the poisoning of Claudius and accession of Nero, Seneca became one of the most influential advisors to the teenage emperor. For five years he exercised a beneficent influence, and public government enjoyed a period that Emperor Trajan (c. A.D. 53–117) later called the finest in the history of imperial Rome. Nevertheless, Seneca made significant compromises in the severe Stoic morality expressed in much of his writings, sacrificing principle to political expediency and acquiring great wealth at the same time.
Beginning in the late 50s, the inconsistency between his practice and his philosophical teachings became the basis of a campaign of denunciations by jealous competitors for Nero’s favor, who encouraged the emperor to shake loose from his boyhood tutor. Sensing that his position was rapidly eroding, Seneca requested, and was granted, imperial permission to retire to the countryside. There he spent his last three years composing various works of philosophy, literature, and drama that influenced many subsequent writers, including Peter Abelard and numerous humanists of the Renaissance. Most significant among these late writings are the Moral Letters to Lucilius, which have often been credited with inventing the “essay” form. The following letter has been considered “a locus classicus” for the form and for liberal studies.86
In 65 Seneca was implicated—perhaps justifiably—in a conspiracy upon the life of Nero. In the frenzied purge that followed, he obeyed the order of the emperor, his former tutee, to commit suicide.
[1] Health to you, Lucilius: You want to know what I feel about liberal studies. I don’t admire or count as worthwhile any study which aims at making money. Such studies are just hiring out our talents and are only of value if they train the mind and do not pre-occupy it. We should only spend time on them as long as the mind has nothing better to do, as they form our apprenticeship, not our proper work.88 [2] You can see why liberal studies are so called: they are worthy of a free man.89 But only one study is truly liberal in making a man free, and that is the study of wisdom, with its strength of purpose and its noble and exalted ideals. All the others are trivial and childish. Do you think there can be anything of value in those subjects which are expounded by the most disgraceful and outrageous teachers you could find?90 We should have finished learning such things, not still be learning them.
Some people have thought it worth asking whether liberal studies create the good man. Well, they do not even undertake to do this and they do not claim the requisite knowledge. [3] The study of grammar91 is concerned with the correct use of language; if it branches out a bit it deals with points of subject matter; at its widest range, the rules governing poetry. Which of these topics paves the way to virtue? Analysis of syllables, careful attention to words, the recording of stories, the laws of scansion—which of these banishes fear, gets rid of desire, or curbs passion?92 [4] Let us turn to geometry and music: you’ll find nothing in them to bid us stop being afraid and stop being covetous. And if a man doesn’t know these things all his other knowledge is useless. The point is whether or not these scholars are teaching us virtue. If they are not teaching it, they are not even imparting it indirectly; if they are teaching it, they are philosophers. If you want to know how far they are from formally teaching virtue consider how very disparate are all the things they study: if they were teaching the same thing they would show some shared characteristic.
[5] Unless perhaps they persuade you that Homer was a philosopher, although they [refute] this conclusion by the very passages from which they derive it. For at one time they make him out to have been a Stoic, approving of virtue alone, rejecting pleasures and refusing even immortality if the price was dishonorable. At other times they claim him as an Epicurean, praising the condition of tranquility in a state which spends its days in banqueting and song. Now he is a Peripatetic, dividing benefits into three classes; now an Academic, stating that nothing is certain. It is quite clear that none of these doctrines is in Homer because they all are, and they are mutually incompatible. Even granting that Homer was a philosopher, he surely acquired his wisdom before he mastered any of his songs. [6] So let us learn those things which made Homer wise. . . .
[9] Turning to music, I say that you teach me how treble and bass notes harmonize, and how a concord is produced from strings that give dissimilar sounds. I would rather learn how to harmonize my mind and stop my purposes being out of tune. You show me which are the plaintive melodies: show me instead how not to utter a plaintive cry in times of trouble.
[10] A geometrician teaches me to measure my estates rather than how to measure the amount that is enough for a man. He teaches me to do sums and put my fingers to the service of greed, instead of teaching me that those calculations have no importance, that a man is not the happier for having properties which tire out his accountants—in fact that possessions are superfluous if the owner is plunged in misery at the thought of having to calculate them all by himself. [11] What’s the good of my knowing how to divide a plot of land into sections if I don’t know how to divide it with my brother? What’s the good of carefully computing the units of an acre, including even the bits which have escaped the measuring rod, if I get upset by an arrogant neighbor who encroaches on my land? The geometrician teaches me how to keep my boundaries intact, but what I want to learn is how to lose the whole lot cheerfully. . . .
[14] I come now to the man who prides himself on his knowledge of the heavens93: “On which side Saturn’s icy star retreats, And in what orbits blazing Mercury roams.”94 What will be the benefit of this knowledge? To make me feel worried when Saturn and Mars are in opposition, or when Mercury sets in the evening in view of Saturn, rather than helping me to learn that these planets are propitious whatever their position and cannot change?95 [15] They are driven on in unalterable courses by a fixed sequence of destined events;96 they reappear in established cycles and they either cause or signalize all the operations of the universe. But if they cause everything that happens, what will be the use of knowing about an unchangeable process? And if they signalize events, what is the point of foreseeing what you cannot avoid? . . .
[18] You must bear with me if I do not stick to the regular program of studies. I refuse utterly to include painters in the list of liberal arts97 any more than sculptors or marble-masons or the other panders to luxury. Equally I reject wrestlers and the oil-and-mud artists from our liberal studies,98 or else I must accept perfumers and cooks and all the others who devote their skills to our pleasures. [19] What, I ask you, is liberal about those people who vomit after drinking on an empty stomach, whose bodies are stuffed while their minds are starved and sluggish? Can we think of that as a liberal study for our youth—the youth whom our ancestors trained to stand up straight and throw javelins, hurl staves, manage horses and handle weapons? They taught their children nothing which had to be learned lying down. But neither these nor the other forms of training teach or foster virtue. For how does it benefit you to control a horse and restrain him with a bridle, if you yourself are swept away by unbridled emotions? How does it benefit you to overcome lots of opponents in wrestling or boxing, if you are overcome by your own temper?
[20] “Well, then,” you say, “do we gain nothing at all from liberal studies?” Regarding other things we gain a lot; regarding virtue, nothing. So too, those admittedly inferior manual skills contribute a great deal to life’s amenities but have no relevance to virtue. “Why then do we educate our sons in liberal studies?” Not because they can confer virtue but because they prepare the mind to receive it. Just as what long ago used to be called basic grammar, by which children acquire the rudiments of their education, does not teach the liberal arts but prepares the ground for them to be acquired in due course, so the liberal arts themselves do not lead the mind to virtue but clear the way for it. . . .
[23] The arts relating to children, which are somewhat like the liberal arts, are those which the Greeks call “encyclic” and we call “liberal.”99 But the only liberal arts or, to speak more accurately, the only ones worthy of free men are those whose concern is virtue. . . .
The mind achieves its highest excellence in one sphere only, the unalterable knowledge of good and evil, and no other art shows any interest in good and evil. [29] I would like to take a look at individual virtues.
Bravery treats with contempt things that fill us with dread, despising and challenging and destroying all that makes us slaves to terror. Can we then say that bravery is strengthened by liberal studies? Loyalty is the most sacred virtue of the human heart, never forced to deceive by any compulsion, never corrupted by a bribe. “Burn, beat, kill me,” it says, “I shall not betray. The more the agony searches out my secrets, the deeper I shall hide them.” Can we say that liberal studies create this sort of courage? Moderation controls our pleasures, hating and banishing some, regulating others and reducing them to healthy limits, and never approaching them for their own sake: she knows that the best limit for our desires is not how much you want but how much you ought to have. [30] Kindness stops us being arrogant towards our fellows, or bad-tempered. In words, deeds and feelings she shows herself obliging and good-natured to all, regarding other people’s troubles as her own and valuing her own blessings in particular because they can be blessings to somebody else. Can we say that liberal studies teach these attitudes? Not any more than they teach candor, or modesty and self-control, or thrift and frugality, or mercy that spares another’s blood as if it were its own, and knows that no human being should make wasteful use of another human, being.
[31] Some may object here: “When you people say that virtue cannot be attained without liberal studies how can you also say that they offer no assistance to virtue?” The answer is that virtue cannot be attained without food either, but there is no connection between virtue and food. Timbers offer no assistance to a ship even though a ship cannot be created without them. I repeat that you must not think that anything comes into being through the assistance of something without which it cannot come into being.100 [32] Indeed you can even argue that wisdom can be achieved without liberal studies: for although virtue has to be learnt, it is not learnt through these. Anyway, why should I imagine that a man who is ignorant of books will not become wise, seeing that wisdom does not lie in books? Wisdom hands down deeds, not words, and I rather think that the memory is more reliable when it has nothing external to help it. . . .
[36] [Others may object,] “but knowledge of many subjects is a real source of pleasure.” In that case let us only retain as much of them as we need. Do you regard one man as blameworthy who equates superfluous things with useful ones and sets out a display of costly objects in his house, and not another one who is engrossed in a superfluous quantity of the furniture of learning? To wish to know more than is sufficient is a kind of extravagance. [37] Observe too how that obsession with the liberal arts makes people tiresome, long-winded, tactless and self-satisfied, not learning what they need to because they have spent their time learning what is useless.101 The grammarian Didymus wrote four thousand books: I would be sorry for him if he had only read so many useless works. In these books he discusses Homer’s birthplace, who was Aeneas’s real mother, whether Anacreon lived the life of a lecher or of a drunkard, whether Sappho was a whore, and other things you would want to unlearn if you knew them.102 Go on, tell me life isn’t long enough! . . .
[42] Measure your life: it simply has no room for . . . liberal studies.
Born and raised in Spain, Marcus Fabius Quintilianus (c. 40–c. 100) traveled to Rome during his teenage years to study rhetoric and the practice of the law courts. After returning to Spain in about 60, likely with the intention of becoming an advocate in the provincial courts, Quintilian went back to Rome and founded a school of rhetoric. He also served as a pleader in the courts, organizing the technical legal material obtained from jurisconsults, delivering speeches on behalf of his client, and cross-examining witnesses. But his school increasingly occupied his attention and brought him fame; he was likely the first professor of rhetoric to receive a salary from public funds, which was provided by Emperor Vespasian during the 70s.
In this prominent chair of rhetoric, Quintilian replaced the popular, epigrammatic style of Seneca with that of the mellifluous, classical style of Cicero, while reasserting the synthesis of virtue, eloquence, and learning that Cicero had regarded as the essence of the orator. In so doing, Quintilian became the only ancient writer, Greek or Roman, to give serious attention to education in early childhood.103 All these purposes appear in his greatest written work: Education of the Orator, which was widely quoted and admired by those who developed the “humanistic studies” of the Renaissance, as will be seen in Section IV below. Quintilian wrote the twelve books of Education of the Orator between A.D. 88 and 95, and died near the turn of the century.
[9] We are trying to form, then, the perfect orator, who cannot exist except he be a good man; and we accordingly demand that there be in him not merely the rarest talent for speaking but all the moral virtues.105 [10] For I would not grant the necessity, as some have had it, of relegating the method of living rightly and honestly to philosophers. The kind of man who is a true citizen and fit to assume the guidance of affairs both public and private, who can direct cities with his policies, found them with his legislation and correct them with his exercise of justice, would not—I can assure you—be anyone other than the orator. [11] For that reason, though I allow that I shall make use of certain principles which are contained in the books of philosophers, still I would openly declare that these principles belong by right and truth to my domain and properly pertain to the art of oratory. [12] After all, considering how often the discussion will turn to justice, courage, temperance and the like (to the point that one could scarcely find a case in which some inquiry relevant to these matters does not appear and require development through invention and eloquence), is there any doubt that the role of the orator is decisive wherever the force of mind and abundance of speaking are required?
[13] These two things have been, as Cicero makes abundantly clear, somehow joined in their very nature and inseparable in practice to the point that the wise and eloquent were held to be the same people. Subsequently, a separation developed in this study due to neglect by its professors, and as a result there seemed to be a plurality of arts; for, once words began to be a source of livelihood and people began abusing the benefits of eloquence, those who were held to be eloquent abandoned the stewardship of morality. [14] Then, neglected as it was, morality fell prey to more mediocre talents, as certain others turned, out of a contempt for the effort required to speak well, to the task of forming minds and establishing rules of living, and kept the most important part (I grant you) of philosophy for themselves (assuming it could be divided into parts). Meanwhile, they arrogated to themselves the most pretentious of names entailing that they alone be called friends of wisdom or philosophers; a title that neither the most illustrious princes nor those occupying themselves with greatest distinction in the governance or the most important affairs and administration of the entire republic have had the audacity to claim at any time. For they preferred to perform rather than promise great deeds.
[15] In sum, I would agree that, among those who professed to teach wisdom in times past, there were many who gave noble precepts and lived in conformity with their precepts; but in our day, truth to say, it is the greatest vices that lurk under this label of philosophy, for the most part. For it was not through virtue and earnest study that this group strove to be considered philosophers; rather their severe facial expression and unique external appearance have served to mask their most corrupt of characters.
[16] These questions, moreover, to which philosophy lays claim, as if they were her exclusive terrain, are all dealt with at times by all of us. For who does not have occasion to refer to the just, the fair and the good, except a man of the worst sort? Who is there, even among the farmers, who does not raise some question about natural causes? And the propriety and distinctness of terms ought to be held in common as a study by all who care about their language. [17] But all these subjects are what the orator will know and articulate best,106 and if the orator had achieved perfection, then one would not seek precepts of virtue from the philosophers’ schools. As matters stand, it is necessary to have recourse to these authors who have seized this most valuable part of the art of oratory (after its abandonment by the orators, as I have said) and to demand its return, so to speak—not so that we employ their inventions but so that we instruct them that they have made use of things that do not belong to them.
[18] Let the orator, therefore, be a man such as could be addressed as a genuinely wise man; and he is not to be complete only in his character (for that is not enough in my opinion, although there are those who disagree), but he is to be complete in the knowledge and entire capacity for speaking, such as perhaps no one up to now has attained. [19] But that is no reason for us to exert ourselves less for the highest goals. And that is what most of the ancients did, who handed down the precepts of wisdom despite their not believing that any wise man had yet been discovered. [20] For a consummate eloquence is certainly something real, and does not stand beyond the reach of human endowment. Even if one should fail to attain it, nevertheless one will climb higher if one strives toward the peaks than if one stops right at the foothills out of a despair at making the ascent.
1. Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture (1933), tr. Gilbert Highet, 2nd English ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1945), v. 1, p. xviii..
2. That is, education or culture. See the note on the meaning of paideia in the Introduction.
3. Plato, The Republic, tr. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968), bk. 7, 521c–533d. Bloom’s translation is among the most faithful to the Greek, because a given Greek word is almost always translated into the same English word and because Bloom tries to render an English sentence for each Greek sentence, although this is difficult given the enormous length (by English standards) of some of Plato’s sentences. Reprinted by permission of Basic Books, a member of Perseus Books Group.
4. The analogy is to the preceding metaphor Simile of the Cave in which the educated person moves from shadowy ignorance to illuminating truth.
5. The reference is to a children’s game.
6. This ontological contrast between becoming and being, between the temporal or contingent and the permanent, is repeated by Plato, as in 525b, 526e, 527b.
7. The Greek is athlètés, a competitor or champion in athletics.
8. “This is a term that refers to drama, in particular to the chorus. It is either a movement of the dancers from left to right, corresponding to a previous movement from right to left (the strophé), or the song they sing while performing their movement.” Translator’s note, p. 465n.
9. “Music” thus refers to the nine arts of the Muses in general. Compare the appraisal here with Isocrates’s views of these arts of speech in the following reading.
10. “Mechanical” is the translation of banausos, connoting low, mean, infra dig, and often translated as “philistine.”
11. “In Greek mathematics the study of numbers and their attributes (arithmétiké) is distinguished from that of calculation (logistiké), which involves operations with numbers (addition, subtraction, etc.).” Translator’s note, p. 465n. Both are subsequently subsumed under “arithmetic” in the liberal arts tradition.
12. From 522c to 526b, Plato incorporates the Pythagorean doctrine that abstract number is “this common thing” manifested in “all kinds of art, thought, and knowledge.” Number is thus the beginning, or arché, of all intellection. See 530d.
13. Agamemnon, legendary Greek hero, led the Greek army against Troy in the Trojan War (c. 1200s B.C.), as described in the Iliad of Homer. Palamedes was a lesser-known, legendary hero of the Trojan War.
14. The passage omitted is the subject of some debate among commentators. The basic point is that comparative judgments made by the senses, such as about the relative size (e.g. large, small) of objects, stimulate the mind to seek invariable standards that can be found in numerical quantities underlying the physical objects apparent to the senses. Thus, the mind rises above the senses by solving the contradictions of sensory perceptions.
15. By guardian, Plato refers to a member of the ruling elite, whom he wishes to educate properly. Below he also uses the term “lawgiver.”
16. Why does Plato exempt warfare from his repeated derogation of utilitarian rationales for learning the arts and sciences (525c, 527d, 531c)?
17. The reference may be to pure numbers, apart from the entities being counted. Plato may also be referring to irrational numbers, such as the square root of two, which cannot be expressed as a ratio of whole integers and can be prehended only in geometrical terms, such as the diagonal of an Isosceles triangle. To the Pythagoreans, the discovery of irrational numbers challenged their doctrine that abstract numerical law provides the norms of reality; and they treated this discovery as a veritable “mystery” of their philosophico-religious sect. While Plato does not quite embrace the Pythagorean mystification of irrational numbers, he does believe that they evidence a higher plane of intelligible reality. Victor J. Katz, A History of Mathematics (New York: Harper Collins, 1993), pp. 47ff.
18. Compare the view of Robert Hutchins in selection #58.
19. Plato’s point here and his claim for the unique stimulus provided by the difficult study of mathematics is perhaps confirmed by the experience of Emma Willard and Mary Fairfax Somerville in reading Euclid, as recorded in selections #35 and #45. The implied social distinction is echoed below by a contrast between the many and the few (527d-528a) and is correlated with the ontological and epistemological distinctions noted above.
20. If turning the soul toward truth is a difficult task, then should liberal education focus upon the most difficult studies? And if that is true, then should mathematics be the core of liberal education?
21. Geometry is a second, mathematical liberal art, according to the subsequent tradition.
22. Eidos (also translated as “form”) comes from eido (“I see”), cognate with the Latin video, and originally denoted “the look” or “the face” of a thing. Plato is here transmuting the meaning of the physical representation of a thing into the intelligible abstract being of the thing.
23. Compare the view of Robert Hutchins in selection #58.
24. The pejorative social distinction is correlated with the distinction between rationales.
25. Socrates says that they made a mistake by skipping three-dimensional (solid) geometry, which should follow two-dimensional (plane) geometry and precede astronomy.
26. Might this paradoxical aphorism apply to liberal education?
27. After geometry is astronomy, the study of number applied to three-dimensional figures set in motion. Because plane and solid geometry are not separated in the subsequent tradition of the liberal arts, astronomy is considered not the fourth, but the third mathematical art, as Plato does at 527d.
28. The contrast here and in the following passages (530a, 532a) between vision and intellection, as well as between hearing and intellection (531a), establishes a psychological distinction between body and mind that is correlated with the ontological and epistemological distinctions noted earlier.
29. “The word is demiurge, meaning ‘a man who practices an art for the public.’ In the exalted sense of this passage, he becomes the craftsman of the cosmos.” Translator’s note, p. 466n.
30. Harmony, or music, becomes the fourth mathematical liberal art in the subsequent tradition.
31. Plato explicitly associates his views with the Pythagoreans, whose doctrine underlies much of this discussion.
32. “Ancient musicians measured the concordant intervals (for example, fourth, fifth, and octave) and gave them mathematical proportions on the basis of the length of the strings required to produce them.” Translator’s note, p. 466n. The harmonic characteristic is commensurability: the two things could be measured in terms of integral units of each other.
33. “A technical term in music, here probably meaning notes the intervals of which are so small as to be almost inaudible; condensed or combined notes. The word in its original sense refers to cloth which has tightly woven threads.” Translator’s note, p. 466n.
34. Plato’s prelude consists, then, of five mathematical arts: arithmetic (number in itself), two-dimensional geometry (numerical law of shape), three-dimensional geometry (numerical law of solids), astronomy (numerical law of bodies in motion), and harmony (numerical commensurability). These five become four in the subsequent tradition, as the two branches of geometry are treated together. Although this account describes geometry in terms of number, it is important to note that the Greeks viewed numerical operations in terms of geometrical figures.
35. See 529b, 530a, 531a.
36. Dialectic is a complex term that denoted “conversation” or “discussion,” as well as the formal sense of “debate.” It was adopted by Plato to refer to a systematic inquiry that could be conducted within one’s own mind; and Aristotle formalized the rules of this investigation, which he sometimes called “logic,” but also “dialectic.” In addition, Aristotle employed “dialectic” to mean, among other things, a particular kind of investigation and reasoning conducted in the “practical” or human sciences. In the subsequent tradition of the liberal arts, “dialectic” and “logic” are frequently, though not always, employed interchangeably.
37. The normative and ethical distinction between worse and better, which has been implicit, now becomes explicit.
38. In the subsequent discussion, Plato clarifies the chronological organization of the liberal disciplines of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, music, and dialectic: “As children, future leaders will learn [arithmetic] and geometry through play, not compulsion. During their late teens they will . . . pursue physical training exclusively. At twenty, those suited to be rulers will be selected and given education in those sciences that will show them how they are akin to each other and to the nature of reality, an education also designed to test their steadfastness. At thirty the best will be selected again and will be taught dialectic and tested in it, to see that they are interested in truth and are by nature orderly and steady. (For when it is taught under the wrong circumstances, and to the wrong sort of people, dialectic has a way of removing one’s earlier beliefs and leaving one with the tendency to dispute simply for the sake of producing contradictions, and not for the sake of truth.) At thirty-five, they will be compelled to take on the task of ruling in matters concerning war and the young, and in this they will be tested again for fifteen years. At fifty, they will be led to a knowledge of the good itself, and they will spend a great deal of time in philosophical activity. But they will be compelled to take their turns ruling for the sake of the city, using the good as a paradigm, and regarding the activity of ruling not as something fine and splendid but as something necessary, until they depart life for the Isles of the Blessed.” Nicholas P. White, A Companion to Plato’s Republic (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1979), p. 202.
39. This preference, associating Isocrates with Aristotle and the philosophers and distinguishing Isocrates from Cicero and Quintilian, may be found in Janet M. Atwill, Rhetoric Reclaimed: Aristotle and the Liberal Arts (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), p. 5. See also Takis Poulakos, Speaking for the Polis: Isocrates’s Rhetorical Education (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998).
40. Adapted from a new, unpublished translation by J. Albert Dragstedt.
41. Panegyricus 48, written in about 380 B.C.
42. Compare Isocrates’s linguistic behaviorism—denying “mentalisms” or abstract intelligible essences—with Plato’s distinctions between speech and reason, between the public forum and philosophy, and between rhetoric and philosophy.
43. These paragraphs (253–257) are identical to Nicocles 5–9, written in about 370 B.C.
44. This Lysimachus appears to be the immoral son of the Athenian general and statesman Aristides the Just or Elder (d. c. 468 B.C.).
45. Isocrates may be resenting the criticisms of the followers of Aristotle.
46. The teachers compete, as do their interpretations of the arts of logos.
47. Likely a reference to Plato and the Academy.
48. Compare Isocrates’s rationale for studying mathematics with the justification for studying Latin and Greek in the Yale Report of 1828 in selection #37.
49. Said to be coined by Pythagoras or members of his school, the Greek word philosophia is derived from philos (“loving”) and sophia (“knowledge” or “wisdom”). In its original sense, philosophia denotes the desire for, or pursuit of, wisdom, rather than a formal body of acquired knowledge. What does Isocrates mean by the term here and below?
50. Compare this view with Plato’s interpretation of the conventional “musical curriculum” in Republic 522a.
51. These “scientists of old” were pre-Socratic philosophers and sophists who speculated about metaphysics.
52. A reference to the fictional indictment that serves as the literary occasion for the Antidosis.
53. Are morals improved, then, not by studying moral philosophy, but by acquiring a general orientation and a rough calculus that is rapidly employed as countless ethical decisions confront us?
54. Another aspersion directed at the Socratic schools’ inquiry into the meaning of virtue and their belief that this knowledge will necessarily lead to practicing virtue.
55. The belief that imitation of fine language implies imitation of high-minded virtue persevered among the proponents of rhetorical and humanistic studies.
56. This apparently refers to the sophists for whom superiority meant winning a debate regardless of the validity of one’s argument.
57. Aristotle, Politics 1337a10–19. Stanford professor Edgar E. Robinson seems to concur in selection #55.
58. Compare the debate on this point between Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois in selections #50 and #51.
59. Quotation is drawn the translation by Benjamin Jowett revised by Jonathan Barnes, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), v. 2, pp. 2121–3. Copyright 1984 by The Jowett Copyright Trustees. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.
60. Contrary to a common view that there existed harmony among Greek views about liberal education, Aristotle observes that disagreement prevails over what to teach (“the subjects”), why to teach (“on what principle”), and how to teach (“the means”).
61. The semantic contrast here is between eleutheros (“liberal”) and banausos, which could also be translated as “vulgar.”
62. What are some arts, or pursuits, that deform or break the body? By the same token, might there be studies that deform the mind—studies whose nature is such that the more one pursues them the less the mind is fitted for that which it naturally does?
63. Leisure is the translation of scholé, which might be more literally rendered “free time.” Why is this “the first principle of all action?”
64. If leisure (scholé) is neither play nor relaxation, then what does Aristotle mean by it?
65. Why are happiness, leisure, and intellectual activity said to coincide?
66. Aristotle’s discussion of the origins of the inclusion of gymnastics and music in the curriculum is anachronistic, as indicated in the introduction to Section I.
67. Some have objected that Aristotle’s formulation of liberal education requires unjust or invidious social distinctions. What may be said about this?
68. Aristotle never returned to these studies.
69. Robert Hutchins echoes this view in selection #58, while Bathsua Makin expresses a similar view in selection #30: “when [other] things are competently cared for and where there are endowments of nature and leisure, then higher things ought to be endeavored after.”
70. Cicero, On Discovery I xxv 35.
71. Adapted from a new, unpublished translation by J. Albert Dragstedt of Book III 52–81. Cf. Cicero, On the Ideal Orator (de Oratore), tr. James M. May and Jakob Wisse (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
72. Cicero is opposing teachers who claimed to teach oratory by conveying a few rhetorical techniques and strategies.
73. The Ciceronian recommendation of a broad, general education—repeated throughout this selection and echoed by Pier Paolo Vergerio in selection #25—may be compared to the approach to general education introduced at Columbia University in the 1920s, described in Section VIII.
74. The theme of wedding eloquence with learning and virtue is echoed below at para. 61 and subsequently in the tradition of liberal education, particularly after the lost Latin text of On the Orator was recovered in 1422.
75. Solon (c. 639–c. 559 B.C.) Athenian statesman; Africanus Minor Scipio (c. 185–129 B.C.), Roman general and patron of learning. Ironically, Cicero associates Cato and Scipio here, although the ancient Roman family of Scipio was patrician and detested by the family of Cato the Elder, who embraced rustic conceits.
76. Here begins the charge of reclusiveness, even self-indulgence, against scholarly specialists.
77. Homer, Iliad IX 443.
78. In the following paragraphs Cicero explicitly begins denying the dualistic distinctions enshrined by Plato above: thinking and speaking-60; tongue and brain-61; rhetoric and philosophy-61, 72; thought and action-62–4, 72.
79. Themistocles (c. 525–c. 460 B.C.), Athenian statesman; Theramenes, Greek rhetorician of the fifth century B.C.
80. Xenocrates (396–314 B.C.) became head of the Academy. Antisthenes (c. 444–c. 370) and Aristippus (c. 435–c. 360 B.C.) were heads of Greek philosophical schools.
81. In Cicero’s day, philosophy was broken into competing sects, some of which adopted arcane terminology and peculiar dress, as Quintilian notes in selection #6. This development influenced Cicero’s critique of Socrates and Greek philosophy, as well as the view of the philosophical schools conveyed by Martianus Capella’s description of Lady Logic in selection #8 and Boethius’s description of the robe of Lady Philosophy in selection #9.
82. Ulysses (in Greek, Odysseus) is the ancient Greek leader portrayed in Homer’s epic Odyssey.
83. This oft-stated distinction between Greek and Roman culture, conceded here by Cicero, is repeated in the subsequent tradition of liberal education, including Martianus Capella in selection #8 and Bathsua Makin in selection #30.
84. Compare Cicero’s claim for the most demanding liberal art with that of Plato (526c) in selection #1.
85. Bathsua Makin recalls this letter in selection #30.
86. In selection #67, Martha Nussbaum gives prominence to Seneca’s letter while seeking to reconcile him with Socrates through a formulation of “Socratic liberal education.” Quotation is from Ernst R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (1948) tr. W. R. Trask (1953; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 36–7.
87. Drawn from the translation in Seneca 17 Letters, tr. C. D. N. Costa (Warminister, United Kingdom: Aris and Phillips, 1988), Letter 88, pp. 71–86. Reprinted by permission of Oxbow Books Ltd.
88. Lucilius, the procurator of Sicily at the time, was a native of Pompeii who had worked his way up the civil service and was moderately educated in literature and philosophy. Seneca interchanges “studies” and “arts” throughout the text.
89. “A free man” is the translation of liber, the root of the adjective liberalis. This phrasing that (“liberal studies . . . are worthy of a free man”) was frequently echoed by Renaissance humanists beginning in the fourteenth century, when Seneca began to exercise significant influence upon the study of moral philosophy, or ethics, in what came to be called “humanistic studies.” See Pier Paolo Vergerio in selection #25.
90. Such statements drawing attention to the divergence between people’s professions and practice is what has long led Seneca himself to be charged with hypocrisy.
91. The study of “grammar,” the term employed by Seneca, customarily included “literature,” which is the rendering given by the translator.
92. “Fear, desire, and passion were three of the emotions that Stoic teaching aimed chiefly to curb.” Translator’s note, p. 192n3.
93. Seneca writes “knowledge of the heavens,” which the translator renders as “knowledge of astrology,” but could just as easily be “knowledge of astronomy” because the modern distinction between “astronomy,” study of the stars, and “astrology,” conjuring their influences on human life, was not firm at this time.
94. Vergil, Georgics I 336–7.
95. “The context of these lines is advice to farmers to take warning of approaching storms from weather signs in the sky. . . . [A] planet is in opposition when it is exactly opposite to the sun in the sky. Saturn and Mars were regarded as unfavorable planets, and Mercury (a favorable planet) is here thought to be adversely affected by Saturn.” Translator’s note, p. 196n14.
96. “This is a fundamental Stoic dogma, often endorsed by Seneca.” Translator’s note, p. 196n15.
97. Having listed grammar, music, geometry, and astronomy, Seneca makes an unusually explicit remark showing that he is consciously deciding which arts are “liberal.” What are the criteria that he employs?
98. Wrestlers were anointed with oil and became covered with mud.
99. “Encyclic” is drawn from the Greek term encyclios paideia, which, in general modern accounts of ancient education, is often said to have circulated among the Greeks (such as Plato or Socrates) in the fifth century B.C. or earlier as the equivalent of the later Latin artes liberales. However, the earliest preserved texts that actually employ the term were written in Alexandria in the first century B.C. and first century A.D. The later dating fits this reference by Seneca, who speaks in the present tense and had visited Egypt in his youth.
100. What exactly is Seneca’s view of the relationship between liberal studies and virtue? Compare the discussion of Seneca by Martha Nussbaum in selection #67.
101. Seneca’s objections to “useless” learning may be compared to those of Cicero in the reading above.
102. Didymus Chalcenterus, Greek grammarian of the first century B.C.; Aeneas, legendary founder of the Roman race, according to Vergil’s epic poem, Aeneid; Anacreon, Greek lyric poet of the late sixth century B.C.
103. Quintilian’s unusual attention to the issue led subsequent humanist educators to attend to it as well. See Pier Paolo Vergerio in selection #25.
104. Adapted from a new, unpublished translation by J. Albert Dragstedt of the preface of Book I.
105. Attributed to Cato the Elder, the standard, epigrammatic definition of the Ciceronian orator (“a good man, skilled in speaking”) was quoted by Quintilian (Education of the Orator XII i 1), and in selection #10 by Cassiodorus (II ii 1) and in selection #11 by Isidore (II 3), and is mentioned by Francesco Petrarca in selection #24.
106. Following Cicero, Quintilian argues that the liberally educated orator must have a broad, general education.