The Visual Arts in the Classical Tradition

The visual arts have encompassed everything from painting and sculpture to architecture, tapestry, furniture, pottery, and more recently photography. The visual arts have been a part of the human experience since prehistoric times, with cave paintings being some of our only means of understanding the earliest civilizations, since the visual arts predate written language. In fact, wherever civilizations have emerged, the visual arts have been produced. We often think of the sculpture of ancient civilizations such as Greece and Rome. Included amongst these ancient works are artifacts from Eastern civilizations such as China, the Middle East such as Egypt and Babylon, and the Americas such as the Aztecs, Incas and Mayans.

In the Western tradition, the guilds that developed during the Middle Ages shaped our understanding of the visual arts. In order to become a master who could take on apprentices, artisans would have to produce a “chef d’oeuvre” or a masterpiece (also referred to as a magnum opus). By the time of the Renaissance, this masterpiece idea led to advancements in architecture and painting, particularly through the application of mathematical formulas that enabled the building of taller structures, such as the dome on the Florence Cathedral, and the discovery of linear perspective by Brunelleschi in the early 1400s. Virtuosity became the litmus test for true masters, and artists continued to push the envelope of effects that could be created on the canvas. Painting in particular took on epic proportions in part due to the promotion of the great artists in Vasari’s publication of Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1550). Art history was now created and the personalities of individuals such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michaelangelo came to dominate the landscape of painting for generations to come.

In and amongst this personality-driven approach to art history, the creation of works of enduring beauty and significance were produced in a succession of art movements down through the centuries. What gives these creations such significance is the fact that they are idea-driven works with religious and philosophical insight. For instance, the famous Creation of Adam by Michaelangelo is simultaneously a religious interpretation of Adam’s creation by God showing an intimate connection between God and his creation. At the same time, we can see the philosophical humanism of the Renaissance in the details of the painting, such as the depiction of God in human form, an outline of the human brain behind God, and an idealized depiction of Adam.

Picture study, then, becomes this valuable treasure trove of idea-rich artifacts that have historical significance as the means by which some of the most important aspects of Western culture are handed down through the ages. Through works of art, we encounter truth, goodness and beauty in ways that can cultivate the affective domain. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I’m not certain one can create some sort of equivalency between art work and the written word. That being said, a classroom and a course of study ought to incorporate the visual arts alongside all the other areas of the curriculum from literature to history and from science to mathematics.

How to Do Picture Study

Our ability to teach a picture study lessons does not rely on any expertise we bring to the subject, but on a clear and consistent method of interacting with works of art. In fact, picture study can be approached just like reading a text, only the “text” we are “reading” happens to be of a visual nature. I cannot stress this point enough, as there ought not to be the thought that one must have studied art history or gained some competency as an artist in order to teach picture study. If you find yourself lacking in expertise, great! You get to encounter works of art alongside your students, growing in your own appreciation of artists and their works.

Charlotte Mason spells out what picture study looks like in her sixth volume, A Philosophy of Education:

We recognise that the power of appreciating art and of producing to some extent an interpretation of what one sees is as universal as intelligence, imagination, nay, speech, the power of producing words. But there must be knowledge and, in the first place, not the technical knowledge of how to produce, but some reverent knowledge of what has been produced; that is, children should learn pictures, line by line, group by group, by reading, not books, but pictures themselves. A friendly picture-dealer supplies us with half a dozen beautiful little reproductions of the work of some single artist, term by term. After a short story of the artist’s life and a few sympathetic words about his trees or his skies, his river-paths or his figures, the little pictures are studied one at a time; that is, children learn, not merely to see a picture but to look at it, taking in every detail. Then the picture is turned over and the children tell what they have seen,––a dog driving a flock of sheep along a road but nobody with the dog. Ah, there is a boy lying down by the stream drinking. It is morning as you can see by the light so the sheep are being driven to pasture, and so on; nothing is left out, the discarded plough, the crooked birch, the clouds beautiful in form and threatening rain, there is enough for half an hour’s talk and memory in this little reproduction of a great picture and the children will know it wherever they see it, whether a signed proof, a copy in oils, or the original itself in one of our galleries. We hear of a small boy with his parents in the National Gallery; the boy, who had wandered off on his own account, came running back with the news,––”Oh, Mummy, there’s one of our Constables on that wall.” In this way children become acquainted with a hundred, or hundreds, of great artists during their school-life and it is an intimacy which never forsakes them.

Charlotte Mason, A Philosophy of Education, 214-215.

Let’s break this down into some clear steps. First, notice that the interest students bring to picture study is innate and universal. Children are predisposed to bring their own intelligence and imagination to the task of viewing works of art. All we need to do is place before them a healthy diet of various great paintings and they devour the meal quite readily. Second, the children encounter the works of art themselves by way of prints. Today we have access to so many via the internet. We can print out copies on printer paper, or can purchase postcard sized reproductions. Hanging great artwork on the walls is another means of placing these works of art in front of them.

With this philosophical framework in mind, let’s turn to the method itself. The lesson begins with a short reading about the artist and the artwork. This shouldn’t be too lengthy, only enough to spark interest in the painting to be looked at in the lesson. Then the students look at one painting at a time. This is a full-focused immersion in the painting. Mason has the children “look at it, taking in every detail.” They can spend several minutes just looking at the print, noticing quite a number of highly specific details. Once the print has been looked at, students turn the picture over and narrate what they have seen. Notice how narration occurs just like we would expect of students reading a literary or historical book. They tell back the details they have noticed: colors, people in the picture, obscure items in the background, little details we ourselves may never have noticed. We will take a look at how we can develop art vocabulary in a moment, but for those just beginning, children can use simple descriptive language to tell back what they see.

I generally have students turn the picture back over to do another round of observations. This time they will notice items shared by other students. Sometimes debates emerge as to what some of the obscure objects might be. At other times, a teacher can focus their attention on key details, such as the source of light, the nature of the subject, the use of color, the development of perspective, and a host of other topics that helps develop their understanding of art.

A lesson of this sort – a short reading, focused attention on one painting, narration, and discussion – does not take very long. In fact, such a lesson is a great one to have in hand on days where there’s only a short amount of time between other classes. If you have a good set of prints, it is easy to distribute a set and encounter another new painting by the artist being studied. The simplicity of the method means that over the course of weeks and months, the student accumulates a good number of paintings of a single artist. The students develop a sense of the artist’s style and immediately notice similarities between paintings studied according to this method. Over many years, as they encounter numerous other artists, they develop a sense of differences in style.

Formal Elements of Art

I myself never studied art in any formal way. There has always been an appreciation, but my own study of art began when I started teaching picture study in the way outlined. It has become one of my favorite subjects to teach, and along the way I have fallen in love with the landscapes of William Turner, the works of Caravaggio still move me, and the philosophical ideas of Eduard Manet still compel me. One of the best ways to help students (and sometimes ourselves) to encounter art is to develop their art vocabulary. Here I’ll lay out the basic or formal elements of art: line, shape, space, texture, color, light.

Taking the first three together – line, shape, space – these are essential to the way an artist conveys three dimension in two-dimensional representation. We can find lines, whether well articulated or implied in the work of art. Sometimes the lines are straight, angled, curved or otherwise. Many times the lines move our eyes throughout the painting or focus our eyes on the subject. With shape, we are looking at the basic shapes being used – such as circles and triangles – and how they are arranged. All of these exist in the space depicted on the canvas. Are the shapes of flowers, vases and fruits placed on a table? Do ships sail on a rolling sea? Is there a window behind a lady in a portrait that gives a sense of the setting? All of these questions point to the use of space.

Texture, color and light are effects that play with our perception of what is happening in the picture. Artists use these effects to create visual realism or to trick the eye through impressions. Texture gives the sense of roughness or smoothness. Even without touching the painting, the eye gets the impression that there is a tactile aspect to the painting. As to color, even a basic understanding of the color wheel can help students see the use of contrasting colors – such as blues and oranges – or the use of warm and cold colors – red hues versus blue hues. The concept of light pertains to the way a source of light plays off of objects, so that there are faces that appear brighter and faces that appear darker. You can often look for shading to identify where the source of light is located.

As you prepare lessons for your students, bringing in these formal elements can open new lines of observation. I recommend choosing one or two formal elements per painting during the second round of observations. I might say, “Okay, this time when we look at our painting, look at the way our artist has used color.” Then I would have students tell back what colors they found, where they are located, contrasts they see, interesting or odd uses of color, and so forth.

Art Movements and Artistic Techniques

Mason recommends reading from a biography of the artist being studied. There are many biographies that can be found for the most prominent artists throughout history appropriate for whatever age level you are working with. The goal with these readings is to understand the personal life of the artist, perhaps their early years, where they studied art, breakthrough moments in their career. Most biographies will indicate what sort of art movement the artist contributed to or was reacting to. For instance, Claude Monet was a prominent figure in the impressionist movement in France during the late nineteenth century. Unpacking what impressionism was as a movement gives a sense of the historical setting as well as the techniques used by artists associated with that movement.

Using impressionism as an example, we know that it was a movement that was reacting to the art of the establishment which has become very staid and formal. Eduard Manet expressed the philosophical concept that “art is artifice,” an idea that inspired a controversial new art scene to emerge. There’s a sense of rebellion amongst the impressionists. As a movement, the artists of this scene contributed to a cultural revolution associated with the modernism of the late 1800s. We can trace some of the tendencies to break with tradition in later art movements to the ideals of impressionism, such as the depiction of everyday life scenes rather than classical or historical subject matters. The irony is that today impressionist art is looked upon as some of the most beautiful artwork ever produced, but in its day the original audiences of these works of art were scandalized by much of what was produced during this era.

The techniques associated with impressionism are tied to the philosophical ideas these artists espoused. For instance, the quick and unblended brush strokes create blurred effects where they eye perceives objects in the painting, but can also see splashes of paint and brushstrokes. In some cases, the canvas itself is left untreated and peaks out amongst the brush strokes. When observing these paintings in a museum, you will often find people standing very close to the painting to see the individual brushstrokes and then moving away from the painting to more clearly see the subject matter of the painting. The brushstroke techniques used by impressionist painters gives a sense of lightness and energy to the paintings, in part because the activity of the artist remains visible in the completed work.

As you read about artists, there will emerge a strong connection between the historical setting of the artist and their works as well as specific techniques that artist used and developed over the course of a career. These readings enable students to see items in the paintings they observe and provide even more language for them to describe what they are noticing.

Hopefully this exploration of picture study has inspired you to incorporate paintings into your classroom or school. No matter what subject you teach, works of art can make lessons come alive.

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On the other hand, this extended digression, which took its cue from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics Book II, has provided an opportunity for us to lay the foundations of Aristotle’s distinctive vision in ways that we could not easily do without. For instance, the fact that Aristotle can refer off-handedly to arts as diverse as building, lyre-playing, navigation, medical practice, grammar and music helps to illustrate the breadth of the category of techne for him. Before the canonization of the liberal arts as “academic subjects”, there is a helpful clarity with which Plato and Aristotle understand them as productive arts, alongside other forms of craftsmanship.

But perhaps more important considerations even than this are the power of habit, the place of instruction, and the essential role of exercise, training and focused practice in the acquisition of both character and craftsmanship. Since time immemorial, it has been tempting to over-emphasize the knowledge-transfer approach to education instead of the more practice-oriented apprenticeship in the arts. While we could blame such a phenomenon on the Enlightenment, the Sophists of Socrates’s day arguably made the same error, as did medieval and Renaissance educators of all sorts. The universal human tendency to take short-cuts, even to our detriment, can probably account for our neglect of a fully orbed apprenticeship. If we could simply pass on a few memorable aphorisms or a book of “information”, rather than the considerable personal and temporal investment of apprenticing a learner through the stages of novice, apprentice, and journeyman, then why wouldn’t we simply do the former? 

In this article we will explore the apprenticeship model of training in the arts by situating the arts in time and place, and defending our five fold division of the arts, which adds two categories and slightly reframes the divisions of Chris Hall’s and Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain’s three fold paradigm. To their liberal, fine and common arts, we add athletics, games and sports, and the professions and trades. But before we can explain why, we must situate the arts as traditions in place and time.

Situating Techne as Traditions in Place and Time

One of the benefits of viewing the arts from the perspective of apprenticeship, rather than information-transfer, is that it draws attention to the traditional status of all arts. Human beings develop traditions of making things, and the arts are nothing more nor less than these traditions of productive skill that we have developed in various times and places and for various purposes. Aristotle’s way of talking about this involves his philosophical distinction between things that are variable and things that exist of necessity:

In the variable are included both things made and things done; making and acting are different (for their nature we treat even the discussions outside our school as reliable); so that the reasoned state of capacity to act is different from the reasoned state of capacity to make. Hence too they are not included one in the other; for neither is acting making nor is making acting. Now since architecture is an art and is essentially a reasoned state of capacity to make, and there is neither any art that is not such a state nor any such state that is not an art, art is identical with a state of capacity to make, involving a true course of reasoning. All art is concerned with coming into being, i.e. with contriving and considering how something may come into being which is capable of either being or not being, and whose origin is in the maker and not in the thing made; for art is concerned neither with things that are, or come into being, by necessity, nor with things that do so in accordance with nature (since these have their origin in themselves). Making and acting being different, art must be a matter of making, not of acting. And in a sense chance and art are concerned with the same objects; as Agathon says, ‘art loves chance and chance loves art’. Art, then, as has been said, is a state concerned with making, involving a true course of reasoning, and lack of art on the contrary is a state concerned with making, involving a false course of reasoning; both are concerned with the variable. (Nicomachean Ethics Book VI, ch. 4)

This passage provides Aristotle’s definition of techne, distinguishing it particularly from phronesis which is concerned with human action rather than production. But it also illuminates the idea that arts have their originators, and their traditions, their schools of thought, if you will, that are very much situated in time and place. 

This understanding of arts is well embodied in the Renaissance fresco painting on the Spanish chapel of Santa Maria Novella, which depicts the captain figures of various arts and theological sciences, as well as an angelic representation of the art to replace a pagan god or goddess. Charlotte Mason found inspiration from this fresco (and John Ruskin’s exposition of it) for her Great Recognition that the Holy Spirit is the ultimate source of all that is true, good and beautiful in these man-made traditions. For our purposes, the significance of the “captain figure” is that he is the originator of a tradition. Even if others in the tradition added new insights and methods—as of course Euclid did not perfect for all time the art of geometry—nevertheless the originator or master proponent of the art stands at the fountainhead of a tradition of artistic wisdom. 

In a similar way, the end of Genesis chapter 4 tells of Jabal, the originator of the art of keeping livestock, of Jubal, the originator of the arts of lyre- and pipe-playing and of Tubal-cain, the originator of the arts of bronze- and iron-working (see Gen 4:20-22). These human arts had a beginning, an originator, and a tradition of proper artistry associated with them. The apprenticeship process regularly occurred in families or clans that passed on this tradition of craftsmanship in the bonded relationship of father to son, mother to daughter. That is why these figures in Genesis 4 are called the father of all who practice those arts. The goal of such apprenticeship was mastery of the traditional skills, rules, and creative processes, embodied as a holistic way of life passed on from one’s ancestors. 

For Aristotle then, artistry as an educational goal is not an abstract intellectual skill, like the objectives of analysis, synthesis, application or evaluation from Bloom’s Taxonomy. Instead, artistry must always have a qualifying area or ‘subject’ that is traditional in nature. Mastering the art of navigation, for instance, constitutes a situated set of complex skills that experienced navigators had charted out over the course of generations, using what knowledge and tools were available to them to accomplish the desired goal of sailing from one place to another. The art of navigation is thus necessarily historically and culturally situated. When a pilot in the navy learns navigation today, he learns a very different set of sub-skills than that of a sailor in the ancient Mediterranean. 

As new technologies are developed, new techne adapt to the new circumstances. Traditions of craftsmanship are continually being updated, honed and passed on to the next generation (or else abandoned entirely), but they are not fixed entities. The tradition of navigation is fluid, changing with the winds of societal structures, goals and technologies. It might seem obvious, but landlocked people groups do not develop a rich tradition of craftsmanship in navigation.  

The upshot of this insight is to call into question the objectivism of Bloom’s taxonomy. A student cannot become a master of analysis; he must learn to analyze a particular thing, within a tradition of insight about that thing, in a way that suits the goals of a broader human project. An apprentice navigator can learn to analyze the clouds and the feeling of the wind, can become sensitive to a drop in barometric pressure that anticipates the coming of a storm, so that he can direct the sailors in taking preparatory measures to safely weather the onslaught. But this ability, this artistry of his, if you will, is unlikely to transfer to the analysis of a farmer deciding when to plant or harvest his crops. We cannot train a student to have general craftsmanship, like we can teach him general knowledge (that is, not unless we mean apprenticing him in the basics of a host of common crafts, which might in fact be desirable…). We can only train a student in a particular artistic tradition. 

I should not be heard, however, as endorsing a postmodern relativism that drops all standards of excellence or measures of conformity to truth. Rather, it is in recognizing the situatedness of the arts that we can consistently affirm the transcendence of truth, goodness and beauty themselves. Human artistry points toward but never encompasses transcendental wisdom. Moreover, the arts must always interact productively with the world as it is, which is why Aristotle’s definition of artistry as “a state of capacity to make, involving a true course of reasoning” is so brilliant. As an intellectual virtue, craftsmanship must involve a conformity of the mind to truth, to the way things really are, in the making of whatever product is intended. It cannot be a wish-fulfillment, but must actually produce the intended result in the world, given the constraints of the materials and processes. The artist’s intention must come to birth in the product. Arts are both traditional and truthful.

But human beings do not always like to make the same sorts of things. Styles of buildings change, just as do styles of speeches, poems, and the like. Of course, each area of human craftsmanship can also develop a better awareness of the nature of reality (the corresponding science), such that medical practitioners today can diagnose and treat ailments much more effectively (or should we say excellently…) than the ancients. This is why the distinction between purposeful and deliberate practice is so helpful, because we should know the nature of the pathway we are trying to lead our students on. Is this a paved road or a jungle trek that we are embarking upon? The answer may depend on the time and place, as well as the exact art we are trying to cultivate excellence in. Artistry and craftsmanship are culturally and historically situated.

A Fivefold Division of the Arts

The situatedness of the arts lays a crucial foundation for the classical Christian renewal movement. And that is because it will be very easy for those who turn back to forget to look forward. What I mean is that looking back at the historical traditions, whether of the liberal arts, the fine arts or the common arts, does not provide us with the answers we need for developing these traditions in the modern era. Recovering the traditions of the past necessarily involves updating and developing them in accordance with our new cultural and historical situation. 

Up to this point, the classical renewal movement has focused its attention on the recovery of various arts: the trivium as stages (Wilson via Sayers), then language arts sub-skills and the quadrivium (Littlejohn and Evans), then the liberal arts tradition culminating in philosophy and theology as well as early training in piety, gymnastic and music (Clark and Jain), and now the common arts (see Chris Hall’s recent Common Arts Education). Of course, classical Christian schools have always valued the fine and performing arts, as well as athletics and sports, to the extent possible in their growing schools. The recovery of historical traditions in the arts have arguably been the first steps in restoring the intellectual virtue of artistry or craftsmanship to our list of educational objectives. And these steps backward have been valuable indeed. 

But in and of themselves these backward steps do not answer the question of exactly what types of artistry to aim at in our schools. And while I cannot answer this question for individual schools, as it is a matter of culture and calling, raising the issue will help to justify offering my own five fold division of the arts, when others have proposed only three. 

Techne — Artistry or craftsmanship

1. Athletics, games and sports
2. Common and domestic arts
3. Professions and trades
4. Fine and performing arts
5. The liberal arts of language and number

The Liberal Arts Tradition and the Status of Athletics, Games and Sports

In their description of the liberal arts, Kevin Clark and Ravi Jain distinguish between arts and sciences in a way that accords with the Aristotelian tradition of intellectual virtues, even if they focus more on objectified ‘subjects’, rather than the subjective and traditionally defined artistry of Aristotle. Their comments on an art as imitation joined with reason are spot on for all the later followers of an artistic tradition (even if not for the originator who discovered it):

The ancients and medievals had clear distinctions between imitation, art, and science. All things, whether poems, statues, or swords, were made by either imitation or art. A science, on the other hand, was a body of knowledge organized by the principles of demonstrative reason, requiring a knowledge of causes but producing nothing on its own—the knowledge was enough. A science could thus describe any such body of knowledge. Subjects as diverse as ethics and mechanics could be described as sciences. The arts were different. One of the ancient patterns in education was that imitation precedes art. An art could only be attained from an extensive foundation in action and imitation forming cultivated habits. Thus, to learn the art of the blacksmith, one would have to imitate a blacksmith for a time. To learn the art of the lyre, one had to practice it imitatively. But an art required more than simply imitation. An art arose only when imitation was joined with reason. In De Musica, Augustine clarifies that a songbird can sing beautifully through imitation and instinct, but because it has no reason, it cannot sing by art…. It is particularly an art that joins imitation with reason in order to produce something. An art is the nexus between imitation and science, the former being only in the body and the latter being only in the mind. (LAT 40)

This passage is foundational for explaining to modern educators the classical distinction between an art and a science. However, one Aristotelian distinction that Clark and Jain do not maintain is between the types of reasoning engaged by man as maker, doer and knower. Because of this, their line between artistry and scientific knowledge is not as clear and bold as it is for Aristotle. The challenge with their treatment is that it blurs the boundary in a way that arguably still privileges knowledge over practice, when for Aristotle only a “bare knowledge” is necessary for artistry (see Nic. Ethics II.4). The reasoning of craftsmanship must be true, but it is not therefore a possession of scientific knowledge, which would be a separate intellectual virtue for Aristotle. 

The only reason why I would hesitantly venture to criticize such brilliant friends and luminaries of our movement is the importance of placing the liberal arts firmly back in the category of artistry or craftsmanship, when they have been watered down into ‘subjects’ of general knowledge for so long. I also deliberately do not limit them to seven in number following the canonical mode, because the divisions and natural developments of the tradition are matters that should be up for discussion as we recover them for the modern era. Should algebra and calculus be added to the quadrivium? Would grammar be better subdivided into Phonics, Spelling, Reading and Grammar? While it is handy to maintain 3s and 7s for symbolic and numerological reasons, there may be downsides to this division for modern proponents of the tradition that outweigh the benefits. We can still speak and act in a way that is continuous with the tradition, while accounting for appropriate developments of the tradition. 

In Clark and Jain’s liberal arts tradition paradigm, they account for athletics and sports under the ancient title of gymnastic education, and the fine and performing arts under the rubric of musical education. In their 2nd edition, they account for the common and fine arts briefly in their discussion of curriculum near the end of the book, no doubt in dialogue with Chris Hall: “To the arts that produce knowledge of the truth (liberal arts), and those that serve the common good of embodied life (common arts), it is necessary to name a third category, namely the arts that produce works of beauty” (LAT 251). Admittedly their three fold paradigm of liberal, common and fine arts is incredibly attractive for how it gestures toward the transcendental triad of truth, goodness and beauty:

As we consider these three categories of arts in their relation to the classical triad of the true, the good, and the beautiful, a wonderful picture of their mutual relevance and interdependence opens before our eyes. As the body derives life from the soul, the common arts flourish through application of the liberal arts of mathematics and language. Because wisdom is gained in service, the common arts provide the context for transforming the knowledge gained through the liberal arts into wisdom. Work and wisdom go hand in hand. Similarly, the liberal and the common arts provide the material for the arts of the beautiful—the language for poetry, the brushes and pigments for painting, the mathematical proportions for singing—but they are subsequently transformed by them. By being placed in the service of beauty, the linguistic subtleties honed by the arts of grammar and rhetoric transform into a sonnet, while the principles of architecture and geometry become the flying buttresses and vaulted ceilings of the cathedral. Beauty becomes the splendor of truth and the radiance of the good. Like the art of the winemaker transforms the juice of grapes to a fine wine, the arts of the beautiful transform the knowledge of the truth and service of the good into captivating and glorious works of art. (LAT 253)

The intertwined nature of the arts is peculiarly beautiful here; nevertheless, it is worth pressing the bounds of these categories. For instance, what is to prevent various forms of athletic feats and sporting events from qualifying as arts of the beautiful, or providing us with the good things of life? Does Roger Bannister’s four minute mile or the performance of an elite gymnast not merit the title of artistry? Certainly elite athletic performances can both gesture toward the beautiful and the good, through the illustration of exquisite teamwork or simply the fact of hitting a target with precision. After all, many sports and games derived from skills needed for common arts like hunting and armament. These sports, therefore, rehearse and celebrate the excellence of human ability in providing for the goods of life with such splendor as to rise to the level of beauty and glory. 

It might be objected that athletics, games and sports are not themselves productive arts. What after all do they produce? But this is to forget the very case of the liberal or performing arts themselves. In what way does a ballet dance differ from a gymnastic performance really? Both are ephemeral (that is, apart from the technology of video recording), but the beautiful performance in time and space for an audience is itself the ‘artifact’ created. The same can be said of every sport or game, whether competitive or not. Cannot a fireworks show be a work of art? And yet it too appears and passes in a span of seconds leading into minutes. No, athletics, games and sports deserve their own category under the intellectual virtue of techne. 

Common Arts Education and the Professions and Trades

Having established the place of athletics, games and sports, I do not perhaps need to argue for the inclusion of performing arts along with fine arts as this is a fairly standard pairing in contemporary culture and schooling in particular. What we must still discuss is the inclusion of professions and trades as separate from common and domestic arts. In his marvelous book Common Arts Education: Renewing the Classical Tradition of Training the Hands, Head, and Heart (CAP 2021), Chris Hall defines the common arts this way:

Common arts are the skills that provide for basic human needs through the creation of artifacts or the provision of services. We need to eat, drink, build shelters, defend ourselves, bargain with others, maintain our health, work raw materials into various forms, and repair artifacts that are broken. The common arts run the gamut of the skills necessary to meet those needs. (31)

He goes on to cite the lists of Hugh of Saint Victor (fabric-making, armament, commerce, agriculture, hunting, medicine, theatrics) and John Scotus Eriugena (architecture, trade, cooking, navigation) for support of this description (31). His own list, detailed throughout the book, is slightly more extensive, including agriculture, architecture, trade, tailoring and weaving, metalworking, woodworking, leatherworking, stonemasonry, navigation, medicine, cooking, armament and hunting, and animal husbandry. 

Before defending my own divisions, I would note that Hall’s method of developing the tradition regarding common arts is perfectly reasonable in its own right. The fact that he does not include theatrics fits with his own definition, and only navigation sits on the edge of his description, since it does not seem to provide for basic human needs, unless it is seen as an offshoot of trade. Hall is to be commended for putting these arts back on the map and his practical guide to restoring the training of the hands as a crucial element of the classical tradition of education, especially pre-Industrial revolution. 

In favor of further dividing his category of common arts is the fact that there are at least two ways of understanding the designation ‘common’. The first is the equivalent of ancient designation and probably Hugh of St Victor’s as well, that these arts are ‘vulgar’ or ‘common’ in the sense of having lesser status relative to the liberal and fine arts. They are non-special arts, the skill-sets of common people vs. the nobility. It thus represents the class distinctions of the ancient and medieval world. Another way of understanding the designation would be that these arts are common among the general populace of a particular culture. They are complex skills that it would be helpful for the general person to have proficiency in, whether for mere subsistence or for enjoying the finer blessings of life. In many times and places, the basic skills of hunting, agriculture, tailoring and weaving, house-building, working in metal, wood or leather, cooking and care for animals would have been common in this sense. And many of these common arts have taken us beyond “basic needs” and into the experience of luxury and abundance.

Of course, for thousands of years, most of these arts have also had their professionals and specialists, who followed a more elaborate tradition of apprenticeship and could produce higher quality and more difficult goods and services that the average person could not. Often these professions and trades would utilize more challenging skills related to the liberal arts of language and number in order to practice their craft at a high level of technical accomplishment. Typically we would use the term ‘professions and trades’ to refer to these more refined skill-sets. Common and domestic arts could then refer to skills in more general use to produce the goods commonly developed in the home or farm. 

Since we have recognized that the arts are culturally and historically situated, it becomes more helpful to differentiate between the professions and trades of a culture and the common and domestic arts, which can be cultivated without the benefit of elaborate certification. Historical professions and trades, like woodworking, metalworking and architecture, might find their place in the modern world under different names and functional descriptions, like contractor, electrician and HVAC specialist. But many of the basic subdivisions of those historical trades could feature as educational objectives in the common and domestic arts, since they could be useful to the modern household or homestead. They may no longer be common attainments in contemporary culture, but they could still be commonly useful. Likewise, craftsmanship in a modern profession or trade is a legitimate educational goal, and it is practically necessary to distinguish this from general craftsmanship in common and domestic arts.

What then is the benefit of recovering the common and domestic arts as educational goals in a world of specialization and mechanization? Chris Hall summarizes it admirably:

Similarly, the common arts appeared to suffer from distortions proportional and connected to those the liberal and fine arts seemed to endure. Because we came to outsource the meeting of our basic needs, we drifted into a utilitarian view for these as well. We earned so that we could pay for goods and services, so that we did not have to make or see to them ourselves. That freed up a lot of time, bolstered an economy, and furthered our specialization and mass production. It also left us at least one step removed from some of the skills that would allow us to meet our baseline embodied needs, and at arm’s length from the very sources of our food, clothes, defense, and other vital elements of our survival….

As the old models of apprenticeship were displaced and lost, the arts themselves suffered from the loss of traditional wisdom. Apprenticeship, let’s say in woodworking, used to involve assignments and experiments, time on task under the tutelage of a master. That experience involved hands-on practice in the proper use of tools, materials, and technique. The common arts that provide a service, like trade, involved experience in the arts of situational and material appraisal, and effective communication. (46)

In our day and age, the recovery of craftsmanship with the hands may be one of the most countercultural moves in education. Thus we find value in the five fold division of Aristotle’s techne into A) athletics, games and sports, B) common and domestic arts, C) professions and trades, D) fine and performing arts, and E) the liberal arts of language and number. But this all does not answer the pressing educational questions of which arts to train our students in at which points in their educational journey, and in what ways. 

In the next article, we will discuss a general method for training in the arts, the difference that it makes to designate artistry or craftsmanship as educational objectives in our Aristotelian taxonomy of intellectual virtues, and how we can discern which arts to cultivate in our classical Christian schools and home schools.

Earlier Articles in this series:

1. Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Purpose of Education

2. Bloom’s Taxonomy and the Importance of Objectives: 3 Blessings of Bloom’s

3. Breaking Down the Bad of Bloom’s: The False Objectivity of Education as a Modern Social Science

4. When Bloom’s Gets Ugly: Cutting the Heart Out of Education

5. What Bloom’s Left Out: A Comparison with Aristotle’s Intellectual Virtues

6. Aristotle’s Virtue Theory and a Christian Purpose of Education

7. Moral Virtue and the Intellectual Virtue of Artistry or Craftsmanship

8. Practicing in the Dark or the Day: Well-worn Paths or Bushwalking, Artistry and Moral Virtue Continued

Later articles:

10. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 2: A Pedagogy of Craft

11. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 3: Crafting Lessons in Artistry

12. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 4: Artistry, the Academy and the Working World

13. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 5: Structuring the Academy for Christian Artistry

14. Apprenticeship in the Arts, Part 6: The Transcendence and Limitations of Artistry

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To summarize the distinction, Aristotle defined the intellectual virtue of ‘art’ as a “state of capacity to make [something], involving a true course of reasoning” (Nichomachean Ethics VI.4, 1140^a). The painter makes paintings, the musician creates music, the architect designs buildings. And all of them do so with a reasoned awareness of the constraints of the world and the proper steps necessary to bring what they imagine into being.

On the other hand, the intellectual virtue of ‘science’ or, in common parlance, ‘knowledge’ is “a state of capacity to demonstrate” (Nich. Ethics VI.3 1139^b), meaning that in order to know something, someone should be able to prove it or give evidence that it is the case. Experts give evidence in order to prove the truthfulness of certain claims, thereby endeavoring to establish genuine knowledge about their subject.

Perhaps you can see in a glance why this is an incredibly important distinction for educators. Training a child in an art should follow a markedly different process than teaching a child a science! Artistic mastery requires a great deal of coached practice in the art, while knowledge of particular truths in a subject entails research, gathering evidence, careful thought and the weighing of arguments.

Where this comes to a head most of all is in our application of the classical liberal arts in our schools: particularly the trivium arts of grammar, dialectic and rhetoric, but also the quadrivium arts of arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. While we’ve continued to call them ‘arts’, it is my contention that we’ve been so caught up with modernist privileging of ‘science’ over everything else, that we’ve fallen into error in both our understanding of what these arts are in their essence, but also in our methods of teaching them… or I should say, of training students in them. We’ve treated the liberal arts as if they were sciences, and our students have been the worse for it.

In unpacking and applying this crucial distinction, let’s start first with John Milton Gregory’s distinction of training vs. teaching.

Training vs. Teaching in J M. Gregory’s The Seven Laws of Teaching

At the school where I work we’re going through John Milton Gregory’s The Seven Laws of Teaching as one piece of our faculty training for this year. In rereading it this last June, I came across a passage of his introduction that caught my eye because of its relationship to the classical distinction between an ‘art’ and a ‘science’.

John Milton Gregory divides the whole art of education into two “branches”:

“The one is the art of training; the other the art of teaching. Training is the systematic development and cultivation of the powers of mind and body. Teaching is the systematic inculcation of knowledge.” (p. 10, 2014 Canon Press reprint)

Here it was again articulated in a different form. Where Aristotle’s expression of it held the trappings of a work on personal ethics, and therefore focused on the subjective virtue of an individual, J. M. Gregory was expressing the distinction from the perspective of an educator. Education involves two core parts, we might say, training in the arts (i.e. any of the “powers of mind and body” that produce something in the world) and teaching of knowledge in any particular ‘science’, or subject in which things can be known.

J. M. Gregory goes on to explain the how and why of training in more detail:

“As the child is immature in all its powers, it is the first business of education, as an art, to cultivate those powers, by giving to each power regular exercise in its own proper sphere, till, through exercise and growth, they come to their full strength and skill.” (10)

This expresses well my previous article’s contention for the importance of lots of coached practice. Training students in an art requires giving them “regular exercise” and a long process for the development of “strength and skill.” I hardly need add that recent research on the importance of deliberate practice over the course of thousands of hours is confirming this traditional insight. Highly focused repeated firing of the relevant neural networks is apparently the key to the formation of myelin sheaths around those neurons, so that their firing can occur with high levels of efficiency and accuracy (see The Talent Code, or Talent Is Overrated, or Outliers or any other of the high performance literature drawing from Anders Erikson’s research).

Incidentally, J. M. Gregory also concedes that training is more primary, or that it is, as he says, “the first business of education,” because without the training of a child’s powers, they cannot even grapple with the stuff of knowledge. The arts are a basic human form of culture-making, without which knowledge is not even possible.

In contrast, J. M. Gregory describes teaching as the communication of knowledge, dropping Aristotle’s emphasis on the ability to demonstrate. Modernism and empiricism had effectively undercut Aristotle’s emphasis on deductive logic’s ability to “prove” from universals, and the promise of presenting the “results of modern science” had already come into its own and subtly influenced J. M. Gregory’s view of what it meant to teach knowledge. At least, that’s my explanation of this curious feature of his account, not to mention his decision to write his whole work focused on the rules of teaching and leave the art of training to the side.

Lastly, it is interesting to note how J. M. Gregory claims that these two aspects of education (training vs. teaching) “though separable in thought, are not separable in practice” (11). The fact that he emphasizes this so strongly–though understandable and no doubt correct—just goes to show how far the tradition has come since Plato and Aristotle. In those days the arts were viewed more concretely, almost as professions or trades, rather than academic attainments.

The Arts as Professions in Plato’s Gorgias

Since the Fall of 2018 I have used Plato’s Gorgias with students in my role as a Senior Thesis advisor. The dialogue is a spritely example of Socrates’ witty repartee with a prominent figure, who claims so much for himself. Gorgias was a famous rhetorician with a flowery style, who travelled around Greece taking payment from students to train them in his art.

In the dialogue Socrates forces Gorgias to adopt the shorter method of discourse (i.e. Socrates’ preferred dialectical method) rather than his normal rhetorical speeches, before systematically picking apart what the art of rhetoric really is, and whether Gorgias can really train men in all he claims to. What is interesting to note for our purposes is further confirmation that even before Aristotle articulated the distinction between skill in an ‘art’ and knowledge or ‘science’, it was alive and well in Greek educational culture.

Socrates begins by discussing numerous other arts or professions, in order to illuminate what exactly Gorgias claims to be as a rhetorician. Throughout the dialogue he brings up the art of a weaver, a physician, a trainer, a business owner, an arithmetician, and a geometer, among other professions. Of course, he also mentions the art of dialectic that he himself engages in, and discusses at length the nature of Gorgias’ art of rhetoric. When Gorgias’ defines rhetoric as the art of discourse, Socrates makes the point that other arts deal with discourse as well. For instance, the physician discourses with the sick about the remedies for their condition, and the arithmetician about odd and even numbers.

In a way, Plato’s Gorgias foreshadows the later idea of the liberal arts, which would include arithmetic, geometry, dialectic and rhetoric. They are distinguished from other arts by how they use discourse in words or numbers to create their product. Unlike the products of a weaver or sculptor, a trainer or physician, their product itself is the discourse of words and numbers now present in the world. That product could be the ephemeral spoken address of an orator, or the record of it later written down; it could be the mental calculations of an arithmetician or the recorded transactions in a business ledger.

The dialogue is also interesting for how Socrates’ chief critique of Gorgias’ art of rhetoric turns on Gorgias’ claim to being able to persuade anyone of anything regardless of his lack of knowledge or expertise in that area. For example, Gorgias claims that his brother, a physician, could not get a certain patient to take his medicine, until he came along and pleaded with him. Socrates seems to almost be objecting to the art of rhetoric’s ability to persuade others of beliefs without “inculcating knowledge” or “teaching” them anything. For this reason, Socrates thinks the art of rhetoric is suspect because it can be used to convince people of false ideas just as well as true.

In other words, Socrates thinks training students in the art of rhetoric without teaching them true knowledge in the sciences leaves the world ripe for manipulation. For Socrates rhetoric is a manipulative technique like cookery (which doesn’t make food nutritious) or cosmetics (which doesn’t produce real health and beauty). All this would certainly support J. M. Gregory’s claim that training and teaching cannot (or should not) be divorced in practice, even if it is useful to distinguish between them in principle.

Two Errors in Training vs. Teaching

While I am inclined to think that our chief error today is aiming to teach students abstract knowledge and rules about the liberal arts, rather than affording them enough coached practice to develop proficiency, Plato’s Gorgias provides a unique and powerful check on the other side. Neglecting the teaching of genuine knowledge can be just as deadly an error.

We might conceive of these as classical education’s Scylla and Charybdis. On the one side is the perilous rocks of focusing so much on knowledge acquisition and testing, that students lose all active agency in their learning and come out of their rhetoric classes with a host of memorized figures of speech and rules, but no facility or confidence in speaking or writing. On the other side, is the vortex of Charybdis, where the powerful currents of worldliness draw in students whose training has given them the ability to manipulate others, regardless of truth or goodness.

Perhaps there are some debate programs, or classical schools, that so focus on mastery of rules and practice, without the heart of knowledge, that this is a live option worthy of fear. But again, my hunch is that most of our modern schools are so focused on the task of learning about rhetoric that our students left without much practice in learning how to speak, to stick with one example.

How do you keep the balance of training vs. teaching? Let us know in the comments and share this article with a friend if you found it helpful!

Check out more recent articles related to training in the arts!

Moral Virtue and the Intellectual Virtue of Artistry or Craftsmanship

Practicing in the Dark or the Day: Well-worn Paths or Bushwalking, Artistry and Moral Virtue Continued

Apprenticeship in the Arts: Traditions and Divisions

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