The Lyceum Letters is a substack dedicated to exploring the principles and practices of classical education. My mission here is to promote the renewal of classical education by providing insights, resources, and inspiration to parents, teachers, and students who seek to cultivate the life of the mind and the pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty.
What’s a “Lyceum”?
Aristotle's Lyceum was a school of philosophy that he founded in Athens in 335 BCE, shortly after he returned to Athens from his time as a tutor to Alexander the Great. The Lyceum was located near the Temple of Apollo Lyceus, which is how it got its name.
The Lyceum was an open-air school where Aristotle and his students would gather to discuss philosophical and scientific topics. It was not just a school, but also a research center where Aristotle conducted his own studies and experiments.
The Lyceum became one of the most famous centers of learning in the ancient world, and its influence continued long after Aristotle's death. Many of Aristotle's ideas and writings were preserved and studied by later philosophers, and his impact on Western thought and education continues to this day.
Defining Terms
Education is the cultivation of wisdom and virtue by nourishing the soul. The soul is nourished with goodness, beauty and truth. Education must be distinguished from vocational training, which has eternal value itself, but not the same thing. Many institutions today focus more on this type of training, teaching people what to think more than how to think.
Classical Education is the cultivation of both wisdom and virtue by means of the seven liberal arts and the four sciences.
Christian Education is the cultivation of wisdom and virtue by nourishing the soul on truth, goodness, and beauty by means of the seven liberal arts and the four sciences so that, in Christ, the student is enabled to better know, glorify, and enjoy God.
The aim here is not just to grow in wisdom and virtue. In Classical Christian Education, growing in wisdom and virtue is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end. The end is ultimately to know God and go to Heaven.
Saint Thomas Aquinas, in summarizing the teachings of the church fathers says;
“Grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it.”
Christian Classical education purifies and perfects the great achievements of the ancient Greeks and Romans. This is perfecting of the past is seen in Saint Augustine’s writings such as Confessions and The Teacher. Individuals and institutions of the 20th century set out to disprove and undermine such achievements, however, Saint Irenaeus said it best;
“The glory of God is man fully alive.”
The Liberal Arts are the arts of thinking. There are seven of these. According to the Christian Classical tradition, rationality is the main disntinction between man and beast. Specifically, humans are able to think using symbols such as words, numbers, shapes, musical representations and other abstract visuals. The skillful use of language is critical and essential to the fully developed human being. There are also arts developed to refine man’s ability to use language. These are the three arts of the Trivium:
Grammar
Logic/Dialectics
Rhetoric
Animals cannot use numbers and shapes like humans of course. Music itself comes from man’s ability to hear with our soul the relationships of numbers in their ratios and proportions. There are other arts developed to refine our ability to use numbers and shapes, comprising the four arts of the Quadrivium:
Arithmetic
Geometry
Music
Astronomy
The Trivium and Quadrivium are called the liberal arts because they are the arts every free man is free to master. These are also the arts required to be free. A society that fails to master these cannot be a free one. A man who has not mastered rhetoric is unable to express his thoughts appropriately. Likewise, a man who has not mastered the art of logic will fall prey to manipulators, both in society and his soul.
1The Trivium consists of the three verbal arts of grammar, dialectic (or logic), and rhetoric. Grammar comes from the Greek word “grammatikos”, which is best translated “letters”. Grammar cultivates the skill of interpreting symbols. First we interpret individual letters or phonemes, then we interpret words, and ultimately we interpret texts, works of art, and artifacts. Dialectic, or logic, is the art of formal and material reasoning. Formal logic asks, “How do we think correctly?” (i.e. “What is the form of valid thought?”) Material Logic asks “What do we think about?” (i.e. “What is the matter of thought?”). Rhetoric is the art of the fitting expression, though Aristotle reduces it to the art of persuasion. We have developed The Lost Tools of Writing as the foundation for a rhetoric program and we humbly recommend it to your consideration. In addition, Dorothy Sayers developed a theory and application of the trivium that suggests that each art corresponds to a general stage in a child’s growth. Much of the modern renewal of classical education feeds on this interpretation.
2The Quadrivium consists of the four mathematical arts. To be able to reason both logically and aesthetically, the individual must be able to interact with what the ancients called magnitude (geometry and astronomy) and multitude (arithmetic and music or harmonics). The mind not trained in the quadrivium is not yet educated. Arithmetic is the art that learns the properties of numbers, that is, “how do numbers behave?” What happens to seven if it meets five? What will eight do if we multiply it by four? Geometry is the art that learns the properties of shapes. It asks, “How do shapes behave?” It is essential to deductive logic and spatial reasoning. Music is the art of ratios and proportions. It asks, “How do numbers behave in relation to each other?” Algebra is a super-efficient and abstract way of expressing musical properties. However, to fully benefit from music, it should not be reduced to algebra. Music is the window or even the doorway between the physical and the spiritual. When a student listens to mathematically sound compositions, the order of mathematics sings directly to the soul through the ear, not needing to pass through the understanding, as it does in arithmetic. Astronomy is the art of shapes in motion. It asks, “How do shapes behave when they are moving?” Practically, it is the doorway to physics and the sciences.
3The Natural Sciences are the sciences of the physical order, such as biology, chemistry, and physics. All other sciences either combine or refine these three. A science is a domain of knowing ordered by a unifying principle (logos). Biology is ordered by the attempt to know the causes of being and change within and among living things. Physics is ordered by the inquiry into the forces that bring about change in the physical realm. Chemistry is ordered by the inquiry into the elements of which physical things consist. The mode of inquiry of the natural sciences is investigation into the material and efficient causes. Observation and measurement are particularly apt to this domain. The goal of the natural sciences is to know the causes of change in the physical world so that one can act wisely and virtuously in relation to the cosmos.
4The Human Sciences are the sciences of the moral order; that is, they are the sciences of human behavior and the soul, namely ethics and politics. Ethics asks the question, how does a human being fulfill its potential (i.e. how does it attain excellence or its own flourishing). In a word, how does a human become virtuous. Many studies come under ethics so understood, such as psychology. Politics asks the question, how can a human community enable its members and itself to fulfill its potential, to attain excellence, to flourish? How can a human community cultivate the virtue of its members. Studies that come under politics so understood include economics, history, etc. Prior to the 17th century, what we now call aesthetics was a humane science, having to do with human behavior. The humane sciences are built upon but higher than the natural sciences. The mode of inquiry suited to the humane sciences is a dialectical engagement with works of art, historical inquiry, and close reflection on the movements of the human soul. The goal of the humane sciences is to know the causes of human behavior so that one can attain virtue in oneself and cultivate it in others.
5The Philosophical Sciences are the sciences of metaphysics and epistemology. The unique tools of philosophical inquiry are a highly refined form of dialectics and contemplation. The goal of the philosophical sciences is to know the causes and limits of human knowledge and to know causality itself. It is in metaphysics that the distinction between modernist education and classical education is most clearly seen. To the modernist, especially after John Dewey, metaphysics is a waste of time because we can only know what the natural sciences reveal to us. Thus modern education is driven by experimentation and measurement. The modernist educator has determined that knowledge is the adaptation of an organism to its environment. The classical educator is deliberately metaphysical and does not approach philosophy with despair. He believes that the world we live in is real and that it is knowable. Therefore, for the classical educator, knowledge is gained when the seeker encounters an idea embodied or incarnated in concrete reality. When the modernist educator teaches, his goal is an adaptation to the environment, or what is commonly called a practical application. When a classical educator teaches, his goal is wisdom and virtue. This will have plenty of practical applications, but it will also include the ability to know when not to adapt to the environment — when to resist it and when to be martyred by it. The irony is that the modernist disables his student from sound practical applications because he has misrepresented reality and thereby made it difficult to adapt to it. Meanwhile, the classical educator has enabled the student to think in terms of circumstances without abandoning virtue.
6The Theological Sciences are the sciences concerned with knowledge of the first cause, or of God Himself. All of the tools of the lower sciences are used for theological knowledge, but the Christian recognizes that Divine Revelation reveals things that the other sciences cannot discover. The goal of theology is to order all knowledge to that first cause.
What you’ll get;
The liberal arts tradition: why it matters and how to apply it today
The history of education: from ancient Greece to modern times
The great books: exploring the classics of literature, philosophy, and theology
Pedagogy and methodology: how to teach and learn effectively in a classical way
Character education: cultivating virtues and moral formation in students
Classical languages: the benefits of studying Latin, Greek, and other languages
Parenting and homeschooling: practical tips and insights for classical families
Current events and issues: applying classical principles to contemporary challenges
Audience
The Lyceum Letters are aimed at anyone interested in classical education, including parents, teachers, students, homeschoolers, classical school administrators, and anyone who values the pursuit of knowledge, wisdom, and virtue.
Cura ut valeas
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