Building the Microcosmos, Part 1: Logos
What's really happening in Classical Education
Most discussions of Classical Education begin and end with the principal division of learning known as “The Trivium.” The Trivium are the three chief stages of Classical learning, broadly sketched across the K-12 framework. The first stage is the Grammar stage, the second is the Logic stage, and the third is the Rhetoric stage. Grammar is K-6, consisting of rote memorization of facts, often deployed via songs or chanting. The Logic stage is 7-9, during which formal laws of logic and argumentation are taught, and then finally, the Rhetoric stage, which teaches students the arts of expression and persuasion. They are designed to capitalize on a child’s natural progression from curious sponge to seeker of truth to a sort of… agent of the Good, who can combine their knowledge of the world with their reasoning power to bring about more Good in their respective vocation (to “be beautiful,” as we’ve outlined previously).
That’s the elevator pitch, of course, but the underlying nuance and truth is much richer than that. The Classical Renewal has adapted the Trivium to conform to the form of modern K-12 education, because, among other things, it’s a means of following our laws. But the Trivium are subjects first, not stages, and they are but one side of the Seven Liberating Arts. Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric are the “Literate Arts,” and the other side, called the Quadrivium, are Arithmetic, Geometry, Astronomy, and Music, the “Numerate Arts.”
The Liberating Arts, or Liberal Arts, are so-called in contrast to the Servile Arts, vis: cooking, hygiene, manual labor- the means by which we survive. A Liberating Art is a means by which we may free ourselves from our passions. The Numerate Arts enable us to order abstract concepts and recognize the divine patterns of reality, calling us to higher comprehension and contemplation of creation. The Literate Arts enable us to share our experiences with one another, to recognize our shared brokenness, to cultivate mercy and soft-heartedness for our brethren, to learn from our mistakes, celebrate our triumphs, relieve ourselves of sadness, call each other to repentance and forgiveness, and perceive the Logos in everything around us.
Which brings me to my point today. A human is a union of body and soul, material and spirit, and the goal of a Classical education is to serve both parts of the person. Our Cosmos is the union of spiritual and material reality, and so every person, every student, is his or herself a micro-cosmos, a unique, discrete union of material and spirit, who will, in their lifetime, encounter and affect dozens if not hundreds if not thousands if not millions of other microcosms, shaping and influencing their understanding of reality. A Classical education acknowledges this, and looks to the past, chiefly, to begin the work of shaping the microcosms who are in its care. Why? Because microcosms cannot help but be shaped, and to do so in a way that serves both body and soul is to pass on Paideia, the worldview of a culture. We’ll talk more about Paideia later, but for now, know that it has to do with three things: Logos, Mythos, and Ethos.
As we discussed in the post on Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, Truth, the Logos, incarnate in Christ, is the beginning and end of all reality. Everything we encounter points back to Him, and He directs the propriety of everything, evinced in its Goodness and spread in its Beauty. Logos can be thought of as the incarnate Christ, but it is also every sub-aspect and quality that can be known in reality. In other words, all truths point back to The Truth, all logoi point back to the Logos. For example: a number is not merely a number, or unit of quantification, it is a symbol for all of its factors, multiples, addends, divisors, and so forth- all of its potential for other numbers and measurements, in both it and their appropriate places according to the laws of arithmetic and geometry. By the way, hang on to that word, symbol, it will be very important in the next post.
An education that focuses purely on material reality does not connect the truths of reality to the Logos, which means it does not address the soul’s desire for spiritual understanding. Why is this important? Because the soul has organs, and organs demand nourishment.
The ancient Greeks were the first to posit this, and their ideas were affirmed by Scripture and the church fathers. In their conception, the soul has three parts: the belly (epithumos), the chest (thumos), and the mind (logistikon). Each part demands one thing and abhors its opposite. The belly wants pleasure- food, sex, sleep, entertainment, and hates pain- discomfort, inconvenience, withdrawal. The chest wants honor- praise, dignity, accomplishment, and hates shame- ignominy, failure, chastisement. The mind wants knowledge- understanding, truth, authority, and hates ignorance- blindness, uncertainty, immaturity.
Each part of the soul oversees and exerts influence over particular aspects of our character. The belly directs our appetites, the chest directs our passions, and the mind directs our curiosity. The church fathers refer to these as the appetitive aspect of the soul, the incensive aspect of the soul, and the intellect, or nous, respectively. St. Paul is more direct when speaking of Christ’s enemies: “whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame- who set their mind on earthly things.” (Philippians 3:19)
Paul’s words directly address the soul’s problem as the result of the Fall: it is disordered. When we are young, our soul is ruled by our belly, and our appetites- not evil in and of themselves -are given to impropriety and misuse. Everything is directed by our desire for fun and enjoyment, but pleasure is not a fulfilling end in and of itself, and as we grow older our chest begins to protest the belly’s rule because it does not lead to honor, or worse, the chest misinterprets honor as “receiving what I desire.”
The soul can only be ordered properly when the mind and the chest work in tandem to subdue the belly and make proper decisions. Opinions differ on the terminology here, but their work together is what produces the nous, or “the eyes of the soul,” the purpose of which is to perceive spiritual reality. Perception of spiritual reality, among other things, reveals propriety, the appropriate way to interact with a given logoi.
Awakening the nous through the use of the chest and the mind requires guidance and training. The Greeks understood this, going so far to refer to their teachers not as teachers, but as “Sophroniste,” a “temperance enforcer.” In school, the ordering of the soul begins with the understanding that the Logos is real; our minds can approach it, insofar as they learn about and understand the logoi around them. When intellectual understanding of the Logos is combined with the chest’s desire for honor and its mastery over the belly, propriety and right action can follow. This nourishes the soul.
There is much more to this, but really, this is simply the first step to building the micro-cosmos of our students. We drill with them, chant with them, memorize with them, and habitualize the dissemination of facts with them from a young age in order to acquaint them with the existence of the Logos in science, in stories, in math problems, in history, in our culture, because it is with that knowledge that they will begin to liberate themselves from their passions, and connect, influence, and receive the other microcosms they will spend their lives doing the work of Christ with: perceiving Truth, understanding Goodness, and spreading Beauty. Next time, we’ll talk about what those connections are and how they are made.
May our Lord illuminate the righteous path He has laid before each of us and compel us to walk it dutifully and with joy.
Well said, Adam!