Concept
Trivium
Overview
The trivium is the lower division of the seven liberal arts and comprises grammar, logic, and rhetoric.
The trivium is implicit in De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii ("On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury") by Martianus Capella, but the term was not used until the Carolingian Renaissance, when it was coined in imitation of the earlier quadrivium. Grammar, logic, and rhetoric were essential to a classical education, as explained in Plato's dialogues. The three subjects together were denoted by the word trivium during the Middle Ages, but the tradition of first learning those three subjects was established in ancient Greece, by rhetoricians such as Isocrates. Contemporary iterations have taken various forms, including those found in certain British and American universities (some being part of the Classical education movement) and at the independent Oundle School in the United Kingdom.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
But in the universities of Europe, where philosophy was taught only as subservient to theology, it was natural to dwell longer upon these two chapters than upon any other of the science. They were gradually more and more extended, and were divided into many inferior chapters; till at last the doctrine of spirits, of which so little can be known, came to take up as much room in the system of philosophy as the…
Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
States what Trivium is.
The same may be said in their numbers, in the use of which they are subjected to invariable rules, which they are scarcely ever allowed to transgress. The two arts, therefore, are to be considered neither as wholly distinct, nor perfectly conjoined. This is the reason why our numbers are not to be so conspicuous in prose as in verse; and that in prose, what is called a _numerous_ style, does not always become so by…
Marcus Tullius Cicero, Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators
States what Trivium is.
Then they add a negation of conjunctive propositions; as, "It is not both this and that; but it is this; therefore it is not that." This is the sixth mood. The seventh is, "It is not both this and that; but it is not this; therefore it is that." From these moods innumerable conclusions are derived, in which nearly the whole science of dialectics consists. But even those which I have now explained are not necessary…
Marcus Tullius Cicero, The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4
States what Trivium is.
Related ideas
- Analysis
- Grammar
- Law of identity
- Isocrates
- Middle Ages
- Music
- Geometry
- Plato
- Classical antiquity
- Rhetoric
- Aristotle
- Arithmetic
- United Kingdom
- Thought
- Logic
- Astronomy
- Dialectic
- Fallacy
- Martianus Capella
- Education in ancient Greece
- Sister Miriam Joseph
Place in the tradition
Part of American philosophy.