Phillips Berns

This talk will explore the nature of a liberal arts curriculum, grounded in the trivium (logic, grammar, and rhetoric) and quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy), and how it serves to form the human person according to human nature. Since the judgment of reason is what distinguishes the human creature from others, the liberal arts are those whereby reason directs its powers to its own act in order that it may be perfected. The liberal arts seek to form human beings precisely as human. When this formation is taken up by the Church, human formation centers on the “one thing needful”—the entire curriculum converges on Christ, who as God Incarnate is the perfect human, and model for us.