The posthuman liberal arts

As those familiar with the liberal arts know, in antiquity there were seven such arts. Three formed the trivium of the humanities: rhetoric, grammar, and logic. And four formed the quadrivium of the sciences: music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. The assertion was this was the knowledge one required to participate as a citizen, as a “free man” (sic). Obviously the liberal arts have gone through various incarnations over the centuries. And this is not a history lesson.

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What I see in the original trivium is the development of the capacities to communicate and deliberate. These capacities remain in short supply and are as important as ever in every profession and in every civic space from social media to the ballot box. Can we make a good decision? Can we deliberate? How do we distinguish good? valid? reasonable? decisions without defining them simply as decisions with which we agree? We cannot deliberate with those whose make decisions with which we disagree if those decisions also strike as unreasonable, as invalid. We can negotiate, because peaceful resolution is always possible, but we cannot deliberate. We cannot make decisions in common, as a community.

In my view, a posthuman liberal arts begins with understanding the flexibility and multiplicity of reason.  —Alex Reid