The exploration of the range of language

pp. 37-67

in: Albert Borgmann, The Philosophy of Language, Berlin, Springer, 1974

Abstract

The dispersion of the philosophy of language into logic, grammar, rhetoric, and poetics which became apparent in Aristotle's thought did not entirely obliterate the common root of these disciplines. Research in these fields, to be sure, diverged more and more. But the educational organization which evolved in the system of the seven liberal arts provided at least a pedagogical unity. The liberal arts arose as a group of distinct subjects of research and education already in ancient Greece. They were taken over and further articulated by the Romans and eventually furnished the basis of Medieval education.¹ A division of the seven arts was made here into two groups, the trivium, comprising grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and the quadrivium, consisting of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music.