Francisco Pantaleon

In this paper, I explore why classics are designated as “classics” and why they continue to endure. I argue that classics are not merely relics of antiquity but living expressions of human wisdom that transcend time and culture. While rooted in the literary, philosophical, and artistic traditions of ancient Greece and Rome, classics persist because they contain universal truths about the human condition. The relevance of classics lies in their ability to serve as patterns for living—a specimen vivendi. I explain that literature and films function as contemporary channels for transmitting classical wisdom, enabling succeeding generations to encounter timeless and timely truths in accessible forms. Hence, their endurance depends on our commitment to preserve, practice, and reinterpret them in dialogue with the present.

The crisis of the humanities as a field of study is evident both within and outside the discipline, as well as among practitioners of humanistic disciplines and those who simply appreciate the humanities. This crisis is especially pronounced amid the rise of scientism. Given this situation, there is a need to reaffirm the lasting importance of the humanities in education, particularly the role of humanistic disciplines in liberal education. To accomplish this, this paper introduces the core concepts of Julián Marías’s philosophy of the human person, which serves as an entry point for emphasizing the ongoing relevance of the humanities. Using Marías’s philosophical anthropology, I demonstrate how the humanities are fundamentally the paideia of modern education. Accordingly, this paper aims to clarify: (1) what the humanities are and why they are considered the paideia today, (2) the development of the concept of the humanities as a field of study, (3) how Julián Marías’s philosophy deepens our understanding of humanistic disciplines, and (4) the philosophical foundation that supports the study of the humanities, justifying their central role in liberal education.

Spanish philosopher Julián Marías explains that the adequate philosophical explanations of the human person reside in literature, particularly in the constitutive dramatismo (dramatic character) of the person, which is made meaningful by narrating human life. He claims that literature is a sort of pre-philosophy, as has been the case since the time of the Greeks, especially in their presentation of philosophy in the form of literature, that is, the story-like structure of the dialogues. Marías says life has dramatismo because it consists of a series of circumstantial happenings that have a projective quality, and this is only intelligible through narration, by ‘giving an account’ of the dramatic character of my life. Since my life is a story on account of its dramatismo, it is only properly recounted, that is, understood, when it is narrated. But no matter how much these two literary notions inform philosophical inquiry, they can never be isolated from their proper domain: literature. In some way, then, philosophy relies on literature because of the ease with which it penetrates the reality of the human person; and the tools that make it possible are, as I shall explore in this paper, Marías’s notions of dramatismo and narrative.

Dietrich von Hildebrand’s metaphysical investigation of the nature of community offers compelling insights into the formation of a community bound by specific values called virtus unitiva. But this is discussed with an ontological and axiological slant, which makes it difficult to understand how it bears on concrete reality. But Julián Marías’s philosophy proves to be a fertile ground for suggesting areas in which Hildebrand’s metaphysics of community may be incarnated in the here and now, specifically through the Marían notions of vigencia and convivencia. Values, which are at the center of Hildebrand’s philosophy, can in some way find their concretization in vigencias, which are the concrete realities that permeate the social fabric, and are therefore the latent values held by a community. In this way, vigencias can likewise help explain the contents and scope of a virtus unitiva, the unifying power that binds persons in a communio personarum. Through a mutual enrichment of these two philosophers’ ideas of community, the rich metaphysical insights articulated by Hildebrand, which have received less attention, can be brought to inform the community life lived by each one.

The notion of liberal arts, since Aquinas, has dramatically changed in its content, method, and aim. Today the liberal arts are understood synonymously with liberal education or general education, which calls for its restoration and rediscovery. For Aquinas, the seven liberal arts—which by his time were already composed of the trivium (ie, grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and quadrivium (ie, geometry, arithmetic, music, and astronomy)—are contrasted to the mechanical arts and the speculative sciences. The current conception of the liberal arts as holistic education came from a gradual conceptual shift in the last two centuries. Liberal arts studies have been progressively reduced to teaching “subjects” rather than giving students the tools, the “art,” of learning, of liberal education. The loss of the sense of the liberal arts—especially its Thomistic sense—brings certain repercussions in how the nature of “education” is understood. As such, this article aims to (1) clarify the situation of the liberal arts, (2) retrace the history of the liberal arts, (3) explore its Thomistic conception, and (4) consider the need to recover them as necessary for the proper order of learning befitting man.