The study of the liberal arts is sometimes referred to as a formal education. We are inclined to think, no doubt, that a formal education means one which has its procedures and protocols, methodically concluding in an established ceremony of some sort that recognizes the prescribed achievement. The term formal, however, includes another meaning, as, …
Author Archives: rultimo
The Liberating Studies
One could conclude from watching the present political moment that it will soon be time for us to return to the liberal arts, and in particular to the arts of language. I say this because the studies which comprise the liberal arts, and particularly the first three subjects of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, have to …
Hammering Out a Revision
It may surprise you to realize that if you worry about how well you write, you have the instincts of an artist. An artist is someone who believes that shapes and forms carry meaning, that making something with skill, a sentence or a paragraph for example, is one of the ways we humans share our …
Looking for Something to Do
There is in the study of language a phenomenon known as nominalization. (That sentence I just wrote is, arguably, an example of it.) The term derives from the Latin noun for noun, nomen, and when overworked, it refers to the habit of building too many sentences with too many nouns. Or better, the habit of …
Where Words Can Go
It is not true that life is one thing and philosophy another, that what’s obviously going on is what’s real and that what subtleties we see are just the result of thinking too hard about nothing at all. The truth, instead, is that the purpose of an art, the art of writing included, is to …