"Because you cannot attain virtue without food, either; and yet food has nothing to do with virtue. Wood does not offer assistance to a ship, although a ship cannot be built except of wood.
"There is no reason, I say, why you should think that anything is made by the assistance of that without which it cannot be made. We might even make the statement that it is possible to attain wisdom without the 'liberal studies'; for although virtue is a thing that must be learned, yet it is not learned by means of these studies." . . .
--Seneca the Younger, Moral Letters to Lucilius, 88 (tr Gummere)
Seneca is saying that a life of virtue requires the liberal arts, but yet virtue is not itself made by liberal studies. To understand this distinction, at first seemingly confusing, is already to engage in the sort of precise and orderly thinking that is a condition for a virtuous life, though hardly the immediate cause of a virtuous life.
The tools of wisdom are hardly narrow or exclusive; they need not be limited to this or that specific school or system. Whether we are thinking with the Stoics or not, Aristotle's explanation of the 'Four Causes' is a priceless aid to clarity of thought.
In seeking not merely to describe, but also to explain, philosophy asks that perennial question, 'why?' Aristotle observed that there are a number of ways to answer that question.
If I am explaining what brought something about, the agent or mover, I am discerning the efficient cause.
If I am asking what something is made out of, its conditions or parts, I am discerning the material cause.
If I am asking what something is by its nature or essence, I am discerning the formal cause.
And if I am asking where something is going, its goal or purpose, I am discerning the final cause.
To fully answer the 'why' question is to discern all four causes.
The admittedly simple but helpful analogy I always used with students was looking at a house. The builder and the architect are the efficient causes. The lumber, concrete, shingles, pipes and wiring are all material causes. The blueprints, the structure and ordered design for the house, are the formal cause. And the final cause of the house, its intended purpose, is to make a home for someone to live in.
The old Thomistic phrase I learned to remember this was that "every agent forms matter for the sake of an end."
Keeping these causes in mind, we should see that Seneca is here distinguishing between the material cause and the efficient cause of virtue. A liberal education can only be said to be a cause of virtue in that it is the condition out of which virtue is drawn, the parts, so to speak, that we use to build virtue, but it is rightly only our own judgment and action that are bring about virtue within us.
A liberal education is therefore a material cause of virtue, but my own thinking and doing are the efficient cause. Virtue needs liberal education, but virtue is not made by that education. As Seneca says, the body may need food, or a ship may be made from wood, but that does not mean that food makes the body, or wood makes a ship.
I find it wonderful that the sort of liberal thinking that Seneca is discussing is exactly what I need to use to understand what he means. Let us look at something carefully, from all sides and angles, with an eye for distinctions and degrees of meaning, always seeking out order and purpose. That is the freedom of thought offered to us when we are exposed to the liberal arts.
But don't forget, the arts of free thinking, in the true sense, are hardly virtue, nor do they make me virtuous. They are the tools, the elements I must use to pursue the good life, but how I will go about making use of these materials will make all the difference. I have all to often been far too clever a person, and not enough of a good person.
Written 1/2010
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