The Faculty of Arts was one of the four traditional divisions of the teaching bodies of medieval universities, the others being Theology, Law and Medicine. The Faculty of Arts was the lowest in rank, but also the largest as students had to graduate there to be admitted to one of the higher faculties.
The Faculty of Arts took its name from the Seven Liberal Arts: the Trivium (grammar, rhetoric, dialectics) and the Quadrivium (arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy).
In the universities of continental Europe, this faculty has more often been named the equivalent of 'Faculty of Philosophy' (e.g., Norwegian: Det filosofiske fakultet, Slovene: Filozofska fakulteta). Nowadays this is a common name for the faculties teaching humanities.
Famous quotes containing the words faculty of, faculty and/or arts:
“To write well, to have style ... is to paint. The master faculty of style is therefore the visual memory. If a writer does not see what he describes—countrysides and figures, movements and gestures—how could he have a style, that is originality?”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“There is an inner world; and a spiritual faculty of discerning it with absolute clearness, nay, with the most minute and brilliant distinctness. But it is part of our earthly lot that it is the outer world, in which we are encased, which is the lever that brings that spiritual faculty into play.”
—E.T.A.W. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus Wilhelm)
“I haven’t seen so much tippy-toeing around since the last time I went to the ballet. When members of the arts community were asked this week about one of their biggest benefactors, Philip Morris, and its requests that they lobby the New York City Council on the company’s behalf, the pas de deux of self- justification was so painstakingly choreographed that it constituted a performance all by itself.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)