Philosophy can be regarded as the freest of the liberal arts.

Philosophy has become the symbol for all the artes liberates; in German universities the "Faculty of Arts" of the medieval university is nowadays called the "Philosophical Faculty." 

"Knowledge is most truly free when it is philosophical knowledge," says Cardinal Newman. 

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Knowledge in general, and more especially philosophical knowledge, is certainly quite impossible without work, without the labor improbus of discursive thought. Nevertheless there is also that about it which, essentially, is not work.

The simple vision of the intellectus, however, contemplation, is not work. If, as this philosophical tradition holds, man's spiritual knowledge is the fruit of ratio and intellectus; if the discursive element is fused with "intellectual contemplation" and if, moreover, knowledge in philosophy, which is directed upon the whole of being, is to preserve the element of contemplation,

then it is not enough to describe this knowledge as work, for that would be to omit something essential. 

- Josef Pieper

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Leisure: The Basis of Culture