This paper addresses what some view as a progressive and decades-long devaluing of the liberal arts in our educational institutions and society at large. It draws attention to symptoms of this trend and possible contributing factors, identifies benefits commonly attributed to the liberal arts, and then shows how insights from recent research on neuroplasticity provide good reason to believe that a traditional liberal education has positive effects on a person's brain. The paper supports the (...) thesis that well-designed liberal arts courses can literally transform students' minds and lives as a result of unique and synergistic brain processes activated and strengthened by the leaming experiences such courses provide. It finishes with recommendations to help reinvigorate and promote the value of liberal education. (shrink)

The changing context and increasing professionalization in higher education have ushered in challenges for liberal arts education worldwide. Situated this discourse in the context of Chinese universities, this paper explores Why do we need a liberal arts education that has been accused of being elitist in the twenty first century? Should an effective or ideal liberal arts education evolve with time and context? If yes, what needs to be taken into (...) account to conceptualize a twenty first century model of liberal arts education? How is a twenty first century liberal arts education defined and featured at Chinese universities and elsewhere? Drawing on an analytical framework constructed with the German concept of Bildung and the Confucian perspective on knowledge, this paper contends that a twenty first century liberal arts education for universities in China and elsewhere needs to absorb meta changes and movements in society at home and around the world, while ideally rooted in a knowledge tradition respectively. Specifically, it should comprise three essential pillars: humanism education, cognitive education, and global education. (shrink)

교양교육은 전인적인 인간의 육성을 목표로 한다. 이를 위해 교양교육은 지식 습득과 감성 증진을 위한 기본적인 전제조건이자 민주주의에 걸맞은 품성을 기르는 것을 목표로 하며, 엘리트가 아니라 대중을 대상으로 한다. 예술교육은 교양교육의 목표를 여타의 다른 종류의 교육보다 더 잘 도달할 수 있는데, 이를 우리는 실러와 헤겔의 예술교육 개념으로 부터 배울 수 있다.BR 실러는 예술교육이 인간에게 전문적인 지식을 제공하지는 않지만, 인간의 능력 일반을 길러준다고 주장한다. 예술향유를 통해 우리는 유희충동의 상태에 빠지게 되는데, 이 속에서 우리는 감각충동과 형식충동의 균형 상태를 경험하게 된다. 우리는 예술작품이 제공하는 (...) 일정한 내용을 수용한다. 하지만 예술작품의 향유로 인한 유희 속에서 우리는 이러한 내용으로부터 스스로 자유롭게 되는 것을 경험하게 된다.BR 헤겔은 예술교육의 중요성을 인정한다는 점에서 실러에 동의하지만, 실러와 반대로 예술교육을 단순히 형식적인 의미에서만 규정하지 않는다. 실러는 예술 향유가 감성과 이성의 상호작용을 일으킨다는 점에 주목한다. 이를 통해 예술 향유가 전인적인 인간 육성에 기여하고, 인간을 “인류의 대표”로 교육시킨다. 이는 예술이 무엇을 표현하든지 간에 그 형식 자체가 이러한 감성과 이성의 균형을 표현하기 때문이다. 이러한 실러의 예술교육에 대한 생각에는 예술이 표현하는 내용에 대한 구체적인 반성이 빠져 있다.BR 헤겔은 한편으로는 예술교육이라는 형식 자체가 가지는 긍정적 의미를 받아들이면서도 이를 추상적, 형식적이라고 비판하면서, 다른 한편으로 예술이 제공하는 내용 및 그와 연계되어 있는 예술의 역사성을 함께 고려해야 한다고 제안한다. 헤겔은 ‘대중을 위한 예술작품’ 개념을 통해 예술향유가 예술연구와 동반되어야 한다고 주장한다. 박물관 건립 논쟁에서 헤겔은 향유와 연구가 박물관의 목적이라는 입장을 대변한다. 먼저 예술교육은 전문적인 부분에 매몰되어 있는 인간을 해방시킨다. 인간은 전문화된 현대 사회에서 특정한 기능을 담당하기 위해 자신의 전체적인 능력보다는 특수한 능력만을 발휘하게 된다. 예술은 특수한 능력만이 아니라 인간의 전체적 능력을 활성화시킨다. 두 번째로 예술은 인간에게 자신이 속한 사회의 공동체적 자기이해를 제공한다. 이러한 이해를 통해 인간은 개별자로서의 자신의 편협함에서 벗어나 사회적인 교류에 나서게 된다. 세 번째로 예술은 인간을 세계 시민으로 교육시킨다. 예술교육이 주는 이런 효과는 예술교육이야말로 교양교육이 추구하는 목적을 가장 잘 도달할 수 있다는 점을 보여준다. (shrink)

This volume has 41 chapters written to honor the 100th birthday of Mario Bunge. It celebrates the work of this influential Argentine/Canadian physicist and philosopher. Contributions show the value of Bunge’s science-informed philosophy and his systematic approach to philosophical problems. The chapters explore the exceptionally wide spectrum of Bunge’s contributions to: metaphysics, methodology and philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of physics, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social science, philosophy of biology, philosophy of technology, moral philosophy, social and political (...) philosophy, medical philosophy, and education. The contributors include scholars from 16 countries. Bunge combines ontological realism with epistemological fallibilism. He believes that science provides the best and most warranted knowledge of the natural and social world, and that such knowledge is the only sound basis for moral decision making and social and political reform. Bunge argues for the unity of knowledge. In his eyes, science and philosophy constitute a fruitful and necessary partnership. Readers will discover the wisdom of this approach and will gain insight into the utility of cross-disciplinary scholarship. This anthology will appeal to researchers, students, and teachers in philosophy of science, social science, and liberal education programmes. 1. Introduction Section I. An Academic Vocation Section II. Philosophy Section III. Physics and Philosophy of Physics Section IV. Cognitive Science and Philosophy of Mind Section V. Sociology and Social Theory Section VI. Ethics and Political Philosophy Section VII. Biology and Philosophy of Biology Section VIII. Mathematics Section IX. Education Section X. Varia Section XI. Bibliography. (shrink)

Liberal arts education has carried with it the tradition of a virtuous elite. The metaphysics that accompanies this elitism has its own ground in the master and slave relation of Antiquity. But a different metaphysics offers itself now for liberal arts, one which can be argued to be ‘green’, by being sustainable and renewable without the exploitation of the resources and labours of others. It might seem strange to argue that liberal arts should (...) be the natural home of such a green metaphysics, but I will argue that liberal arts has two clear advantages: one is that part of its history has been to champion the comprehensive view of the world, as opposed to one that is fragmented within the professionally demarcated borders of single academic subject disciplines. The other is that it has held close to itself the Delphic maxim ‘know thyself’, and that this remains a crucial ingredient for any green education. (shrink)

The history of the continuous inclusion of mathematics in liberal education in the West, from ancient times through the modern period, is sketched in the first two sections of this chapter. Next, the heart of this essay (Sects. 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7) delineates the central role mathematics has played throughout the history of Western civilization: not just a tool for science and technology, mathematics continually illuminates, interacts with, and sometimes challenges fields like art, music, literature, and (...) philosophy – subjects now universally considered to be liberal arts. Section 8 adds an international perspective to the contemporary liberal arts story by describing some instructive mathematical achievements from many cultures and societies. Finally, Sect. 9 addresses how contemporary mathematics teaching can use the history of mathematics viewed as a liberal art to enhance the appreciation and understanding of mathematics for all students. (shrink)

The goals of a global liberal arts education, as conjoining both western and eastern sources, focus on ‘virtue first’, i.e. on pursuing human excellence . To determine whether such excellence can be taught online, I turn to contemporary research on Computer-Mediated Communication and online education. Among other factors, important cultural issues as well as the real costs of online education have moderated 1990s enthusiasm for online learning as ‘revolutionary’. I then take up Hubert Dreyfus’ pedagogical (...) taxonomy as it emphasizes the role of embodiment in learning. Expanding on his analysis, I argue that the most important goals of a global liberal arts education–precisely the goals of becoming excellent human beings capable of Aristotelian phroneØsis, a key form of judgment crucial to not only professional success but also ethical and political life–require human teachers who incarnate the skills and judgment students need to acquire. These analyses, finally, support what is in fact a recent turn in online education towards blended classrooms that seek to exploit the distinctive advantages of both embodied and disembodied teaching. (shrink)

Mixing methods is a well-known innovative meth- odologic proposal for research in the second half of the 20th century social sciences. Reading literature about it, I observed the aspect that justifies this paper: Authors of theoretical contributions on mixing methods recognized that this was known to be a practice already in use many centuries ago. Some of them even have re-examined the whole history of the scientific method to search precedents. They are however individual and theoretical precedents. I add in (...) this paper the practical projection of these and other methodological theories on people’s training from Greek classical times. My hypothesis is that liberal arts was the basic syllabus in Western -and westernized- educaion for more than a millennium in such a way that results of their training precisely involved to mixing methods. In return, to understand the liberal arts in the light of mixing methods shows new aspects of their historical interest. I study the theoretical basis of this syllabus from Cicero to Alcuin. More important for future research, I conclude that Alcuin’s thesis about the correspondence between the gifts of the Holy Spiritu and the seven liberal arts can be extended to the Aristotelian dianoethics habits and to Dilthey’s 20th-century sciences of mind. (shrink)

This paper summarizes paired courses, a technique that is being used to incorporate the benefits of liberal arts into the business curriculum. This technique pairs a required business course with a liberal arts course that students take concurrently during a semester. The courses have overlapping themes and activities to build specific competencies that are desired by organizations, such as communication, critical thinking and problem solving, emotional intelligence, and organizational professionalism. These competencies are identified by exploring national (...) surveys and conducting a local survey of business professionals. The paired courses utilize a variety of exercises with the ultimate goals of building desired workplace-related skills in students and improving their practical reasoning ability. The exercises do this by strengthening students’ analytical thinking, understanding of multiple framing, and reflective exploration of meaning through various techniques. Many of the activities are explained in detail with some additional resources provided. Teachers can utilize the same activities or adapt them to their classroom. (shrink)

After showing how pragmatist aesthetics and Marcuse's critical theory affirm aesthetic education as key to transforming society toward greater freedom, equality, pleasure, and fulfillment, I compare the ways these two approaches differently perceive the scope and role of aesthetics in such transformation. Whereas Marcuse identifies the aesthetic dimension with the realm of high art, pragmatism understands this dimension far more broadly to include the popular arts and somaesthetic arts of living. Because Marcuse identifies art's critical function through (...) its oppositional transcendence and autonomy from ordinary reality and practical life, he insists that aesthetics cannot directly contribute to transformative praxis in the real world but can operate only indirectly by transforming our sensibilities. Pragmatist aesthetics, particularly though somaesthetics, resolves the dilemma in Marcuse's aesthetics of liberation by bridging the alleged gap between aesthetics and praxis by reeducating our sensibilities in a more direct, practical, embodied way. The article further exemplifies the overlaps and differences between Marcuse's critical theory and pragmatist somaesthetics by focusing on erotic experience, which is essential to Marcuse's liberational program and increasingly present in somaesthetics’ concern with aesthetic reeducation of our senses and sensibilities. (shrink)

Critical realism is the middle road between the extreme versions of constructivism and objectivism. It is applied here to liberal arts education in general, and specifically to liberal arts education for learners of English. Critical realism can help promote greater coherence in liberal education, and educators can apply critical realism as they develop a unified and purposeful curriculum of liberal arts content for learners of English. Critical realism also influences how (...) teachers perceive the learning environment, and it affects how educators think about learner and teacher beliefs regarding education. Moreover, critical realism can influence education in moral and political terms, enabling educators to critically infuse moral realism into the study of the liberal arts and sciences. (shrink)

Using Australia to illustrate the case, in this paper it is argued that the transformation of universities into businesses and the undermining of the liberal arts is motivated by either contempt for or outright hostility to democracy. This is associated with a global managerial revolution that is enslaving nations and people to the global market and the corporations that dominate it. The struggle within universities is the site of a struggle to reverse the gains of the Radical Enlightenment, (...) the tradition of Enlightenment that, committed to upholding and developing the civic humanism of the Renaissance, strove for liberty, understood as democratic self-governance. The central place the liberal arts had in upholding this liberty is shown. Inspired by the Ancient Greek notion of paideia, the liberal arts, which originated in republican Rome, was the form of education required designed for free people, in opposition to the specialist education appropriate for slaves, to inspire them to maintain their liberty and enable them to govern themselves. While not always upholding this ideal, it is argued in this paper that the liberal arts always kept alive this quest for liberty, bequeathing this quest to the Renaissance philosophers and to the proponents of the Radical Enlightenment. With managerialism and the undermining of democracy, such education and the questioning, creative people it produced, are now seen as a threat to the new global corporatocracy who, to achieve cultural hegemony, have coöpted university managers and academics to impose their agenda to cripple the liberal arts. Their goal, never fully articulated as such but successfully prosecuted, is a dumbed-down population. (shrink)

Public reason liberalism is the political theory which holds that coercive laws and policies are justified when and only when they are grounded in reasons of the public. The standard interpretation of public reason liberalism, consensus accounts, claim that the reasons persons share or that persons can derive from shared values determine which policies can be justified. In this paper, I argue that consensus approaches cannot justify fair educational policies and preserving cultural goods. Consensus approaches can resolve some controversies about (...) teaching values in the educational system, such as curriculum choice. But they cannot determine which culture goods, e.g., architecture, artwork, or language ought to be preserved in the education system. Consensus approaches cannot fairly resolve competing claims about these kinds of disputes. -/- I propose that convergence accounts of public reason, which allow individuals to draw on their own comprehensive doctrines in limited ways, can remedy these weaknesses in the mainline public reason tradition. The convergence approach can justify a pluralist state that can advance valuable community goods. John Henry Newman’s advocacy of liberal arts education finds resonance in other cultures, notably among Confucians, illustrating that there can be a shared moral vision and inquiry into the good life across deep substantive disagreements about educational values and policies, once we expand our notion of justification to be more inclusive. (shrink)

The question at hand is whether or not a liberal arts education can be politically neutral, but the very fact that this question is phrased in the curious manner that it is, which is to say that we place emphasis on "can" as opposed to "is" or "how we might better ensure," speaks to the nature of a problem that much more deeply rooted than the mere question of scholarly polarization. Borrowing from Christopher Schlect of New Saint (...) Andrews College, we might say that the "liberal arts teach us how to learn—how to freely gain knowledge and understanding," and that the manner in which they do this is by teaching students not only methodologies for solving problems that are presented to them, but also how to identify problems of their own accord (79). That would mean, by definition, that a political neutral liberal arts curriculum would necessitate not only an active awareness of one's ethical orientation, but also an active tempering of the biases that accompany that orientation out of respect for the spirit of liberalism and in recognition of one's own fallible nature. Unfortunately, since, as I intend to illustrate, our moral and therefore political senses are similar to aesthetic taste as described by Kant in his third critique, they carry with them the paradoxicality of pure subjectivity tethered to the expectation of universality, making the possibility of political neutrality in the liberal arts a grim proposition, to put it at its absolute mildest. In order to determine whether this problem is in any way manageable, it is necessary to analyze of the nature of moral and political taste in a general sense, the rhetoric that educator use toward members of opposing moral frameworks, how that rhetoric is buttressed by institutional teloi, and finally, how different systems of normative ethics might contribute to neutrality in the liberal arts. (shrink)

For over forty years, Leland Ryken has championed and modeled a Christian liberal arts education. His scholarship and commitment to integrating faith with learning in the classroom have influenced thousands of students who have sat under his winsome teaching. Published in honor of Professor Ryken and presented on the occasion of his retirement from Wheaton College, this compilation carries on his legacy of applying a Christian liberal arts education to all areas of life. Five (...) sections explore the background of a Christian liberal arts education, its theological basis, habits and virtues, differing approaches, and ultimate aims. Contributors including Philip Ryken, Jeffry Davis, Duane Litfin, John Walford, Alan Jacobs, and Jim Wilhoit analyze liberal arts as they relate to the disciplines, the Christian faith, and the world. Also included are a transcript of a well-known 1984 chapel talk delivered by Leland Ryken on the student's calling and practical chapters on how to read, write, and speak well. Comprehensive in scope, this substantial volume will be a helpful guide to anyone involved in higher education, as well as to students, pastors, and leaders looking for resources on the importance of faith in learning. - Publisher. (shrink)

가다머에게 독서는 내면에 이르는 과정이며 이해와 해석의 기술 문제가 아니라 자기이해의 문제이다. 이해와 해석의 궁극적 목적은 자기이해이다. 독서에서 이해-해석-적용의 해석학적 경험과 실천이 ‘최종적’인 것이 아니듯이 자기이해도 ‘미완결된 과정의 연속’이다. 이와 같은 의미에서 독서는 자기이해를 위한 하나의 통로이며 타자이해-세계이해의 토대이기도 하다. 가다머의 해석학적 관점에서 현재의 교양독서교육은 자기형성으로서의 교양개념과 가다머의 자기이해로서의 독서개념에 입각해 본래의 목적성을 회복해야 한다. 교양 독서교육은 자기형성과 자기이해에 반하는 ‘관리되는 독서’를 지향하며 ‘권장도서 중심 독서에서 자유독서로’, ‘지식과 학습을 위한 독서에서 탐구를 위한 독서로’, ‘독백적 독서에서 공동의 언어를 창조하는 대화와 토론의 (...) 독서’로 교육의 무게 중심을 옮겨야 한다. 가다머의 해석학적 사유에서 열린 독서, 비판적 독서, 문제제기식 독서, 깊이 읽기와 같은 교양독서교육의 이론적 전거와 방향을 찾을 수 있다. (shrink)

This book examines the promise of and issues related to preparing teachers for cultural diversity through community engagement in the liberal arts colleges. The field of teacher education and small liberal arts colleges will find in Teacher Education, Diversity, and Community Engagement in Liberal Arts Colleges an excellent reason to enact purposeful change and transformation.

The democratic backsliding that has accelerated across the globe over the past decade has included a rollback of liberal arts and sciences (LAS) as a system of university education. This essay explores the origins and goals of the global LAS education reform movement. I argue that while the movement is under threat largely due to its principled value of educating democratic citizens, it still has powerful potential and global impact; in part because LAS education is (...) primarily an indigenous phenomenon adapting to local circumstances. I also argue that U.S. universities could contribute more constructively to the movement if they conceived of their role as global civic actors that conduct themselves in the spirit of mutuality and reciprocity, not as multinational corporations that channel neoliberal tendencies to maximize revenue. U.S. critics of the global LAS movement should also pay heed to the United States’ own history. Specifically, they can learn from historically Black colleges and universities how, operating under the extreme authoritarianism of the Jim Crow era, they managed to produce leaders who shaped a more democratic country. Liberal arts education produces short term benefits for students and alumni, but in the democratic context it is a long-term wager. (shrink)

This essay explores the future of the liberal arts by investigating the visions of the future assumed respectively in the institutions of specialized and general education. The core dichotomy is between the specialized, which is instrumentality useful for a closed future, against the general, which is inherently valuable for an open future. The author doubts that educators can prioritize, in a single pedagogy, both inspiring people to freedom (liberal education) and preparing people to fit into (...) an economic or academic niche (professional education). This frames a critique of LEAP'S rationale for higher education, although the value of particular classroom practices therein is affirmed. With reference to Freire and Seery, the essay proposes that theory per se presents the best mode for teaching toward an open future. The value of such teaching would be "potential," neither usable nor exchangeable, instrumental nor inherent. (shrink)

“THE ONLY THING NECESSARY IS NOT THEORETICAL LEARNING, but the Bildung of human beings, both in regard to their talents and their character.” Kant’s epigrammatic observation in his 1778 letter to Christian Wolke, director of the Philanthropin, adumbrates not only his mature sense of “enlightenment” but also the pedagogical role of his critical philosophy and his own life’s work. Over a decade earlier, his reading of Rousseau’s Emile: or, On Education had “set him straight” about what constitutes the true (...) dignity of humanity, namely, that it did not consist in the advance of knowledge by scholarly inquiry as he had believed. The primary thing was, instead, the “restoration of the rights of humanity,” an objective articulated in Kant’s mature moral thought as that pedagogical method which facilitates the self-consciousness and efficacy of the moral law in the individual. In another 1778 letter, this time to his former student, Marcus Herz, Kant states that the “main purpose of his academic life,” which he “at all times keeps before him,” is to “cultivate good characters.” In both his lectures on anthropology and on pedagogy, Kant repeatedly emphasizes the need for education and, by extension, for attending to the education of the educator. Human beings are nothing save what education makes of them, but they can only be educated by other human beings who must themselves first be educated. As early as his 1775/ 76 anthropology lectures, Kant observes that “if teachers and priests were educated, if the concepts of pure morality would prevail among them, then... the whole could afterwards be educated.” The resulting task is clear: it is incumbent on every generation to work on the plan of a more purposive education,” a task Kant describes as the “greatest and most difficult problem that can be assigned to humankind.”. (shrink)

What good is art? What is the point of a university education? Can philosophers contribute anything to social liberation? Such questions, both ancient and urgent, are the pulse of reformational philosophy. Inspired by the vision of the Dutch religious and political leader Abraham Kuyper, reformational philosophy pursues social transformation for the common good. In this companion volume to Religion, Truth, and Social Transformation, Lambert Zuidervaart presents a socially engaged philosophy of the arts and higher education. Interacting with (...) the ideas of leading Kuyperian thinkers such as Calvin Seerveld and Nicholas Wolterstorff, Zuidervaart shows why renewal in the arts needs to coincide with political and economic transformation. He also calls for education and research that serve the common good. Deeply rooted in reformational philosophy, his book brings a fresh and inspiring voice to current discussions of religious aesthetics and Christian scholarship. Art, Education, and Cultural Renewal is a testament to the practical and intellectual richness of a unique religious tradition, compelling in its call for social solidarity and cultural critique. (shrink)

Based upon the author's twenty-five years of experience leading seminars concerning the history of liberal education, this collection presents a uniquely comprehensive and salient set of documents, ranging from Plato to Martha Nussbaum, while incorporating the neglected portrayal and discussion of women within the history of the liberal arts.

Much innovation has taken place in the development of medical schools and licensure exam processes across the African continent. Still, little attention has been paid to education that enables the multidisciplinary, critical thinking needed to understand and help shape the larger social systems in which health care is delivered. Although more than half of medical schools in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States offer at least one medical humanities course, this is less common in Africa. We report (...) on the “liberal arts approach” to medical curricula undertaken by the University of Global Health Equity beginning in 2019. The first six-month semester of the curriculum, called Foundations in Social Medicine, includes courses in critical thinking and communication, African history and global political economy, medical anthropology and social medicine, psychology and health, gender and social justice, information technology and health, and community-based training. Additionally, an inquiry-based pedagogy with relatively small classes is featured within an overall institutional culture that emphasizes health equity. We identify key competencies for physicians interested in pursuing global health equity and how such competencies relate to liberal arts integration into the African medical school curriculum and pedagogical approach. We conclude with a call for a research agenda that can better evaluate the impact of such innovations on physicians’ education and subsequent practices. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

The question whether the study of education and teacher education belong at a liberal arts college deserves careful consideration. In this essay Bruce Kimball analyzes and finds unpersuasive the three principled rationales that are most often advanced on behalf of excluding educational studies, teacher education, or both from a liberal arts college. Specifically, Kimball argues that no principled definition of the conventional liberal arts disciplines excludes the study of education without (...) barring other fields now regarded as legitimate, and consistency demands that all such fields be excluded if any are. In addition, teacher education, even if considered as merely “craft know-how” or as professional training, cannot be excluded from liberal arts colleges without arbitrarily classifying it as suspect and subjecting it to strict scrutiny. But the question of whether educational studies or teacher education fit any asserted definition of liberal education does not finally resolve the question of whether they belong in a liberal arts college. Kimball concludes by suggesting that there are moral and prudential reasons for liberal arts colleges to offer teacher education and, concomitantly, the study of education, even apart from the unpersuasive objections that they do not fit a definition of liberal education. (shrink)

There is a new myth of the heterogeneous that is reducing the concept of humanity to a sinful enlightenment. In this article I investigate the contribution that a renewed understanding of liberal arts education might offer for the idea of a humanist education and for the concept of humanity; and this at a time when not only the concept of humanity per se, and of a humanist education in particular are suspected of Western imperialism and (...) rational logocentrism, but also, in England at least, when the tuition fees of humanities students have trebled. I argue that within a concept of modern metaphysics first principles are re-formed to have their universality in instability and struggle. This instability and struggle is the modern culture of rational education, and speaks of a non-abstract comprehension of two of modernity’s most contested terms: freedom and humanity. (shrink)

From the perspective of a recent graduate, this article offers a critique of non-STEM higher education in England as unfit for purpose. Whilst universities blindly focus on employability, transferable skills and narrow bands of subject knowledge, the economic world around them has collapsed into absurdity. The graduate today is now faced with economic, social and cultural precarity which is unreflected in the rigid structures and narrow focus of their degree. This article seeks a radical return to the ancient principles (...) of a liberal arts education. Far from this being regressive, I argue that this education can and should be reclaimed and reinvigorated by the flexibility, difficulty and complexity of modern philosophy. Drawing on both Zygmunt Bauman’s liquid modernity and Nigel Tubbs' modern metaphysics, this article argues that higher education is far from obsolete but that its continuing relevance in late Capitalism can only arise from a return to the questions of how graduates can best thrive i... (shrink)

As the classic of classics and the bridge between pagan antiquity and the Christian era, Virgil’s Aeneid stands at the center of the humanities’ Great Conversation. Yet this poem of Empire, with its flawed hero and its ambivalence toward divine and temporal power, raises more questions than it answers about the nature of human history. The epic’s true moral complexity, mirroring the insoluble conundrum that is human life, makes it especially relevant in an era whose political polarization resembles civil war. (...) Reflecting on centuries of readers’ deeply personal relationships with the Aeneid, this article discusses how even today the “greatest text” can provide companionship and inspiration on our life’s journey. (shrink)

Higher education is seeing renewed calls for strengthening ethics education, yet there remains a dearth of research on the state of ethics education across undergraduate curricula. Research about ethics in higher education tends to be localized and often isolated to fields of graduate study. In contribution to a contemporary, landscape understanding of ethics education, we collected data on the placement and prevalence of ethics instruction within the general education curricula at 507 major U.S. colleges (...) and universities. Our findings suggest that 1) most schools in our study’s population do not explicitly require ethics as a part of their general education curricula; and 2) a school’s religiosity and research status are positively associated with explicitly requiring ethics instruction for its undergraduate student body. (shrink)

In the first part of this paper I explore a recently conceived notion of a modern liberal arts education which brings the ancient Aristotelian search for first principles into a modern metaphysics of Kant and Hegel. In the second part I examine two ways in which this modern conception of a liberal arts education intervenes in important social and political debates in Western culture. My concluding comments centre on the belief that twenty-first-century liberal (...) arts education needs to provide more resistance to a culture of capitalism by orienting itself to the tradition from a modern standpoint. (shrink)

This essay explores the conceptual foundations of C. S. Lewis' pilgrimage to a Christian worldview and its implications for Christian scholarship in the Third Millennium. C. S. Lewis' essential Christian worldview has three distinct yet complementary strands: The Tao, Natural Law, or the moral sense; the ecumenical inspiration of Mere Christianity; and the quest for truth and authentic values in the real world. These three strands converge in Lewis' own pilgrimage and witness to the immediacy and relevance of religious experience. (...) Curiously, the reality and truth of the Christian vision finds eloquent exposition in Lewis' lucid prose In the recounting of this consummate storyteller, the Christian worldview emerges as both real and transcendental or "numinous," whose truth is found in historical evidences and lived experience. It is for this reason that Lewis is aptly called an apostle to the sceptics. Lewis' literary imagination thus provides inspiration for a Christian humanist paideia as propaedeutic to renew both liberal arts education and the culture of liberalism. (shrink)

I argue that there is an important problem with framing the value of a liberal arts education through a contrast between intrinsic and instrumental value. The paper breaks down into three sections. First, I argue that the traditional divide between intrinsic and instrumental value conflates two pairs of related concepts and that distinguishing those concepts frees us from an important impasse found in contemporary discussions about the liberal arts. Second, I argue that a liberal (...) arts education is only intelligible as a practice if we value it for its own sake. Third, I explain how we can value a liberal arts education as an end even if we reject the possibility of intrinsic value. I conclude with a brief statement of the practical implications my account has for the way we approach the liberal arts. (shrink)

The Liberal Arts model of undergraduate education within small, internationally-focused University Colleges is becoming increasingly popular in Europe. This trend is most notable in the Netherlands, where the liberal arts model is acclaimed as filling a gap in Dutch undergraduate education at conventional research universities. This paper explores the status of the Dutch University College as simultaneously continuing the liberal arts tradition of the US, with its civic and pedagogic values, and providing (...) a truly modern education preparing students to find innovative and inter-disciplinary solutions to the complex problems which define contemporary society. It concludes that the traditional role of a liberal arts education in cultivating intellectual rather than vocation skills does not have to exclude its appeal as providing the skills necessary for professional success in global sectors of the 21 st century knowledge economy. (shrink)

The term liberal arts is widely used but seldom defined. While casual usage allows license for flexibility, academics should exercise care with terms that probe the vitals of their calling. This paper proposes a workable definition of liberal arts. It draws upon historical usage to address several concerns that figure into such a definition: it clarifies what an art is, it differentiates arts from sciences, it distinguishes liberal arts from other arts, and (...) it also distinguishes liberal arts from humanities. Alternative definitions may also be viable, but only if they duly recognize historical usage and differentiate the term liberal arts from terms related to it. (shrink)