Liberal arts education

Liberal arts education (from Latin liberalis 'free' and ars 'art or principled practice') can claim to be the oldest programme of higher education in Western history. It has its origin in the attempt to discover first principles – 'those universal principles which are the condition of the possibility of the existence of anything and everything'. Liberal arts education (from Latin liberalis 'free' and ars 'art or principled practice') can claim to be the oldest programme of higher education in Western history. It has its origin in the attempt to discover first principles – 'those universal principles which are the condition of the possibility of the existence of anything and everything'. The liberal arts, also known as the seven liberal arts, are those subjects or skills that in classical antiquity were considered essential for a free person (liberalis, 'worthy of a free person') to know in order to take an active part in civic life, something that (for ancient Greece) included participating in public debate, defending oneself in court, serving on juries, and most importantly, military service. Grammar, logic, and rhetoric were the core liberal arts (the trivium), while arithmetic, geometry, the theory of music, and astronomy were the following stage of education (as the quadrivium). Liberal arts today can refer to academic subjects such as literature, philosophy, mathematics, and social and physical sciences; and liberal arts education can refer to overall studies in a liberal arts degree program. For both interpretations, the term generally refers to matters not relating to the professional, vocational, or technical curriculum. Rooted in the basic curriculum – the enkuklios paideia or 'education in a circle' – of late Classical and Hellenistic Greece, the 'liberal arts' or 'liberal pursuits' (Latin liberalia studia) were already so called in formal education during the Roman Empire. The first recorded use of the term 'liberal arts' (artes liberales) occurs in De Inventione by Marcus Tullius Cicero, but it is unclear if he created the term. Seneca the Younger discusses liberal arts in education from a critical Stoic point of view in Moral Epistles. The exact classification of the liberal arts varied however in Roman times, and it was only after Martianus Capella in the 5th century AD influentially brought the seven liberal arts as bridesmaids to the Marriage of Mercury and Philology, that they took on canonical form. The four 'scientific' artes – music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy (or astrology) – were known from the time of Boethius onwards as the quadrivium. After the 9th century, the remaining three arts of the 'humanities' – grammar, logic, and rhetoric – were grouped as the trivium. It was in that two-fold form that the seven liberal arts were studied in the medieval Western university. During the Middle Ages, logic gradually came to take predominance over the other parts of the trivium. In the 12th century the iconic image - Philosophia et septem artes liberales - or Philosophy and seven liberal arts was produced by Alsatian nun and abbess Herrad of Landsberg with her community of women as part of the Hortus deliciarum. Their encyclopedia compiled ideas drawn from philosophy, theology, literature, music, arts, and sciences and was intended as a teaching tool for women of the abbey. Compiled between 1167 and 1185 it contained humanity’s most significant ideas. The image ‘Philosophy and seven liberal arts’ represents the circle of philosophy, and is presented as a rosette of a cathedral: a central circle and a series of semicircles arranged all around. It shows learning and knowledge organised into seven relations, the Septem Artes Liberales or Seven Liberal Arts. Each of these arts find their source in the Greek φιλοσοφία, philosophia, literally “love of wisdom”. In the Renaissance, the Italian humanists and their Northern counterparts, despite in many respects continuing the traditions of the Middle Ages, reversed that process. Re-christening the old trivium with a new and more ambitious name: Studia humanitatis, and also increasing its scope, they downplayed logic as opposed to the traditional Latin grammar and rhetoric, and added to them history, Greek, and moral philosophy (ethics), with a new emphasis on poetry as well. The educational curriculum of humanism spread throughout Europe during the sixteenth century and became the educational foundation for the schooling of European elites, the functionaries of political administration, the clergy of the various legally recognized churches, and the learned professions of law and medicine. The ideal of a liberal arts, or humanistic education grounded in classical languages and literature, persisted until the middle of the twentieth century. Some subsections of the liberal arts are in the trivium – the verbal arts of grammar, logic, and rhetoric – and other parts are in the quadrivium – the numerical arts of music, astronomy, and arithmetic, and the graphical and mathematical art of Geometry. Each subsection includes the analysis and interpretation of information.