What are the Liberal Arts?
“The world, in all its diversity, is eager to be guided towards the great values of mankind, truth, good[ness] and beauty; now more than ever… Teaching means to accompany young people in their search for truth and beauty, for what is right and good.”
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Congregation for Catholic Education. 2014. “Educating Today and Tomorrow: A Renewing Passion"
A Philosophy of Knowledge and Education
Traditionally, Western civilisation has viewed the study of the liberal arts to be essential in the formation of a holistic person, the character and the intellect. The ancient Greeks viewed these disciplines as vital in the formation of the ‘democratic man,’ able to make decisions for the good of society. The Greeks distinguished between different types of knowledge; the "liberal arts" (or "arts of freedom") were considered essential for a free citizen, including subjects such as grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Through the study of these, students became apprentices of virtue, developing a fluency in critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and civic responsibility.
In modern times, these seven arts are often categorised into four key subjects: the natural sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities. A liberal arts education draws on these areas to build the foundation of one’s entire life, providing a student with the skills of critical analysis and holistic thinking needed for a purposeful vocation, providing a robust basis for both further study and for life.
St. John Henry Newman
According to the thesis of renowned 19th-century scholar St John Henry Newman, titled The Idea of a University, a foundation created by a liberal arts education is essential for the development of well-rounded, intellectually capable individuals. Such an education would prepare a student not exclusively for specialisation in a vocational field, but instead the intellectual virtues of various, necessary, and broadly applicable fields required for the understanding of higher things.
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In this way, correctly understood, the study of the liberal arts is more important, as it is more fundamental than those vocational studies.
Why a Catholic, or Western liberal arts?
Naturally, the liberal arts involves reading texts all through the periods of antiquity to the modern world. To fully delve into these texts and the development of thinking at the time, it’s important to adopt the period’s mode of thinking and intellectual environment. Catholicism and the Christian tradition is at the forefront of many of these movements. The study of the liberal arts always leads the student to the deep questions of life, to those metaphysical questions which deal with the fundamental nature of existence. It inclines a student’s mind to that in life which is truly meaningful. The study of the liberal arts through the lens of Christianity allows for an authentic understanding, placing them against the backdrop in which they were originally envisioned.
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The liberal arts use the lenses of truth, goodness and beauty to evaluate the subject under consideration. These three elements are often understood as being among the “transcendentals,” the timeless and universal attributes of being. They are the properties of all beings. They reflect the divine origin of all things and the unity of all truth and reality in God, and are among the deepest realities. They help unite men across time and culture and are often a delight to explore and discuss because they are substantive to our very nature. The transcendentals of truth, beauty, and goodness are closely intertwined
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​Dubay (1999) observed that, “Truth beauty and goodness have their being together, by truth we are put in touch with reality which we find is good for us and beautiful to behold. In our knowing, loving and delighting the gift of reality appears to us as something infinitely and in-exhaustively valuable and fascinating.”