How to Value the Liberal Arts for Their Own Sake Without Intrinsic Values

The Liberal Arts

In ancient Greece and Rome, a liberal arts education was for men who were not slaves. It taught free men to exist skilful citizens, that is, to live freely and responsibly, so that they could remain free all of their lives.¹ The premise of the liberal arts is that education will aid homo existence in living good lives, both for themselves and the common good, the good of society.^two The ii-fold purpose of the liberal arts, then, is to "seek noesis for its own sake," for truth is good in itself, and the application of knowledge to enrich one'south own life, besides every bit the lives of others.³

Originating from the Human Heed

The liberal arts are different from the material arts, which are formed out of matter and, thus, from human easily.^four Liberal arts are costless from matter, that is, they are formed from the human heed. For example, a oral communication is made or equanimous by the human mind, even if it is written on paper. Other examples are literature, music and logic, all of which originate, first, from the mind and may later exist written on material information.^five

Disciplines within the Liberal Arts

Today, the liberal arts include a broad range of disciplines, such as the study of rhetoric (public speaking), writing, literature, mathematics, history, political science, didactics, philosophy, theology, religion, scientific discipline, psychology, sociology, culture, anthropology, the arts, theater, music and physical education. The purpose of such studies is to requite students a well-rounded education, allowing them to become generalists in knowledge, while at the same fourth dimension, focusing on a specific bailiwick for their degree, allowing them to become specialists in knowledge.^vi

Non a Vocational Instruction

The liberal arts should non be confused with vocational instruction, which prepares a person for an occupation, such every bit becoming a carpenter, plumber or an electrician. The primary focus of vocational education is "What tin I do with my grooming?" Nevertheless, the main focus of a liberal arts educational activity is the shaping of "a person's understanding and values."⁷

The question nearly studying the liberal arts is not "What can I do with it?" That reduces knowledge to an instrumental value or a useful art. Rather, the right question most the liberal arts is "What can information technology do to me?" That supposes the intrinsic or innate value of knowledge. In other words, it is good in itself, needing no applied justification.⁸

The Humanities

Situated in the liberal arts, and virtually equivalent to them, is the studia humanitatis, "studies of humanity" or the humanities. They represent the man person's concern with man beings and their human being globe.⁹ The humanities, then, are the products of human creativity.¹⁰ In short, they are from humans and for them. The humanities teach about homo beings – morally, economically, artistically, politically, religiously and in countless other ways – at their best and worst.

For Christians, the humanities are due to the imago Dei, the "epitome of God" in the man person. God is the Creator, and thus, the author of creativity. Because human persons are made in his prototype, they reflect, in a finite style, the creativity of their Creator.¹¹ They can create, because they are made in the image of their Creator.

The humanities have a special meaning for Christians. As philosopher Arthur Holmes says, "Nosotros are to image [reflect] God in all our creaturely activities, our cultural existence and every phase of our humanity. To image God in the fulness of our humanity is our highest calling."¹² In brusque, Christianity rejects nothing that is genuinely human. Sin, however, is non genuinely man. Rather, it is a distortion of the human being will, a homo abnormality or abnormality.

The Fragmentation of Knowledge

Today, colleges and universities endure from the fragmentation of truth. They are producing specialists. In the words of Christian apologist Francis Schaeffer,

"In our modern forms of specialized educational activity there is a tendency to lose the whole in the parts, and in this sense we tin say that our generation produces few truly educated people. True education means thinking by associating across the various disciplines, and non just existence highly qualified in one field, as a technician might exist."¹³

Knowledge is interrelated. But it is up to the student to integrate or come across the connection betwixt dissimilar areas of study. Schaeffer continues,

"Today we take a weakness in our educational procedure in failing to understand the natural associations betwixt the disciplines. We tend to study all our disciplines in unrelated parallel lines. This tends to be true in both Christian and secular education. … We have studied our exegesis equally exegesis, our theology equally theology, our philosophy as philosophy; we study something about art as art; we written report music equally music, without agreement that these are things of human, and the things of human being are never unrelated parallel lines."¹⁴

Today'due south Multiversity

Dissimilar the Christian concept of a medieval university, today'south university is really a multiversity. It has no unifying earth view or point of integration.^fifteen Information technology is literally disintegrated, with fragmented departments of knowledge. According to theologian R. C. Sproul,

"The students' schedules are filled with liberal arts courses which expose them to wide variety of academic disciplines. Simply these disciplines accept no apparent cohesion with each other. Students move from lecture to lecture, arresting differing and oft mutually exclusive views. The information they glean about their own humanity incites … confusion. In psychology, ane view; in biology, another; in philosophy … [nonetheless another]."¹⁶

In brusque, in many modern universities, there is incoherence, diverseness without a source of unity.

Academy: Diverseness inside Unity

A Christian university is patterned after the concept of the medieval academy. Like a universe, a academy, in Sproul's words,

"[was] a place where the many (diversity) come up together into the unified whole (unity). The working assumption was that all various particulars of knowledge discovered and analyzed in the specialized academic disciplines, institute their coherence in God. It was the unifying power of theology that elevated her to the queen of sciences, being assisted by her metaphysical handmaiden philosophy."¹⁷

A Christian university, then, consists of diversity in unity and is structured "on the premise that all knowledge is ultimately coherent and unified."^xviii Such a academy "retains a unifying Christian globe-view and brings it to behave in agreement and participating in the various arts and sciences, likewise as in not-academic aspects of campus life."¹⁹ For a Christian academy or college, the source of integration is the Christian concept of God.

God the Creator is the author of sacred (spiritual) and secular (natural or pertaining to the world and man beings) truth, whether already discovered or yet to be discovered by humans. That is to say, all truth is God's truth, no affair where or by whom information technology may be found.^twenty The humanities, and so, Christianly understood, discover the truth of God's world, especially the truth about homo beings.

Christian Humanism

Withal, Christian universities do not teach that man beings possess the highest value of all that exists. That is reserved for God, the Supreme Being, the only One who is worthy of worship (from the Old English words worth transport). In other words, humans exercise non have ultimate value, because simply an Ultimate Beingness, God, does. Withal, out of all the creatures of the world, the creation, God gives humans the highest intrinsic value, making them highest in beingness.²¹ That is why they are worth studying, understanding and loving.

Endnotes

^oneArthur F. Holmes, The Idea of a Christian College (Chiliad Rapids, MI.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1975), p. 35.

ⁱⁱAnon. 2019. Liberal Arts: What is Liberal Pedagogy? Christendom Higher. [Web:] https://www.christendom.edu/academics/liberal-arts/ [Date of admission: 7 September 2012].

ⁱⁱⁱPeter Kreeft, The Best Things in Life (Downers Grove, IL.: InterVarsity Printing, 1984), p. 31.

⁴Mortimer J. Adler, The Corking Ideas: From the Great Books of Western Culture, ed. Max Weismann (Chicago and La Salle, IL.: Open up Courtroom Publishing Company, 2000, five^th press 2002), pp. 242-243, 245.

⁵Ibid. 246. In antiquity, the liberal arts were divided into two parts, namely, the trivium and quadrivium, consisting of seven areas of study. The trivium consisted of grammar, logic and rhetoric. The quadrivium consisted of arithmetics, geometry, music and astronomy.

⁶Anon. 2003-2012. What is the Difference between Liberal Arts and Liberal Sciences? Learn.org. [Web:] http://degreedirectory.org/articles/What_is_the_Difference_Between_Liberal_Arts_and_Liberal_Sciences.html [Engagement of access: 17 September 2019].

⁷Arthur F. Holmes, The Idea of a Christian College, op. cit., p. 36.

⁸Ibid., p. 37.

^nineMortimer J. Adler. 2008-2009. The Mortimer J. Adler Archive: Aristotle's Ethics — The Theory of Happiness, Part I. The Radical Academy. [Web:] http://radicalacademy.org/adleraristotleethics1.html [Date of access: 17 September 2019].

¹⁰Francis A. Schaeffer, The Consummate Works of Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Worldview, Vol. 5: A Christian View of the West, 2^nd ed. (Westchester, IL.: Crossway Books,1982), p. 427.

¹¹Ibid.

¹²Arthur F. Holmes, The Idea of a Christian Higher, p. 35.

¹³Francis A. Schaeffer, The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer, A Christian Worldview, Vol. 1: A Christian View of Philosophy and Civilisation, two^nd ed. (Westchester, IL.: Crossway Books,1982), p. 12.

^xivIbid., p. 211.

¹⁵Arthur F. Holmes, The Idea of a Christian College, p. nineteen.

¹⁶R. C. Sproul, John Gerstner and Art Lindsley, Classical Apologetics: A Rational Defense of the Christian Faith and a Critique of Presuppositional Apologetics (One thousand Rapids, MI.: Academie Books/Zondervan Publishing House, 1984), p. 10.

¹⁷Ibid., pp. 9-x.

^eighteenIbid., p. nine.

¹⁹Arthur F. Holmes, The Idea of a Christian College, p. 19.

^xxIbid., pp. 24-25.

²¹Norman L. Geisler, Is Man the Measure? An Evaluation of Contemporary Humanism (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1988), p. 123.

bishopsullightse.blogspot.com

Source: https://lentsblog.org/2019/09/18/christianity-the-liberal-arts-and-the-humanities/

Bagikan Artikel ini