Is twenty-first-century liberal arts modern?

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• Modern liberal arts
• philosophy
• first principles
• education in itself
• leadership
• freedom

Notes

1. The University of Winchester was the first to (re-)introduce an undergraduate liberal arts programme in England in September 2010. I graduated from this BA Modern Liberal Arts in 2016.

2. I note too the slow but steady appearance of Liberal Arts programmes in Asia and Latin America.

3. See James (2002).

4. I am taking the definition of Liberal Arts here to be that which presents a fruitful contradiction: liberalis, free and ars, art or principled practice.

5. Here, I am summarising the argument for modern metaphysics made in Tubbs (2014).

6. See, for example, Theaetetus.

7. See n5.

8. Which is also why Hegel asks in the Phenomenology ‘whether this fear of error is not just the error itself?’ (Hegel, 1977, p. 47).

9. For more details here see Tubbs (2014) chapter 5.

10. I am aware of the limits of critiquing programmes solely on their ‘marketing materials’. However, this rhetoric is what students read in choosing programmes, and is what the programmes choose to say about themselves.

11. This is all too clear in the current debates between Trump and Clinton (October 2016).

12. This issue is often rehearsed in the USA between supporters of core curricula and supporters of electives.

13. Not, note, a teacher of philosophy.

14. It is well known that Apples success relies on a modern-day slavery, see Gibson (2014) Huffington Post How the iPhone Helps Perpetuate Modern-Day Slavery.