Liberal arts have traditionally been identified with the classical ideal of human development and knowledge. The developed individual is expected to have a good appreciation and understanding of the sciences, the humanities, and the arts. Although some academic purists have argued that the ideal of the developed individual is connected with everyday political, social, and psychological concerns.
The emergence of the liberal arts or the arts befitting a free man is closely interwoven with the gradual rise of the commercial classes to a position of political, economic, and cultural dominance. Art is one of the main forms of liberal arts which influences the perception of the world and understanding of its beauty, allows a person to adapt to the new environment, and develops critical thinking skills crucial for economic and business spheres.
A journey through liberal arts has a great impact on my life and life choices. A journey through liberal arts is important for me because it helps to develop knowledge and understanding of the world and its meaning. Art manifests an especially strong inclination toward visibility. For instance, the plastic character of the figures leads to clarity of appearance; visibility is furthered from another quarter by grandeur and simplicity (Giangrande 54).
Relief-like representation is the pictorial style that causes the viewing eye the least effort. The forms in architecture and the pictorial arts are readily comprehensible to the eye. The revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries promoted Greek culture and Roman law and politics in an effort to counteract the political and cultural elitism of aristocratic Europe. Thus, at least on the level of ideology, a theory of culture replaced the aristocratic notion of two cultures, one for the elites and one for the masses. To acquire the arts befitting a free man became considered one of the rights and obligations of citizenship (Giangrande 55).
In my project, I will see art as a science. It can be born only out of full knowledge, a knowledge that relates to the subject as well as to the nature of the representational procedure as such. From this stems, on one hand, the early tendency to establish theoretically the foundations of art and, on the other, that intensive concern with nature in a scientific sense. In many cases, art cannot be pinned down to the concept of “imitation”.
Many painters aim directly at expression and mood, and drawing is to them something other than the projection of a tangible measurable reality. If one wishes to ascribe an expressionistic bent to art, no objection can be made. This means that picture and object need not be identical, that the problem of “correctness” does not exist, or at least not to the same extent, and that what would be a defect in a drawing. ‘A journey through liberal arts’ helps a person to understand the meaning and values of art, its cultural uniqueness, and importance (Camenson 82).
A journey through liberal arts has a great impact on my career choice and further professional development. The capacity of the human mind to impose rational order upon experience and the general progress of history in the direction of reason and freedom were seen to be universal. One could, for the first time, look upon one’s life from a “world-historical” perspective and define the purpose of life in terms of a historical or civilizational mission.
History thus became the foundation of a Liberal arts education. Through history, one could develop empathy with and an understanding of the values realized in the greatest achievements of Western civilization. Liberal art can be seen as a source of moral virtue and knowledge. The specific content of moral knowledge concerns “human nature” and the immutable standards of the good and true (Camenson 31). Moral education is criticized as sill- rather than knowledge-oriented. Skills cannot do justice to moral values because they are mere instruments and are thereby transient (not immutable) (Camenson 31).
Art, as a field of liberal arts, can be seen as second nature. Even in architecture, which does not depend on the representation of a given subject, the connection is maintained. Beautiful proportions lie hidden in nature; the artist must know only how to find them (Curran and Greenwald 63). They are fundamentally related to the proportions of the human body. It is our life that breathes in architecture, and there is no difference in kind between secular and sacred architecture. Natural beauty is of itself divine. It is something different for every people and every period. The feeling for the material nature of things also belongs to the painterly side.
A pronounced plastic taste lays so much stress on geometrically determinable volume that the physical dissimilarities between hard and soft stuff, between shiny and dull surfaces, are neglected. Roman-Florentine art, in particular, is rich in examples of neutral treatment of material, a treatment that has a chilling effect on sensibility (Curran and Greenwald 66).
The critics (Curran and Greenwald 69) wish to inculcate in individuals a particular set of “right” values. Individuals, they argue, should be given the knowledge of genuine ethical values as set down in the classics. Foregoing this fallacious appeal to authority, all the more obvious because the “authorities” themselves disagree on almost every issue, the inculcation of a particular set of values in the manner favored by Camenson (23) is tantamount to indoctrination.
An art education wed to such a paternalistic pedagogy is an inappropriate reaction to the current moral malaise because it sacrifices ethical intelligence for the security of the absolute. This tradeoff would rob both individuals and society of the possibility for moral growth at a time when the ethical problems that confront us demand the highest degree of ethical acuity (Curran and Greenwald 69).
In my project, liberal arts will help me to inculcate habits and imaginative schemas that encourage ethical thinking that is flexible, intelligent, and creative. Such skill in ethical thinking enables the person to comprehend situations from a variety of perspectives so that new means and ends may be instituted in light of new conditions (Curran and Greenwald 92). In the era of globalization, the journey through liberal art is important for employment and changing economy helping a person to understand the world around and develop critical thinking skills. Knowing has less to do with ethical judgments and actions than habits.
This point is supported by the fact that knowledge of what the experts say about ethical values has little effect on making a person ethically superior. Knowledge is largely external to the process of making choices and judgments, so it is no wonder that some people exposed to the ethical ideals of the classical writers still turn out to be scoundrels. The meaning and values espoused in the classical works will no doubt be internalized to some degree by individuals who are exposed to them, but the crucial point is that the pedagogical methods used keep the minds of the people from neglecting to do their own thinking, to engage the authors and texts of the classical traditions as co-inquirers (not as masters to be obeyed)
(Curran and Greenwald 84). This point underscores the most important feature (and responsibility) of a liberal arts institution. The liberal arts institution, in order to promote intellectual inquiry among individuals, must become a “community of inquiry.” Such an ideal highlights two notable characteristics that make a liberal arts curriculum effective in developing the powers of ethical thinking in its individuals; these characteristics are the critical tradition and academic holism.
A trademark of the liberal arts environment is the pursuit of learning through the give-and-take of shared inquiry (Camenson 96). Therefore, the kind of tradition inculcated in individuals in a liberal arts environment is a reflective or critical tradition, one that permits flexible and intelligent handling of subject matter. In such an environment, reflective dispositions are cultivated so that the application of thought to ethical problems may become habitual. Such powers of reflection are not mere tolerance or openness, but empowerment.
A liberal arts community is ideally suited to this end because one can influence the development of imaginative structures only in indirect ways, through participation in the dialogue of the community of inquirers. The liberal arts community encourages such participation by exposing individuals to the problems that confront us as human beings, by bringing individuals within the traditions in a way that liberates possibilities for intelligent activity (Curran and Greenwald 54).
In my project, knowledge about art is important because I learn to participate in the greatness of humanity through studying these arts. History is filled with positive contributions, noble deeds, exemplary words, and admirable characters. Though history may be largely the story of the horror of our past, it is also the tale of the honor of being human. Even philosophy in its plodding cold procedure, beset by obstacles and often bereft of the resolution, awakens our sense of pride and joy in the power of our intellect to see things, including our own limitations, in their true light. Philosophy is the art of becoming honest. The humanities teach us to take part and to take joy, in excellence.
In the moral sphere, we also need to become participants in the moral activity, admiring and praising the many fine examples of moral excellence. We enjoy the heroes of fictional life; we may take joy in the heroes of moral life. Moral activity is too often seen in the uncomfortable light of sad restraint (Camenson 61). The great moral conflicts of life have no easy answers, but the humanities prepare us to face them by seeing clearly the poignant collision of concerns while withstanding the shock. The splendid works of art are to be appreciated for their aesthetic power, but a good part of that power is to lay bare the heart caught in a moral dilemma (Camenson 68).
The journey through liberal arts and art itself can be seen as a part of moral education. Moral education needs to be more than just training and indoctrination into the established moral traditions. The memorization of bits of traditionally sanctified values is far less important than the development of reflective methods. Trying to teach ethical values without teaching individuals how to think, how to creatively engage ethical situations, would be like training a painter with no more than a walking tour of the world’s art galleries (Camenson 84).
The majority of practice in education still treats no more than the product produced, the facts or information known and assumes that simple exposure to expert-tested knowledge from the classics or elsewhere will somehow lead to the general habit of reflective thinking. In attempting to memorize the prefabricated thinking of the expert, the individuals fail to develop the imaginative structures that motivate thinking and demonstrate the relevance of the inquiry to life (Camenson 84).
With respect to an art curriculum, the emphasis should be on the value of classical paintings as sources for funding the imaginative levels of experience because the values they express can be internalized by the individual as imaginative structures that are standards of judgment. The art must be taught in a way that endows the person with the emotional attitude that motivates further reflection and inquiry (Curran and Greenwald 91).
Changing economy and job markets are influenced by critical thinking and decision-making skills. Art is particularly effective in developing the powers of ethical thinking because of the variety of perspectives that are brought to bear on significant issues. Effective thinking occurs where there is the transference of meaning structures from one domain to another. On a larger scale, this transference is encouraged in a liberal arts context, because (ideally) in such a context knowledge and inquiry are not irrevocably fragmented along disciplinary lines.
This feature of the liberal arts environment thus funds the moral imagination by rejecting impenetrable barriers between the domains of meaning represented by the different academic disciplines. As such, structural features of a certain area may be borrowed by analogy or extended metaphorically for use in a different area or with respect to problems that face humanity on a variety of levels (Camenson 67). To be effective, ethical thinking must be developed in a way so that it does not become isolated from other parts of life.
Only the practice of academic holism characteristic of the liberal arts institution can supply the flexible traditions (the imaginative background) for a kind of thinking that is continuous across the diverse subjects (including art as well as mathematics and science). Skills and knowledge learned in isolation will certainly remain so. Where thought remains tied too closely to a single context, where transference from one domain of meaning to another is ignored or retarded, the power of thinking (in ethical areas as elsewhere) is fractured and possibilities for enhancement of meaning are lost (Camenson 38).
In the workplace, art allows a person to understand cultural values and traditions. Despite the discrepancy between civic duty and individual self-interest, the liberal arts remained tied to a democratic theory of culture and citizenship. Cultivation was considered to be the duty of all free men, whether merchants, farmers, or mechanics. This democratic theory of culture necessarily involved a radical rejection of the patronage system, wherein the most creative elements of society are paid employees of a privileged aristocracy, and thus remain in a state of dependency (Camenson 92).
Thus far, the major political and social factors that accounted for the emergence of the Western ideal of classical cultivation have been discussed. But these political and social factors alone could not convincingly explain the profound personal attachment a British gentleman, a German burgher, or a French bourgeois would often develop to what he considered to be his cultural or civilizational heritage. In many cases, this attachment was much too authentic to be explained strictly in terms of the enhancement of one’s prestige and lifestyle.
There must have been something more than the competition with the aristocracy for a cultural hegemony to have emerged that produced the intense need on the part of the individual to place himself in a meaningful cosmos, to seek clues in the past that would help him explain his present and hopefully predict his future. It was, furthermore, only in modern Europe that the understanding of the individual’s biography became problematic. As long as the self remained the product of clear social definitions, as in traditional societies, self-experience remained virtually inseparable from the experience of society, nature, and the divine (Camenson 49).
In his everyday life, the individual experienced himself as someone apart from the ideal community exactly because the community remained an ideal yet to be actualized. The frustration of the experience of longing for something that one could not have probably contributed to the romantic irrationalist and existentialist assault upon rationalism and universalism during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Thus, the decline of the liberal arts ideal is rooted in the very contradictions of bourgeois society and culture that had produced it, to begin with.
The ideals of liberty, fraternity, and equality, universal human rights, civic duty, cultural and political democracy never became applicable to the overwhelming majority of humanity, and often directly contradicted the exigencies of the market and capital accumulation. The democratic humanist ideal of the cultured citizen with his fully integrated critical intellectual faculties could not prevent the growing fragmentation and specialization of knowledge that was taking place under the impact of an ever-increasing and elaborate capitalist division of labor (Camenson 98).
The gradual extension of the rights of citizenship coincided with the reduction of the public sphere, the concentration of the means of production in fewer and fewer hands, and the growth of state power in all spheres of life. The richness of the personality is comprehended, and the value of the particular and the unique is acknowledged. This individuality may easily signify an end in itself so that even with the aim of idealization in rendering sacred figures, he does not aspire beyond it.
In Italy, however, the tendency to transform the individual case into a typical one emerges early and, at all events, is very pronounced in sixteenth-century classic art. The unique seems to have acquired the disagreeable flavor of accidentalness; inevitable and comprehensive forms were sought. Whether it was a question of architectural forms or human heads made no difference (Giangrande 26).
The role of social traditions in developing individual moral capacities is tremendous. Such value traditions are the largest source of the structures in the moral imagination; one can no more avoid learning a language. The process of language learning and value learning are parallel. The use of language as a tool for communication is for most people “second nature”; that is, largely a non-cognitive process. In like manner, certain values are internalized whether we want them or not.
The imagination will develop certain structures of ethical valuation as a matter of living in a social environment. Therefore, with this picture of ethical thinking, the primary question for moral education in a liberal arts curriculum is not whether there will be some traditional values inculcated in the young, but what kind of traditions and values should be inculcated (Giangrande 73). The “public,” as opposed to the “private” sphere, is the terrain upon which legally free and equal individuals engage in rational debate concerning public issues and governmental decisions. The very concept of rational public debate requires that its participants have access to education and information.
Following R. Ellison a search for truth is important for every man and his personal values. In this case, art education helps me to possess first-hand knowledge of the benefits, challenges, and obstacles a person can face when attempting to compete with the changing economy and workforce. Art education can be seen as a systematic study of disjoint subjects: ideally, the subjects of inquiry begin at the level of the whole community and are only broken down into academic subjects for purposes of control and focus.
The subject matter begins with the questions and aspirations of the human community as a whole; the impetus to divide the common subject matter into sub-problems and thus form departments of knowledge and skill remains always within the context of this wider human vision. Hence, in a liberal arts community, problems are first of all human problems, the particular perspectives of the individual academic disciplines are secondary; thus the problem and its solution are neither tied to the effect of overspecialization nor blunted by the indoctrination of some purportedly immutable truth. The conclusion to be drawn from these brief comments about ethical thinking in a liberal arts tradition is not the exoneration of the current practice of liberal arts education nor a defense of the “anything goes” bogeyman (Curran and Greenwald 73).
Education that recognizes the importance of cultural values and education that encourages reflection and inquiry from a variety of perspectives are not mutually exclusive. The liberal arts environment is one that is particularly suited to employ cultural traditions and the pluralistic methods of inquiry, thereby contributing significantly to the enlargement of the moral imagination. For instance, Italian nature must be different in art, because of the different interpretation, selection, and accentuation of reality. In the final analysis, however, the value of nature in Italy is different.
Following Mcpherson and Schapiro (1999): “Keeping pace in a world of rapid technological change puts a premium on learning how to learn, on becoming flexible. Even the very best training in today’s technology will quickly become obsolete in the world into which we are moving” (47).
The humanities free the self to realize the “we,” which is constitutive of the self. Painting increases our human experience, develops formal responsiveness, and engages our apprehending feeling. Art has ways of putting us in the shoes of others. History is perpetually doing this to us, although we might think the history we study is of other people from another time and another place. The humanities teach us to take part and to take joy, in excellence.
In the moral sphere, we also need to become participants in the moral activity, admiring and praising the many fine examples of moral excellence. All the credit for expanding our moral dimensions does not go to philosophy, for such insights come from other fields of knowledge and other domains of experience. What should be included in morality needs arguing for and against? Philosophy is the art of getting into the argument (Giangrande 39).
In sum, the journey through liberal arts helps a person (and me) to know about himself and the world around him. They humanize us, thereby further empowering us as human beings. Individuals are the subject of the humanities. Whereas the natural sciences and the technologies study other matters, we are the central abiding and complex concern of humanities education.
The art liberates individuals from the narrow confines of their self-conception. People are freed to be themselves in the fullest sense. Surely this is an underlying goal of “making our way in the world” (Camenson 73) and for other reasonable life goals. In my project, liberal arts will help to express freedom and self-development. The humanities cultivate the humanity of the moral agent; the person who adopts principles, makes decisions, and engages in ethically significant action is transformed.
The individual is not lost in such a transformative experience; instead, the person flourishes. As moral agents, we become sensitized to the complex scope of our existence. The moral life is going to be more complicated, not as easy as before, but at the same time, it will be richer and more rewarding. As moral agents, we are awakened to our fullest dimensions, but these we share with other human beings. At the heart of humanistic discovery is this presence of sharing.
Works Cited
Camenson, B. Great Jobs for Liberal Arts Majors (Great Jobs Series). McGraw-Hill; 3 edition, 2007.
Curran, Sh. J., Greenwald, S. Smart Moves for Liberal Arts Grads: Finding a Path to Your Perfect Career. Ten Speed Press, 2006.
Giangrande, G. Liberal Arts Advantage. Harper Paperbacks, 1998.
Ellison, R. Invisible man. Vintage, 1995.
Mcpherson, M.S., Schapiro, M. O. The Future Economic Challenges for the Liberal Arts Colleges. Daedalus 128 (1999), 47.