Liberal Arts

A liberal arts education remains unequalled for the exercise and development of the most valuable qualities of the mind: penetration of thought, broadmindedness, fineness of analysis, gifts of expression.

It was once said that democracy is the regime that stands or falls by virtue: a democracy is a regime in which all or most adults are men of virtue, and since virtue seems to require wisdom, a regime in which all or most adults are virtuous and wise, or the society in which all or most adults have developed their reason to a high degree, or the rational society. Democracy, in a word, is meant to be an aristocracy which has broadened into a universal aristocracy. … Liberal education is the ladder by which we try to ascend from mass democracy to democracy as originally meant.

ARTS, Liberal, or Seven Liberal. The distinction between the liberal arts and the practical arts on the one hand, and philosophy on the other, originates in Greek education and philosophy. In the Republic (Bk. xi.) of Plato, and the Politics (viii. 1) of Aristotle, the ‘liberal arts’ are those subjects that are suitable for the development of intellectual and moral excellence, as distinguished from those that are merely useful or practical. The distinction was always made, by the Greek theorists, between music, literature in the form of grammar and rhetoric, and the mathematical studies, and that higher aspect of the liberal discipline termed philosophy. Philosophy was sometimes called the liberal art par excellence.