Humanities - The Heart of Liberal Education Essay -- Education Philoso

I justify the humanities by sketching quad views of knowledge in which the idea of an honorary society or an integration of disciplines talent be understood. I assume that every system of higher nurture inevitably appeals to concepts of knowledge. Such concepts cannot be isolated from political and civic dimensions of manner as well as from personal cultivation and character. N one and only(a)theless, older views found on these aspects are open to serious criticism. The four views considered are Aristotelian-Thomistic, Cartesian-positivist, Kantian, and diehard (in a patient of and hermeneutic sense). The paper describes key elements in each(prenominal) of these views and notes several objections, with a marked preference for Kantian and traditionalist views. Kant provides for refilling of the humanities, especially ethics and literature (the moral and aesthetic), within a poser in which modern acquisition displaces ancient teleological nature. Tradition is warrant on pra ctical grounds--by the need to appropriate for oneself the knowledge and experience of early(prenominal) generations (without which human life loses continuity and meaning). Further, the humanities save the great texts from oblivion to which progress would otherwise consign them. The humanities counteract the tendency of science to undermine the conditions of its own possibility, as well as the discipline, knowledge, and virtue requisite for its own origin. Two questions are urgently posed to the modern academy what is the justification for congregating all the disciplines of modern knowledge under one roof as if they belonged integrally togetherif, that is, there is one? For whitethornbe it is merely a convenience. And secondly, what is the justificationif there is anyfor insisting upon th... ...ndered spare by its existence. Technology makes perpetual adolescents of us, because of the ease with which it puts great power in our hands its power diminishes our desire (and thus our capacity) for responsibility. In the face of this particular of modern life, the traditionalist view of education seeks to reverse this effect, without denying the legitimacy of science. It cultivates liberal virtues by keeping the classics and all the great texts alive, including the classics of science itself (physical and human), abandoned by later science. Traditional stances like those of (1), (2), and (3), may be suspicious of it because it declines the plan of attack to found education upon the dogma of a metaphysics or an epistemology. But it may well be the most practical way pedagogically that the aims and substance of those approaches can be sustained within a modern environment.