The History of Liberal Arts
Our Liberal Arts programme combines the values at the heart of classical liberal education with the future-oriented skills our graduates need to contribute to today's complex world.
What is Liberal Arts?
Liberal Arts takes its name from the classical and medieval collection of subjects known asartes liberalis, "the knowledge worthy of a free person".
A Liberal Arts education, then, is designed to create critically engaged citizens who contribute to free society.
What skills do you gain from Liberal Arts?
Critical thinking is at the heart of Liberal Arts. By analysing a range of concepts, ideas, and materials, and making connections between different areas of knowledge, we support our students to become confident, adaptive, critical thinkers.
Graduates from our programme are capable of moving beyond the expertise they鈥檝e already developed. They can tackle new ideas and problems with confidence and capability.
A brief history of Liberal Arts
Liberal education is one of the oldest forms of education. It was the primary educational structure at the great medieval universities across Europe. Traditionally, there are seven subjects that made up the liberal arts:
- the trivium of humanities (grammar, logic, and rhetoric)
- the 鈥榮cientific鈥� quadrivium (astronomy/astrology, music, geometry, and arithmetic)
Together, these seven 'artes' contributed to the overarching art, philosophy.
In the 19th century, European universities shifted to a more focused approach. Degrees recognised achievement in specific subjects such as medicine and law.
Liberal Arts today
In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in the benefits of this educational philosophy in Europe, Canada, and the US. Employers recognise that graduates with broad skills and flexible approaches can be more valuable than specialists. Liberal Arts have been introduced at leading universities in the Netherlands, Germany, Lithuania, the UK, China, and India.
This video provides a guide to studying Liberal Arts at university.
Find out more about Liberal Arts
For a well-voiced articulation of the values of an American-style) liberal education, see
For a narrative about the history of liberal education and its cultural, religious, and political importance, see
For a survey of the classical roots of liberal education, see Rachel Bruzzone and Claudia Michel, eds., The Roots of the Liberal Arts in Antiquity: A Handbook (University College Freiburg/Rombach, 2015).
An overview of the development of transdisciplinarity as a concept forms the basis of Jay Hillel Bernstein's "Transdisciplinarity: A Review of Its Origins, Development, and Current Issues", in Journal of Research Practice 11:1 (2015).