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‘What men, in heavens name, can we set alongside these insects which are superior to men when it comes to reasoning. For they recognise only what is in the common interest’ (Pliny the Elder)
‘I believe that it is very difficult to know who we are until we understand where and when we are’ Carl Sagan
‘When one day our humankind becomes full-grown, it will not define itself as the sum total of the whole world’s inhabitants, but as the infinite unity of their mutual needs’ (Sartre)
‘Those who look for the laws of Nature in their new works collaborate with the creator’ (Gaudi)
'The unexamined life is not worth living' Socrates
‘This crisis exposes the basic level of unreality in the situation — the truth that almost unimaginable wealth has been generated by equally unimaginable levels of fiction, paper transactions with no concrete outcome beyond profit for traders’ Rowan Williams
'to die is indeed the lot of every human being and thus is a very mediocre art, but to be able to die well is indeed the highest wisdom of life' (Kierkegaard)
'sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better' (Ecclesiastes 7:4)
'You shall strengthen the stranger and the dweller in your midst and live with him' {Leviticus 25:35}
'absence of haphazard and conducive oneness of everything to an end are to be found in nature's works in the highest degree, and the end to which these works are put together and produced is a form of the beautiful' (Aristotle)
‘In my own work I put my whole life in jeopardy, and I have half lost my mind in the process’ Van Gogh
'as the contradiction among the features creates the harmony of the face we proclaim the oneness of the suffering and the revolt of all the peoples on all the face of the earth' (Jacques Roumain) (Picture reproduced by kind permission of Amir Zaidi)
'My purpose is that the truths be glimpsed and then again be concealed' (Maimonides)
'Who are we? We are the descendants of slaves. We are the offspring of noble men and women who were kidnapped from their native land and chained in ships like beasts. We are the heirs of a great and exploited continent known as Africa' (Martin Luther King)
'medieval culture … was the chapter of Europe’s culture when Jews, Christians and Muslims lived side by side and, despite their intractable differences and hostilities, nourished a complex culture of tolerance' (Menocal)
‘And he waited on them under the tree as they ate’ (Genesis 18: 1-8; Koran XI: 69)
'Europe, where they were never done talking of… the welfare of man… today we know with what sufferings humanity has paid for every one of their triumphs of the mind' (Fanon)
'The meaning or lack of meaning that old age takes on in any given society puts that whole society to the test' (Simone de Beauvoir)
'The Divine Comedy is precisely the drama of the soul’s choice' (Dorothy L Sayers)
'Beethoven belongs as much to West Indians as he does to Germans, since his music is now part of the human heritage' (Edward Said)
'Such is the secret of the motions of the heavens and of their diversity, each motion strictly corresponding to the desire of a Soul' (Corbin, on Avicenna)
'And would that it might please our Creator that I were able to reveal the nature of man and his customs even as I describe his figure' (Leonardo da Vinci)
‘The greatest artistic problem is how difficult it is to get something of the Absolute into the frog pond’ (Picasso)
‘People can’t tolerate a ruler…nor a teacher a pupil, nor a wife her husband…unless they sweeten life for themselves with the honey of folly’ (Erasmus)
'what counts today, the question which is looming on the horizon, is the need for a redistribution of wealth. Humanity must reply to this question, or be shaken to pieces by it' (Fanon)
'Fish say, they have Stream and Pond/ But is there anything Beyond?/ And in that Heaven of all their wish/ There can be be no more land, say fish' (Rupert Brooke)
Everybody knows the deal is rotten/ Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton/ For your ribbons and bows (Leonard Cohen)
‘RING THE BELLS THAT STILL CAN RING
FORGET YOUR PERFECT OFFERING
THERE IS A CRACK, A CRACK IN EVERYTHING
THAT’S HOW THE LIGHT GETS IN’
LEONARD COHEN – ANTHEM
Copyright © 1992 Sony Music Entertainment (Canada) Inc.

 

Modern LIBERAL ARTS

In retrieving undergraduate and postgraduate liberal arts education for the modern age we must explore new answers to the ancient philosophical questions which defined the liberal arts.

The Ancients asked ‘What are the first principles of truth, freedom and nature?’ Yet they believed in slavery, in the Earth at the centre of the universe, and in the principle of absolute unchanging universal truth. An educated person would have understood these to be the first principles of the natural and political universe.

Today, and urgently, we must ask again, ‘What are the first principles of truth, freedom and nature in the modern world?’

Modern reason abhors slavery, yet is the world free? Modern science uncovers the laws of nature, yet do we understand our place in the natural universe? Modern thinking decries absolute unchanging universal truth, yet does humanity really have no shared first principles?

We have taken up the challenge of retrieving these fundamental questions concerning truth, freedom and nature in our BA and MA Modern Liberal Arts degrees at the University of Winchester, England, UK.

If you are intrigued by the big questions concerning truth in the natural and social worlds; and in the meaning of life and death for all of us; and if you desire to study and think about the most profound ideas in the Western tradition and beyond, then Modern Liberal Arts may well be the degree you have been looking for. It will not be easy, but then what in life that is worthwhile is easy?

 

…beyond the limits of single academic subjects