Jeffrey Scheuer’s article, “Creative Thinking and the Liberal Arts: We Neglect Them at Our Peril”. From the title, I think the article is going to be talking about the importance of the liberal arts and how people have been ignoring or underestimating them in recent years. There are a bunch of boxes on the next homework assignment. Based on that, I figure there are more than a few pieces on this topic that Scheuer is going to tell us readers about.
What Are the Liberal Arts?
The liberal arts has a long history, but the meaning of the phrase and subject has changed over time. Scheuer tells us that “Originally there were seven liberal arts: the trivium of classical antiquity, consisting of grammar, rhetoric, and logic, combined with the medieval quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.” As the world has changed, so have our minds. Now the liberal arts has evolved into an intertwined system with critical thought, free-thinking, and the pursuit of knowledge at its center.
Why Do We Need the Liberal Arts?
In a simple answer, the reason we need the liberal arts is to make life better. The arts have been defended as “instrumental” to the different forms of citizenship. Scheuer characterizes these forms as “participation in the public sphere”, “being a productive member of a community”, and “participation in the various conversations that constitute a culture”. Altogether, we need the liberal arts because they enhance our communities and help us become “well-informed, critical citizens.”
What Is Critical Thinking?
As is clear from the title, this section is about critical thinking. Scheuer defines it as “the intellectual engine of a functional democracy: the set of mental practices that lends breadth, depth, clarity, and consistency to public discourse.” Though this definition feels too simplistic, it technically includes the parts of critical thought that aren’t usually talked about. We have experiences and skills that go into our judgments and thinking just as much as learned information. Just being human can help us think critically and benefit society as a whole.
The Importance of Critical Inquiry
Critical inquiry seems to be important and necessary for picking out and solving problems that may not be immediately obvious. Scheuer even talks about some of these problems in relation to the twentieth century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein: “In seeking to bring philosophy to a close, by revealing its problems to be essentially linguistic ones, [Wittgenstein] paradoxically gave the field an enormous boost of fresh intellectual energy.” There is more to be discussed than many might think. Scheuer talks about the “openness” of this conversation. There is no true end to the topics that “transcend the various disciplines and unify the liberal arts curriculum”, but we will be there to discuss and solve what we can.
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