1. I think this article will be about the main ideas of critical thinking and liberal arts. Also, I think that they’ll get into what they do and how they help us in our lives and why they are important to society. I think liberal arts means things that you may not be thought in your four main classes of math, science, English and history. But instead, art music, politics and things like that. 
  • For the first section, what are liberal arts? 

After reading they go through the history of liberal arts and where they started. Liberal arts started over 2,000 years ago with the Latin’s and Greeks. Liberal comes from a word that means free minded. “In the beginning there were several liberal arts: the trivium of classical antiquity, consisting of grammar, rhetoric, and logic, combined with the medieval quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy”.  Clearly my thoughts of what a liberal art it was completely wrong, I only through the arts were one or two subjects when in reality they are the root of most subjects we learn about. After universities stared to stray away from the monistic and cathedral schools those seven were changed to philosophy, jurisprudence, theology and medicine. Toward the end of the section, it goes over how liberal arts, and the sciences are all somewhat connected or are distantly related to each other. 

In section 2; Why do we need the liberal arts? 

They talk about why the arts are important to our lives. “The liberal arts have traditionally been defended as instrumental to two key elements of democracy: critical thinking and citizenship”. I never knew that the arts layer a role in things as big as democracy something that runs our country.  This section talked a lot about the types of citizenships we have and how liberal arts ties into them. 

In section 3; What is critical thinking 

Critical thinking is not easy to describe but it is also very important in our lives. “critical thinking is about my thinking or yours or someone else’s in the here and now”. When you have to have a critical thinking period, you need to be able to pull that thought and then thinking about it as deeply as you possibly can. Critical thinking can help you with a lot of things from decision making to your work in school or your job. 

In section 4; the importance of critical inquiry. 

They talk about Wittgenstein and also reflected in certain organizing concepts that (like critical inquiry itself) transcend the various disciplines and unify the liberal arts curriculum. These concepts include truth, nature, value, causality, complexity, morality, freedom, excellence, and—as Wittgenstein understood—language itself, as the principal medium of thought. These concepts all are linked to critical thinking. In this they talked about how Wittgenstein understood and reacted to these concepts of capital inquiry