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Cake day: November 17th, 2024

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  • coherent_domain@infosec.pubtoComic Strips@lemmy.worldCollege Degrees
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    13 days ago

    As a person who enjoyed liberal art college and studied a liberal art major (mathematics), I think some people here might misunderstood the definition of liberal art.

    “Liberal art” means “skills of free people”, which by its very history, are useful skills that don’t immediately lead to professional applications, since they historically target comparativly weathy people who are in higher class of society, who don’t need to immediately find work to stay alive. Not to say we should still limit liberal art education to the wealthiest few, but there is still immense value in these subjects, especially in the long term.

    Most of the majors in U.S. undergrad educations are liberal art majors, like physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, computer science (not engineering), economics, sociology, physiology, music, fine art etc. The exceptions are business, law, medical field, and engineering, several of these fields seldom have undergrad programs.

    In general, most of the U.S. research universities teaches libral art subjects in their “college of art and science”, which is usually the most popular college in universities.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_arts_education


  • everyone understood and embraced their role

    It is also important to note the historical context of this sentence. At the time of Confucius, social role is very much assigned by birth, where the first child of wife (not concubine) called 嫡长子 would inherit the social status and class of the father, yet others move down one status, until the lowest of your social class (for example, the lowest class of aristocrat 士 usually do not move down to common person, and common person do not move down to slave).

    In general, Confucius promoted strict and stiff social hierarchy: love towards others should respect such structure; also a lot of its education is about the proper behavior within this social structure. One famous example is “八佾舞于庭, 是可忍也, 孰不可忍也”: “If we allow 8-by-8 dancing (for an official), what can’t we allow?!” The dance with 8-by-8 dancer is intended for the king according the old law (周礼), officials are only allowed 4-by-4. This strict adherence to hierarchy and traditional rules likely explains popularity of Confuicism in the feudalist China.

    On the other hand, Qin famously adopted the philosophy of 法家 (Fa, translated to “law”), which significantly contributed to the rise of Qin. Philosophy of Fa advocates that everyone is equal under the law (including royals and aristocrat), and rapid promotion of social classes via contribution in war and policy, which is not aligned with the philosophy of Confucius. However, Fa also promoted cruel punishments like murdering entire families, even neighbors, because the fault of one person, and spliting a person alive by five horses riding towards different directions.

    There are other philosophy in that era, one of my favorite is Mo (墨), which believe to made up of lower-class artisans and workers. They promoted universal and unconditional care and love, reduce consumption, rejection of destiny, and also one of the harshest critic of Confucius’ ideal. Obviously they are not terribly popular with the ruling class. A fun fact about Moism is that they are believed by some to be the first to describe Newton’s first law, lever, definition of a circle (圆,一中同长也 translated to “a circle is [points with] equal distance to the center”) , and Camera obscura.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozi