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The Crisis of Liberal Education in a University and the Futureof the Humanities

Kim, Seong-WooChoi, Jong-Duck

The Liberal arts does originally mean the contents and procedures of cultural education to

raise the Human morality and subjectivity. The liberal education have been covered by a

university since the medieval of the West, and remained the core of general education in it.

Being division of labor among sciences in the seventeenth century, liberal education have

been positioned as faculty of general education in the curriculum of university education. In

this aspect, it is important to recognize that liberal education in a university is the universal

one to aim at a human being's having the elementary morality and intelligence, for it is the

kernal of liberal education to raise human morality and subjectivity by which a man acquires

the value as a human being for oneself regardless of major education

It is the problem that liberal education is regarded as preliminary primary subjects rather

than as the position of real universal education in many universities. Besides, the logic of

capitalism violates the publicity of education not only in Korean, but also in the world. In

addition to the USA which represents the logic of capitalism, college liberal education is also

weakening in Japan where public education is operated under the state's hegemony. And It is

a mainstream of education which is the market-oriented tendency that assets that early

major education be provided for short-term success. Anyway, it is not a solution, but the

worsening of the education problem. The examples of it are the absence of critical thinking

and the appearance of the general decline in the scholastic ability.

In this situation, the humanities should be the subject of huamistic education. The

culture(Bildung) as a way approaching social problems should be cultured with the insight

into the human being and the nature, so that the bud of such a culture can grow up. In order

to acquire not a superficial view, but a structural understanding of the society, we need

profound and urgent question raising on the basis of careful learning of the classics and of

diverse collection of information, not of simple erudition and not of popular interdisciplinary

studies. The culture is a ability to discover and solve problems, and to plan and operate

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strategies. The university student who realizes one's self, society, and nature through this

culture can be an intellectual in its real sense, and have the subjective identity of one's self.

The humanities which contribute to this liberal education should be one to search for human

morality and subjectivity. We call this the humanistic education.Subject Sphere : Philosophy of Education, Social PhilosophyKey Words : Liberal Education, Humanistic education, the humanities, morality, subjectivity