MODULE OUTLINE
Modern Liberal Arts
University of Winchester
Semester 1 2015
LA 1001a Freedom is to Learn
Thursdays 09.00 in MB2
Nigel Tubbs
Module Learning Outcomes
Demonstrate engagement with texts and ideas relevant to the tradition of Liberal Arts education
Demonstrate reflection on experiences and the wider contexts in which they take place
Communicate experiences of texts and ideas as appropriate
Show knowledge and understanding of specialist terminology
Demonstrate requisite research skills in gathering, summarizing and presenting evidence including proficiency
in referencing and academic conventions
Weekly seminars
‘He who still doubts has not yet learnt enough, yet we doubt as
long as we live; and so as long as we live we should learn’ (Ficino,
M. (1997) Meditations on the Soul, Rochester: Inner Traditions.)
‘To know oneself is to contradict oneself’ (Hyppolite, J.
(1952/1997) Logic and Existence, New York, SUNY).
‘we badly need someone to teach us the art of learning with
difficulty’ (Rousseau, J.J. (2000) Emile, London, Dent, p. 167)
‘it is difficulty which makes us prize things’ (Montaigne, M. (2003)
The Complete Essays, London, Penguin, II. 15, p. 696)
‘I can surrender to doubt and to my master-form, which is
ignorance’ (Montaigne, M. (2003) The Complete Essays, London,
Penguin, I.50, p. 338)
The Freedom is to Learn modules are the core modules that run through the three years of the
degree. The title is suggestive of something carried by the term ‘modern’ in the name of the
Programme.
There will be much more to be said about this, but for now, remember it is important that you treat
all the material you read in each of your MLA modules as relevant to all MLA modules. Think of year
1 as a whole year of learning, not necessarily divided into modules, and think of each year as part of
the whole degree. In time we will reward essays which are able to bring material in from different
modules.
So, don’t get rid of anything, especially the reading packs! You will need some of them later in the
degree! And NOTE: the first essay is due in Thursday of week 3 Thursday October 8th!! No
panicking… I’ll help…
Outline
In this we are looking at some aspects of the origin of liberal arts education in Antiquity. But before
that our Introductory session asks a strange question: what is the meaning of ‘beginning’? This is
related to a second question: what is learning?
One of the main books we will read, and return to often throughout the three years is Plato’s
Republic. If you can get a copy of your own that will help, and they are available cheaply second
hand at Amazon, and at ABE books. We will look at more modern writers in the last few weeks of the
module.
SEMESTER 1 (w/b 21st September)
Week 1
Reading:
What is Learning? (Schön)
Schön, D. (1987) Educating the Reflective Practitioner, San Francisco: JosseyBass, pp. 82-95.
T.S. Eliot The Four Quartets,
http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/datasets/full-text-of-ts-eliots-fourquarte/versions/1.txt
Wider reading
Week 2
Try Plato’s Alcibiades I on knowing, and teaching… (which many doubt
is by Plato, but it still makes a reasonably straightforward Introduction
to some of Socrates’ main ideas on learning which we explore next
week).
Prologue, Henry V, Shakespeare
What is Learning? (Socrates)
Reading
Plato, (1987) The Trial and Death of Socrates, Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing Company, trans. G.M.A. Grube (available at
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/apology.html ).
Pascal, B. (1966) Pensées, London Penguin, pp. 51-2.
Wider reading
Wilkins, E.G. (1917/2013) ‘Know Thyself’ in Greek and Latin Literature, Delhi:
Isha Books, chapter 5.
Plato, (1997) The Sophist, in Plato Complete Works, ed. J.M. Cooper, 230a-e,
pp. 250-1.
Plato, (1997) Theaetetus, in Plato Complete Works, ed. J.M. Cooper,149151d, pp. 167-8.
St Paul, I Corinthians, 8: 2.
Erasmus, D. (2001) The Adages of Erasmus, Toronto, University of Toronto
Press, III.iii.1, pp. 242-4.
Stone, I. (1988) The Trial of Socrates, London: Jonathan Cape.
Hogan, P. (1995) The Custody and Courtship of Experience, Blackrock, The
Columba Press.
Popper, K. (1962) The Open Society and its Enemies, London: Routledge.
Hegel, G.W.F. (1974) Lectures on the History of Philosophy vol. 1, New
Jersey: Humanities Press.
Kierkegaard, S. (1989) The Concept of Irony, Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Augustine, (1972) City of God, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 301-2.
Hadot, P. (2002) What is Ancient Philosophy?, Cambridge, Mass., Belknap
Press, Harvard UP.
Video on Jaques Louis-David ‘Death of Socrates’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKhfFBbVtFg&feature=youtu.be
Reading for later in the degree on not-knowing:
Cusanus, N. (2007) Of Learned Ignorance, Oregon, Wipf & Stock.
Petrarch, ‘On His Own Ignorance and That Of Many Others’ in Cassirer, E.,
Kristeller, P.O., & Randall Jnr, J.H. (1948) The Renaissance Philosophy of
Man, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, pp. 49-133.
Montaigne, M. (2003) ‘An Apology for Raymond Sebond’, in The Complete
Essays, London, Penguin, pp. 489-683.
Pascal, B. (1966) Pensées, London Penguin.
Kierkegaard, S. (1989) The Concept of Irony, Princeton University Press.
Assessment 1
What do Socrates and Schön believe is the relation between education and doubt?
(1,500 words max; due Thursday week 3, 8th October, given in to Catherine before 3.30pm)
Week 3
Human culture (Jaeger)
Reading
Wider reading
Week 4
Jaeger, W. (1973) Paideia The Ideals of Greek Culture, vol. I, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, pp. xxii-xxv, 280, 286-314.
Halevi, J. (1964) The Kuzari, New York, Schocken Books, p. 124 (written
1130-40 CE)
try Hadot, P. (2002) What is Ancient Philosophy?, Cambridge, Mass., Belknap
Press, Harvard UP (for everything from Socrates to Aristotle).
Rhetoric (Isocrates)
Reading
Jaeger, W. (1986) Paideia The Ideals of Greek Culture, vol. III, Oxford, Oxford
University Press, pp. 46-9, 61-3, 89.
Isocrates, ‘Panegyricus’ in Isocrates with an English Translation in three
volumes, by George Norlin, Ph.D., LL.D. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University
Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1980; 47-50.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0144%3Aspeech%3D4%3Asection%3D47
Isocrates, ‘Nicocles or the Cyprians,’ in Isocrates with an English Translation
in three volumes, by George Norlin, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University
Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1980, 1-9.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0144%3Aspeech%3D3
Isocrates, ‘Antodosis,’ in Isocrates with an English Translation in three
volumes, by George Norlin, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press;
London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1929, vol. II, pp. 327-9.
Cicero, (1967) De Oratore Books 1 & 2, trans. E.W Sutton, London:
Heinemann, i.71-8, ii. 5-7.
Montaigne. M (2003) The Complete Essays, London, Penguin, I. 51. ‘On The
Vanity Of Words’, pp. 341-344.
(See also Plato, Phaedrus, 270-1; Plato, The Sophist, 231-235; and Plato,
Gorgias.)
Week 5
Reading
Week 6
Reading
Philosophy (Plato’s Republic)
Plato, (1992) The Republic, London: Dent.
(available at http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.8.vii.html).
Philosophy (Plato’s Republic)
Plato, (1992) The Republic, London: Dent.
(available at http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.8.vii.html).
Week 7
Reading
Week 8
Reading
Week 9
Philosophy (Plato’s Republic)
Plato, (1992) The Republic, London: Dent.
(available at http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.8.vii.html).
The Liberal Arts Tradition
Kimball, B.A. (1986) Orators and Philosophers, a history of the idea of liberal
education, New York: Teachers College Press, chapter II.
Cicero, (1945) Tusculan Disputations, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, I. i-iv, pp. 3-11, & II, i-iii, pp. 149-153.
Plato, Phaedo, 79-84c, in Plato Complete Works, Indianapolis, Hackett
Publishing Co, 1997.
First principles: Aristotle and Kant
‘a principle cast into a good mind bears fruit’ (Pascal, B. (1966) Pensées, London
Penguin, p. 247)
Reading
Plato, (1997) Phaedrus, in Plato Complete Works, Indianapolis, Hackett
Publishing, p524 (§ 245)
Aristotle (vol. 1) Physics, I.1. 184a10-15 (p. 315); II.3. 194b17-23 (p. 332);
VIII.5. 256a12-256b3 (p. 428); VII.1. 242a50-4 (p. 408); III.4. 203b 6-15 (p.
347); Fragment 12 (vol. 2), p. 2392, in Aristotle, (1984), The Complete Works
of Aristotle, vols 1 & 2, ed. J.Barnes, Princeton UP.
R. Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy in The Philosophical Writings of
Descartes vol. 2, trans. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff & D. Murdoch,
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 29.
Kant, I. (1990) ‘What is Enlightenment?’ in Foundations of the Metaphysics
of Morals, New York: Macmillan Press.
Kant, I. (1956) Critique of Practical Reason, (London, Macmillan), pp. 30-5,
57, and Conclusion.
Kant, I. (1990) Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, New York:
Macmillan Press, pp. 29-33, 38, 44-57.
Kant, I. (1991) Kant, Political Writings, (Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press), ed. Hans Reiss, pp. 64-72.
Week 10
Reading
Week 11
market freedom (Adam Smith)
Smith, A. (1958) The Wealth of Nations, London, Dent, Book V, article II, pp.
245-271.
Kant in action: taxation and education
Reading
Lecture notes
Wider Reading
Brighouse, H. (2002) ‘A Modest Defence of School Choice’ Journal of
Philosophy of Education, Vol. 36, No. 4, pp. 653-659.
Tooley, J. (2003) ‘Why Harry Brighouse is Nearly Right about the
Privatisation of Education’ Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 37, No. 3,
pp. 440-447.
Cox, C.B. & Boyson, R. (eds.) (1977) Black Paper London, Temple Smith,
pp.8-9.
Davies, M. and Edwards, G. (2001) ‘Will the Curriculum Caterpillar Ever
Learn to Fly?’ in Mike Fielding (ed.) Taking Education Really Seriously: Four
Years Hard Labour, London, RoutledgeFalmer, pp. 96-107.
Lawton, D. (1994) The Tory Mind on Education, London: Falmer Press.
Williams, R. (2000) Lost Icons, London: Morehouse Publishing.
Week 12
Seminar voice: Presentations
These will be split across week 12; some will be in LA 1001a, some in
LA 1002 on Friday. Make sure you know your time and place…
Assessment
Assessment 1: (50%) What do Socrates and Schön believe is the relation between
education and doubt? (1,500 words max; due Thursday week 3, 8th October, given in to
Catherine in the office, before 3.30pm)
Assessment 2: (50%)
Seminar Voice presentations in week 12: details given in seminars.
Use Harvard Referencing
We attempt always to return work within 3 working weeks (15 days working days).
MODERN LIBERAL ARTS MARK SCHEME
We want you to be very clear about how we will mark your work and that means you must know with each
assessment what you are expected to do. We hope that this does not mean you will feel that you have to write
to a formula. We are trying to build in considerable freedom to your assessments; but as the term ‘liberal arts’
conveys, in every freedom there is a discipline, and in every discipline there is a freedom; together, we hope,
they constitute the struggle of learning.
There are (often but not always) two types of essays in MLA: the first assessment title in a module will most
often be set by the tutor and will be restricted to texts explored in the first weeks. The second assessment title
can be tutor-led, or chosen from a list of titles, or can be negotiated individually; this varies according to the
tutor and the module. This assignment can explore wider issues, employ wider reading, or explore a single
issue in depth. Students will bear some responsibility for the references consulted in the second essay,
increasing through years 1, 2 and 3.
Tutor-set assessments (disciplina)
Student/tutor-set assessments (libertas)
1st module essay
2nd module essay
Marks for
 depth of understanding specialist
terminology
 depth of understanding of set texts
 depth of understanding of ideas/concepts
 evidence by quotation
 answering the question
 correct referencing
 word limit
Marks for
 depth of understanding of texts
 depth of understanding and application of
ideas/concepts
 evidence-based critical arguments
 depth/breadth of reading (depending on
the question)
 answering your own question
 correct referencing
 word limit
Note the difference between essays 1 and 2: the first one is marked only on your understanding of texts; the
second one is marked on understanding, on your own reading, and your emerging critical voice. Be careful
here; being critical does not mean just giving your opinions. It means making a case based on evidence from
your reading, using ideas and concepts from texts. It does not mean you have to fight for one side of an
argument or another… ambivalence will be treated with great respect. But for every essay, remember this: if
we (and you) get the title right, then by answering the question you will be doing exactly what is required.
Over years 1, 2 and 3 the levels of your work are raised by using increasingly challenging texts, ideas, concepts
and writers, and by the way you are able to employ ideas, concepts and writers from other modules across the
degree in increasingly sophisticated ways.
For all essays, then
Depending on the question you will need to



Demonstrate reflection on module material and the wider contexts from across the degree which
might impact upon it
Communicate experiences of texts and ideas as appropriate
Show knowledge and understanding of specialist terminology

Demonstrate requisite research skills in gathering, summarizing and presenting evidence including
proficiency in referencing and academic conventions.
For essay 1
Depending on the question you will need to





Show careful reading of primary sources
Show a knowledge of theoretical perspectives and/or works
Show an understanding of abstract concepts and ideas within theoretical perspectives
Show an ability to work with theorists and their concepts in various forms of assessment as
appropriate
Show evidence of engagement with texts and ideas concerned with issues raised in the module.
For essay 2
Depending on the question you will need to




Show an ability to employ theorists critically in relation to issues
Show an ability to use concepts as critical tools in discussing issues and questions as appropriate
Show an ability to employ theoretical perspectives as critical tools
Therein, to develop a critical voice informed and deepened by appropriate use of theory as
critique.
 Sustain a critical relationship to ideas related to the module
It is often hard to explain in generic terms how any particular essay could have been improved. But, cautiously,
we can say the following:
In general,
a 3rd (40-49%) may have ignored the question, may have not given much evidence of reading, may have clumsy
sentence structure, but will still have made a bona fide attempt at the work.
a 2.2 (50-59%) will have provided evidence of reading, quotations where appropriate, clear sentence structure,
attended to the question or title, but not related the material in ways which synthesise more developed and
complex thinking.
a 2.1 (60-69%) will have evidence of reading through effective selection of quotation, being able to make
specific points, and to relate material together to make broader and/or deeper and more complex
observations. At the higher end, it may have been able to relate material from across modules, or across the
degree as a whole, to synthesise separate ideas and issues into more holistic comments, ideas and problems.
The questions addressed will be getting ever more difficult and important, including those that are asked
without being answered.
a 1st (70-100%) will make a little go a long way. Quotations may carry implications beyond their precise
content; sentences will be clear but able to refine complex ideas succinctly; most importantly, it will be able to
combine the microcosm of its subject matter with the macrocosm of its place in the wider context, and these
contexts will be drawn form the overall, experience of the degree, growing obviously from years 1 to 3. No
inaccuracies of grammar or sentence construction, and no referencing mistakes are expected here. The voice
of the essay will be in control of difficult material throughout. Above all the questions asked and addressed will
be compelling in their difficulty and import.
Module Evaluations (previous year)
It is obviously important that, as one of the first mandatory modules for our first years, this module is
interesting, accessible and able to motivate students for studying on the programme. The module evaluations
commented on good organisation, interesting content, good reading packs, good support with a
compassionate approach, and a good collaborative atmosphere within the group. The memory stick was
commended particularly. One student commented that he or she had not realise that doing philosophy at Alevel would have been an advantage. It is not our intention that this should be the case, and the tutor will try
to address this next year directly with the students, and teach in such a way that no advantage should be
assumed for such students. Taking time to go through material slowly in order to gain understanding was also
commended. The library was seen to have good resources, and the interconnection of material from different
weeks was also noted. This module was revamped this year in line with the publication of the book Philosophy
and Modern Liberal Arts Education, and these changes will be incorporated again next year.
Catalogue summary
This module runs across both semesters. It explores three distinct areas of enquiry within the liberal arts
tradition: freedom, education and nature, looking at both ancient and modern sources. It explores the
question of freedom in relation to the education of the self in particular, as well as with regards to the
tradition of liberal arts education per se. Indicative issues are those to do with equality of opportunity with
regard to higher education, the nature of responsibility in a community, the nature of the political and notions
of determinism, and work and ideas in the study of nature within the tradition of liberal arts education. It looks
at some of the most important ideas from ancient texts but also at the challenge presented to these ideas by
elements of 20th century physics.