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UNDERSTANDING THE NUANCES OF THE LIBERAL ARTS

UPSC CSE Syllabus

• GS 1: History of the world; Political philosophies like communism, capitalism, socialism etc.— their forms and effect on the society.
• GS 2: Education.
• GS 4:  Contributions of moral thinkers and philosophers from India and the world; 

Why in the News?

A more harmonious future requires a better appreciation of the importance of liberal arts education, a fact that is being overlooked in many modern popular and right-wing articulations.

Liberal Arts Degree Programmes Benefits

• Misrepresentation of Liberal as an Ideology: 
  • Liberal ideologies are being misinterpreted and seen with suspicion in right-wing and popular current articulations, while they are also becoming more prevalent in the setting of private higher education in India.
  • A more peaceful future depends critically on a greater appreciation of the benefits of a liberal arts

    education and what it offers to future citizens.

• Benefits of Liberal Degree: Students who choose this degree

will be more equipped to address today’s issues, such as the politics surrounding the separation of church and state or the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine, by having a deeper awareness of the subtleties of what a liberal arts education has to offer.

Why does the “liberal” subject need to have an identity?

• Increases Social Issues Understanding: A liberal arts education aims to provide students and future leaders with the contextual understanding necessary to comprehend today’s social issues as it provides study of its historical, sociological, economic, and psychological settings.
• Provides a Multi-dimensional Understandin: 
  • Openness, the capacity to understand a subject from several angles, and an understanding of the complexity of the current situation would all be necessary for such an approach.
  • It provides the ability to historicize the current issues through lens of history showing us how past events have shaped current difficulties rather than ignoring them.
• Ingrain a Critical Approaach: Liberal perspective gives a critical thinking approach, that would give us the ability to understand how and why we have an issue or a dispute.
• Liberal as an Ideology Benefits:
  • Any military conflict, for instance, is a representation of multifaceted fault-lines over culture, language, views of truth and justice, rather than a struggle for material resources or religious sovereignty.
  • The concept of’sovereignty’ is frequently constructed based on personal interpretations of past claims and injustices.
  • A conflict narrative is more complicated when geopolitical and military objectives are involved.
  • At the very least, a liberal approach should acknowledge these difficulties prior to criticizing any specific voice or story.

• For Building Perspectives and Sense of a Subject: Individuals’ identities are inextricably tied to gender, nationality, geography, and other characteristics. An undergraduate studying the liberal arts would instead begin by asking, “When and why do national identities matter?” in order to make sense of conflict between two groups.
• Necessitates Acceptance of Diversity and Compels to Question: It is fundamental to human civilization and it compels to talk from a naive perspective of “simply being human” while ignoring the history of human evolution and the creation of societies, cultures, and groups? Does the elimination of one identity contribute to the growth or domination of another? Why do passports matter when we travel if identities are irrelevant? Why don’t countries welcome people of different nationalities and religions within their borders?

Liberal Perspective is Required to Understand the Role of Power in the Central Vector:

• Helps in Understanding Civilization: The function of power in civilizations can be seen as being incredibly crucial in attempting to address these concerns. Students who have a liberal arts education can discover that power is a key concept in comprehending situations and emergencies.
• Contemporary Crisis Engagement: It enhances the interaction with current crisis scenarios. Power can function in a complex, multi-layered way within a community or beyond borders, therefore a nuanced liberal perspective should be based on a multifaceted approach to power rather than rejecting or desiring it away.

Way Forward

• With the goal of transforming society, a liberal arts education helps students become more compassionate while acknowledging their identities and differences and comprehending the ways in which power functions in our communities.
• Students can learn to think through solutions, adopt educated positions, and find resolutions that must also be complex and nuanced by first asking insightful questions and then thoroughly understanding the issues at hand.

Mains Question

A greater understanding of the value of a liberal arts education is necessary for a more peaceful future; this is something that is being disregarded in many contemporary popular and right-wing articulations. Examine.

SOURCE: The Hindu