Liberal arts

(noun)

Those areas of learning that require and cultivate general intellectual ability rather than technical skills; the humanities.

Related Terms

Examples of Liberal arts in the following topics:

  • Education and Humanism

    • The main foundation of the school was liberal studies.
    • Liberal arts were viewed as the key to freedom, which allowed humans to achieve their goals and reach their full potential.
    • Liberal studies included philosophy, history, rhetoric, letters, mathematics, poetry, music and astronomy.
    • A painting symbolizing the liberal arts, depicting individuals representing the seven areas of liberal arts study, all circling around Plato and Socrates.

  • Egyptian Art

  • Art and Patronage

  • Buddhism

    • Sramana promoted spiritual concepts that became popular in all major Indian religions, such as saṃsāra, the cycle of birth and death, and moksha, liberation from that cycle.
    • The Sramanas renounced married and domestic life and adopted an ascetic path, one of severe self-discipline and abstention from all indulgence, to achieve spiritual liberation.
    • Depictions of the bodhisattva path are a popular subject in Buddhist art.

  • Art Under the Zhou Dynasty

  • Art and Culture Under the Nerva-Antonines

  • Art Under the Ming Dynasty

  • Art and Culture in the Edo Period

  • Art and Culture in 20th-Century Mexico

  • Hatshepsut

    • The average woman in Egypt was actually quite liberated for the time.
    • This statue of Hatshepsut is housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.