자유교과의 형성과 전개:

A Study of the Development of the Liberal Arts: In the Ancient and Medieval Context

이 논문은 ‘자유교과’와 ‘칠 자유교과’의 형성과 전개 과정을 서양 고중세적 맥락에서 되짚어 봄으로써 그것들에 접근하는 한 가지 방식을 제안하기 위해 작성되었다. 연구자는 우선 자유교육에 대한 아리스토텔레스적 정의와 그것을 토대로 영미권에서 형성되어 온 자유교육의 현대적 정의를 간략히 고찰하고, 자유교과의 성격을 그렇게 정의된 자유교육의 이념으로부터 연역 하고 그 목록을 제시하는 방식을 비판적으로 검토한다. 이후 논의에서 연구자는 ‘자유교과’를 하나의 교과 체계 또는 규범적 프로그램을 가리키는 용어로 사용해야 한다는 점, 그 경우에 그체계 속에 포함되는 개별 교과들은 고대 헬라스에서 전승된 것이라 할 수 있지만 그것들을 모두 포괄하는 전반적인 교과 체계는 기원전 1세기 고대 로마에서 유래한다는 점, 그리고 특히 그것은 4세기 이후 ‘칠 자유교과’의 형태로 확립된 후 기독교 성직자들에 의해 수용되고 중세 교과의 표준으로 정착되었다는 점을 그 역사적 흐름에 따라 기술한다.

This essay is a result of the author’s attempt to look at the issues concerned with the liberal arts and the seven liberal arts in the context of the history of the Western education, particularly in the ancient and medieval context. The essay consists basically of two parts. In chapters two and three, the author discusses about some problems found in the approaches of looking at what the liberal arts are from the question of what the liberal education is, and the basis of such approaches as well as how such approaches have been conducted. Aristotle’s famous book, Politics, which is the major reference of the distinction between the liberal and the illiberal, the nature of the intellectual activities called ‘schole’, and the ideal of liberal education related with them are critically reviewed. Also, in these two chapters, the great debates on the ideals of the university education occurred in the 19th century England, what the debates can mean for the issue of liberal education, and the 20th century English analytical philosophers’ theory of liberal education are examined. The discussion in the chapters four and five is made in the somewhat opposite way of those in the previous chapters. Here the author discusses the term ‘liberal arts’ as the translation of the Latin term, ‘artes liberales’, and asks who began to use it, when and where. The disciplines called the liberal arts were transmitted from the ancient Greece to the 1st century BCE Roman scholars such as Cicero and Varro, taught in their public schools. They became weakened as Christianity proliferated. However, these pagan disciplines were accepted Christians as useful tools for studying Christianity from the time of the Saint Augustine on. At the beginning of the Medieval Ages the system of the ‘seven liberal arts’ was established and maintained its status as the standard Medieval curricular system for over 900 years.