Faculty of Arts

The Faculty of Arts ( facultas artium, artistarum ) was the basic part of the medieval and early modern university and served the mediation propaedeutic knowledge in preparation for study at one of the three " higher faculties " ( theology, law, medicine) as well as the training of teachers. Your name derived fro of the artes to her scholarly liberal. The arts faculty changed from the 15th to the 18th century to the Faculty of Arts, from which in turn emerged today humanities, math and science faculties.

Function

The artistic faculty was established in the 12th century in the wake of emancipation of medieval philosophy from theology. Your development towards an independent faculty was promoted significantly in the 13th century by the coined by Thomas Aquinas conception of autonomy of philosophy over theology. However, it was considered the "bottom" of the - since the 14th century in Central Europe after the model of the University of Paris established - four faculties, making up in the early modern period the common foundation of studying at one of the three "higher" faculties ( facultates the superior ). A successful completion of studies at the Faculty of Arts was also a prerequisite for the exercise of the teaching profession.

Object of study were the Seven Liberal Arts ( Septem Liberal Arts ), resulting in a Trivium ( " Three Way " with the subjects of grammar, rhetoric, dialectic ) and Quadrivium a ( " four way " with the subjects of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music ) divided. The study was completed after the Trivium with the degree of Bachelor and after the Quadrivium with the Magister; the latter opened the company access to the higher faculties. However, the Master's degree was not a prerequisite for admission to study at the higher faculties. Such knowledge could be acquired in an accompanying study at the Faculty of Arts.

The distinction between Bachelor and Master is the first time in 1215 in the Parisian statutes of Robert Coursons, who was charged as papal legate to the reform of the curriculum of the University of Paris, occupied. The duration of study during the Middle Ages was four years for the completion of the baccalaureate, two to three years for the Master's degree. In the early modern period, the duration of study for both degrees was gradually reduced to one and a half years.

The students of the Faculty of Arts only had to have a basic knowledge of Latin, which they usually acquired in the urban Latin schools to baseline. You were 16 years old on average. The teachers of the Faculty of Arts were generally at the same time students at one of the higher faculties, and not part of the actual faculty of the university, but to the scholars.

Development

First, under the influence of Renaissance humanism and the Reformation, then especially in the wake of the Enlightenment, the Faculties of Arts and Humanities transformed gradually into faculties. Already in the 14th century, the use of the term " Faculty " is busy, but it took until the 18th century that " the new name generally enforced and had definitively replaced the original naming ".

From the dialectic philosophy established in the course of this development as an academic discipline, from the grammar created the classical philology (Latin, Greek, Hebrew ), and later by the modern language sciences. In addition to the rhetoric has poetics, which further developed into the literature as a discipline. The Faculty of Arts thus comprised the rest of philosophy in the strict sense all philological- historical disciplines; developed from arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy in accordance with the mathematical and natural sciences. However, their propaedeutic function within the university retained the Faculty of Arts until well into the 18th century at.