Overview

Introduction to the Liberal Arts will begin to define what is unique and valuable about a small, liberal arts college like Monmouth College. The goal of the course is vast, challenging, and even inspired: to expose new college students to the life of the mind.  Many college students nationwide cite getting a better job as their first reason for attending college, and there is no doubt that a good education can be the first step to a comfortable income.  A liberal arts education, however, offers much more.  After all, a good income is only the means to an end: a good life.  Your years at Monmouth College can prepare you to make the best choices in your personal and professional life--and within the public arena as well.  By your exposure to the best ideas, texts, and minds, your life is more engaged, more thoughtful, and more conscious.  Critical thinking, aesthetic appreciation, communication skills, cultural understanding: these and more are the foundations of the liberal arts education.  These are also the abilities of the informed citizen, the thoughtful parent, and the ethical employee/ employer.

Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire: A Plant's Eye View of the World is the central text for Introduction to the Liberal Arts.  In this book, Pollan incorporates information from various disciplines as he explores the interrelatedness of plants and people. He considers the ways in which four human desires--for sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control--impact our behaviors and developments within the plant world. As he does so, he considers important issues such as how language shapes our understanding of the world and how and why we construct uncomplicated heroes. In the chapter on tulips, he considers the apparent irrationality of humans and the "artificial" valuation of objects of beauty (or, alternatively, the creation of value).  He examines links between apparent natural desires for intoxication and the links between being high and spirituality. Finally, in the chapter on potatoes, he explores genetic modification and the advantages and risks of our urge to control nature and of argricultural monocultures.

This broad topic will allow us to explore a wide variety of topics in the human condition—including how human beings form identities, how we come to know and understand the world, notions of what has value, what consequences our actions and choices have and how our desires impact the world around us. 

Goals of Introduction to the Liberal Arts