Prof. Kazimierz Ilski: This is not about us
Professor Kazimierz Ilski is a former dean of the Faculty of History. He belongs to the group of people responsible for establishing the LAS program in Poznań. He teaches the class “Traditions of artes liberales”. We asked him for a few sentences of reflection related to his subject and the program as such.
What exactly are Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS)? The name is English, but in the name of the class "Traditions of artes liberales" - we hear Latin.
Next to the first, easy answer that LAS is a program which in its first recruitment at AMU attracted a group of well-motivated students, it should be noted that it is also a concept of education and upbringing, which the Greeks described with the word paideia.
It is by no means an anachronistic return to the form of a Greek Academy or Lyceum. However, certain principles determining the shaping of the mental model are worth recalling and, in a modernized shape, worth following. It is about educating a free man and shaping a community of free people - the university as a "community of doubt". After all, bringing together the free citizens of the world doesn't seek to emphasize the ignorance of each other. The goal is to cross the boundaries of what has already been established in an open discussion or to correct what has been established defectively, without being servile to fashions and weathered methodologies.
The point is to ask, in the community of professors and students, every possible question as long as it meets the criteria of logic, so that the thesis can be verified by an antithesis. The freedom of learning includes opening new fields while respecting tradition,
accumulation of knowledge in vertical (generational) and horizontal structures, by constant contact with friends from other universities in the East and West. Freedom is not a privilege to waste time, nor is it a privilege to concentrate narcissistically on onself,
on ones beautiful, trained body and skills described by the particular disciplines of science in the name of career, profit, or short-term popularity. Paideia is still about the "good life" and awakening the desire to discover the unchanging and harmonious world order.
