This interactive overview is for a motivated student or adult who already works hard at some subject — science, history, writing, coding, theology, a trade — and who is willing to ask whether that work rests on something more ordinary than it first appears: the care of words.
Modern schooling often wants to begin from things, from methods, from “critical thinking,” or from the felt need for the student to find how to express himself and engage with the world.
But the classical tradition of Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas begins from speech. Human teaching and learning are fundamentally linguistic; and that is where we must begin. Grammar, logic, and rhetoric are arts of speech, ordered to truth and to persuasion in a community of speakers.
Work through the modules in the order given, ideally.
But if you come with a strong objection or a strong presupposition that we should not begin with words— that science should come first, or that logic puzzles are enough — start at Modern starting-points and follow that path until it returns here.
You should have a teacher to lead you through these studies; but in our time it is often not easy to find a teacher; and this is especially true for older students.
The three practice apps
This interactive overview is expository. It does not replace practice. At the proper places this course sends you into three live applications, which train the arts rather than describe them. Those applications are not a substitute for reading; they are where the reading is tried.
The right order to proceed through the exposition is to begin with Grammar, then move to Logic, then, finally, Rhetoric. Sometimes, an excursus may be warranted, a detour to answer objections, consider other perspectives, and in general to solidify your understanding.
The quadrivium — the arts that begin from quantity, arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy — is discussed at the end but has its own course of study.