In contemporary colleges and universities, higher studies typically begin with, or are often accompanied by, courses in writing and thinking. These courses in writing or thinking usually begin by directly teaching the student “how to think” or how to write or how to understand his own experience of things; sometimes, modern higher studies might also start from other directions, like from mathematical representations or from discussions of “critical thinking” or from each person’s felt need to express himself and engage with the world.
But the classical tradition of Plato, Aristotle, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas begins from speech. Human teaching and learning are fundamentally linguistic; and so that is where the tradition begins. Grammar, logic, and rhetoric are arts of language (or, to use the more proper traditional term, arts of speech), ordered to truth and to persuasion in a community of speakers.
This introduction lays out the foundations of the classical trivium (which is the coordinated studies of grammar, logic, and rhetoric), and in particular makes clear why the classical tradition begins all inquiry from words and takes words as its fundamental instrument.
But, first, what is a liberal art? A liberal art is an art that makes a man more free. How can an art make someone more free? An art can make free because it enables a man to know himself better and obtain his own goals in a better and more direct and easy way. An example will suffice: a man who can express himself well and communicate his ideas and persuade others will be far better able to achieve his goals in life and live for the best. That is the goal of the liberal arts. And the arts of language take pride of place.
Many contemporary students need to begin from starting points that differ from the classical tradition, given what they have already learned. The first set of pages allows the student either to explore modern starting points and why they are not the best places to begin, from the classical perspective, or to go directly on to begin how the tradition has always begun.
Ideally, you would 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 courses of study
After this introduction to the trivium, students can progress to these three courses of study in the arts of grammar, logic, and rhetoric themselves.
This interactive overview is expository. At the proper places this course turns to three courses of study now available, one in each art; these interactive courses provide an important foundational set of skills in the liberal arts. Neither this introduction nor these courses replace study of the classic texts. The study of the classic texts is and must be more meditative than is possible here.
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, to answer objections, consider other perspectives, and in general to clarify and confirm what you have already learned.
The quadrivium (the arts that begin from quantity, arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy) is discussed at the end of this introduction but has its own course of study.