Grammar, logic, and rhetoric

You now have three questions that look alike and are not. Is this joined as speech? Does this follow, and is it so? Has a hearer been shown it? Kearns’s Preface names the same three as the foundations of how we come to express ourselves, to show that something is true, and to persuade others of that truth. The school names are grammar, logic, and rhetoric. They are not three subjects that happen to share a building. They are one education in speech, taken at three depths of the same act.

The practice applications put the same split in the form of a test. Grammar is satisfied by congruity and fails as solecism or barbarism. Logic is satisfied by truth and valid following, and fails as falsity or fallacy. Rhetoric is satisfied by persuasion ordered to what is so, and fails as ineffectiveness — or, if it persuades toward what is false, as sophistry. Walshe’s pair still holds: “man is stone” can be well formed and false; “man are animal” can be ill formed and true. Aristotle’s definition still holds: rhetoric sees the available means in this case; it does not replace demonstration, and it is not the art of winning.

The cycle

Each art is learned twice: once as doctrine on these pages, once as practice in the matching application. Then you return. The return is not a failure of the first pass. It is how an art is had. A new muddle in the app sends you back to the doctrine page; a new distinction on the doctrine page sends you back to the app with a better question.

For grammar, read What grammar is here, then work Ars Grammatica, beginning with What Grammar Is. Come back when you can say what grammar asks that the other two arts do not.

For logic, read Logic as a liberal art, then work Ars Syllogistica, beginning with What Is Logic · An Orientation and the First Act. Come back when you can tell what follows from what, and what only appears to.

For rhetoric, read Rhetoric ordered to the true and the good, then work Ars Rhetorica, beginning at Act I, What Rhetoric Is, with the tutorial card The counterpart of dialectic. Come back when you can say what still has to be done for these hearers after the saying is joined and the inference is valid.

Do not try to finish an application before you have the question. Do not treat the doctrine pages as a substitute for the drills. The default order remains grammar, then logic, then rhetoric, because a statement is made of words, and a hearer is shown a claim that can be followed.

If you are stuck

If you cannot tell what a word is doing in a sentence, or whether a string is even a complete saying, you are not yet in logic or rhetoric. Return to grammar and to Ars Grammatica.

If you cannot tell a statement from a question or a command, stay with grammar until you can, then look at the opening of logic. Logic works on statements, which can be true or false. That detour is rare, and it is not a skip of the first art.

If you can form sentences but cannot tell contradiction from disagreement, or what follows from what, or if a paragraph has the gait of an argument and none of its necessity, return to logic and to Ars Syllogistica.

If your terms have gone muddy in the middle of an inference — if you cannot tell what is being said of what — leave the syllogism and go back to grammar. Logic cannot order what has not yet been said as a saying.

If you can follow an inference but cannot offer it to anyone, or if you occupy a room without having shown anything, go to rhetoric and to Ars Rhetorica.

If you want to win before you can follow an inference, you are asking rhetoric too early. Stay with logic until something follows; then rhetoric can have a claim to show. If empty debate is already your trouble — fluency without a meaning — do a first pass of rhetoric so that you can see what the art is for, then return to grammar and logic so that you have something true to persuade toward.

On the order itself

The order grammar, logic, rhetoric is the one this course recommends and the one it has argued for: a statement is made of words, and a hearer is shown a claim that can be followed. It is also the traditional order. But it is not the only defensible one, and you should know that before you treat it as settled.

R. E. Houser, whose account of the three acts this course has used throughout, orders his own textbook grammar, then rhetoric, then logic — and his reason is not antiquarian. He tells instructors that the “information revolution” makes it more necessary than ever to distinguish ethos, pathos, and logos, and asks them to cut later material rather than cut the rhetorical appeals. His point is that a student now meets, every day and in volume, speech engineered to move him, and that he needs to be able to name what is being done to him before he has finished a course in the syllogism.

That argument has force, and it has most force for the reader who came here from machines that write or from a life spent in argument online. If that is you, taking a first pass of rhetoric after grammar and before logic is a reasonable choice, not a shortcut — provided you come back. The reason this course still recommends logic second is narrower than Houser’s is broad: rhetoric ordered to the true and the good needs something true to be ordered toward, and the art of telling what follows is what supplies it. Take the order you can defend, and be able to say why.

If you want methods, data, or systems before you can name, you are asking the later sciences too early. The quadrivium waits on purpose. Remain with words until speech can bear truth.

The test is ordinary. After a stretch of practice, come back to this page and ask which of the three questions you cannot yet answer. That is the art to return to. Then go to the matching application, and then come back again.

Continue to The quadrivium (later).