Ars Logica

This course is a training in reasoning well and in not being fooled — the classical dialectica, the rung of the trivium that sits between grammar and rhetoric and holds up both. It runs in two halves. Part One is informal logic: what an argument actually is, the split between true and valid, the full catalog of fallacies taught as recognizable moves in the wild — in ads, online fights, a sibling's bad case — with no abstract notation yet. Part Two is formal logic at full classical weight: the categorical proposition, the syllogism with mood, figure, and validity checked by rule and by Venn diagram, the enthymeme with its hidden premise, and a first real contact with propositional logic and the truth table.

Two rules govern everything. Charity before attack: a student does not get to judge an argument until they can state it strongly enough that its own author would nod. And — this is the course's own verdict, stated rather than left to be inferred — the tools come down hardest on the student's own side, because the arguments you want to be true are the ones that slip past your guard. Validity is formal, so the worked examples are drawn from across the spectrum on purpose: a fallacy is a fallacy whoever committed it, and a toolkit that only cut one way would not be logic. The capstone turns the full toolkit loose on real arguments — including the ones the student walked in agreeing with — and then hands the finished skill upward to rhetoric.

The full course opens September 1. Founding Families watch the ladder fill in — at a price that never moves.