Edit. Mr. Chastek responds:
Logic is one of the hardest arts/sciences to learn. What logic has been reduced to (formalism and validity, and intellectualism- remember that St. Thomas includes dialectics, rhetoric, and poetry in the modes of argument) is relatively easy to learn, but it is of dubious value and, as far as I can tell, is a tool of thought that excludes the possibilty of metaphysics from the beginning. Trying to make any statement about being or existence is either silly or impossible in all the formal systems I look at. The difference between the per se and the per accidens- which was the dividing line between philosophy and sophistry- is impossible to make or to take seriously where the fundamental unit of logic is the proposition, or where “classes” are seen as terms, or where the copula “is” is taken as having a single meaning.
A real logic course, studying all modes of argument and inference and the basis for them, etc. would probably take eight years. A basic program would probably take two years, and be followed by real life argumentative drills, like the medieval disputation (St. Thomas’s format of writing was developed by a real life public argument his “disputed questions” are developments of “transcipts” of public disputations) Given the rate of maturity of modern people, the needs we require our university system to meet, and the carpetbombing destruction that we commit upon our cognitive powers which makes contemplation very difficult (advertisements, pop music, movies, etc.) I’m not sure that the old modes of knowing logic could come back. The Medievals could never have had our medical or technological skill, and we can’t have their skill at metaphysics, logic, or disputation.
8 years! Did it take the medievals so long?
