Trail · 5 steps · Liberal Arts & Reasoning · The Canon

Read Great Books

How do I read a difficult classic and come away with something?

Five steps from a reading method to the arts that shaped the classics, a first primary text, a reading path on knowledge, and the Canon of sourced quotations.

  1. How to Read a Great Book: Levels, Modes and the Completion Standard Liberal Arts & Reasoning

    Start with method: read the primary text first, understand before you judge, and finish each book with something made: a thesis, notes, an argument map, an objection and an open question.

  2. The Seven Liberal Arts, Hands-On: Logic, Proof and the Quadrivium Liberal Arts & Reasoning

    The classics were written by people trained in the seven liberal arts; this guide gives a practice and a made thing for each art, then a path through Socratic questioning, Aristotle's logic and Euclid.

  3. Peirce on the Fixation of Belief Liberal Arts & Reasoning

    Now read one: Peirce's 1877 essay is short, clear and argued, with a worked reconstruction to compare yours against.

  4. What Does It Take to Know Something? Liberal Arts & Reasoning

    Then a reading path: six texts on knowledge and justified belief, from Peirce to Gettier, with a writing prompt at each stop.

  5. The Canon The Canon · interactive

    Finish with the Canon: sixty-seven quotations from the Presocratics to the present, each cited to its source and graded for how reliable the attribution is.

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