"John of Salisbury has long been celebrated as one of the foremost humanists of the twelfth-century renaissance, an erudite correspondent, legal expert, historian, poet, diplomat and political thinker, and clerk to two successive archbishops of Canterbury, Theobald and Thomas Becket. His 'Metalogicon', ostensibly a defence of the role of logic and of Aristotle's 'Organon' in the educational syllabus of the day, makes a powerful argument for an educational system of real practical utility for society, one whose intellectual coherence and rigour should underpin political morality and rational governance. As such, it has been seen to stand alongside the more famous 'Policraticus' as an integral part of the intellectual contribution of one of Europe's great political theorists. Based on John's own experiences as a student and a teacher, the treatise offers unique evidence of the educational system of twelfth-century Paris at a critical stage in the early development of the schools, and of the earliest reception of the Aristotelian texts of the 'new logic'."--Back cover.