Thomas Reid on Logic, Rhetoric and the Fine Arts: Papers on the Culture of the Mind

by Alexander Broadie (Editor)

Thomas Reid saw the three subjects of logic, rhetoric, and the fine arts as closely cohering aspects of one endeavor that he called the culture of the mind. This was a topic on which Reid lectured for many years in Glasgow, and this volume presents as near a reconstruction of these lectures as is now possible. Though virtually unknown today, this material in fact relates closely to Reid’s published works and in particular to the late Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man and Essays on the Active Powers of Man . When composing these works, Reid drew primarily on his lectures on “pneumatology,” which presented a theory of the mental powers, broadly conceived. These lectures were basic to the course on the culture of the mind that explained the cultivation of the mental powers. Although the Essays also included some elements from the material on the culture of the mind, the bulk of the latter was left in manuscript form, and Alexander Broadie’s edition restores this important extension of Reid’s overall work. In addition, this volume continues the attractive combination of manuscript material and published work, in this case Reid’s important and well-known essay on Aristotle’s logic. This text was corrupted in earlier editions of Reid’s works and is now restored to the state in which Reid left it. This volume underscores Reid’s great and growing significance, viewed both as a historical figure and as a philosopher. At the same time, it is of great interdisciplinary importance. While the material emerges directly from the core of Reid’s philosophy, as now understood, it will appeal widely to people in literary, cultural, historical, and communications studies. In this regard, the present volume is a true fruit of the Scottish Enlightenment.

400 pages, Hardcover

First published November 30, 2004

About the author

Alexander Broadie FRSE is a Scottish philosopher and emeritus professor of logic and rhetoric at Glasgow University. He writes on the Scottish philosophical tradition, chiefly the philosophy of the Pre-Reformation period, the 17th century, and the Enlightenment.

Broadie attended the Royal High School, Edinburgh, the University of Edinburgh (MA), Balliol College, Oxford (MLitt), and the University of Glasgow (PhD, DLitt). He was Henry Duncan prize lecturer in Scottish Studies, Royal Society of Edinburgh (1990 - 1993), and has been a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh since 1991. As Gifford Lecturer in Natural Theology at Aberdeen University in 1994, he delivered a series of Lectures published under the title The Shadow of Scotus: Philosophy and Faith in Pre-Reformation Scotland (1995). Since demitting his professorship of logic and rhetoric at Glasgow University (held from 1994 to 2009) he has been honorary professorial research fellow there, mainly researching 17th-century Scottish philosophy.

In 2007 Broadie was awarded the degree of DUniv honoris causa by Blaise Pascal University at Clermont-Ferrand in recognition of his contribution to Franco-Scottish collaboration in the field of the history of philosophy.

Broadie's A History of Scottish Philosophy (2009) was named Saltire Society Scottish History Book of the Year. In July 2018 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society, and in 2020 was appointed honorary vice-president of the Saltire Society in recognition of his contribution to Scottish philosophy.