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

Following an enlightening introduction by Alexander Broadie, this volume collects Reid's manuscripts into three parts of about 100 pages each: the first about the culture of the mind, the second about Aristotle's logic, and the third about eloquence and the fine arts.

The first part reproduces Reid's manuscripts on the cultivation or improvement of the mind—originally lecture notes delivered to one of his classes at the University of Glasgow. Reid describes how one is to improve one's faculties of the mind, including reason, memory, perception, and imagination. His motivation lies in his conviction that the faculties are like "the Earth itself" which was "left by the Almighty in a Rude and uncultivated state but capable of a high degree of Cultivation by human Labour Industry [and] Art" (13).

This material will be most useful to those interested in Reid's philosophy of education, or the philosophy of education in eighteenth-century Scotland. Nonetheless, Reid makes several interesting points in these lectures that students of his metaphysics, ethics, and epistemology will find interesting. For example, he considers the nature of acquired perception here because our ability to form acquired perceptions depends on the cultivation of our senses. He recognizes that "the far greater part of the perceptions we have by [the senses] are acquired and therefore must be learned by practice and Habit" (18). This would confirm the interpretation of acquired perceptions according to which they are not as non-inferential and non-cognitive as Reid's "original perceptions."

Perhaps Reid's most intriguing observations concern the social nature of our faculties. In his analysis of testimony, scholars have seen in Reid a concern with social aspects of knowledge unparalleled in the history of philosophy. But Reid goes a step further by arguing that the faculties themselves are social in origin. Comparing a cultured man with a feral man, he argues that culture is necessary for the development of our intellectual and active powers, including reasoning, language-use, the conception of abstract ideas, and moral perception (40–42). This prompts Reid to attack Rousseau's thesis that man is most happy as a solitary individual in a state of nature, lacking these powers. Reid's case against Rousseau includes some unjustifiable ad hominem attacks, but is on the whole persuasive.

Reid also applies philosophical reasoning to his religious beliefs in these lectures, warning readers that some facts are beyond the human mind: "the first origin both of the human Soul and of the human Body is unknown to us" (25). This discussion should influence the question of whether Reid believes the substance of the mind is fundamentally beyond human comprehension. Second, in a conceptual argument that eludes me, he contends that it is "probable" that God "must" have created human beings as fully-formed adults (49).

The second part is entitled 'A Brief Account of Aristotle's Logic. With Remarks.' Amidst his excoriation of Aristotle and syllogistic reasoning, Reid's emphasis on the use of induction is impressive and important. Readers of this part will get glimpses of Reid's views on first principles and the nature of truth. Reid sees his philosophical reasoning—about the mind and now about logic—as having immediate practical benefit to those wishing to learn about the world. Though he praises Aristotle on several occasions for establishing the foundations of logic, he sees little of value in Aristotle's own logic. Of Aristotle's Topics, Reid asks, "Why should I throw away so much time and painful attention upon a thing of so little real use?" (115).

The final part of the volume is about the fine arts, principally eloquence, which is noblest because it combines the virtues of all the others (197). Reid mentions several conditions for a flourishing art of eloquence, including a number...