From Logic to Rhetoric: Adam Smith's Dismissal of the Logic(s) of the Schools

Abstract

In the professorship of Logic, to which Mr. Smith was appointed on his first introduction into this university, he soon saw the necessity of departing widely from the plan that had been followed by his predecessors, and of directing the attention of his pupils to studies of a more interesting and useful nature than the Logic and Metaphysics of the schools. Accordingly, after exhibiting a general view of the powers of the mind, and explaining so much of the ancient logic as was requisite, to gratify curiosity with respect to an artificial method of reasoning, which had once occupied the universal attention of the learned, he dedicated all the rest of his time to the delivery of a system of Rhetoric and Belles-lettres (Stewart 1858: 11).