The Life of Thomas ReidAberdeen and the North-East, 1710-1764

Provides the first detailed discussion of Thomas Reid's life as a clergyman and academic in the North-East of Scotland, and the cultures of Enlightenment which shaped his thought and career

• Based on an exhaustive examination of Reid’s extant manuscripts as well as previously untapped archival sources
• Integrates the study of Reid’s work in philosophy, the natural sciences and mathematics
• Contains an in-depth account of Reid’s career as a parish clergyman, his religious outlook and his involvement in the affairs of the Kirk at both the local and national levels
• Reconstructs Reid’s teaching at King’s College Aberdeen as well as his role in the administrative crisis that engulfed the College in the period 1759-1763
• Uses Reid’s life as a clergyman and academic to shed light on the rise of moderate Presbyterianism in the North-East and the nature of the Aberdeen Enlightenment

Thomas Reid is now recognised as one of the leading thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment. Based on largely unexplored archival and printed resources, The Life of Thomas Reid is the first biography of him to appear since the nineteenth century. It situates his life and writings firmly in the context of eighteenth-century Scotland, and analyses in depth his career as a clergyman and academic.

This book focuses on Reid's years in Aberdeen and the North-East of Scotland, where he played a major role in furthering a moderate brand of Presbyterianism in the Kirk and in promoting educational reform at King’s College. It also highlights his prominent contribution to a form of Enlightenment in Aberdeen that encompassed rational Christianity, the aspiration to improve the moral and material conditions of humankind and the consolidation of the Hanoverian state. As well as painting a vivid picture of Reid’s social and cultural milieux and his activities as a parish minister and pedagogue, the book traces in detail the intellectual origins of his first major publication, An Inquiry into the Human Mind, on the Principles of Common Sense (1764).