Kames's Legal Career and Writings as Precedents for Elements of Criticism

Abstract

Abstract Scholars have seldom explored relationships among Lord Kames's legal career and writings and Elements of Criticism. After considering why Kames did not write a rhetoric of legal advocacy, I argue that Kames's legal career and writings offered precedents for Elements in three areas: fulfilling social aspirations, using principles of human nature for pedagogical purposes, and using a mode of reasoning that involved abstracting principles from particular cases. I provide a more complete understanding of theElements and suggest that aims and methods of Scots law may have penetrated eighteenth-century Scottish rhetorics more broadly.