Robert Burns and the Philosophers

J. Walter McGinty received his PhD at the University of Strathclyde on ‘Literary, Philosophical and Theological Influences on Robert Burns’. Dr McGinty is an ordained Minister, having trained for the Ministry of the Church of Scotland at the University of Glasgow and Trinity College Glasgow. Other publications are Robert Burns and Religion, (Ashgate); and Robert Burns the Book Lover: From Reader to Writer, (Humming Earth.) The present volume completes the trilogy of books that have examined the influence of the reading of Robert Burns. McGinty has also written a biography, ‘An Animated Son of Liberty’: A Life of John Witherspoon, (Arena) and has published papers on ‘John Goldie and Robert Burns’ and ‘Milton’s Satan and Burns’s Auld Nick’ in Studies in Scottish Literature Vols XXIX and XXXIII.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1 Homespun philosophy

Chapter 2 John Locke I - Opening up other worlds

Chapter 3 Adam Smith I - Theory of Moral Sentiments

Chapter 4 Adam Smith II – The Wealth of Nations

Chapter 5 Francis Hutcheson – A shared outlook

Chapter 6 Thomas Reid – Common Sense

Chapter 7 Dugald Stewart – The local philosopher

Chapter 8 Archibald Alison and William Greenfield –A confidence achieved

Appendix List of Authors or texts quoted or alluded to by William Greenfield in his Essays on the sources of the pleasures received from literary

composition, that were known to Robert Burns.

References and Notes

Bibliography

Index