G. F. Meiers rhetorisierte Logik und die freien Künste

A peculiar feature of the philosophy of Georg Friedrich Meier (1718-1777) lies in its being based on rhetorical principles. We are in front of an important construct that claims for attention in the context of the growing literature on eighteenth-century rhetoric. The syntagm ‘rhetorical logic’ indicates a specific function of rhetoricised as the basis of rethinking philosophical discourse. The paper shows that Meier’s philosophical programme is consistently based on the trivium. On top of this, the paper compares Meier and Immanuel Kant on the ancient topos of the artes liberales, thus making it clear that the position of Meier can be assessed as a model for a rhetorically founded theory of knowledge, which was transformed and overcome by Kant.