The Rise and Fall of Scottish Common Sense Realism
The Rise and Fall of Scottish Common Sense Realism
Douglas McDermid
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For Michelle, Julia, and Andrea
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Acknowledgements
I would be remiss if I did not thank the following individuals, each of whom helped me think better about the issues and authors dealt with in this book: Peter Baumann, Michelle Boué, Justin Broackes, Alberto Corona, Cairns Craig, Phillip Ferreira, James Foster, Giovanni Gellera, James Harris, Colin Heydt, Damian Ilodigwe, Ralph Jessop, Jennifer Keefe, Arthur Kleinman, Esther Kroeker, Keith Lehrer, Bill Mander, Jorge Ornelas, Stamatoula Panagakou, Carlos Pereda, Sabine Roeser, Nathan Sasser, Ernest Sosa, Jan Swearingen, James Van Cleve, and Rory Watson. Special thanks go to Gordon Graham for his enthusiasm for this project, and for organizing the superb series of conferences on Scottish Philosophy at Princeton Theological Seminary. I am also deeply indebted to Peter Momtchiloff at Oxford University Press for his patience and editorial guidance, and to two anonymous readers for their instructive comments on the manuscript. I also wish to thank Joanna North for her skilful and efficient copy-editing.
Some of the early work on this book was done during my 2011–12 sabbatical, which I spent as a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School. I wish to thank William Graham, Karin Grundler-Whitacre, and David Lamberth, all of whom made my stay at Harvard pleasant as well as possible. I also want to acknowledge the assistance I received from the helpful staff at Widener Library, the Harvard Law School Library, and the Andover-Harvard Theological Library. Finally, I thank my colleagues and students at Trent University, my home institution, for their interest and support.
This book incorporates material from two previous publications of mine: “Ferrier and the Myth of Scottish Common Sense Realism”, Journal of Scottish Philosophy 11 (2013): 87–107; and “Scottish Common Sense and American Pragmatism”, in A History of Scottish Philosophy in the 19th and 20th Centuries, ed. Gordon Graham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 205–35. I thank the publishers for their permission to reproduce that material here.
Finally, I dedicate this book with love to Michelle, Julia, and Andrea, all of whom have more common sense than I do.
Abbreviations
ACS James Oswald. (1766–72) An Appeal To Common Sense In Behalf of Religion, ed. James Fieser. Bristol: Thoemmes, 2000.
AM James Burnett, Lord Monboddo. (1779–99) Antient Metaphysics: Or, The Science of Universals. 6 volumes. London and New York: Garland Publishing, 1977.
BAL Thomas Reid. (1774) “A Brief Account of Aristotle’s Logic”. In Thomas Reid: Philosophical Works, With Notes and Supplementary Dissertations, ed. Sir William Hamilton. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1967: 681–714.
DM George Campbell. (1762) A Dissertation on Miracles. In Early Responses to Hume’s Writings on Religion. Volume 2, ed. James Fieser. Bristol: Thoemmes, 2001: 1–114.
DPL Sir William Hamilton. (1853) Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, Education and University Reform. Edinburgh: MacLachlan and Stewart.
EAP Thomas Reid. (1788) Essays on the Active Powers of Man, ed. Baruch Brody. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969.
EIP Thomas Reid. (1785) Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, ed. Derek R. Brookes. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002.
EOT James Beattie. (1771) Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism. Hildesheim and New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1975.
EPM Henry Home, Lord Kames. (1751) Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion. London and New York: Garland Publishing, 1976.
FW James Frederick Ferrier. (1864) Philosophical Works of James Frederick Ferrier. 3 volumes, ed. A. Grant and E. L. Lushington. Bristol: Thoemmes, 2001.
HSD William Hamilton. (1846) Dissertations, Historical, Critical, and Supplementary. In Thomas Reid: Philosophical Works, With Notes and Supplementary Dissertations, ed. Sir William Hamilton. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1967: 741–987.
ICR John Calvin. (1559) Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2009.
IHM Thomas Reid. (1764) An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, ed. Derek R. Brookes. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997.
LML Sir William Hamilton. (1861) Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic. 4 volumes, ed. H. L. Mansel and J. Veitch. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons.
POR George Campbell. (1776) The Philosophy of Rhetoric, ed. Lloyd F. Bitzer. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1963.
RC Thomas Reid. (1764–92) Correspondence of Dr. Reid. In Thomas Reid: Philosophical Works, With Notes and Supplementary Dissertations, ed. Sir William Hamilton. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1967: 39–92.
SCG St Thomas Aquinas. Summa Contra Gentiles. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975.
SP James Frederick Ferrier. (1856) Scottish Philosophy: The Old and the New. Edinburgh: Sutherland and Knox.
ST St Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947.
SW Dugald Stewart. (1854–60) The Collected Works of Dugald Stewart. 11 volumes, ed. Sir William Hamilton. Edinburgh: Thomas Constable and Company.
All passages from the Old and New Testaments are taken from The Bible: Authorized King James Version, ed. Robert Carroll and Stephen Prickett. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
It shows a lack of education not to know of what things we ought to seek proof and of what we ought not. For it is altogether impossible for there to be proofs of everything; if there were, one would go on to infinity, so that even so one would end up without a proof; and if there are some things of which one should not seek a proof, these people cannot name any first principle which has that characteristic more than this.
—Aristotle, Metaphysics
If the fear of falling into error sets up a mistrust of Science, which in the absence of such scruples gets on with the work itself, and actually cognizes something, it is hard to see why we should not turn round and mistrust this very mistrust. Should we not be concerned as to whether this fear of error is not just the error itself? Indeed, this fear takes something—a great deal in fact—for granted, supporting its scruples and inferences on what is itself in need of prior scrutiny to see if it is true. To be specific, it takes for granted certain ideas about cognition as an instrument and as a medium, and assumes that there is a difference between ourselves and this cognition. Above all, it assumes that the Absolute stands on one side and cognition on the other, independent yet separated from it, and yet is something real; or in other words, it presupposes that cognition which, since it is excluded from the Absolute, is surely outside the truth as well, is nevertheless true, an assumption whereby what calls itself fear of error reveals itself rather as fear of the truth.
—G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit
Introduction
About the very cradle of the Scot there goes a hum of metaphysical divinity . . .
—Robert Louis Stevenson
This book tells the lively and little-known story of common sense realism’s rise and fall in Scotland. The plot revolves around the contributions of five philosophers, each of whom enjoyed a generous measure of renown during his lifetime:
I. Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696–1782)
II. Thomas Reid (1710–96)
III. Dugald Stewart (1753–1828)
IV. Sir William Hamilton (1788–1856)
V. James Frederick Ferrier (1808–64)
It goes without saying that Thomas Reid, the canny apostle of common sense, is far and away the most famous of the five. Nevertheless, the other four authors on our list are also worth reading; and if you are seriously interested in understanding what any one of the five has to say about the central questions of epistemology and metaphysics, you would do well to study the works of the rest. Why? Simple: Kames, Reid, Stewart, Hamilton, and Ferrier are members of a rich and underappreciated tradition, and they routinely develop and define their positions by reference to the contributions of their predecessors. Such, at any rate, is the first of this book’s principal contentions, and I shall support it by carefully analysing what Kames, Reid, Stewart, Hamilton, and Ferrier had to say about a major issue which lies at the intersection of epistemology and metaphysics—namely, the thesis of realism about ordinary physical objects, or what J. L. Austin called “moderate-sized specimens of dry goods” (Austin 1962: 8). To be more specific, this book shall follow the career of a position known as ‘common sense realism’ through four main developmental stages in Scotland: its humble beginnings (Kames), its definitive formulation (Reid), its elevation to the status of academic orthodoxy (Stewart and Hamilton), and, finally, its dramatic repudiation and overcoming (Ferrier).1
This brings us to the book’s thematic, as opposed to its historical, focus. In what follows, I explore the different ways in which Kames, Reid, Stewart, Hamilton, and Ferrier tackled a problem which has haunted Western philosophy ever since Descartes: that of
determining whether any form of perceptual realism is defensible, or whether the very idea of a material world existing independently of perception and thought is more trouble than it is worth.2 As we shall see, this century-long conversation about the relation between mind and world led our five Scots to think uncommonly hard about a host of challenging issues in epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and meta-philosophy:
• Is the very idea of ‘things existing without the mind’ hopelessly confused or incoherent? Is a mind-independent world even a possible object of thought or conception? What, for that matter, are the limits of thought and conception, and what is supposed to determine or fix them?
• If a mind-independent world exists, is there good reason to suppose that we can have knowledge of it? Can we refute or disprove the thesis of external world scepticism, according to which we can never have knowledge of a mindindependent world? And if there isn’t any way to refute this thesis, does that mean it is reasonable for philosophers to endorse it?
• If we reject external world scepticism, what (if anything) can we learn from our encounter with it? Must we regard external world sceptics as wholly mistaken, or can we credit them with some significant philosophical discoveries or fresh insights?
• What are the objects of sense-perception? Does perception yield immediate epistemic access to anything beyond one’s mental states or representations (i.e.—our ‘ideas’ or ‘impressions’, in the parlance of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophy)? If so, how? If not, does this mean that external world scepticism is unavoidable?
• Can we prove that our faculties of sense-perception are fundamentally reliable or trustworthy? If we cannot prove this, does it follow that doubting the veracity of their deliverances is a reasonable thing to do?
• Is our knowledge of the physical world inescapably conditioned by subjectderived forms of thought or sensibility? Can we know objects only as they appear to us, or can we know things as they are ‘in themselves’?
• Should philosophers begin their inquiries with radical and all-devouring doubt à la Descartes? Is such doubt even coherent, or is it ultimately self-defeating? Moreover, what are the proper starting-points for philosophical reflection, and in virtue of what feature(s) do they qualify as such?
• Can we refute a philosophical thesis by showing that it contradicts some plain dictate(s) of ‘common sense’? If we can, then what gives common sense its authority? How are its authentic dictates identified? And—finally—what does the primacy of common sense reveal about human nature and our place in the scheme of things?
That the Scots’ reflections on all these topics repay close study, that their works are chock-full of bold thoughts and nice distinctions, that their thinking has the power to
deepen our understanding of the questions they addressed—that is this book’s second principal contention, and I shall defend it by offering perspicuous and detailed reconstructions of their main arguments and theses. In order to present each philosopher’s views in a fair and reasonably charitable light, I have tried to identify the main problems he was attempting to solve, to relate his work to that of his predecessors where possible, to describe the mistakes (real or perceived) he was particularly anxious to correct, to explain the internal logic of his position, and to discuss some of the main objections which he anticipated and tried to rebut. My hope is that even seasoned students of the realism controversy may learn something new and valuable from this exercise, if only because I have chosen to focus not on the usual suspects—Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant—but on a fresh and undervalued cast of characters.
The third aim of this book is to re-contextualize some of the achievements of Thomas Reid, who has frequently been treated as little more than a pedestrian footnote to David Hume. According to those who take this interpretive line, Reid was a mere Nay-sayer or negative thinker, a philosophical reactionary profoundly suspicious of modern thought, a dull and unimaginative critic who naïvely believed that he could refute Hume by pointing out that the ordinary person—the sober man or woman of ‘common sense’—finds Humean scepticism unspeakably silly and utterly incredible. This interpretation is a crude caricature of Reid’s procedure, to be sure, and no one who has studied Reid’s writings with a modicum of care will be tempted to take it too seriously. Nevertheless, the shadow cast by this reductive reading leaves us with an obvious and pressing question: if Reid should not be viewed as a mere footnote to Hume, what should we say about his place in the history of modern philosophy? My impulse is to divide this question into two sub-questions. Question 1: Can we construct a narrative about Reidian common-sensism which deepens our understanding of its historical significance without taking Hume’s assumptions or conclusions as its sole or primary point of reference?3 Question 2: Can we find a way of thinking about the connections between Reid’s thought and the work of later philosophers which does not lift Reid out of his historical and cultural context by presenting him as the precursor of some current school or movement?4
We can accomplish both of these things, I hope to show, provided we change our perspective and see Reid’s common sense philosophy as an integral part of the Kamesto-Ferrier sequence. When we relate Reid’s philosophical outlook to that of Kames, for instance, we get a much better sense of the ways in which Reid’s common sense realism was truly original, as well as a better sense of the ways in which it wasn’t; for once we become aware of his intellectual debts to Kames, we can see how Reid transformed what he received, both by adding to it and by subtracting from it. Similarly, our overall understanding of Reid’s common sense realism—our perception of its strengths and its weakness, its presuppositions and its ramifications—is enriched when we reflect on the ways in which Reid’s philosophy was received by leading nineteenth-century Scottish philosophers, who chose either to refine and systematize its contents (as in the case of Dugald Stewart), to synthesize it with doctrines derived from Kant (as in the case of
Sir William Hamilton), or to reject it altogether in order to start from scratch, buoyed by the noble hope of creating a system that would be free of all the supposedly crude and embarrassing blunders committed by Reid and his Scottish epigoni (as in the case of James Frederick Ferrier).
The fourth and final aim of this book is to win a wider audience for the neglected work of James Frederick Ferrier, a thinker of rare daring and originality who was arguably the first academic philosopher in nineteenth-century Britain to offer a sophisticated defence of idealism.5 Once a name to conjure with, Ferrier is now a largely forgotten figure; and the three volumes of his Philosophical Works, written with ferocity and finesse, gather dust on the shelves of research libraries or antiquarian bookshops in old university towns. To be sure, many is the mighty name whose lustre has faded, and time has made phantoms of more than one philosopher reckoned immortal by adoring contemporaries. But is Ferrier’s pathetic fate fair or fitting? Does he deserve to become a dumb shade, known only (if at all) for coining the term ‘epistemology’?6
The answer, I submit, is a firm and emphatic No. To be more specific, I believe that there are at least two reasons why Ferrier’s oeuvre deserves careful study. In the first place, Ferrier was that rarity among Anglophone philosophers: an honest-to-goodness speculative system-builder in the venerable rationalist tradition of Spinoza. With its self-conscious commitment to rigour and its proofs ad more geometrico, the format of Ferrier’s magnum opus, the Institutes of Metaphysic: The Theory of Knowing and Being (1854), reminds us much more of the Ethics than it does of any previous work of note in English-language philosophy. Beginning with a single proposition set up as an undeniable first principle or irrefragable axiom, Ferrier advances a total of forty-one propositions, the vast majority of which are presented as unavoidable logical consequences of propositions established at some earlier stage of the Institutes. The result, which John Stuart Mill called ‘the romance of logic’, is an impressive synthesis of rationalism and idealism which is remarkable for its breadth, coherence, and intellectual beauty.7 In the second place—and this is closely related to our first point—Ferrier was an extremely aggressive and skilful dialectician, a metaphysical Hannibal whose wars were waged with the well-honed weapons of pure reason. As anyone who peruses the Institutes soon realizes, Ferrier’s book is one long and audacious campaign of argument from beginning to end; and this campaign’s creator, like a seasoned military commander, has devised an ingenious and far-sighted strategy, the purpose of which is to ensure the downfall of his realist and common-sensist enemies by attacking them directly and repeatedly, and by cutting off their logical lines of retreat with platoons of necessary truths and regiments of razor-sharp syllogisms. In short, the Institutes of Metaphysic is a beautifully plotted book, and its fine structure mirrors the subtle yet far-seeing mind of its maker.
Very little needs to be said about the plot or structure of this book, because its plan is largely self-explanatory. After introducing the Scottish common sense school of philosophy led by Thomas Reid (Chapter 1), we delve into its prehistory by examining
the powerful but little-known defence of perceptual realism mounted by the redoubtable Lord Kames (Chapter 2). This sets the stage for an extended discussion of Reid’s insightful treatment of external world scepticism and his influential plea for common sense realism (Chapter 3). After describing how Reidian realism was appropriated and re-stated by Dugald Stewart and Sir William Hamilton in the early nineteenth century (Chapter 4), we take a close look at James Frederick Ferrier’s two great contributions to the realism debate in Scotland: his no-holds-barred critique of Reid’s position (Chapter 5) and his little-known argument for a form of idealism which is both neoBerkeleyan and post-Kantian (Chapter 6). We conclude with some reflections about the direction Scottish philosophy took in the years following Ferrier’s death in 1864 (Chapter 7).
Although it is tedious as well as un-Parmenidean to talk about what a book is not, I would like to make it perfectly clear at the outset that this is not a history of Scottish common sense philosophy. 8 It cannot possibly be that, since common sense realism is only one part of common sense philosophy—a rather important part, as I think, but a comparatively small one, all things considered. If you are inclined to doubt the latter claim, consider two points. (1) There is much more to Scottish common sense philosophy than epistemology. As students of the primary and secondary literature know very well, common sense philosophers explored a wide range of topics—in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, moral philosophy (pure and applied), aesthetics (including rhetoric and criticism), and philosophy of religion—many of which had little or nothing to do with the issues we shall discuss in this book. (2) Moreover, external world scepticism is only one of many epistemological problems addressed by Scottish common-sensists. To be sure, Reid and company were deeply interested in questions raised by sense perception; but they were also deeply interested in corresponding questions about memory, reason, introspection, conscience, and testimony. The conclusion supported by (1) and (2) may be expressed metaphorically: if common sense philosophy were a country, common sense realism would be a provincial capital whose reputation and charm once made it a mandatory stop on the Grand Tour. This book tells a story about that famous city’s rise and fall: about how and when it was built, who lived there, what they did, and how its once-firm foundations were shaken.
Another thing this book does not do is trace the emergence or evolution of the concept of ‘Scottish common sense philosophy’. That is to say, I shall not focus on how or when this category was first constructed, what interests and purposes it served, whose interests and purposes it served, why it survived and spread, or how it was related to extra-philosophical developments inside or outside of Scotland. As readers will see in Chapter 1, however, I firmly believe that there was what might be called a ‘school’ of common sense philosophy; but I acknowledge that there are some scholars of the Scottish Enlightenment who are sceptical about this old-fashioned judgment, and whose reservations flow from their account of that judgment’s genesis or historical
origins. In the interests of fairness, and for the benefit of readers who are keen to explore the history of the concept of ‘common sense’ on their own, I have included numerous references to the work of these scholars in the notes.
One word more before we begin. There are many signs that scholarly interest in the Scottish philosophical tradition as a whole has increased dramatically in recent years: the creation of the Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 9 the establishment of the Center for the Study of Scottish Philosophy at Princeton Theological Seminary (which grew out of The Reid Project based at the University of Aberdeen), the creation of the International Association for Scottish Philosophy, the republication of classic texts in the Library of Scottish Philosophy undertaken by Imprint Academic, the publication of much-needed critical editions of the works of Thomas Reid by Edinburgh University Press, the multi-volume history of Scottish philosophy published by Oxford University Press, and the publication of excellent scholarly monographs devoted to understanding various aspects of the Scottish philosophical tradition. I very much hope that this encouraging trend will continue; and if what I have written about the career of common sense realism in Scotland leads readers to take a closer look at the work of any of the figures I discuss, this book will have served its primary purpose.
Notes
1. Readers who cannot wait to find out what is meant by ‘common sense realism’ may consult Section 3.6 now. The present book, I hasten to add, does not purport to be an exhaustive or comprehensive history of common sense realism in Scotland.
2. According to Schopenhauer, this problem “is the axis on which the whole of modern philosophy turns” (Schopenhauer 1851 I: 15; cf. 3, 20).
3. Of course, I do not deny that Hume was a very important influence on Reid and the first wave of common sense philosophers. For more on this point, see Sections 1.2, 1.5–1.8.
4. According to some recent students of Reid’s work, Reid can be read as an externalist and a reliabilist avant la lettre, or as anticipating certain themes in the ‘Reformed epistemology’ associated with Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff (1983). I have absolutely no desire to argue against such interpretations; my interest here is in relating Reid’s work to pre-twentiethcentury philosophy in Scotland.
5. In his magisterial study, British Idealism: A History (2011), W. J. Mander writes: “Although the idealist movement proper did not begin until the 1860s, there were a few philosophers before then who may be thought of as forerunners, figures who began to sense the possibility of new lines of thought and who freed up the ground for others to go further. The first such person to consider is James Frederick Ferrier, a Scot, who was educated in the Universities of Edinburgh, Oxford, and Heidelberg, before finally he became Professor of Moral Philosophy at St Andrews” (Mander 2011: 27; cf. 28). As Mander points out, Ferrier was also seen as a forerunner by early twentieth-century commentators like James Seth (1912: 332), W. R. Sorley (1920: 284), and J. H. Muirhead (1931: 162–4). See also Rudolf Metz (1938: 247–8) and Bernard Mayo (1969/2007: 159).
6. “It is a curious, if minor, irony that where none of the books Ferrier wrote remains on a university syllabus, a mere word he coined does: the word ‘epistemology’ ” (Mayo 1969/2007: 161).
7. “His fabric of speculation is so effectively constructed, and imposing, that it almost ranks as a work of art. It is the romance of logic” (Mill, quoted in Seth 1912: 332).
8. See Grave (1960) for a book-length treatment of Scottish common sense philosophy.
9. Formerly known as Reid Studies, the journal’s name was changed in 2003 to reflect its broadened focus.
1 Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense
I’ve sent you here by Johnie Simson, Twa sage philosophers to glimpse on; Smith, wi’ his sympathetic feeling, An’ Reid, to common sense appealing. Philosophers have fought an’ wrangled, An’ meikle Greek an’ Latin mangled, Till wi’ their logic-jargon tir’d, An’ in the depth of Science mir’d, To common sense they now appeal, What wives an’ wabsters see an’ feel!
—Robert Burns
1.0 Introduction
What was Scottish common sense philosophy? To answer this question, we shall examine the works of four authors affiliated with the so-called ‘Scottish common sense school’: Thomas Reid (1710–96), James Oswald (1703–93), James Beattie (1735–1803), and George Campbell (1719–96). As Reid is by far the best-known and most accomplished member of this group, we shall place him at the centre of our account, treating his system as the sun by whose light three less brilliant bodies of work can be seen and measured.
First, however, an indiscreet and potentially subversive query is in order. Isn’t the very idea of common sense philosophy an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms? Robert Burns (1759–96), for one, seemed to think that it was; and so did Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). Indeed, in the Preface to his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783), Kant famously complained that common sense is the last refuge of the cynical and ambitious littérateur who, lacking any real aptitude for speculative thought, seeks to win over the public by consecrating their inherited prejudices and unexamined beliefs. Any half-educated scribbler or unscrupulous dilettante, Kant suggests, can now make an author of genius look like a fool or a knave in the eyes of non-philosophers; all she needs to do is insist that whoever contradicts the entrenched convictions of the
mob must be mischievous or mad. The problem with this approach, Kant thinks, is obvious: the judgments of common sense, while worth a great deal outside of philosophy, are virtually worthless within it. Common sense is an intellectual opiate, a curiositykilling drug which sedates human reason and keeps philosophy in a deep dogmatic slumber; and in that sleep of reason we know what dreams may come—dreams of a world where sceptical doubts are unknown, metaphysical perplexity is unheard of, and naïveté is the beginning of wisdom as well as its end:
But fate, ever ill-disposed toward metaphysics, would have it that Hume was understood by no one. One cannot, without feeling a certain pain, behold how utterly and completely his opponents, Reid, Oswald, Beattie, and finally Priestley, missed the point of his problem, and misjudged his hints for improvement—constantly taking for granted just what he doubted, and, conversely, proving with vehemence and, more often than not, with great insolence exactly what it had never entered his mind to doubt—so that everything remained in its old condition, as if nothing had happened
In order to do justice to the problem, however, the opponents of this celebrated man would have had to penetrate very deeply into the nature of reason so far as it is occupied solely with pure thought, something that did not suit them. They therefore found a more expedient means to be obstinate without any insight, namely, the appeal to ordinary common sense. It is in fact a great gift from heaven to possess right (or, as it has recently been called, plain) common sense. But it must be proven through deeds, by the considered and reasonable things one thinks and says, and not by appealing to it as an oracle when one knows of nothing clever to advance in one’s defense. To appeal to ordinary common sense when insight and science run short, and not before, is one of the subtle discoveries of recent times, whereby the dullest windbag can confidently take on the most profound thinker and hold his own with him. So long as a small residue of insight remains, however, one would do well to avoid resorting to this emergency help. And seen in the light of day, this appeal is nothing other than a call to the judgment of the multitude; applause at which the philosopher blushes, but at which the popular wag becomes triumphant and defiant. (Kant 1783: 8–9)
A curious passage, this.1 Note that Kant appears to treat Thomas Reid, James Oswald, and James Beattie as equals, that he does not mention George Campbell, the fourth horseman of Scottish common sense, and that he writes as if the Englishman Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) were an ally of the Scottish philosophers instead of being one of their earliest and most caustic critics. Note, too, that Kant’s main objection is not so much that Reid, Oswald, and Beattie did not answer David Hume correctly; it is that they did not answer him at all. Ill-equipped to deal with an intelligence as penetrating and powerful as Hume’s, they thought it best to avoid a direct confrontation with him; unable to respond to reason with reason, they took the liberty of consulting an ‘oracle’ (ein Orakel)—that is to say, an inspired source of knowledge whose authority is hallowed and mysterious, ancient and unquestioned—whose revelations are presented in the form of our ordinary beliefs. Unfortunately for the Scots, says Kant, this entire line of thought is a little more than a desperate and execrable argumentum ad populum. Instead of being
a species of philosophy, the Scottish appeal to common sense is an act of treason against reason itself.2
What is wrong with Kant’s interpretation of Scottish common sense philosophy? Where and why does it miss the mark? To answer this question, we must become better acquainted with the work of the school’s representatives, beginning with Thomas Reid.
1.1 Thomas Reid: Curriculum Vitae
The bare facts of Reid’s life and academic career are easily summarized. A son of the manse, Reid was born in 1710 in Strachan, Kincardineshire, and received his early education there, followed by several years at a nearby school.3 After graduating in 1726 from Aberdeen’s Marischal College, where one of his teachers was the Berkeleyan philosopher George Turnbull (1698–1748),4 Reid devoted himself to the study of divinity in preparation for a career as a minister in the Church of Scotland. Ordination duly followed in 1731, and in 1737 Reid became the parish minister of New Machar in Aberdeenshire. During his tenure there, he continued to cultivate his life-long interests not only in philosophy, but also in mathematics and the natural sciences.5
In 1751, Reid took up his first academic post: that of Regent at King’s College in Aberdeen, whose Philosophical Society (or “Wise Club”, as some witty locals christened it) Reid co-founded in 1758. During the late 1750s and early 1760s, he presented several papers to this Society, whose members served as a sounding-board for his novel ideas about perception—ideas which were to figure prominently in his first book, An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (1764).6 In that book’s Dedication, addressed to the Earl of Findlater and Seafield, Reid acknowledges his intellectual debt to the Wise Club, which he refers to as “a private philosophical society, of which I have the honour to be a member”:
My thoughts upon this subject were, a good many years ago, put together in another form, for the use of my pupils; and afterwards were submitted to the judgment of a private philosophical society, of which I have the honour to be a member. A great part of this inquiry was honoured even by your Lordship’s perusal. And the encouragement which you, my Lord, and others, whose friendship is my boast, and whose judgment I reverence, were pleased to give me, counterbalanced my timidity and diffidence, and determined me to offer it to the public.
(IHM Dedication, 5; emphasis mine)7
Reid remained at King’s College until 1764, when the Inquiry into the Human Mind was published. The very same year, his younger contemporary Adam Smith (1723–90), whose Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) had appeared only a few years before Reid’s Inquiry, unexpectedly retired from the Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow.8 The vacancy created by Smith’s sudden departure was filled by Reid, whose professional duties in Glasgow differed in kind from his old ones in Aberdeen. As Regent at King’s College, Reid had been required to teach a remarkably diverse
assortment of subjects, including mathematics and science;9 as Professor of Moral Philosophy, his assignment was predictably more specialized, though still far from narrow. Epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, ethics (both theoretical and practical), aesthetics, and natural theology: these were the subfields of philosophy to which Reid returned time and again during his years in Glasgow. In addition to preparing lectures on these topics, he found time to compose other works, such as “A Brief Account of Aristotle’s Logic With Remarks”,10 “A Statistical Account of the University of Glasgow”, and several papers on Priestley and materialism.11
Although Reid held the Chair of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow until his death in 1796, he stopped teaching in 1780 and let his assistant, Archibald Arthur (1744–97), lecture in his stead.12 Determined to set down his philosophical thoughts in a final and integrated form, Reid spent several years converting decades’ worth of manuscripts and lecture material into two major books: Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785) and Essays on the Active Powers of Man (1788).13 It is ultimately upon these two works, along with his earlier Inquiry into the Human Mind, that his philosophical reputation rests.
An important part of that reputation, of course, is the idea that Reid was ‘a philosopher of common sense’. This epithet is in some ways a singularly unfortunate one, however, because it may conjure up images of a mad-dog dogmatist—one who boldly barks ‘I refute you thus!’ as his buckled shoes ring against reassuringly solid rocks.14 Although Reid was certainly interested in overcoming scepticism, this pedestrian and comically inept way of confronting it has virtually nothing in common with his approach, and it is high time that we explained why.
1.2 Scepticism and Reid’s Principles of Common Sense
One fruitful way of understanding Reid’s common-sensism is to see it as a reply, not to a single form of scepticism, but to no fewer than four: epistemological scepticism, metaphysical scepticism, moral scepticism, and religious scepticism.15 Epistemological sceptics directly target our faith in the basic reliability of our cognitive faculties (perception, memory, reason, and introspection), cast aspersions on our conviction that we can have knowledge of other minds, scout our belief in nature’s uniformity, or urge that the weight we naturally give to testimony is excessive. Metaphysical sceptics, taking a rather different tack, complain that our ordinary conceptual scheme is hopelessly confused or fundamentally inadequate. According to this class of doubting Thomases, certain categories which we are accustomed to take for granted in our thinking about the world—categories such as substance, selfhood, personal identity, causation, and libertarian free will—can no longer be employed with a clean philosophical conscience, because there is nothing in reality to which they correspond. Moral sceptics, for their part, contend that we cannot act altruistically, doubt whether the distinction between virtue and vice is rooted in the nature of things, argue that practical reason is
