Beattie, James (1735–1803)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Wood
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Common Sense Philosophy ◽  
The Mind

James Beattie was famed as a moralist and poet in the late eighteenth century, and helped to popularize Scottish common-sense philosophy. At Marischal College, Aberdeen, Beattie cultivated a lecturing style which differed significantly from that of his Aberdonian predecessors. Because he believed that the form of abstract analysis characteristic of the science of the mind in his day often led students into the morass of Humean scepticism, Beattie endeavoured to inculcate sound moral and religious principles through the study of ancient and modern literature. Consequently his version of common-sense philosophy diverged from that developed by Thomas Reid. Beattie was more of a practical moralist than an anatomist of the mind, and his treatment of common-sense epistemology lacked the philosophical range and rigour of Reid’s.

The “New Empire of Common Sense”

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul B. Wood
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Atlantic World ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Joseph Priestley ◽  
Common Sense Philosophy

Although the rise of Scottish common sense philosophy was one of the most important intellectual developments of the Enlightenment, significant gaps remain in our understanding of the reception of Scottish common sense philosophy in the Atlantic world during the second half of the eighteenth century. This chapter focuses on the British context in the period 1764–93, and examines published responses to James Oswald, James Beattie, and, especially, Thomas Reid. The chapter contextualizes the polemics of Joseph Priestley against the three Scots and argues that it was Joseph Berington rather than Priestley who was the first critic to claim that the appeal to common sense was the defining feature of “the Scotch school” of philosophy. It also shows that Reid was widely acknowledged to be the founder and most accomplished exponent of the “school”, whereas Beattie and Oswald were typically dismissed as being derivative thinkers.

Hamann, Johann Georg (1730–88)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick Beiser
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Friedrich Schlegel ◽  
Sturm Und Drang ◽  
German Enlightenment ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Social ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Mind

Hamann was one of the most important critics of the German Enlightenment or Aufklärung. He attacked the Aufklärung chiefly because it gave reason undue authority over faith. It misunderstood faith, which consists in an immediate personal experience, inaccessible to reason. The main fallacy of the Aufklärung was hypostasis, the reification of ideas, the artificial abstraction of reason from its social and historical context. Hamann stressed the social and historical dimension of reason, that it must be embodied in society, history and language. He also emphasized the pivotal role of language in the development of reason. The instrument and criterion of reason was language, whose only sanction was tradition and use. Hamann was a sharp critic of Kant, whose philosophy exemplified all the sins of the Aufklärung. Hamann attacked the critical philosophy for its purification of reason from experience, language and tradition. He also strongly objected to all its dualisms, which seemed arbitrary and artificial. The task of philosophy was to unify all the various functions of the mind, seeing reason, will and feeling as an indivisible whole. Although he was original and unorthodox, Hamann’s critique of reason should be placed within the tradition of Protestant nominalism. Hamann saw himself as a defender of Luther, whose reputation was on the wane in late eighteenth-century Germany. Hamann was also a founder of the Sturm und Drang, the late eighteenth-century literary movement which celebrated personal freedom and revolt. His aesthetics defended creative genius and the metaphysical powers of art. It marked a sharp break with the rationalism of the classical tradition and the empiricism of late eighteenth-century aesthetics. Hamann was a seminal influence upon Herder, Goethe, Jacobi, Friedrich Schlegel and Kierkegaard.

scholarly journals Enlightenment or Counter-Enlightenment in Russia? Enlightenment or Counter-Enlightenment in Russia? Century

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1089-1120
Author(s):  
Natalie Bayer
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Mind

The article explores the themes of Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment through the lens of Freemasonry, and, more specifically, Freemasons in Russia who wrote history. It tests the approaches of Masonic history writers against Berlin’s definitions of the Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment. Whilst a definitive break between the Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment seems attractive, the article advances a more nuanced picture of the plurality of religious and secular discourse in Russia. Instead of opposing the Enlightenment, many late eighteenth-century Masonic writers of history provided their own, alternative interpretative models of history as a way out of the perceived crisis between the mind and the soul.

Buffier, Claude (1661–1737)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James W. Manns
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
External World ◽  
Inner Experience ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
External Reality ◽  
The Common ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense Philosophy

A French Jesuit who flourished in the early eighteenth century, Buffier developed an outlook that he referred to as common-sense philosophy. While deeply influenced by the philosophies of Descartes and Locke, he saw their reliance on the testimony of inner experience to be conducive to scepticism concerning the external world. In reaction to this, he sought to establish the irrevocable claims of various ‘first truths’, which pointed towards external reality and qualified it in various respects. His work anticipates certain themes that surfaced later in the common-sense philosophy of Thomas Reid.

Montaigne and Shakespeare

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
William M. Hamlin
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Literature ◽  
Modern Literature ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of

This article examines the history of critical efforts to trace the nature and extent of Shakespeare’s reliance upon Montaigne. Such efforts began in the late eighteenth century with the English scholar Edward Capell, and they have continued quite vigorously up to the present. In addition, the article raises a number of key cognate questions: What constitutes evidence in an investigation of this sort? When does verbal reliance amount to intellectual dependence? What do we stand to gain if we cease to look for relations of influence and focus instead on synchronic affinities between Montaigne and Shakespeare? Does Shakespeare exhibit resistance to Montaignian thought? And why do the potential links between these extraordinarily independent writers continue to fascinate scholars of early modern literature?

Unveiling Nature: Wonder and Deception in Eighteenth-Century London Shows and Exhibitions

Nuncius ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lavinia Maddaluno
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Natural Philosophers ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Philosophical Understanding

This paper examines six exhibitions of machines, clocks, and automata which were performed in the squares, salons and coffee-houses of late eighteenth-century London. It does not take into account those natural philosophers whose enquiries were acknowledged by institutional science, rather focusing on those mechanicks, illusionists, and circus owners (Gulielmo Pittachio, John Joseph Merlin, Benjamin Rackstrow, Henry Breslaw, Philip Astley and James Cox), often collocated in the category of charlatans. By taking into account original advertisements, catalogues and pamphlets, it argues that these shows, with their moments of veiling and unveiling, their dissimilar “methods” to astonish and induce credulity in the beholders, and their separation from institutional venues, were still conceived as places to enlighten and edify the mind, and conveyed concepts such as wonder, deception, curiosity and philosophical understanding to the public.

Hamilton, William (1788–1856)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
H.O. Mounce
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Sense Philosophy ◽  
The Mind

Sir William Hamilton was a leading exponent of the Scottish philosophy of ‘common sense’. This philosophy had its origin in the works of Thomas Reid, but it was through Hamilton that it achieved its most subtle form and exerted its greatest influence. ‘Common-sense’ philosophy, on a superficial view, may seem to hold that philosophical problems should be settled by appealing to the commonly accepted opinions of ordinary people. But that is not what it holds. The ‘common sense’ to which it refers are certain powers and beliefs natural to the mind and therefore common alike to the learned and vulgar. Hamilton holds that these powers and beliefs can neither be doubted nor justified. They carry their own authority. This view derives its significance from a point which has often been overlooked. When we doubt or justify a belief, we stand outside that belief and compare it with the world. But the power to compare a belief with the world itself presupposes beliefs about the world. We cannot step outside all our beliefs. That is why, according to Hamilton, certain powers and beliefs must carry authority.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. B. Bow
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Common Sense Philosophy ◽  
The Mind

This volume of essays considers the philosophical and historical significance of common sense philosophy in the Scottish Enlightenment. As one of eighteenth-century Scotland’s most original intellectual products, common sense philosophy dominated the teaching of moral philosophy and the “science of the mind” at Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen universities during the last quarter of the century, and also informed many Presbyterian clergymen’s treatment of human nature from the pulpit....

Aberdeen Philosophical Society

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Wood
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
George Campbell ◽  
Common Sense Philosophy ◽  
The Mind

The Aberdeen Philosophical Society (1758–73) played a formative role in the genesis of Scottish common sense philosophy. Its founder members included the philosopher Thomas Reid and the theologian George Campbell. Its discussions favoured the natural and human sciences, particularly the science of the mind, and one of its central concerns was the refutation of the work of David Hume.

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