Common Sense School

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Wood
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
George Campbell ◽  
Joseph Priestley ◽  
Common Sense Philosophy

The school of common sense philosophy originated in the mid-1730s in Aberdeen in the circle of clergymen and academics associated with Thomas Reid. During the 1750s and 1760s the details of the philosophy of common sense were developed by Reid, Alexander Gerard and George Campbell, largely in response to the irreligious implications of Hume’s writings. Their ideas subsequently served as the starting point for the different formulations of common sense philosophy published by James Beattie and James Oswald. Beattie, Oswald and Reid were widely attacked in the 1770s and 1780s for their appeals to common sense, most notably by Joseph Priestley and Immanuel Kant. These attacks prompted Dugald Stewart to reformulate the appeal to common sense principles in the 1790s. However, Stewart’s version of common sense philosophy found little support in Scotland and the school effectively disappeared with his death in 1828.

Reid and the Foundations of Scottish Common Sense

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas McDermid
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
The Public ◽  
George Campbell ◽  
Common Sense Philosophy ◽  
Speculative Thought

In the Preface to his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783), Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) 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. The aim of this chapter is to explain where and why Kant’s interpretation of Scottish common sense philosophy goes awry. The work of four early Scottish common-sensists is explored: Thomas Reid (1710–96), James Oswald (1703–93), James Beattie (1735–1803), and George Campbell (1719–96). As Thomas Reid is by far the best-known and most accomplished member of this group, his system is treated as the sun by whose light three less brilliant bodies of work can be seen and measured.

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.

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.

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.

scholarly journals Nathaniel William Taylor and Thomas Reid: Scottish common-sense philosophy's impact upon the formation of New Haven theology in Antebellum America

2005 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-82
Author(s):  
Michael W. DeLashmutt
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
New Haven ◽  
Second Great Awakening ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Antebellum America ◽  
Mass Conversion ◽  
Common Sense Philosophy ◽  
New Haven Theology ◽  
The Relationship

This paper will examine the relationship between Scottish common-sense philosophy and the formation of New Haven Theology. It will be illustrated that Nathaniel William Taylor's adaptations of orthodox Calvinism (particularly the doctrines of election and predestination and total depravity) relied heavily upon the principles of common-sense philosophy found in the work of Thomas Reid. Furthermore, it will be argued that Taylor's adaptation of Calvinism was a necessary accommodation to the phenomenon of mass conversion and evangelism during the Second Great Awakening.

Stewart, Dugald (1753–1828)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward H. Madden
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Major Influence ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Realistic Interpretation ◽  
Ordinary Life ◽  
The Common

Dugald Stewart was, after Thomas Reid, the most influential figure in the Common Sense School; he was a major influence on Victor Cousin and Théodore Jouffroy in France and on most academic philosophers in the United States. Along with Reid and Cousin, Stewart made the Scottish tradition the dominant philosophy in America for half a century. His Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind and Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man were his most important works and went through a number of printings. The abridged edition of his Active and Moral Powers was reprinted ten times from 1849 to 1868. Stewart followed Reid in claiming that any philosophy which contravenes the principles of common sense must be false, and the problem is to discover and eliminate the premise which yields such results. He added the requirement that philosophical propositions must not change the meanings of concepts in ordinary life, and he also added a new dimension to Reid’s agency theory. More than any other writer he emphasized correctly the epistemic similarities between Reid and Immanuel Kant, but he followed Reid in avoiding Kant’s distinction between phenomena and noumena. Stewart disagreed with Reid in avoiding the phrase ‘principles of common sense’ as misleading, rejected his mentor’s realistic interpretation of universals and provided his own nominalistic alternative. He also modified to some extent, though quite cautiously, Reid’s rigid inductivism and made some concessions to a realistic interpretation of scientific hypotheses. Stewart was equipped to discuss issues in the philosophy of science since he was well versed in mathematics and physics, having been professor of mathematics at Edinburgh for ten years before being named professor of moral philosophy. Stewart was arguably the first and finest philosopher of science in the Scottish tradition.

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.

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.

The Rise and Fall of Scottish Common Sense Realism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas McDermid
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
External World ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
George Campbell ◽  
Perceptual Realism ◽  
Realism Debate

This book tells the lively story of common sense realism’s rise and fall in Scotland. Chapter 1 explores the work of the Scottish common sense school of philosophy, whose representatives included Thomas Reid (1710–96), James Oswald (1703–93), James Beattie (1735–1803), and George Campbell (1719–96). Chapter 2 examines the earlier but little-known defence of perceptual realism mounted by Lord Kames (1696–1782), David Hume’s cousin and critic. Chapter 3 examines Reid’s defence of common sense realism and scrutinizes his campaign against the Cartesian assumptions on which the problem of the external world depends. Chapter 4 describes how Reidian common sense realism was propagated by two influential nineteenth-century philosophers: Dugald Stewart (1753–1828), who was content for the most part to expound Reid’s views eloquently, and the more ambitious Sir William Hamilton (1788–1856), who tried in vain to synthesize Reid and Kant. Chapters 5 and 6 highlight the two main contributions to the realism debate made by James Frederick Ferrier (1808–64): his no-holds-barred critique of Reid’s realism, and his novel argument for a form of idealism which is both neo-Berkeleyan and post-Kantian. Chapter 7 offers some reflections about the surprising direction Scottish philosophy took in the years following Ferrier’s death in 1864.

Hume and the Contemporary “Common Sense” Critique of Hume

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorne Falkenstein
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Effective Response ◽  
Theory Of Ideas ◽  
George Campbell

This paper examines the principal objections that Hume’s Scots contemporaries, George Campbell, James Beattie, and Thomas Reid raised against his views of testimony, belief, and the “theory of ideas.” In opposition to Kant’s claim that “Reid, Oswald, and Beattie” had “appealed to common sense as an oracle when insight and research [failed them]” and had “[taken] for granted what [Hume] meant to call into doubt while emphatically, and often with great indignation, demonstrating what he had never thought to question” it is shown that, in each case, Hume’s critics understood him correctly and raised serious objections. But it is also shown that Hume’s work contains all the materials necessary to mount an effective response to their objections.

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