scholarly journals The Hero as Seer: Character, Perception and Cultural Health in Carlyle

2009 ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Gavin Budge
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sense Data ◽  
Individual Character ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
Erasmus Darwin

Abstract A rhetoric of spectrality pervades Thomas Carlyle’s writings, in a way which is intimately related to his characteristic position of “natural supernaturalism.” This essay argues that Carlyle’s rhetorical emphasis on spectral hallucinations in his descriptions of social upheavals such as those of revolutionary France reflects the influence on his work of physiological theories of perception stemming from the medical thought of Erasmus Darwin, theories which are frequently invoked in early nineteenth-century theories of ghosts and apparitions. Carlyle’s preoccupation in his historical writing with the figure of the “Great Man” also reflects this medical context, in that the Great Man’s superior ability to perceive the reality of his historical moment is understood by Carlyle as indicative of a superior cultural “health” that he manages to convey to the society of his time, contrasted by Carlyle with the state of feverish delirium characteristic of revolutionary situations. The essay suggests that this relationship to theories of perception aligns the Carlylean “Great Man” to the figures of the Wordsworthian poet and the Romantic genius more generally, and also helps to explain the Victorian emphasis on “character,” of which the Carlylean historiography of “Great Men” is an example. The placing of individual character at the centre of accounts of perception by nineteenth-century thinkers such as Carlyle and Ruskin reacts against the determinism associated with Enlightenment thought’s assumption that in perception the mind is passively imprinted with sense-data, and reflects the influence of the alternative account of perception as a process of interpretation of signs put forward by Thomas Reid and other Common Sense philosophers.

The Physiology of Mind, the Unity of Nature, and the Moral Order in Victorian Thought

1981 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. S. Jacyna
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Living Organism ◽  
The State ◽  
Moral Order ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Mind

In 1879 G. H. Lewes described the state of current British mental science. There were, he maintained, three main ‘schools’ of psychology. The first of these Lewes called the ‘ontological’ school; its members traced their lineage to Thomas Reid and to the common sense philosophers of the early nineteenth century, especially Dugald Stewart and William Hamilton. The second school was the ‘empirical’, which stood in the tradition of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Condillac, Hartley, and James Mill. The ontologists and the empiricists differed in their theories of knowledge: the former held that certain beliefs were native to the mind; the latter that all ideas originated, mediately or immediately, from experience. However, both schools agreed on the object of psychological enquiry. They ‘quietly ignore the complex conditions of the living organism, and treat mental facts simply as the manifestations of a Psychical Principle’. Further, the ontological and empiricist schools concurred on the means by which this principle should be studied; both made introspection the ‘exclusive method of research’.

Dugald Stewart on intellectual character

1997 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
JENNIFER TANNOCH-BLAND
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Intellectual Culture ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual Character ◽  
History Of

Dugald Stewart (1753–1828) lectured in astronomy and political economy, held the chair of mathematics at Edinburgh University from 1775 to 1785, then the chair of moral philosophy from 1785 to 1810, and wrote extensively on metaphysics, political economy, ethics, philology, aesthetics, psychology and the history of philosophy and the experimental sciences. He is commonly regarded as the last voice of the Scottish Enlightenment, the articulate disciple of Thomas Reid, father of Scottish common sense philosophy. Recently some historians have begun to rediscover elements of the contribution Stewart made to early nineteenth-century British intellectual culture, and his Collected Works have been republished with a new introduction by Knud Haakonssen.

George Combe and common sense

2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
SEAN DYDE
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Relative Success ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Mind

AbstractThis article examines the history of two fields of enquiry in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Scotland: the rise and fall of the common sense school of philosophy and phrenology as presented in the works of George Combe. Although many previous historians have construed these histories as separate, indeed sometimes incommensurate, I propose that their paths were intertwined to a greater extent than has previously been given credit. The philosophy of common sense was a response to problems raised by Enlightenment thinkers, particularly David Hume, and spurred a theory of the mind and its mode of study. In order to succeed, or even to be considered a rival of these established understandings, phrenologists adapted their arguments for the sake of engaging in philosophical dispute. I argue that this debate contributed to the relative success of these groups: phrenology as a well-known historical subject, common sense now largely forgotten. Moreover, this history seeks to question the place of phrenology within the sciences of mind in nineteenth-century Britain.

Providential Naturalism and Miracles: John Fearn's Critique of Scottish Philosophy

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-94
Author(s):  
Giovanni B. Grandi
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century

According to Thomas Reid, the development of natural sciences following the model of Newton's Principia and Optics would provide further evidence for the belief in a provident God. This project was still supported by his student, Dugald Stewart, in the early nineteenth century. John Fearn (1768–1837), an early critic of the Scottish common sense school, thought that the rise of ‘infidelity’ in the wake of scientific progress had shown that the apologetic project of Reid and Stewart had failed. In reaction to Reid and Stewart, he proposed an idealist philosophy that would dispense with the existence of matter, and would thus cut at the root what he thought was the main source of modern atheism. In this paper, I consider Fearn's critique of Reid and Stewart in his main works: First Lines of the Human Mind (1820) and Manual of the Physiology of Mind (1829). I also consider Fearn's arguments against Hume and in favour of a renewed apologetics in An Essay on the Philosophy of Faith and the Economy of Revelation (1815).

Burney's The Wanderer and Early-Nineteenth-Century Commodity Fetishism

2002 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Commodity Fetishism ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Labor Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
Theory Of Value ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
The Wanderer

This essay explores a particular moment in the history of commodity fetishism by means of an examination of Frances Burney's The Wanderer (1814). The novel, which is explicitly concerned with the social changes facing early-nineteenth-century England, reveals that at this historical moment the commodity inspired emotions of a particular kind: it was idealized and perceived as attractively individualized, aloof, exotic, and changeable, and it elicited a passionate and sometimes even painful form of desire. In The Wanderer Burney explores the human repercussions of this new way of engaging with objects in the marketplace. She reveals, moreover, the extent to which the fetishism of the commodity reflected not just developments within the economy but also political change: under the influence of the French Revolution the charisma once generated by social status was transferred to the economic realm, where, embodied in the commodity, it gave rise to a pleasurable but masochistic reverence. Burney'sargument for the usefulness of economic independence necessarily leads her to appreciate the commodity fetishism she describes: even while she develops a labor theory of value, Burney promotes a mystification of the commodity by insisting on the aloof independence of both labor and its products. Thus, Burney uses the apparent autonomy of things——which Marx decries——as a means to argue for the autonomy of the makers of those things.

Ferrier, James Frederick (1806–64)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John J. Haldane
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Thomas Reid

Ferrier represents the transition within nineteenth-century Scottish philosophy from the tradition of common-sense realism begun by Thomas Reid, the last major exponent of which was Ferrier’s mentor, Sir William Hamilton, to versions of idealism influenced by German philosophers, especially Hegel. Although he is largely forgotten, Ferrier merits study for at least two reasons. First, he had a role in importing Hegelian ideas into British thought; and second there are parallels between his arguments and those advanced by antirealist philosophers in the analytical tradition.

Science with a Soul

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 246-262
Author(s):  
Deborah K. Manson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Experimental Science ◽  
Historical Society ◽  
Active Participant ◽  
Religious Ideology ◽  
Individual Character ◽  
Divinity School ◽  
The Mind

From the 1840s through to the end of his life in 1888, James Freeman Clarke’s influence permeated newspapers, churches, and lecture halls in Boston. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, Clarke was an educated and active participant in his community and a respected voice amongst Boston intellectuals. At a time when sciences of the mind were rapidly expanding, Clarke neither ceded authority nor turned a blind eye. Instead, he studied emerging psychologies himself, approaching them as ways to enhance his understanding of the human being—body, soul, and spirit. In his private writings, including journals and letters, Clarke discusses his applications of experimental science, and he appears especially enthusiastic about mesmerism. However, from the pulpit and the lectern, Clarke was almost silent on the topic. This article examines Clarke’s private letters, journals, and sermon notes, accessed in the archives at the Massachusetts Historical Society, for evidence of the role mesmerism played in Clarke’s religious ideology, specifically his concept of man’s physical and spiritual constitution. For Clarke, mesmerism allowed an intimate incorporation of the body with theology, for through it the body became a conduit to the soul and to individual character. Clarke’s interest in and practice of mesmerism reveals it as an underground force that not only shaped his thoughts and theology, but also influenced a number of fellow theologians and intellectuals during the mid-nineteenth century.

Treitschke: National Prophet

1945 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 418-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Kohn
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Italian Renaissance ◽  
The Mind

Machiavelli was a man of the Italian Renaissance; yet Mazzini shows no trace of Machiavellian thought, and Mussolini's attempt to revive Machiavelli in his homeland failed lamentably and ignominiously. Italy lacked the power and the hardness of character which Machiavellianism presupposes. Piedmont was an imitation Prussia, but only an imitation Prussia. Machiavelli's ideas bore real fruit in nineteenth century Germany. The German inclination to force ideas in the “free realm of the mind” to their logical and absurd conclusions without regard for the limitations of reality and common sense, combined with Prussia's power and hardness of character to implant Machiavellianism firmly in Germany. While German statesmen like Frederick II and Bismarck were its ablest disciples, its noblest teacher and prophet was Heinrich von Treitschke.

scholarly journals Scottish Common Sense and Nineteenth-Century American Law: A Critical Appraisal

2008 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 167-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Mikhail
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Critical Appraisal ◽  
Moral Agent ◽  
Moral Sense ◽  
American Law ◽  
Common Sense Philosophy ◽  
The Mind

One overriding concern I have with Susanna Blumenthal's insightful and stimulating article, “The Mind of a Moral Agent: Scottish Common Sense and the Problem of Responsibility in Nineteenth-Century American Law,” is whether there is anything sufficiently distinctive about Scottish Common Sense philosophy that justifies the role Blumenthal ascribes to it. In a representative passage, she writes:Common Sense philosophy left would-be “moral managers” with a puzzle. If rational and moral faculties were innate and universal, what explained the great conflicts among men concerning matters of belief, manners, and morals … leading some to commit acts that were … patently irrational or downright evil? And to the extent that therewasa common sense about the dictates of reason, propriety, and moral sense, why did some individuals act in defiance of them?

‘Scottish to the Very Core’

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas McDermid
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
At Home

This chapter describes how Ferrier had the last laugh, despite his failure to be appointed to Sir William Hamilton’s Chair at Edinburgh in 1856. For by the end of the nineteenth century, it was apparent that several of the once-unpopular causes championed by Ferrier in the 1840s and 1850s had triumphed: Thomas Reid was no longer the beau ideal of most Scottish philosophers, the old meta-philosophy of common sense was decidedly out of favour, and idealism had supplanted realism as the metaphysic of choice in many Scottish universities. Although a few grizzled defenders of Reidian-inspired realism could still be found at home and abroad, their way of thinking seemed banal and un-nuanced to a generation of Scottish students who had cut their philosophical teeth on the subtleties of German speculation.

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