Common Sense in the Scottish Enlightenment

317 Pages·2018·2.763 MB·English

by  C B Bow

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Common Sense in the Scottish Enlightenment
C. B. Bow
Print publication date: 2018
Print ISBN­13: 9780198783909
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198783909.001.0001
Title Pages
Charles Bradford Bow
(p.i) Common Sense in the Scottish Enlightenment
(p.ii) Mind Association occasional Series
(p.iii) Common Sense in the Scottish Enlightenment
This series consists of carefully selected volumes of significant original papers on
predefined themes, normally growing out of a conference supported by a Mind
Association Major Conference Grant. The Association nominates an editor or
editors for each collection, and may cooperate with other bodies in promoting
conferences or other scholarly activities in connection with the preparation of
particular volumes.
Director, Mind Association: Julian Dodd
Publications Officer: Sarah Sawyer
RECENTLY PUBLISHED IN THE SERIES:
Art and Belief
Edited by Ema Sullivan-Bissett, Helen Bradley, and Paul Noordhof
The Actual and the Possible
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Edited by Mark Sinclair
Thinking about the Emotions
Edited by Alix Cohen and Robert Stern
Art, Mind, and Narrative
Edited by Julian Dodd
The Social and Political Philosophy of Mary Wollstonecraft
Edited by Sandrine Bergès and Alan Coffee
The Epistemic Life of Groups
Edited by Michael S. Brady and Miranda Fricker
Reality Making
Edited by Mark Jago
The Metaphysics of Relations
Edited by Anna Marmodoro and David Yates
Thomas Reid on Mind, Knowledge, and Value
Edited by Rebecca Copenhaver and Todd Buras
The Highest Good in Aristotle and Kant
Edited by Joachim Aufderheide and Ralf M. Bader
(p.iv) 
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2018/10/30 Notes on the Contributors - Oxford Scholarship
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Biology Linguistics Philosophy Religion
Business and Management Literature Physics Social Work
Classical Studies Mathematics Political Science Sociology
Economics and Finance Music Psychology
History Neuroscience Public Health and
Epidemiology
Law Palliative Care
Go to page: Go
Common Sense in the Scottish Enlightenment
C. B. Bow
Print publication date: 2018
Print ISBN­13: 9780198783909
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198783909.001.0001
(p.vii) Notes on the Contributors
Charles Bradford Bow
Charles Bradford Bow
is an Assistant Professor of Global Intellectual History at Yonsei
University. His research on the intellectual history of
Enlightenment(s) and imperialism has appeared in Modern
Intellectual History, The Scottish Historical Review, Historical
Research, History of European Ideas, History, Intellectual History
Review, Journal of Scottish Philosophy, and Eighteenth­Century
Scotland.
Claire Etchegaray
is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Université Paris Ouest—
Nanterre La Défense and member of the Institut de Recherches
Philosophiques (IRePh). Her research interests involve the Scottish
Enlightenment, human nature, judgment, reasoning, and
scepticism. Her research has appeared in the journals History of
European Ideas, Archives de philosophie, and in the volumes Croit­
on comme on veut? Histoire d’une controverse; Revue de
métaphysique et de morale: Le scepticisme aux limites de la
question; Histoire d’une controverse; Medical Empiricism and
Philosophy of Human Nature in the 17th and 18th Century; and
Scepticism in the Eighteenth Century: Enlightenment, Lumières,
Aufklärung.
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Giovanni Gellera
is Post-Doctoral Researcher at the University of Lausanne in the
Swiss National Science Foundation project ‘Tolerance, Intolerance
and Discrimination Regarding Religion’ (2016–20). At the
University of Glasgow, he worked in the Leverhulme Project
‘Scottish Philosophers in 17th-Century Scotland and France’ (2010–
14) and wrote a Ph.D. thesis (2012) on seventeenth-century Scottish
philosophy. He works on the interactions between scholasticism
and early modern philosophy, from the Renaissance to the
Enlightenment. His research has appeared in British Journal for
the History of Philosophy, Journal of Scottish Philosophy, History
of Universities, Intellectual History Review. With Alexander
Broadie, he is working on the first edition and translation of the
Idea philosophiae moralis by James Dundas (1679), for Edinburgh
University Press.
Gordon Graham
is Henry Luce III Professor of Philosophy and the Arts at Princeton
Theological Seminary. His areas of academic interest include
aesthetics, moral philosophy, philosophy of religion, and the
Scottish philosophical tradition. He is Director of the Center for the
Study of Scottish Philosophy at Princeton and founding editor of the
Journal of Scottish Philosophy.
(p.viii) Giovanni B. Grandi
is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of British
Columbia, Okanagan Campus. His research on Scottish philosophy
has appeared in Journal of Scottish Philosophy, Studies in History
and Philosophy of Science, History of Philosophy Quarterly,
Journal of Scottish Thought, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, and
Eighteenth­Century Thought. He is the editor of Thomas Reid:
Selected Philosophical Writings (2012).
James A. Harris
is Professor of the History of Philosophy at the University of St
Andrews. He is the author of Hume: An Intellectual Biography
(2015) and Of Liberty and Necessity: The Free Will Debate in
Eighteenth­Century British Philosophy (2005). He has published
articles on Hume, Hutcheson, Reid, Beattie, Priestley, and a number
of themes in eighteenth-century British philosophy. He is the editor
of The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Eighteenth­Century
Britain (2013), and also (with Aaron Garrett) of Volume one of
Scottish Philosophy in the Age of Enlightenment (2015). He has
edited texts by Reid (with Knud Haakonssen), Beattie, Kames, and
Abraham Tucker. He has held fellowships from the Leverhulme
Trust and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), and in
2012–13 was Member of the Institute for Advanced Study
(Princeton).
Esther Engels Kroeker
is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Antwerp. Part of her
research is focused on Reid’s moral psychology. She has published
papers on Reid’s moral philosophy, moral perception, and agency.
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2018/10/30 Notes on the Contributors - Oxford Scholarship
Some of her recently published articles are Reid on Natural Signs,
Taste and Moral Perception (2009), Reid’s Moral Psychology:
Animal Motives as Guides to Virtue (2011), and Acting from a Good
Conscience: Reid, Love, and Moral Worth (2013). Her research
extends to David Hume’s moral psychology and philosophy of
religion, and her work also focuses on the contemporary debate
surrounding love and practical reasons. She is the co-editor (with
Katrien Schaubroeck) of Love, Reason and Morality (2017).
R. J. W. Mills
is Teaching Fellow in the History of Political Thought at the
University College London. He has articles published or in press on
numerous Scottish thinkers including James Beattie, Archibald
Campbell, Henry Home, Lord Kames, and Alexander Ross and is
currently working on a book about the Scottish Enlightenment’s
application of the ‘science of human nature’ to the study of religion.
Paul B. Wood
Professor Emeritus in the History Department at the University
Victoria in Canada who has published widely on the Scottish
Enlightenment. For the Edinburgh Edition of Thomas Reid he has
edited Thomas Reid (p.ix) on Mathematics and Natural
Philosophy (2017), (with Knud Haakonssen) Thomas Reid on
Society and Politics (2015), The Correspondence of Thomas Reid
(2002), and Thomas Reid on the Animate Creation (1995). He is
currently at work on the final volume in the series, Thomas Reid
and the University, with Alexander Broadie.
(p.x)
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Introduction
University Press Scholarship Online
Oxford Scholarship Online
Common Sense in the Scottish Enlightenment
C. B. Bow
Print publication date: 2018
Print ISBN-13: 9780198783909
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: May 2018
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198783909.001.0001
Introduction
Common Sense in the Scottish Enlightenment
C. B. Bow
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780198783909.003.0001
Abstract and Keywords
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....
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.1 Reflecting on the
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Introduction
importance of this philosophical system, which was widely
known as “the Scottish philosophy” by the nineteenth century,
the Presbyterian divine and philosopher James McCosh wrote:
Scottish metaphysicians and moralists have left their
impress on their own land, not only on the ministers of
religion, and through them upon the body of people, but
also on the whole thinking mind of the country. The
chairs of mental science in the Scottish colleges have
had more influence than any others in germinating
thought in the minds of Scottish youth, and in giving
permanent bias and direction to their intellectual
growth.
(McCosh, 1875: 8)
In these ways common sense philosophy informed the
understanding and exercise of human improvement in the
intellectual and moral culture of the Scottish Enlightenment.2
Thomas Reid popularized prominent features of this
philosophical system, which were later used as criteria to
identify the Scottish “school” of common (p.2) sense
philosophy.3 Writing in 1764, Reid recalled that when he was
initially confronted with David Hume’s brand of scepticism in
the 1740s, Hume’s “reasoning appeared to me to be just: there
was therefore a necessity to call in question the principles
upon which it was founded, or to admit the conclusion” (Reid,
1764: iv). Eventually Reid countered Hume’s Treatise of
Human Nature (1739–40) with An Inquiry into the Mind on the
Principles of Common Sense (1764). Dugald Stewart, who had
studied under Reid at Glasgow University in 1771–2, later
remarked that Reid’s “leading design was evidently to
overthrow the modern system of scepticism” (Stewart, 1811:
452–3). In order to establish a new empirical system for future
inquiries in the science of mind Reid focused on vindicating
his “principles of common sense” and undermining the “Ideal
Theory” upon which he believed modern scepticism was
founded. Stewart highlighted the philosophical significance of
Reid’s attack on the “way of ideas” when he wrote that, “On
the refutation of the ideal theory […] Dr. Reid himself was
disposed to rest his chief merit as an author […] and
something, perhaps, has been added to his labors by those of
his successors” (Stewart, 1822: 354). The ways in which Reid
and moralists associated with the Scottish “school” of common
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Introduction
sense developed a viable alternative to Humean scepticism
and the Ideal Theory is the overarching theme of the essays
which appear in this volume.
The volume originated from the British Society for the History
of Philosophy’s 2014 annual conference hosted by Edinburgh
University and supported by the Mind Association, Scots
Philosophical Society, and Taylor & Francis publishers.
Featuring the research of philosophers and intellectual
historians from nine countries and over twenty cities, the
three-day conference explored new avenues to better
understand the place of common sense philosophy within the
Scottish Enlightenment. While the scholarly exchange
between philosophers and intellectual historians is not new,
this dialogue, as we experienced it, encourages a deeper and
more complete examination of philosophical ideas and their
historical value. This volume, which is the first edited
collection devoted exclusively to the philosophy and history of
Scottish common sense during the long eighteenth century,
presents the fruits of the exchanges which took place at the
conference.4 The philosophical writings of Thomas Reid and
David Hume factor prominently in the volume as influential
authors of competing ideas in the history of common (p.3)
sense philosophy. While recent scholarship traces the
transnational reception of common sense philosophy, this
volume centres on recovering its understudied significance in
British contexts.5 The following chapters, which all embody
original and innovative research, shed new light on prominent
features of this philosophical system, including the
methodological use of the inductive method, the subscription
to universal self-evident principles regarded as instincts
rooted in human nature, the conscious awareness of the
intellectual, active, and moral powers of mind, and the belief
in a providential God. This introduction offers a brief overview
of the philosophical themes, historical contexts, and
philosophers examined in this volume.
René Descartes (1596–1650) was considered by Reid to be the
founder of the Ideal Theory, which was also known as the “way
of ideas” or “theory of ideas” in the Enlightenment. Beginning
with seventeenth-century Scottish scholastics, Scottish moral
philosophers responded to Descartes’ philosophy in a variety
of ways. His Discourse on Method (1637) and Principles of
Philosophy (1644) appealed to mathematical principles in
formulating a “rational” philosophical approach to
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Introduction
metaphysics, epistemology, and morals.6 John Marshall
suggests that Descartes’ ideal moral theory was intended as
an “exact science”, rather than a mere technique of self
government.7 As a new type of epistemological scepticism,
Descartes brought scholastic direct “realism”, which accepted
the existence of transcendental universals within the material
and moral worlds, into question as a reliable belief system.
After removing “weak” beliefs concerning divinely inspired
material existence, Descartes’ ideal theory accepted “only
what is certain and unshakable”, which did account for some
“realist” beliefs concerning the existence of the material world
in his Meditations (Descartes, 1996: 17). The Cartesian
ambition to secure the foundations of human knowledge in
order to construct a rigorous deductive system of the sciences
challenged the principles of Aristotelian scholasticism.
Although he was a professed Catholic, Descartes’ intervention
in theological and philosophical debates of the early
seventeenth century initiated a prolonged controversy over his
treatment of the “rational soul” and our knowledge of God’s
causal powers.8 Whereas sharp philosophical divisions
emerged between scholastics and Cartesians in continental
Europe during the seventeenth century, Scottish philosophers
in the period sought to harmonize Descartes’ ideas with
scholastic philosophy.
(p.4) The literature on the seventeenth-century Scottish
reception of Cartesianism was, until recently, dominated by
the scholarship of C. M. Shepherd.9 With a focus on
seventeenth-century graduation theses at Scottish
universities, Giovanni Gellera refines the scope of Shepherd’s
earlier work on Scottish philosophical debates of the period by
examining how Descartes’ philosophy affected Scotland’s
Reformed philosophy in higher education. According to
Gellera, around the middle of the century Scottish university
curricula instituted a variety of reforms in response to
Cartesianism. These changes were best shown in new
Reformed doctrinal characteristics in the teaching of
metaphysics, natural philosophy, and epistemology.10 The
broader diffusion of this Reformed Scottish scholasticism, as
Alasdair Raffe argues, signified a transitional moment in
Scotland’s intellectual culture.11 In the first chapter “Common
Sense and Ideal Theory in Seventeenth-Century Scottish
Philosophy”, Gellera documents the extent to which
seventeenth-century Scottish scholastic philosophers
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