The Works of Thomas Reid; with an Account of His Life and Writings, Volume 1

The Works of Thomas Reid #1

by Thomas Reid

This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work. While some publishers have opted to apply OCR (optical character recognition) technology to the process, we believe this leads to sub-optimal results (frequent typographical errors, strange characters and confusing formatting) and does not adequately preserve the historical character of the original artifact. We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as blurred or missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work or the scanning process itself. Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy seeing the book in a format as close as possible to that intended by the original publisher.

Genres: Philosophy, Empiricism

428 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1872

About the author

The Reverend Thomas Reid FRSE, a religiously trained Scottish philosopher and a contemporary of David Hume, was the founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense and played an integral role in the Scottish Enlightenment. The early part of his life was spent in Aberdeen, Scotland, where he created the 'Wise Club' (a literary-philosophical association) and graduated from the University of Aberdeen. He was given a professorship at King's College, Aberdeen in 1752, where he wrote An Inquiry Into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (published in 1764). Shortly afterwards he was given the prestigious Professorship of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow when he was called to replace Adam Smith. He resigned from this position in 1781.

Reid believed that common sense (in a special philosophical sense of sensus communis) is, or at least should be, at the foundation of all philosophical inquiry. He disagreed with Hume, who asserted that we can never know what an external world consists of as our knowledge is limited to the ideas in the mind, and George Berkeley, who asserted that the external world is merely ideas in the mind. By contrast, Reid claimed that the foundations upon which our sensus communis are built justify our belief that there is an external world.

Reviews

[Douglas Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really informative. Reid was the road not taken, and subsequent centuries paid a heavy price for it. The founder of the sturdy Scottish Common Sense philosophy, Reid attempted to transplant plain sense into the vagaries of philosophy. Unfortunately, the patient rejected the donated organ.

[Ronstoppablerlc · Rating 5 out of 5]

(I actually skipped the first 100 pages or so of this volume, as it included introductory material and a bunch of letters. I was reading secondary literature on Reid concurrently with this book, so I thought the extra material was superfluous.)

There is an awful lot in here that strikes me as right on the money. Reid's attacks on the Way of Ideas and skepticism seem correct, as does his understanding of abstraction and conception. Certainly more problematic is his argument against Hume's argument against the Argument from Design. Also, Reid's understanding of the veridical nature of our senses and faculties depends (he clearly thinks) on their being designed, and it is not obvious how this can easily be modified to yield the same results with a basis in natural selection. If Reid's position cannot be so modified, then a large part of his project would be weakened. So, it seems to me that a lot depends upon that ol' Argument from Design.

[Dustin Hellberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent material obscured by a terrible layout. Same for both volumes.