The Works Of Thomas Reid V1: With An Account Of His Life And Writings

The Works of Thomas Reid #1

by Thomas Reid

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Genres: Philosophy, Empiricism

424 pages, Hardcover

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.