Thomas Reid on Practical Ethics

The Edinburgh Edition of Thomas Reid

by Thomas Reid, Knud Haakonssen (Editor), James A. Harris (Editor)

Essays on the Active Powers of Man (1788) was Thomas Reid's last major work. It was conceived as part of one large work, intended as a final synoptic statement of his overall philosophy. The first and larger part was published three years earlier as Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (edited as volume 3 of the Edinburgh Edition of Thomas Reid). These two works are united by Reid's basic philosophy of Common Sense, which sets out native principles by which the mind operates in both its intellectual and active aspects. The Active Powers shows how these principles are involved in volition, action, and the ability to judge morally. Reid gives an original twist to a libertarian and realist tradition that was prominently represented in eighteenth-century British thought by such thinkers as Samuel Clarke and Reid's near contemporary and acquaintance, Richard Price.

Traditionally seen as an epistemologist, Reid has in much recent work emerged as a significant contributor to the philosophy of action and to ethics. This edition of the Active Powers will be of interest not only to historians of philosophy but also to philosophers working on the theory of action, on the problem of free will, and in moral psychology and meta-ethics.

Genres: Philosophy

448 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

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

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A standard text of Common Sense Realism. Thomas Reid is always very easy to read.