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

Abstract

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?