Reid's Philosophy Research Articles

Revisiting Reid on Religion

This paper answers two interpretive questions surrounding belief in God in Thomas Reid's philosophy, the status question and the detachability question. The former has to do with the type of justification Reid assigns to belief in God – immediate or mediate. The later question is whether anything philosophically significant depends on his belief in God. I argue that, for Reid, belief in God is immediately justified and integral to some parts of his system. Reid's response to skepticism about God is more complicated and more interesting than many of the contemporary philosophers who, citing Reid as inspiration, also hold that belief in God enjoys immediate justification. In Reid's hands the approach to belief in God does not compete with inferential justification, does not rely on a special faculty, and foregrounds the developmental character of his epistemology.

Epistemic Justification of Testimonial Beliefs and the Categories of Egophoricity and Evidentiality in Natural Languages: An Insoluble Paradox of Thomas Reid's Anti-Reductionism

Abstract The paper is concerned with the epistemological status of testimony and the question of what may confer justification on true testimonial beliefs and enable us to call such beliefs knowledge. In particular, it addresses certain anti-reductionist arguments in the epistemology of testimony and their incompatibility with the grammatical categories of egophoricity (conjunct/disjunct marking) and evidentiality (information source marking) present in the architecture of natural languages. First, the tradition of epistemological individualism and its rationale are discussed, as well as certain attempts within this tradition to include testimony-based beliefs in the body of legitimate and rational beliefs. The next section is concerned with the anti-reductionist approach to testimonial beliefs and some arguments supporting ‘the credulity principle’ grounded in Thomas Reid's philosophy of common sense. The last two sections show how the anti-reductionist argumentation is threatened with an insoluble dilemma when considered in the context of languages with the grammatical categories of egophoricity (conjunct/disjunct marking) and evidentiality (information source marking). Special attention is paid to the justificatory role of egophoric and evidential marking; how these grammatical categories may influence the process of belief formation, and consequently, how this bears upon the nature of justification for testimonial beliefs. The final conclusion of the paper is that the anti-reductionist claim concerning the directness and non-inferential nature of testimonial knowledge is bound to meet objections grounded in the structure of many natural languages. This leads to a paradox: in discussion with reductionism, anti-reductionists do seek support for their arguments in common sense beliefs reflected in everyday language, and, on the other hand, their claims are incompatible with the linguistic data found in a number of natural languages.

Thomas Reid on Signs and Language

AbstractThomas Reid's philosophy of mind, epistemology, and philosophy of language all rely on his account of signs and signification. On Reid's view, some entities play a role of indicating other entities to our minds. In some cases, our sensitivity to this indication is learned through experience, whereas in others, the sensitivity is built in to our natural constitutions. Unlike representation, which was presumed to depend on resemblances and necessary connections, signification is the sort of relationship that can occur without any intrinsic ties between the sign and the thing signified. Of particular interest is the priority Reid gives to natural signs (in contrast with artificial signs, that is, those signs instituted by humans). Reid deploys his robust account of natural signs in a way that allows him to sidestep some skeptical worries common in the early modern period, as well as in grounding “artificial” human languages like English or Cantonese on a more basic human capacity for communication, that is, itself, the result of our sensitivity to natural signs of other people's minds.

Sentido común "común" y sentido común "sensato". Una reivindicación de Thomas Reid

Este artículo trata de mostrar que Thomas Reid (1710-1796) defendió no ya un sentido común “común”, sino uno “sensato”. Adicionalmente, se propone que la filosofía del sentido común de Reid es sumamente importante de entre las de su tipo.

Thomas Reid on Common Sense and Morals

Reid's philosophy of the moral faculty must be interpreted in the context of his philosophical theory concerning the human faculties and their connection with truth. One purpose of this paper is to offer an account of the development of our moral concepts that accords with a proposal of Esther Kroeker (Kroeker 2010) and also my own ( Lehrer 2010 ). Another is to explain how Reid combines an account of the objectivity of moral judgments with the denial of the existence of moral properties, the affirmation of a necessary connection of the moral judgments with sentiment and the accommodation of moral disagreement.

Consciousness AND REGRESS

Thomas Reid has a theory of consciousness that is central to his philosophy of mind but which raises a regress problem. I have two tasks in this paper. The first is to give an account of Reid's views on consciousness and the avoidance of the regress based on textual analysis. The second is to expand the theory of consciousness Reid gives to offer a deeper explanation of how the regress is avoided that is based on Reid's philosophy of mind but goes beyond any text from Reid that I know. The distinction is important. Philosophers are inclined to attribute to a philosopher views that they have invented by studying the philosopher. Both textual analysis and invention based on a philosopher's writings are legitimate uses of the history of philosophy. When they are confused, however, arguments about what the philosopher held generate confusion. If you invent something from his or her philosophy, even something implied by it, that is your philosophy, not the philosopher's. The distinction is important for avoiding useless disputes. This first part of my paper is an attempt to remain true to the texts of Reid. The second part goes beyond the text, though it is what I extrapolate from Reid.

Thomas Reid and Philosophy with Children

This paper presents a rationale for doing philosophy with children. It suggests a rationale that differs from more usual arguments supporting philosophy with children—for such reasons as that it will enhance problem solving-skills or will help pupils' thinking to be more logical. These worthy objectives are not denied but only considered somewhat subordinate to the rationale proposed. This is presented in three steps. In the first step the issue of whether philosophy should be done with children is considered in the context of claims that children may be too young to do philosophy or too inexperienced in the ways of academic discipline to be able to discern proper philosophy. These objections are weighty enough, especially in view of general teacher reluctance to engage with philosophy itself in any form. In the second part, I invoke the common sense philosophy of Thomas Reid as a method of philosophy particularly significant for, and appropriate to, philosophy for children. Finally, I show how these aspects arising out of my understanding of Reid's philosophy can help resolve at least some of the misgivings people have about doing philosophy with children. It is hoped that these discussions will illuminate the question of how it may be appropriate for children to do philosophy in classrooms today.

Reid, Kant and the Philosophy of Mind

I suggest a possible rehabilitation of Reid's philosophy of mind by a constructive use of Kant's criticisms of the common sense tradition. Kant offers two criticisms, explicitly claiming that common sense philosophy is ill directed methodologically, and implicitly rejecting Reid's view that there is direct epistemological access by introspection to the ontology of mind. Putting the two views together reveals a tension between epistemology and ontology, but the problem which Kant finds in Reid also infects his own system, as his weaker ontological claims are undermined to such an extent by the necessary reintroduction of self‐consciousness that the justification he seeks for reason fails to be reached epistemologically. Plausible solutions to these parallel tensions imply that both Reid and Kant have a pre‐systematic concept of mind, and may lead to the conclusion that Reid's method is more economical in the elaboration of an ontology for the philosophy of mind.

Opposition to the ideal system as leitmotif in nineteenth century Anglo-Canadian psychology.

AbstractDespite their varying backgrounds and philosophical commitments, the ideas of four major figures in the early history of psychology in English Canada converge in their opposition to what Thomas Reid had referred to as the system, his shorthand label for Cartesianism in general. The scepticism and individualism of Cartesianism were seen as particularly inimical to the development of psychology as a truly moral -- that is, truly social -- science. These early psychologies anticipated in several interesting respects more recent moves within psychology away from positivist science toward what is now again being described as moral science.Psychology, or the philosophy of the human mind ... is the province of Moral Philosophy ... [T]o employ our intellectual and moral powers according to the principles of reason and truth, is the great end of our existence. (Ryerson, 1842, p. 17)Egerton Ryerson, a major figure in the history of education in Upper Canada (and therefore also of Canada as such), held a view of psychology that did not differ significantly from that of Thomas Reid. Both saw it as the science of our capacity to grasp reason and truth as the foundations of the moral -- and thus truly human -- life. In the mid eighteenth century, Reid had, in connection, detected a serious problem in the philosophy of his time. The most immediate grounds of his concern were the implications for theology, which he took to provide the basis for morality, of Hume's Treatise of Human Nature (1739/1984). In his criticism of Hume, Reid sought to identify the roots of the problem, which he ultimately found in the philosophy of Descartes.Des Cartes's system of the human understanding, which I shall beg to call the system, and which, with some improvements made by later writers, is now generally received, hath some defect; that his scepticism is inlaid in it, and reared along with it; and, therefore, that we must lay it open to the foundation, and examine the materials, before we can expect to raise any solid and useful fabric of knowledge on subject. (Reid, 1764/1818, p. 40)It was Descartes' doctrine that our ideas were the immediate objects of knowledge. This was the doctrine that Reid understood as the original defect of the ideal Descartes had intended to use scepticism in order to achieve certainty, i.e., to overcome scepticism itself, but, on Reid's account, the metaphysics of the Cogito was flawed in just such a way as to sow the seeds of precisely the noxious weed it had been intended to eradicate. Descartes, Reid maintained, was profoundly mistaken to believe that the problem of accounting for knowledge of ourselves and of the material world could be solved by the question - begging arguments presented in his Meditations. To begin by proclaiming ideas as the sole objects of knowledge left one with no effective instrument by which to break out of the realm of ideas. Locke, according to Reid, failed to see the nature of the problem and, though he dug deeper, found it even harder to keep out this enemy. Berkeley carried on the work but, finding himself unable to secure the material world against scepticism, took refuge in the spiritual. even proved insecure. Reid continued: But alas! the Treatise of Human Nature wantonly sapped the foundation of partition, and drowned all in one universal deluge (Reid, 1764/1818, p. 40).(f.1)Reid's Common Sense realism was based on the belief that to know God we must be assured a contact with the material world that is not threatened by sceptical arguments. Reid's philosophy was one of the two great eighteenth - century moves against the system. The other, motivated less by theological than by epistemological and logical considerations, was the German idealism that originated with Kant and continued with Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. These two traditions differed in important ways, but they had a common cause in their opposition to the scepticism that they saw descending from Descartes. …

The Philosophical Orations of Thomas Reid Delivered at Graduation Ceremonies in King's College, Aberdeen, 1753, 1756, 1759, 1762 (review)

BOOK REVIV.WS 499 D. D. Todd, ed. The PhilosophicalOrationsof ThomasReid Deliveredat Graduation Ceremonies in King's College,Aberdeen, z753, i756, i759, I762. Translated from the Latin by Shirley Darcus Sullivan. Journal of the History of Philosophy Monographs. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989. Pp. 86. Paper, NP. Thomas Reid was engaged as regent in King's College, Aberdeen, in 175~. Under the regenting system, Reid was responsible for instructing a group of students from their second through their fourth years. When this group of students graduated, their regent presented an oration at the ceremony. D. D. Todd presents in this volume the four orations given by Reid during his tenure at King's College. After a brief historical introduction, Todd indicates the importance of Reid's work, particularly for American thought. He follows this with an introduction to the philosophy of common sense, focusing on Reid's use of first principles and the criteria that distinguish them. Although necessarily brief, Todd's treatment of the fundamental framework of Reid's philosophy is well done. Todd then includes a fine analysis of the orations, followed by the orations themselves. Overall, Todd's introduction is good, but there are several aspects which are troubling . In speaking of Reid's influence on contemporary philosophy, Todd mentions only Noam Chomsky as "its most notable example" (3). It would seem almost imperative that one mention Roderick Chisholm in this context. The adverbial view of sensation presented by Chisholm and C. J. Ducasse has its roots in Reid, as does the theory of agency presented by Chisholm, Richard Taylor, and Keith Lehrer. Again, Todd writes that "by 'philosophy' Reid understood, primarily, 'the received principles' of philosophers from Descartes through Hume" (4). However, in the orations themselves, and certainly later in the Essayson the IntellectualPowersof Man, Reid spends a significant amount of time on Aristotle and traces the theory of ideas back to include him. Also Todd's mention of similarities between Reid and Wittgenstein is misleading. He writes: "In some ways, Reid's assertion of first principles of common sense as selfevident truths is comparable to Wittgenstein's 'this language-game is played' or 'what has to be accepted, the given, is--so one could say--f0rms of life' " (a 1). For Wittgenstein there are many language games (religious, scientific, etc.). From outside one is not able to criticize any other language game, which therefore leads to the possibility of skepticism. Reid spent much of his time arguing against any skeptical conclusion. If this is implied by Wittgenstein's language games, then it is antithetical to Reid's whole way of thinking. The orations themselves contain much that is of philosophical interest, although it must be kept in mind that Reid did not intend them for publication and did not always develop his points as he did in later works. Several interesting features of the orations mentioned by Todd are: l) historically they give us a picture of the regenting system; ~) they show Reid's later works were "not so much developments of his early views as amplifications and elaborations of them" (13-14); 3) they present a good critique of the theory of ideas; and 4) they introduce the philosophy of science of Reid, who Todd believes was "preeminently the philosopher of science of his time" (15)Oration 1, although of little philosophical importance, indicates some of Reid's likes 500 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 29:3 JULY 1991 and dislikes in the history of philosophy. Bacon and Newton are mentioned favorably, as is Socrates in the area of moral philosophy. There are also several passages commending Hippocrates of Cos. Oration 2 is of greater philosophical importance, as it deals with the nodon of common sense that is developed more fully in Reid's later work. Orations 3 and 4 deal with Reid's criticism of the theory of ideas. I concur with Todd's evaluation that they constitute "Reid's most concise statement of his objections" (2o). Even though this theory of ideas seemed to be almost universally adopted by philosophers, Reid argued that there was little evidence to support it. He wrote: "Although approval may be given to those who...

Lehrer Reading Reid

Lehrer's “reason for writing this book is that the philosophy of Thomas Reid is widely unread, while the combination of soundness and creativity of his work is unexcelled.” The book contributes to the ongoing Reid revival. Chapter 1 presents an overview of Reid's life and works and the last, Chapter 15, gives Lehrer's appraisal of Reid's philosophy. Chapter 2, “Beyond Impressions and Ideas,” outlines Reid's “refutation of what he called the Ideal System” of impressions and ideas that dominated philosophy from Descartes through Hume, and summarizes Reid's theory of the mind. The remaining chapters conduct the reader through the three books Reid published during his lifetime. There are three chapters covering the Inquiry of the Human Mind (1764), five on the Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785), a chapter comparing Reid on conception and evidence in the Inquiry and the Essays, and three chapters on Essays on the Active Powers of Man (1788). The index is helpful despite occasional references to a page number larger than the number of pages. The bibliography is generally good, although, oddly, Lehrer lists the inaccessible 1937 Latin edition of Reid's important Philosophical Orations and not the English translation published by the Philosophy Research Archives in 1977 and republished by the Journal of the History of Philosophy Monograph Series early in 1989. The text is remarkably free of typographical errors, but on p. 130 Putnam's 1973 article, “Meaning and Reference,” is said to have been published in 1983.

Possible Theological Perspectives in Thomas Reid's Common Sense Philosophy

It is well known that Thomas Reid, premier exponent of the Common Sense school of Scottish philosophy, was an ordained and active minister. Less clear is the role played by theology in the deve opment ofthat philosophy as it matured slowly under his pen, particularly in me most prominent of his works, the Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785) and the Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind (1788), works which range widely over the field of human experience and the nature of reality. When philosophy and theology assumed more distinct and separate identities in the generations which succeeded Reid, it became common for critics of the Common Sense school to base their analyses solely on philosophical foundations and to neglect the theological underpinning which is essential to a fuller and clearer grasp of Keid s position. It would be a useful contribution to more than one discipline were Thomas Reid's philosophy linked more closely to the development and extent of his theological thinking. While his philosophical writings are strewn with theological references in the way typical of the eighteenth century, there is more substance in these references than is usually the case, when divines ofthat age wrote philosophy. That they are much more than casual, conventional embellishments becomes apparent from a careful reading of his works.

Beyond Impressions and Ideas

Thomas Reid was a persistent and acute critic of the philosophy of David Hume. It is Reid's contention that Hume's theory cannot account for the facts of human conception and belief.1 Hume's theory is deficient in that impressions and ideas are inadequate to account for the intentionality of human thought, the fact that human thoughts have objects, ones that may not exist. Impressions and ideas are also inadequate to account for the facts of belief, especially the fact of negative belief. Reid recognizes the genius of the attempt to account for human conception and belief in terms of impressions and ideas. He calls Hume the most acute metaphysician of the age and remarked, in correspondence, that if Mr. Hume were to stop writing, he and his cohorts in Aberdeen would have nothing to discuss. Reid remarks as well, however, that it is genius and not the lack of it that leads to false philosophy. Reid is not a mere modus tollens critic of Hume. Unlike G. E. Moore, Reid does not rest content with arguing that Hume's theory cannot account for the facts but contends that we need not despair of a bet ter.2 Reid's philosophy is an attempt to offer a better theory. I shall describe Reid's destructive and constructive efforts to refute the philosophy of Hume. Reid's theory postulates certain innate conceptual operations of the mind that he considers necessary to account for the facts of human concep tion. Some of these operations are operations on other operations of the mind, that is, they are metamental operations based on consciousness of the lower level operations. It is notable that intentionality and consciousness are the two features of the mental that are the most problematic from the standpoint of contemporary cognitive science and philosophy of mind.3 Reid's theory explains the connection between these two features, namely, that intentionality presupposes consciousness. To account for intentionality, according to Reid, it is necessary to sup pose that we have general conceptions which result from directing our atten tion to mental operations, what he calls abstracting and generalizing, to form general conceptions which are essential for communication and the ac quisition of knowledge. Some conceptions and beliefs arise from innate principles of the human mind. Reid argues that the beliefs to which such principles give rise are justified without reasoning, though he admits that all faculties of the mind are fallible. Our original perceptual beliefs concerning the external world are beliefs of this kind, ones that are justified without

Some “common sense” about Campbell, Hume, and Reid: The extrinsic evidence

This essay examines extrinsic evidence, mainly historical, biographical, and epistolary, to demonstrate that George Campbell's friends and colleagues considered him a member of their Common Sense School of Philosophy, and, hence, an opponent of Hume. It also argues that Campbell was motivated to write on philosophical topics in response to the attacks on religion and the foundations of human knowledge in the works of Hume. Finally, it maintains that Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric was popular in nineteenth century America because it was in harmony with Thomas Reid's psychology and philosophy.

Thomas Reid, on Intelligible Objects

Reid's philosophy is an attempt to describe the operations of the mind. The author is less concerned with objects than with the power or faculty by means of which the mind is furnished with objects. This faculty he calls con ception or apprehension or understanding, and he is careful always to dis tinguish it from the power of judgment by means of which we come to possess belief or knowledge. Much of what is most distinctive in Reid's philosophy is to be found in his account of these two faculties and of the way in which they are related to each other. In directing his attention to powers and their operations, Reid seems to have been influenced by the logic handbooks that were current in his day. Reid approved of attempts inspired by Descartes to reform the teaching of logic by treating of the operations of conception, judgment, and reasoning rather than simply dealing with the properties of concepts, propositions, and arguments. Early in his career, however, Reid remarked on the error involved in supposing that, because concepts are in some sense prior to propositions, the operation of conception?which logicians were calling simple apprehen sion?must be considered as the first operation of the mind, with the result that perception and memory were classified together with imagination as simple apprehensions.1 On the contrary, said Reid, perception, memory, and consciousness are judgments; they include, together with a conception of the object, a belief in the object's existence. Simple apprehension, by which we imagine or conceive of an object without judging as to whether it exists, comes after judgment, and can work only with materials given to it in percep tion or consciousness.

The Seriousness of Reid’s Sceptical Admissions

For anyone acquainted with Reid's works and the literature on them, the idea of proposing a hypothesis to explain contradictory comments on his philosophy,1 and the further idea of borrowing this hypothesis from Hume's threefold account of scepticism will not only appear ironical but quite unlike ly. Yet, this is what I propose to do in showing that Reid's sceptical ad missions can be seen as a form of scepticism. And while I acknowledge the irony of my hypothesis, I do not grant that it lacks plausibility. My general claim is that it is time to realize that Reid's numerous references to scepticism are not all of the kind suggested by his rhetorical statements on scepticism as a monster or as a Trojan horse which carries a depreciating picture of human nature as Yahoos.2 In the Reidian references, we must indeed distinguish a negative, a critical and a constructive stand, and these different attitudes are particularly revealing when analysed in the light of Hume's distinction between antecedent, conse quent and mitigated scepticism.3 When viewed in this perspective, Reid's qualified view of scepticism may be summarized by saying that, for him, the only tenable position for a philosopher who admits the speculative in superability and the practical untenability of antecedent scepticism is not a consequent form of scepticism but rather a mitigated one. This analysis in dicates that we should reject a standard interpretation of Reid's philosophy as being mere dogmatism. The suggestion rather is that Reid's claims to the effect that we know must be related to the many things he argues we do not know.

Reid on Primary and Secondary Qualities

In recent years renewed interest in Thomas Reid's philosophy has led to fruitful discussion of Reid's theories of sensation and perception. Although certain aspects of these topics can be discussed without setting out Reid's version of the primary-secondary quality distinction, the ultimate evaluation of Reid's work on both sensation and perception requires discussion of his views on primary and secondary qualities. Current Reid literature virtually ignores this important topic. This paper is an attempt to remedy this situation. In addition to setting out Reid's position on primary and secondary qualities I will discuss Reid's curious relation to the New Science of his day and will explain how Reid thought he could reintroduce the primary-secondary quality distinction despite Berkeley's attacks on the doctrine.In both of his major works, An Inquiry Into The Human Mind (1764), and Essays On The Intellectual Powers Of Man (1785), Thomas Reid was intent upon examining the philosophical problems of human knowledge. In the Inquiry perception received his exclusive attention. In the Essays other cognitive operations were examined as well. The impetus for these investigations was provided by Reid's negative assessment of the achievements of his philosophical predecessors.

An Updated Bibliography of Works on the Philosophy of Thomas Reid

Although Thomas Reid has had a strong influence on contemporary thought, his philosophical writings have been to a large extent ignored. Recently, however, there has been a birth of interest in Reid's philosophy. In order to facilitate Reid scholarship, a bibliography of works by and on Reid, compiled by Nina Mikhalevsky, was published in the third issue of Philosophical Monographs. The title of this issue is Thomas Reid: Critical Interpretations. The following bibliography has been compiled to complete and update the aforementioned bibliography.

Thomas Reid's Inquiry: The Geometry of Visibles and the Case For Realism (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 371 l'homme sauvage knows as little of it or of natural rights as any other beast. Rousseau and Burke are further distinguished from the "political empiricists" (Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Condillac), since neither could accept the Lockean psychology of a sensing and reflecting tabula rasa, the scientific optimism of progress in politics, or the utilitarian view of the state as mere human contrivance for satisfying easily known human needs. For both, the state had the lofty function of providing for moral improvement. On specific concepts, Cameron shows that the independence and natural liberty of Rousseau's l'homme sauvage is not unlike the absolute, abstract liberty Burke relegated to "theory," and Burke's belief that moral liberty requires civil order and control of the passions mirrors Rousseau's that good civil institutions free one from subjection to another's will and our own lower nature. The case is made similarly for comparing Burke's "rational freedom" with the prescription that some may be "forced to be free," except that Rousseau's prescription involves external coercion. Burke's love of tradition, customs, the wisdom of the community, and slow and small changes is matched by Rousseau's endorsement of patriotism and public spirit, his reverence for ancient lawgivers, his counsel of reforms for Corsica and Poland. For Rousseau, of course, political obligation was a major philosophical problem. His selection of le contrat social to explain the origin and to defend the legitimacy of government, as well as his insistence upon non-representable sovereignty, are not followed by Burke. As Cameron demonstrates, Burke rejected the social contract approach as well as prescriptive and divine right of kings theories of legitimacy. It seems fair to say that legitimate government was for him not a philosophical but a practical problem. Cameron suggestively likens Burke's image of government to a language: an ongoing fluid mixture of natural and artificial (conventional) elements. But if one accepts Cameron's analysis of Rousseau as moving away from the social contract approach to an emphasis on the General Will--an institutionalized process of expressing the public interest--Rousseau is once again brought nearer to Burke. Cameron's work does not exhaust the possibilities for comparison. Rousseau and Burke both had reservations about democracy: for Rousseau it was too perfect for human beings; for Burke nothing was more shameless. Similarly, each appears to have favored elective aristocracy as the best form of government. Cameron concludes that while their personal and professional lives, the political climates in which they wrote, and their writing styles themselves certainly differed, Rousseau and Burke shared dissatisfactions, with their age, recognized common problems , and often made similar intellectual efforts to solve those. If Cameron's rewarding study will not suffice to dissuade us from approaching Rousseau and Burke by way of the French Revolution, it may at least prevent us from self-confidently locating these two at opposite ends of the spectrum of political thought. JOHN P. BURKE University of Washington Thomas Reid's Inquiry: The Geometry o[ Visibles and the Case Jor Realism. By Norman Daniels. Forewordby Hilary Putnam. (New York: Burt Franklin, 1974. Pp xix q- 147. $14.95) This is the first recent book to appear on Thomas Reid, the eighteenth-century founder of "common sense" philosophy,. It is a welcome addition tothe modest but encouraging revival of interest in Reid over the last few years which has also included republication of his major works.1 Daniels' study is readable and convincing. In addi1 Thomas Reid, Inquiry into the Human Mind, ed. Timothy Duggan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970); Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, ed. Baruch Brody (Cam- 372 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY tion to putting Reid's philosophy in an interesting historical perspective, the book has a useful account of Reid's attack on Berkeley's theory of concepts and of Reid's own alternative to Berkeley's empirical idealism. Although the book begins by addressing itself to what might seem to be a topic of limited interest (Reid's discovering of a non-Euclidean Geometry) there is much here of interest to anyone who is concerned with eighteenth-century empiricism and metaphysics generally. Daniels begins by...

La storia della filosofia secondo Kant (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 535 ception because Reid's aesthetics are part of his over-all philosophy of perception. Unfortunately , he neglects altogether a number of important and interesting topics in aesthetics which Reid discussed, e.g., eloquence, the improvement and progress of taste, the nature of expression in various of the fine arts, and the different ways the different fine arts are aesthetically pleasing. The elements of Kivy's exposition of Reid's theory of perception are derived wholly from Reid's Inquiry into the Human Mind. Except for one footnote he ignores entirely Reid's later statement of his theory of perception in the Essays on the Intellectual Powers o[ Man. Odder still is Kivy's studied failure to discuss the relation of Reid's work on aesthetics in the Lectures on the Fine Arts to his essay "Of Taste" in the Intellectual Powers where Reid's aesthetic theories get their fullest, and only published, statement. Professor Kivy's justification for his peculiar focus is that he regards the Lectures on the Fine Arts as belonging to the same stage of Reid's philosophical development as the Inquiry into the Human Mind. I find this unconvincing. Reid's Philosophical Orations (1753; 1756; 1759; 1762) were delivered at an even earlier period in Reid's career than the Lectures on the Fine Arts and they contain important discussions of characteristic Reidian doctrines which are neglected in the Inquiry but which get taken up and discussed in detail in the Intellectual Powers. The fact seems to be that there is very little that in any rich sense can be called development in Reid's philosophy. His later works are not so much developments of his early views as amplifications and elaborations of them, so Kivy might well have utilized the Intellectual Powers to the advantage of himself and his readers. Various accounts of Reid's aesthetic theories are to be found in works on 18th century British aesthetics, but Kivy's Introduction exceeds them all in interest and importance. He argues, correctly I believe, that Reid's work on aesthetics deepened the epistemological significance of the fine arts in ways which only Kant was to surpass later in the century . Kivy's demonstration of Reid's proto-Kantianism in aesthetics will be of great interest to historians of ideas, and aestheticians will be interested in this account of how Reid attempted to relate aesthetic perception to the rest of human experience through an objectivist theory of aesthetic qualities which connects aesthetic qualities with an epistemological and ontological analysis of the primary/secondary quality distinction. Even so, Professor Kivy's neglect of the special topics in aesthetics which Reid discusses is a censurable defect. D. D. TODD Simon Fraser University La storia della filosofia secondo Kant. By Sergio Givone. (Milano: U. Mursica & Co., 1972. Pp. 197) This study, sponsored by the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Turin and supported by the Italian National Council for Research, is an examination of Kant's conception of the history of philosophy. The author deals with the problem in four stages: (1) the interrelation of philosophy and the history of philosophy; (2) Kant's philosophy as foundation of the history of philosophy; (3) the problem of that foundation as "the destiny of reason"; and (4) an attempt to reconstruct a history of philosophy on the basis of the fragmentary Kantian interpretation as a progressive manifestation of reason. The author bases his discussions on Kant's writings from the Dissertation of 1770 to the Opus postumum, stressing the teleological theme in all of Kant's works. The first problem---(1) above--the author discusses largely in connection with the early and the late sections of the Critique o[ Pure Reason (B8 to B27, B860 to B864), and the Prolegomena. He finds (a) that the period of the Enlightenment in the history of philosophy coincides in time with the period of Enlightenment in history in general; and (b) 536 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY that Kant gives us both, a mechanistic and a teleological interpretation of history, the one being a complement of the other (p. 43). In discussing the second theme--(2) above the author keys his analysis to...