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REID, THOMAS (1710-1796)

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Originally appearing in Volume V23, Page 52 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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REID, See also:THOMAS (1710-1796) , Scottish philosopher, was See also:born at See also:Strachan in See also:Kincardineshire, on the 26th of See also:April 1710. His See also:father was See also:minister of the See also:place for fifty years, and traced his descent from a See also:long See also:line of Presbyterian ministers on See also:Dee-See also:side. His See also:mother belonged to the brilliant See also:Gregory See also:family (q.v.), which, in the 18th See also:century, gave so many representatives to literature and See also:science in See also:Scotland. Reid graduated at See also:Aberdeen in 1726, and remained there as librarian to the university for ten years, a See also:period which he devoted largely to mathematical See also:reading. In 1737 he was presented to the living of Newmachar near Aberdeen. The parishioners, violently excited at the See also:time about the See also:law of patronage, received him with open hostility; and tradition asserts that his See also:uncle defended him on the See also:pulpit See also:stair with a See also:drawn See also:sword. Though not distinguished as a preacher, he was successful in winning the affections of his See also:people. The publication of See also:Hume's See also:treatise turned his See also:attention to See also:philosophy, and in particular to the theory of See also:external See also:perception. His first publication, however, dealt with a question of philosophical method suggested by the reading of See also:Hutcheson. The " See also:Essay on Quantity, occasioned by reading a Treatise in which See also:Simple and See also:Compound Ratios are applied to Virtue and Merit," denies the possibility of a mathematical treatment of moral subjects. The essay appeared in the Transactions of the Royal Society (1748). In 1740 Reid married a See also:cousin, the daughter of a See also:London physician.

In 1752 the professors of See also:

King's See also:College, Aberdeen, elected him to the See also:chair of philosophy, which he held for twelve years. The See also:foundation of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society (the " See also:Wise See also:Club "), which numbered among its members See also:Campbell, See also:Beattie, See also:Gerard and Dr See also:John Gregory, was mainly owing to the exertions of Reid, who was secretary for the first See also:year (1758). Many of the subjects of discussion were drawn from Hume's speculations; and during the last years of his stay in Aberdeen Reid propounded his new point of view in several papers read before the society. The results of these papers were embodied in the Enquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of See also:Common Sense (1764). The Enquiry does not go beyond an See also:analysis of sense perception, and is therefore more limited in See also:scope than the later Essays; but if the latter are more mature, there is more freshness about the earlier See also:work. In this year, Reid succeeded See also:Adam See also:Smith as See also:professor of moral philosophy in the university of See also:Glasgow. After seventeen years of active teaching, he retired in See also:order to See also:complete his philosophical See also:system. As a lecturer, he was inferior in See also:charm and eloquence to See also:Brown and See also:Stewart; the latter says that " silent and respectful attention " was accorded to the " simplicity and perspicuity of his See also:style " and " the gravity and authority of his See also:character." His philosophical See also:influence was exerted largely through the writings of Dugald Stewart and See also:Sir See also:William See also:Hamilton. The Essays on the Intellectual See also:Powers of See also:Man appeared in 1785, and their ethical See also:complement, the Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind, in 1788. These, with an See also:account of See also:Aristotle's See also:Logic appended to See also:Lord See also:Kames's Sketches of the See also:History of Man (1774), conclude the See also:list of See also:works published in Reid's lifetime. Hamilton's edition of Reid also contains an account of the university of Glasgow and a selection of Reid's letters, chiefly addressed to his Aberdeen See also:friends the Skenes, to Lord Kames, and to Dr See also:James Gregory. With the two last named he discussed the See also:materialism of .See also:Priestley andthe theory of necessitarianism.

He reverted in his old See also:

age to the mathematical pursuits of his earlier years, and his ardour for knowledge of every See also:kind remained fresh to the last. He died of See also:paralysis on the 7th of See also:October 1796, his wife and all his See also:children See also:save one having predeceased him. His portrait by See also:Raeburn is the See also:property of Glasgow University, and in the See also:National Portrait See also:Gallery, See also:Edinburgh, there is a See also:good medallion by Tassie, taken in his eighty-first year. His character was marked by See also:independence, See also:economy and generosity. The See also:key to Reid's philosophy is to be found in his revulsion from the sceptical conclusions of Hume. In several passages of his writings he expressly See also:dates his philosophical awakening from the See also:appearance of the Treatise of Human Nature. In the See also:dedication of the Enquiry, he says: " The ingenious author of that treatise upon the principles of See also:Locke—who was no sceptic—hath built a system of See also:scepticism which leaves no ground to believe any one thing rather than its contrary. His reasoning appeared to me to be just; there was, therefore, a See also:necessity to See also:call in question the principles upon which it was founded, or to admit the conclusion." Reid thus takes Hume's scepticism as, on its own showing, a reductio ad impossibile (see HumE, ad fin.) of accepted philosophical principles, and refuses, accordingly, to See also:separate Hume from his intellectual progenitors. From its origin in See also:Descartes and onwards through Locke and See also:Berkeley, See also:modern philosophy carried with it, Reid contends, the germ of scepticism. Embracing the whole philosophic See also:movement under the name of " the Cartesian system," Reid detects its fundamental See also:error in the unproved See also:assumption shared by these thinkers " that all the See also:objects of my knowledge are ideas in my own mind." This See also:doctrine or See also:hypothesis he usually speaks of as ' the ideal system " or " the theory of ideas "; and to it he opposes his own analysis of the See also:act of perception. In view of the results of this analysis, Reid's theory (and the theory of Scottish philosophy generally) has been dubbed natural See also:realism or natural See also:dualism, in contrast to theories like subjective See also:idealism and materialism or to the cosmothetic idealism or hypothetical dualism of the See also:majority of philosophers. But this unduly narrows the scope of Scottish philosophy, which does not exhaust itself, as is sometimes supposed, in uncritically reasserting the See also:independent existence of See also:matter and its immediate presence to mind.

The real significance of Reid's doctrine lies in its attack upon Hume's fundamental principles, (1) that all our perceptions are distinct existences, and (2) that the mind never perceives any real connexion among distinct existences (cf. Appendix to the third See also:

volume of the Treatise, 1740). It is here that the danger of " the ideal system " really lies—in its reduction of reality to " particular perceptions," essentially unconnected with each other. This theory admitted, nothing is See also:left for philosophy save to explain the illusion of necessary connexion. Reid, however, attacks the fundamental assumption. In logical See also:language, he denies the actuality of the abstract particular. The unit of knowledge is not an isolated impression but a See also:judgment; and in such a judgment is contained, even initially, the reference both to a permanent subject and to a permanent See also:world of thought, and, implied in these, such judgments, for example, as those of existence, substance, cause and effect. Such principles are not derived from sensation, but are " suggested " on occasion of sensation, in such a way as to constitute the necessary conditions of our having perceptive experience at all. Thus we do not start with " ideas, and afterwards refer them to objects; we are never restricted to our own minds, but are from the first immediately related to a permanent world. Reid has a variety of names for the principles which, by their presence, lift us out of subjectivity into perception. He calls them " natural judgments," " natural suggestions," " judgments of nature," " judgments immediately inspired by our constitution," " principles of our nature," " first principles," " principles of common sense." The last common designation, which became the current one, was un- Sense. doubtedly unfortunate, and has conveyed to many a false impression of Scottish philosophy.

It has been understood as if Reid had merely appealed from the reasoned conclusions of philosophers to the unreasoned beliefs of common See also:

life. But Reid's actions are better than his words; his real mode of See also:procedure is to redargue Hume's conclusions by a refutation of the premises inherited by him from his predecessors. For the See also:rest, as regards the question of nomenclature, Reid everywhere unites common sense and See also:reason, making the former " only another name for one See also:branch or degree of reason." Reason, as judging of things self-evident, is called common sense to distinguish it from ratiocination or reasoning. And in regard to Reid's favourite See also:proof of the principles in question by reference to " the consent of ages and nations, of the learned and unlearned," it is only See also:fair to observe that this See also:argument assumes a much more scientific See also:form in the Essays, where it is almost identified with an See also:appeal to " the structure and See also:grammar of all See also:languages." " The structure of all languages," he says, " is grounded upon common sense." To take but one example, " the distinction between sensible qualities and the substance to which they belong, and between thought and the mind that thinks, is not the invention of philosophers; it is found in the structure of all languages, and therefore must be common to all men who speak with understanding " (Hamilton's Reid, pp. 224, and 454). he principles which Reid insists upon as everywhere See also:present in experience evidently correspond See also:pretty closely to the Kantian Reid and categories and the unity of See also:apperception. Similarly, Reid's See also:Rent assertion of the essential distinction between space or See also:extension and feeling or any See also:succession of feelings may be compared with See also:Kant's doctrine in the Aesthetic. " Space, may he says, " whether tangible or visible, is not so properly an See also:object [Kant's " matter ") as a necessary concomitant of the objects both of sight and See also:touch." Like Kant, too, Reid finds in space the source of a necessity which sense, as sense, cannot give (Hamilton's Reid, p. 323). In the substance of their See also:answer to Hume, the two philosophers have therefore much in common. But Reid lacked the See also:art to give due impressiveness to the important advance which his positions really contain. Although at times he states his principles with a wonderful degree of breadth and insight, he See also:mars the effect by looseness of statement, and by the See also:incorporation of irrelevant psychological matter.

And, if Kant was overridden by a love of symmetry, Reid's indifference to form and system is an even more dangerous defect. Further, Reid is inclined to See also:

state his principles dogmatically rather than as logical deductions. The transcendental See also:deduction, or proof from the possibility of experience in See also:general, which forms the vital centre of the Kantian See also:scheme, is wanting in Reid ; or, at all events, if the spirit of the proof is occasionally present, it is nowhere adequately See also:developed. Nevertheless, Reid's insistence on judgment as the unit of knowledge and his See also:sharp distinction between sensation and perception must still be recognized as of the highest importance. The relativism or phenomenalism which Hamilton afterwards adopted from Kant and sought to engraft upon Scottish philosophy The is wholly absent from the See also:original Scottish doctrine. One Scottish or two passages may certainly be quoted from Reid in School . which he asserts that we know only properties of things and are ignorant of their essence. But the exact meaning which he attaches to such expressions is not quite clear; and they occur, moreover, only incidentally and with the See also:air of current phrases mechanically repeated. Dugald Stewart, however, deliberately emphasizes the merely qualitative nature of our knowledge as the foundation of philosophical argument, and thus paves the way for the thoroughgoing philosophy of nescience elaborated by Hamilton. But since Hamilton's time the most typical Scottish thinkers have repudiated his relativistic doctrine, and returned to the original tradition of the school. For Reid's ethical theory, see See also:ETHICS. The complete edition of the works by Sir William Hamilton, published in two volumes with notes and supplementary See also:dissertations by the editor (6th ed. 1863), has superseded all others.

For Reid's life see D. Stewart's Memoir prefixed to Hamilton's edition of Reid's works. See also McCosh, Scottish Philosophers (1875); Rait, See also:

Universities of Aberdeen, pp. 199-203, 223; A. C. See also:Fraser, Monograph (1898); A. See also:Bain, See also:Mental Science, p. 207, p. 422 (for his theory of See also:free will), and Appendix, pp. 29, 63, 88, 89. (A. S.

End of Article: REID, THOMAS (1710-1796)

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