Scottish Common Sense Realism
Scottish Common Sense Realism is a philosophical movement that emerged during the Scottish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, primarily founded by Thomas Reid. This school of thought emphasizes the importance of self-evident truths as foundational to intellectual inquiry, arguing that these truths should not be subjected to critical evaluation. Reid believed that a focus on so-called "common sense"—principles universally accepted and logically sound—could provide stability in philosophy, in contrast to the skepticism and phenomenalism championed by contemporaries like David Hume. Hume's questioning of the certainty of perception and existence prompted Reid to advocate for a more immediate understanding of knowledge, where perception of external phenomena is direct rather than mediated through human consciousness.
The work of Reid was further popularized by James Beattie, whose treatise in 1770 made common sense principles accessible to a broader audience and positioned them against Hume's skepticism. This movement not only influenced later Scottish philosophers, such as Adam Ferguson and Dugald Stewart, but also left a lasting impact on philosophical thought in countries like France and the United States. In particular, the principles of Scottish Common Sense Realism informed the intellectual climate surrounding the American Revolution, influencing founding figures like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. The doctrine's emphasis on practical, universally observable truths resonates with various cultural and intellectual traditions, making it a significant part of the philosophical landscape of the time.
Scottish Common Sense Realism
Scottish Common Sense Realism is a school of philosophy that emerged during the Scottish Enlightenment, an eighteenth century cultural movement marked by a succession of noteworthy Scottish scientific, artistic, literary, and intellectual achievements. It was founded by the Scottish thinker Thomas Reid and popularized by his countryman James Beattie, a poet and philosopher whose widely read 1770 treatise, An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, in Opposition to Sophistry and Skepticism, helped vault the common sense school into the intellectual and cultural mainstream.
The essence of Scottish Common Sense Realism is grounded in Reid's idea that self-evident truths form an important basis for intellectual inquiry and ought to be excluded from the realm of critical evaluation. Reid believed that the value and real-world applicability of philosophy diminishes when it becomes preoccupied with questioning what he calls "common sense," a term that describes the agglomeration of logically sound and practical principles widely known and accepted across human cultures.
Background and Context
Contemporary commentators have positioned Reid's initial work in opposition to the ideas of David Hume, another Scottish philosopher who is widely regarded as one of the era's most prominent intellectuals. Hume's philosophical systems showed a preoccupation with phenomenalism and skepticism. Phenomenalism is a philosophical view that rejects the notion that physical objects can be said to objectively exist outside of a human being's ability to perceive them, while skepticism questions the idea that absolute certainty about anything is attainable. These positions led Hume to problematize the very basis of philosophical, scientific, and intellectual inquiry while interrogating even the most elementary assumptions about the physical world and the ability of human beings to perceive or explore it with any degree of assured truth.
Hume's ideas resonated with the earlier work of other leading philosophers, including René Descartes and Thomas Hobbes. Both Descartes and Hobbes rejected the notion that common sense holds inherent value, and for Reid, this led philosophy down a path he termed "unprosperous." Reid countered the positions of the phenomenalists and the skeptics by forwarding a theory of perception that aimed to restore the recognized veracity of common sense principles to the realm of philosophical inquiry.
While it was the work of Hume that inspired Reid to develop a position that defended the value of common sense, Scottish Common Sense Realism can also be viewed as a direct response to the idea of representative perception advocated by John Locke. Locke posited that perception involves three key elements: a thing to be perceived, a person who is able to perceive it, and the idea or notion of perception. Reid believed that Locke's idea of representative perception was fundamentally flawed, and since representative perception provided the foundational basis for Hume's skepticism, Reid essentially criticized Hume by challenging Locke's view.
Theory of Perception and Doctrine of Common Sense
In his theory of perception, Reid takes what is known as the "presentative" position, which holds that human knowledge of external phenomena is immediate. For Reid, the perception of external objects bypasses human consciousness altogether; its immediacy is self-evident, and interrogation of it is needless, fruitless, and contrary to the fundamental and perpetual everyday experience of human beings. This contradicts Locke's position that it is the conscious awareness of the notion of perception that makes perception possible in the first place, an idea that naturally leads to the destabilization of fundamental assumptions about human consciousness and the very existence of the external world itself.
While Reid's doctrine of common sense is not considered, in and of itself, to be a cogent and comprehensive philosophical theory, it forms the basis of his later work and the work of his successors. In basic terms, Reid's theory forwards the notion that common sense has inherent value because its principles are readily demonstrable and form an important part of the universal life experiences of human beings. For example, human beings know that cold air turns water to ice because water freezes every time it is exposed to cold temperatures for a prolonged period of time. This, for Reid, is a fundamental and easily perceptible truth, and there is nothing of value to be gained by questioning the assumptions that underlie it.
Influence of Scottish Common Sense Realism
While Reid's ideas were more comprehensively developed by Scottish thinkers including Adam Ferguson and Dugald Stewart, it arguably found its widest audience in 1770 with the publication of Beattie's An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, in Opposition to Sophistry and Skepticism. In this treatise, Beattie drew heavily on rhetoric to mount a systematic attack on Hume's idealist brand of skepticism. While Beattie's work drew significant criticism from the intellectuals of the day, its accessibility and simple profundity undeniably resonated with a wide readership. The essay was built around a methodical rationalization of common sense principles, essentially stating that philosophy becomes convoluted to the point of impracticality when it deviates from the self-evident dictates of human experience.
In the later part of the eighteenth century, Scottish Common Sense Realism permeated emerging philosophical movements in several countries, including France and, most notably, the future United States. Its widespread acceptance in the thirteen colonies formed an important philosophical underpinning of the pervasive practical sentiment that informed the intellectual ideals of the American Revolution, leading some historians to cite the Scottish Enlightenment as an important formative step in the American independence movement. The philosophical works of American founding fathers Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both owe a significant debt to the brand of practical realism founded by Reid and championed by Ferguson, Stewart, and Beattie. Furthermore, common sense principles found broader applications in conservative religious circles, perhaps owing in part to Reid's own background in religious training.
Bibliography
McDermid, Douglas. "James Beattie (1735–1803)." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 26 Aug. 2015, www.iep.utm.edu/beattiej. Accessed 28 Oct. 2024.
Reid, Thomas. "Selections from the Scottish Philosophy of Common Sense." Online Library of Liberty. 26 Aug. 2015, oll.libertyfund.org/titles/2044. Accessed 28 Oct. 2024.
Segrest, Scott Philip. America and the Political Philosophy of Common Sense. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2010. Print.
"Thomas Reid." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 23 Sept. 2014, plato.stanford.edu/entries/reid/. Accessed 28 Oct. 2024.
Turner, William. "Chapter LXVII: The Scottish School." History of Philosophy. London: Forgotten Books, 2015. Print.
Wirzbicki, Peter. "John Witherspoon, the Scottish Common Sense School, and American Political Philosophy." Theology Today, 12 Jan. 2024, doi.org/10.1177/00405736231207542. Accessed 28 Oct. 2024.