No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Scottish Common Sense in Germany, 1768–1800: A Contribution to the History of Critical PhilosophyManfred Kuehn Kingston and Montréal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1987. xiv + 300 p.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2010
Abstract
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
- Type
- Book Reviews/Comptes rendus
- Information
- Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , Summer 1990 , pp. 453 - 460
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1990
References
Notes
1 Tetens, it should be mentioned in passing, was more a critic than a supporter of Common Sense philosophy, although his version of standard empiricism had some original twists to it, due to various influences including Leibniz's Nouveaux Essais, See Tonelli, Georgio's article on Tetens in Vol. 8 of Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edwards, Paul (New York: Macmillan, 1967)Google Scholar. Tetens certainly deserves more attention than he has received. There is no article on him, for example, in most single-volume, English-language dictionaries and encyclopedias of philosophy, nor in the 2, 725 pages of Huisman, Denis's massive, two-volume Dictionnaire des philosophes (Paris: P.U.F., 1984)Google Scholar.
2 Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, p. 239.
3 H. Vaihinger, Kommentar zu Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Vol. 1, p. 342; quoted by Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, p. 5.
4 Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, p. 8.
5 Ibid.
6 A German-language encyclopedia of philosophy which I consulted gives the following publication dates for German translations of works by the following authors of the “Scottish School”: Reid, 1782*; Oswald, 1774*; Beattie, 1772*; Stewart, 1794; Ferguson, 1768, 1772* (by Garve), 1795; Gerard, 1776 (by Garve); Campbell, 1791**. See the articles devoted to these authors in the Philosophen-Lexikon: Handwörterbuch der Philosophic nach Personen, 2 vols. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1949–50)Google Scholar.
The asterisk indicates that the translation in question is also noted in Kuehn's bibliography, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, p. 275–282. A double asterisk indicates there is a listing in Kuehn's bibliography but that the listing in the Philosophen-Lexikon has not been checked. The absence of an asterisk thus indicates German translations of works by the Scots which Kuehn has ignored, including translations by Garve. (On p. 46 Kuehn, however, recognizes the “seminal importance” of Garve's translations “for the further development of German thought.” Under the circumstances, then, more attention to the influence of Gerard might have been appropriate. It is also noteworthy that Ferguson, whom Kuehn deals with only tangentially, seems to be the first of the Common-Sense Scots to be translated into German.) It is however also of some note that Kuehn lists German editions of works of Beattie's in 1779, 1789–90 and 1790 which are not mentioned in the Philosophen-Lexikon.
7 Quinton, Anthony, “British Philosophy,” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edwards, Paul (New York: Macmillan, 1967), Vol. 1, p. 386.Google Scholar The reviewer does not however concur in Quinton's selection of the “direct” heirs of Thomas Reid.
8 Hume's sin in the eyes of the powerful, however, was not so much his alleged scepticism in philosophy, as his too-kind treatment of the Stuarts in his History of England. For a discussion of Reid's and Beattie's relations with Hume, with quotations from the letters and writings of all three, see the historical and biographical introductory chapter to the reviewer's “Thomas Reid's Theory of Immediate Perception” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Waterloo, 1979), p. 5–7Google Scholar and note 29 on p. 15f. On the pension given to Beattie, see Fraser, Alexander Campbell, Thomas Reid (Edinburgh, 1898), p. 95.Google Scholar
9 Brockhaus Encyclopddie: Siebzehnte vollig neubearbeitete Auflage (Wiesbaden, 1973), Vol. 16, p. 825.Google Scholar The article indicates that the founder of the school was Reid, and that it included Th. Brown, D. Stewart and J. Beattie. (Brown, a student and “un derstudy” of Stewart, whose books went through an incredible number of editions ca. 1820, might better be described as having reverted to classical empiricism.)
10 See von Aster, Ernst, Geschichte der Philosophie (Leipzig, 1932), p. 228.Google Scholar
11 Unfortunately, the Dalhousie University Library's holdings of this work cover A to M only, possibly due to budget cuts at the beginning of the 1980s when the later volumes were to come out. As a result, I was unable to consult the articles on Reid, the Scottish School, Stewart, Priestley, Oswald, etc.
12 Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, p. 7.
13 Kant, Prolegomena, quoted by Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, p. 4.
14 Quinton, “British Philosophy”
15 The second edition, by J. Johnson, London, is the one reproduced on microcard by the Lost Cause Press, Louisville, 1968. The date of the first edition (which the reviewer has not seen) is 1774.
16 See Kuehn's bibliography, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, p. 280.
17 Joseph Priestley, or “Mr. Exploding Gas” as Blake called him, is now mainly known to us as the chemist who discovered and first isolated oxygen – although the ebullient Priestley (who detested Lavoisier's theories and terminology) would be the first to deny that that was what he had discovered, preferring to say that he had isolated dephlogisticated air. Priestley, however, who was also a non-conformist clergyman with his own congregation, probably considered that his most important contributions were in the field of theology. Among the more original of these is an attempt to prove the truth of materialism by various appeals to scripture! See Disquisitions Relating to Matter and Spirit (London, 1777)Google Scholar. He also had to leave England in the 1790s because of his sympathies with the French Revolution – and became the friend of an American president during his exile, while succeeding in greatly annoying the American clergy. Priestley describes in his Examination how he became annoyed by Oswald's defence of some of the conventional theological ideas which Priestley fervently believed to be errors (immortality of the soul, etc.) and how this led him to a criticism of Beattie and then of Reid. Priestley's knock-down refutation of ROB was that their method seemed to be to enlarge the list of First Principles to include whatever it was they wanted to prove. His answer to Reid's more particular criticisms of the “theory of ideas” was that no one had ever literally held the theory criticized. On the latter criticism of Reid, see the reviewer's “Some Counter-Critiques Countered,” chap. 3 of “Thomas Reid's Theory of Immediate Perception,” p. 118–136.
18 Kuehn notes no such translation in his bibliography, and the reviewer has been unable to turn up any evidence for the existence of one.
19 See the 1979 Georg Olms facsimile edition of Tetens' Philosophische Werke, Vol. 1, p. 67–68 and 584. That Hartley called ideas “Nervenschwingungen” is mentioned on p. 68. On pages 67–68 it is regretted that Priestley and Hartley were not aware of Wolff's allegedly superior account of ideas as “Modifikationen der Seele selbst.” Tetens' main thesis seems to be that there is a simpler and more general explanation of the association of ideas, namely the existence of a primitive “vorstellende Kraft” or representative power. On page 584, Reid, Beattie and Oswald (RBO, not ROB) are taken to task, à la Priestley, for renouncing (rational) inquiry and leaving us with nothing to go on but the “ungeprüften Menschenverstand.”
20 See note 6 above.
21 Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, p. 148; emphasis added.
22 Reid, Inquiry, quoted in ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany.
25 Ibid., p. 147.
26 Ibid., p. 148, n. 24.
27 Ibid., p. 148.
28 Ibid.
29 Hamann, Werke, quoted in ibid., p. 149.
30 Ibid.
31 It is however beyond the scope of the present review to discuss what Reid's view of language is and whether Hamann's views are similar, as they may in fact be. For purposes of the complaint being discussed, this is immaterial.
32 Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany, p. 149.
33 Ibid.