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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 April 2011
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.
1 Influential nineteenth-century commentators like H. T. Buckle recognised the theological element, of course, but disparaged it, since he, along with other, was notoriously hostile towards the Scottish clergy of the century preceding. See Buckle, H. T., Introduction to the History of Civilisation in England, London n.d., repr. of 1857-1861 edn, 835ff.Google Scholar Nineteenth-century su[porters of Reid, like Schopenhauer in Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, praise the Scot for his shrewd analytica powers but neglect the theological element altogether, while popularisers, some in America, like James M'Cosh, did stress the theological element, but wholly to Reid's detriment. For example see M'Cosh, J., Method of the Divine Government, Physical and Moral, New York 1852, 320CrossRefGoogle Scholar and passim.
2 In the final chapters of the Essays on the Active Powers, Reid is to adopt arguments and language suggestive of the position of Richard Hooker, author of the seventeenth-century Anglican via media. The debt in general to Hooker is considerable and has been remarked by Schneewind, J. B. in Sidgwick's Ethics and Victorian Moral Philosophy, Oxford 1977, 63n.Google Scholar Readers of volume i of Hooker's Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, etc., may easily agree with this conclusion after comparison.
3 All references and quotations in this essay are from the 1846 edition of The Works of Thomas Reid, etc., ed. Hamilton, W., London 1846.Google Scholar Sir William Hamilton, editor of this edition, provided extensive notes in which he attempted to revise or explain Reid's views. However, it is clear that Hamilton failed in many instances to understand Reid or was determined to bring to bear his own strongly Kantian bias. It is unfortunate that Hamilton later became too closely identified in the minds of many with the true position of the Common Sense school.
4 Works, 448.
5 ‘The whole system of minds, from the infinite Creator to the meanest creature endowed with thought, may be called the Intellectual World’: ibid. 216.
6 Ibid. 345 (the emphasis is Reid's).
7 Leibniz, G. W., Philosophical Writings, ed. Parkinson, G. H. R., London 1973, 9.Google Scholar
8 Works, 346.
9 Quite apart from his understanding of the Fathers and the Shoolmen, Reid also owes a debt in this respect to Archbishop Tillotson (d. 1694), one of his favourite divines, whose views he often adhered to closely and whose teachmgs he liked to quote verbatim and in extenso within the context of his own sermons. It is only fair, perhaps, to recollect that one of Tillotson's contemporary opponents, Dean Hickes, once accused the prelated of atheism. See Swift's Works xxiv, London 1776, 237, ‘Collins' Discourse on Free-thinking’.
10 Aquinas says in the Summa Theological ‘Sic ergo patet quod propter melius animae est ut corpori uniatur, et intelligat per conversionem ad phantasmata…’. One reason, incidentally, why Reid opposes the Platonic notion of Ideas is because it appears to turn the soul from the body rather than allowing it to exploit the physical association.
11 Works, 236. Reid does, however, allow intuition a positive role. See below n. 59.
12 Ibid. 309.
13 Ibid. 260.
14 Ibid. 309.
15 Ibid. 326. It was statements of this sort by Reid which particularly irritated some Victorian commentators. Buckle sees them as evidence of Red's coarseness, crudity and intellectual inadequacy. See Buckle, Introduction, and Stanley, A. P., Lectures on the History of the Church of Scotland, London 1872, 123Google Scholar and passim, on the supposed mediocrity of the eighteenth-century Scottish clergy in general. It was this conviction which led another of Reid's Victorian detractors, Edmund Gosse, to conclude that the Radian position was no more than a weak amalgam of the views of Shaftesbury and Clarke. This may seem plausible, since Reid was exposed as a student to George Turnbull's great fondness for Shaftesbury. But Gosse is unfair to all the parties, and any confirmation of clarke in particular by Reid seems to have been quite independently arrived at. In relation o the passage cited above, it is informative to compare Hooker: ‘it followeth hat either all flesh is excluded from possibility of salvation, which to think were most barbarous or else God hath…revealed the way of life so far forth as does suffice’: Hooker, , Laws i. 87.Google Scholar Calvin notes in the same context: “but on each of [God's] works his glory is engraven in characters so bright, so distinct, and so illustrious, that none, however dull and illiterate, can plead ignorance as their excuse’: Institutes of the Christian Religton, 2 vols, Edinburgh 1869, i. 51. More, in Utopia, has it thus: ‘nature…seems to have placed on a level all those that belong to the same species’.
16 Works, 329.
17 Ibid. 330 (the emphasis is Reid's).
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid. 244.
20 Ibid. 448. Not surprisingly, a favourite text for eighteenth-century pulpit oratory, Scottish and English, was found in Rom. xii. 5.
21 Butler, J., ‘Sermons’, in The Works of J. Butler, 2 vols, Oxford 1850, ii. 15.Google Scholar
22 The recognition of the life and intelligene of God in others also lessens the likelihood of schism, something the Church in Scotland always sought very hard to avoid. See, for example, The Confessions of Faith, 1560, and successive canons.
23 Works, 449.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid. 450.
26 See also ibid. 483.
27 Like Tillotson, whom he so much admired, Reid also diminishes the role of Christ in favour of a practical approach to the problems of the faith. Tillotson says, in a sermon familiar to Reid, ‘All the precepts of Christianity are reasonable and wise, requiring such duties as are suitable to the light of nature and do approve themselves to the best reason of mankind’: The Works of Archbishop Tillotson, London 1782 edn, sermon xlii, iii. 275. A modern clerical critic finds this view contemptible: it professed to be ‘eminently practical. Its concern was with what is outward and visible and palpable. In more modern speech it would be described as realist or as ethical or as a species of social regeneration teaching whose supreme concern was in a pragmatic fashion with tangible results in the region of the conventions of neighbourly life. In those days, Tillotson was its ideal preacher’: Maclcod, J., Scottish Theology in Relation to Church History, Edinburgh 1943Google Scholar, 1974 edn, 204. (There is a premonition here of today's ‘social gospel’ controversies, yet this was alike the old Broad Church view and a basis for Reid's Common Sense philosophy.)
28 An explicit statement on the role and importance of supplicatory prayer is found in the Essays on the Active Powers, Works, 625–6.
29 Ibid. 337.
30 Ibid.
31 Reid's notions of the origin and nature of the power he feels man needs in order to govern and direct the so-called faculties are of considerable mterest. He has clear idea of course, of all scriptural definitions and uses of the phenomenon and most often uses it himself in the sense of the Greek ‘Dunamis’ rather than “Exousia” as one might expect. This seems to be a metonymie usage which reflects the exercise of moral courage and denotes accountability when applied to man rather than to God. ‘Upon he wholes,’ Reid says, ‘human power, in its existence, and in its extent and in its exertions in entirely dependent upon God, and upon the laws of nature which he has established…At the same time, that degree of power which we have received…is one of the noblest gifts of God to man’; man must be ‘excited to make the proper use of it’. This is one of the primary aims of the Common Sense philosophy, as Reid sees it. See Essays on the Artve Powes Works, 530. Reid also makes it clear that all exercise of power in any form, is utterly dependent upon God, who could choose at any time to withdraw the prerogative of its use, ibid. 517.
32 Predictably, although a believer in the need for redemption, Reid always avoids the zeal of the radical Redemptionists.
33 Works, 366.
34 Ibid. 381.
35 Ibid.
36 Reid, T., Thomas Reid'ss Lectures on Natural Theology (1780), Washington 1981Google Scholar, misleadingly transcribed from students' notes, and with an introduction by E. H. Duncan and additional material by W. R. Eakin (the students' notes confirm this impression).
37 Butler, , Works ii. 37.Google Scholar
38 See also Works, 380–1.
39 Ibid. 399.
40 Reid attacks the system of Platonic Ideas primarily because, if carried to a logical primacy and majesty. Take away the notion that the Platonic Ideas or Forms actually are a species of existence comparable to that enjoyed by God and Reid has less difficulty with them. See Works, 371 and 429. (But then, these diminished Ideas might become mere further instances of man's attempt to interpose some vacuous mental events between himself and immediate experience of God's creation, and this something that Reid particularly wishes to avoid.) For a different, but intriguing and stimulating, discussion of Reid's position on the Theory of Ideas in general, see Daniels, N., Thomas Reid's Inquiry: the geometry of visibles and the case for realism, New York 1974.Google Scholar passim. Here, Reid's genius is acknowledged and placed in a fresh, modern setting.
41 Works, 437. Reid's aim is a ‘unanimity’ of opinion — he does not see how men can long be ‘blinded by prejudice or partiality’ so long as principles granted by both sides are taken into consideration. If terms are explained and examined ‘coolly’, common sense must prevail. The point is, he feels, that ‘Nature hath not left us destitute of means whereby the candid and honest part of mankind may be brought to unanimity when they happen to differ about first principles’. Honest disagreement, based on compassion and concern for the opposing view, is possible if it is agreed that the principles about which one debates are objectively existent, and this is possible on Reid's own view only if God is the acknowledged originator and immanent sustainer of those principles. An earlier twentieth-century American critic of Reid remarks, ‘No one has taken the “first principles” of Reid seriously, or as anything more than primary statements on which ethical investigations may be based. Many…agree with him that the right is a quality so simple that it admits of no explanation except that it is the right’: Hamilton, E. J., The Moral Law or The Theory and Practice of Duty, New York 1902, 220–1.Google Scholar In nineteenth-century Britain Whewell was an occasional exponent of similar views.
42 A popular defender of this view was George Bull, bishop of St Davids, whose Defensio Fidei Nicaenae of 1685 became a standard work. His influence lasted well into the eighteenth century, and Reid as a divinity student in Aberdeen was very probably acquainted with his works. See, for further examples, Bull, G., Several Sermons and other Discourses, etc., 14 vols, London 1713, i. 893–4Google Scholar and passim.
43 2 Tim. ii. 5, 15.
44 Works, 442.
45 Ibid. 443.
46 ‘But, as his dominion is subordina, [man] is under a moral obligation to make right use of it…And he must Anally render an account of the talent committed to him, to the Supreme Governor and righteous Judge’: Essays on the Active Powers, ibid. 615–16.
47 Butler comments on the confusion current at the time concerning the issue of personal identity and its crucial relation to the Christian belief: ‘Yet strange perplexities have been raised about the meaning of that identity, or sameness of person, which is implied in the notion of our living now and hereafter: ‘Of personal identity’, Works i. 313, dissertation 1.
48 Works, 445.
49 Ibid. 446.
50 Ibid. 447.
51 Ibid.
52 Ibid. 449.
53 Ibid.
54 Ibid. 449. Adam Smith also attached considerable importance to the position supported by this principle. It was a foundation stone in his own theory of conscience. ‘Our continual observations upon the conduct of others, insensibly lead us to form to ourselves certain general rules concerning what is fit and proper either to be done or to be avoided’: Smith, A., The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. Raphael, D.D. and Macfie, A. L., Oxford 1979Google Scholar, first publ. 1759, 159.
55 Works, 451.
56 Ibid
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid. 484.
59 ‘There are ways by which the evidence of first principles may be made more apparent when they are brought into dispute…their evidence is not demonstrative, but intuitive’ (my emphasis): ibid. 231.
60 ‘When the eye of sense is open, but that of judgment shut by… any violent emotion…we see things confusedly, and probably much in the same manner that brutes and perfect idiots do’: ibid. 417.
61 Ibid. 422.
62 This comment also applies directly to Reid's An Inquiry into the Human Mind, Etc., of 1764, where the author lays down the epistemological foundations upon which the Essays are built. Several recent publications which add depth to the understanding of Reid and Common Sense as historical phenomena are: Scotland in the Age of Improvement, ed. Phillipson, N. T. and Mitchison, R., Edinburgh 1970Google Scholar; The Origins of the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. Campbell, R. H. and Skinner, A. S., New York 1978Google Scholar; and Bryson, G., Man and Society: the Scottish inquiry of the eighteenth century, Princeton 1945.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
