Dugald Stewart on Reid, Kant and the refutation of idealism

British Journal for the History of Philosophy

Volumn 13, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 263-286

  Friday, Jonathan ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF KENT   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 61249407416     PISSN: 09608788     EISSN: 14693526     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09608780500069285     Document Type: Article

References (13)

1. Stewart's influence was particularly strong in France and North America. In the early nineteenth century, Scottish common-sense philosophy, with Dugald Stewart as its living embodiment, inspired a generation of French philosophers, the most famous of whom are Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard, Victor Cousin and Theodore Jouffroy. In the United States, Stewart and Reid were at the centre of the philosophy curriculum for generations of university students. For a discussion of Stewart's influence, cf. Knud Haakonssen, 'Dugald Stewart' in Dictionary of 18th Century Philosophy, Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1999;
2. and James McCosh, The Scottish Philosophy (1875), reprinted by Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1990, pp. 302.
3. Dugald Stewart, Dissertation: Exhibiting the Progress of Metaphysical, Ethical and Political Philosophy, p. 460. The passage quoted, like all the other passages I cite from this work, is from the second Dissertation published in 1821. Page numbers of the Dissertation refer to the first volume of Sir William Hamilton (ed.) The Collected works of Dugald Stewart, published in 1854.
4. Manfred Kuehn, Scottish Common Sense in Germany 1768-1800, Kingston and Montreal: McGill/Queen's Universities Press, 1987.
5. Joseph-Marie de Gerando, Histoire Comparée des Systémes (Paris 1803). Stewart mentions Prevost's discussion of Kant in the appendix to his French translation of Adam Smith's Posthumous Essays was of particular assistance. Prevost shared Stewart's abhorrence of Kant's style of writing and technical jargon.
6. Immanuel Kant, Lewis White Beck (trans.), Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1950, pp. 6-7. Kant also considers common-sense philosophy in a similarly dismissive tone, and with no greater understanding of Reid's views, in the final section of the Prolegomena.
7. Although he might also have been thinking of many other writers - including Hume, who argued that Berkeley's idealism collapsed into his own scepticism as his argument produces no conviction, even though its conclusion is unavoidable. See David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Nidditch. (eds), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975, pp. 155n.
8. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Norman Kemp Smith (trans.), London: Macmillan, 1929, B274. Of course, it strains credibility to suppose that Kant fell victim to the kind of confusion with which Stewart is concerned, and in the first edition of the Critique, we find Kant distinguishing between dogmatic and sceptical idealism (cf. A377) in a manner that could be said to respect the distinction Stewart stresses. Relying as he did upon Born's Latin translation of the second edition, Stewart could not have been familiar with that passage.
9. Two useful discussions of Reid's notion of common sense are Nicholas Wolterstorff, Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 215-49
10. and Louise Marcil-Lacoste Claude Buffier and Thomas Reid: Two Common Sense Philosophers, Kingston and Montreal: McGill/Queens University Press, 1982, pp. 73-23.
11. Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers, (London 1785), 2.19.1.
12. Thomas Reid, An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, (London 1764), 5.5.
13. Hume commonly uses 'affection' in this sense. Cf. e.g. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, L. A. Selby-Bigge and P. H. Nidditch. (eds), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978, pp. 575-6.