Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind

The Edinburgh Edition of Thomas Reid

by Thomas Reid

A treatise on ethics, on the human being's performance and motives and freedom, that makes perceptive thrusts into the loopholes of skepticism. Includes and 18-page introduction by Baruch Brody.

Genres: Philosophy

481 pages, Paperback

First published August 15, 1969

About the author

The Reverend Thomas Reid FRSE, a religiously trained Scottish philosopher and a contemporary of David Hume, was the founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense and played an integral role in the Scottish Enlightenment. The early part of his life was spent in Aberdeen, Scotland, where he created the 'Wise Club' (a literary-philosophical association) and graduated from the University of Aberdeen. He was given a professorship at King's College, Aberdeen in 1752, where he wrote An Inquiry Into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (published in 1764). Shortly afterwards he was given the prestigious Professorship of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow when he was called to replace Adam Smith. He resigned from this position in 1781.

Reid believed that common sense (in a special philosophical sense of sensus communis) is, or at least should be, at the foundation of all philosophical inquiry. He disagreed with Hume, who asserted that we can never know what an external world consists of as our knowledge is limited to the ideas in the mind, and George Berkeley, who asserted that the external world is merely ideas in the mind. By contrast, Reid claimed that the foundations upon which our sensus communis are built justify our belief that there is an external world.

Reviews

[izabella · Rating 1 out of 5]

bro i fucking hated this fucking book. DO NOT READ IT. he literally slags off every philosopher whos ever lived and their fucking mothers whilst simultaneously contradicting himself in every idea he proposes and giving no solid notion of the things he slates further than common sense, whilst seeming bashing common sense in another meaning of the term at the same time. as a hume girly i do not like this man and if i see him on block it is on sight. god i hated having to read this for ten weeks and wouldnt wish it on my worst enemy. yo fuck this ho i would give it 0 stars if i could