Locke or Wilson, Reid and The Scottish Enlightenment? The US Constitution, Democracy and Revolution
David Peters explores Scottish born American Founder James Wilson's contributions to the US Constitution and resulting political theory.
An Aberdonian Enlightenment: Reid, Campbell, Gerard and Beattie on David Hume
Gordon Graham re-assesses neglected critics of David Hume, four of whom formed the vanguard of Enlightenment thinking in Aberdeen.
Primary and Secondary Qualities: More Trouble than You’d Think!
Size and shape versus sound and colour: discover how primary and secondary qualities have perplexed philosophers for thousands of years, and how Thomas Reid offers us a way forward.
Realism and Scepticism
By Gordon Graham For the Scottish philosophers of the 18th and 19th centuries, Hume was the great ‘sceptic’ awaiting an answer, which many of them thought Thomas Reid had provided. Thanks to Norman Kemp Smith’s seminal papers, philosophers in the…
Common Sense and Moral Philosophy
By Gordon Graham Scottish philosophy has regularly been identified with the ‘School of Common Sense’ because of the high regard in which Thomas Reid’s Inquiry was held in his lifetime and for many decades thereafter. Nevertheless, some major Scottish philosophers…
Scottish Philosophy: Neglect and Renewal
By Gordon Graham Philosophy played a key role in the curriculum of the Scottish universities from their foundation in the 15th century to the closing decade of the 19th century. By the middle of the 20th century, however, Hume’s great…
Scottish Philosophy: Project and Legacy
By Gordon Graham The Scottish philosophical tradition found its richest and most influential expression in the investigations Scottish philosophers of the 18th century conducted in their project of a ‘science of human nature’. This project, uniquely, tackled traditional philosophical problems…