Thomas Reid

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Thomas Reid (1710 - 1796), 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 afterward he was given a much more prestigious professorship 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) is, or at least should be, at the foundation of all philosophical inquiry. He disagreed with Hume and George Berkeley, who asserted that humans do not experience matter or mind as either sensations or ideas. Reid claimed that common sense tells us that there is matter and mind. This common sense is the result of the way that we were made by God.

External Links

• The Aberdeen University Reid Project
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Reid
• Inquiry into the Human Mind, Essays on the Active Powers of Man (1, 2 and 4), and Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man

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