Scottish Philosophy. Scotsmen taught philosophy in Paris and other foreign universities during the middle ages and as late as the 16th century, and in some cases they returned to academic positions in their native land. When it is added that David Hume, the greatest name which Scotland has contributed to philosophy, is not included in the Scottish school, it will be apparent that the designation is not merely a mark of nationality, but expresses definite doctrines, or at least a definite tendency, in philosophy. The school may, for all practical purposes, be said to take its rise in the revulsion headed by Reid (1710-96) against the conclusions of the great sceptic. Antiquarian research has sought to place the foundation of the school earlier, in the teaching, for example, of Gershom Carmichael, who was professor in Glasgow from 1694 to 1729, or George Turnbull, Reid's teacher at Aberdeen, who lectured from 1721 to 1748. Francis Hutcheson, who succeeded Carmichael in Glasgow, and lectured from 1729 to 1746, is more frequently mentioned as the founder of the school, but he has a place rather among the succession of English moral philosophers, while the two other names are too obscure to be of any real account. Reid's answer to Hume appeared in 1764 under the title An Enquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense. Hence the current but somewhat misleading designation of Reid and his followers as the Common Sense (q.v.) school, which seems to imply an appeal from philosophical conclusions to the unreasoned verdict of ordinary consciousness. No doubt a certain warrant for this view of the Scottish philosophers may be found in certain passages of Reid himself, and still more in the diatribes of the lesser men, like Beattie and Oswald, who joined in the ontcry against Hume. But common sense meant to Reid simply the common reason of mankind, as constituted by certain fundamental judgments which are expressed in the very structure of human language, and which are intuitively recognised by the mind as true. Reid's answer to Hume thus consists in traversing his reduction of experience to unconnected ideas. He attempts to show by a deeper analysis of experience that the having of ideas, or rather of knowledge, implies certain primitive or fundamental judgments as irreducible elements. This constitutes his attack upon what he calls 'the ideal theory,' that is to say, upon the presuppositions which he finds common to Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume; and in this, its most philosophical aspect, his theory may be compared with Kant's vindication of the categories as elements necessary to the constitution of the simplest experience. The weakness of Scottish philosophy has lain in its tendency to treat these rational elements as isolated intuitions. The reiterated appeal to 'the testimony of consciousness' is a short and easy method of disposing of an opponent, but it is apt to leave the opponent unconvinced. The natural dualism or natural realism which forms such an outstanding feature of Scottish philosophy asserts, against subjective idealism, that the object or the non-ego is given in knowledge along with the subject. But this important epistemological position degenerates too often into a crude metaphysical dualism of mind and matter as two heterogeneous substances.
Scottish philosophy has not produced anything like a metaphysical system, but its inductive method of procedure has led to a large amount of valuable psychological observation both in the intellectual and moral sphere of mental activity. This is mainly what we find in Dugald Stewart (1753-1828), accompanied by a power of persuasive eloquence which made philosophy a force and a tradition in the national life. Dr Thomas Brown (1778-1820), his successor in the Edinburgh chair of Moral Philosophy, was led by his acute psychological analysis so far in the direction of English associationism that he can hardly be counted a continuator of the school. The most eminent successor of Reid and Stewart was Sir William Hamilton (1788-1856), who endeavoured to combine the traditional Scottish doctrine with the negative results of the Kantian critique of knowledge. Apart from his contributions to psychology and logic, his philosophy is in the main an assertion of the relativity of human knowledge, and the impossibility, therefore, of reaching a coherent metaphysical view of the universe. This position, however, has been disclaimed by M'Cosh and others as savouring too much of agnosticism, and as inconsistent with the original position of Scottish philosophy in regard to our immediate knowledge of mind and matter. Scottish philosophy has had a wide influence not only in Scotland and America, but also in France, through Cousin and his 'spiritualistic' followers.
See M'Cosh. The Scottish Philosophy from Hutcheson to Hamilton (1874); and the Balfour Lectures on Scottish Philosophy, by the present writer (1885).