Scottish Common Sense Philosophy and hermeneutics

[rmwilliamsjr]

hermeneutical ?-literal, plain

I'm only a few months into my hermeneutical studies. At this point i understand that the preference for the literal over the allegorical is attributed to Luther.

I understand that the literal, plain, common sense, man in the pew hermeneutic is basically the response of the 19thC church to the acceptance of Scottish Common Sense philosophy. Since the hermeneutic plays such an important part in the YECist system i am curious to follow up on this just a little more.

So has anyone travelled this path? references would be greatly appreciated since all my reading on it has been second hand.

while i am at it, is anyone interested in sharing xeroxes of 18th, 19th and early 20thC theology, out of copyright and hard to find? which is exactly what these references will be......

Now i have read lots of both Hodge and Warfield.
i'm looking for John Vander Stelt, Philosophy and Scripture: A Study in Old Princeton and Westminster Theology, but it is impossible to find a copy apparently. looking for personal recommendations, trying to save a lot of money and time by looking at just a few of the crucial texts in the discussion, but i don't know which ones are best....

thanks.

[learning]

I am of a bit of Scottish heritage, and was very interested in reading a journal of John Wesley about his trips up in Scotland, very interesting, if you'ld like I'll mention the exact journal, but in it he mentions something I think might help you understand the Scottish.
John Wesley said that though the Scottish had a greater appreciation and respect for things religious
"You can't tell the Scottish anything, because they know everything"

I mentioned this to a former professor who was from Scotland, and he smiled and said 'But it's true, though' :)

[One Bad Pig]

Have you read Matthew Henry's commentary, or is that older than what you want?

[rmwilliamsjr]

from: http://mb-soft.com/believe/txc/scotreal.htm

Scottish Realism was a popular movement in eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain, which attempted to overcome the epistemological, metaphysical, and moral skepticism of the Enlightenment philosophy of David Hume (1711 - 76) with a philosophy of common sense and natural realism. The founder of Scottish Realism was a moderate (as opposed to evangelical) Presbyterian clergyman, Thomas Reid (1710 - 96), born in Strachan, Kincardineshire, and educated at Marischal College. He became professor at King's College, Aberdeen, in 1751. Reid was disturbed by studying Hume's Treatise of Human Nature (1739), which he thought denied the objective reality of external objects, the principle of causation, and the unity of the mind. In answer, Reid wrote An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense in 1764, and the same year was appointed professor in Glasgow. In 1785, he wrote Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, and in 1788, Essays on the Active Powers of Man.

Reid traced Hume's skepticim to what he considered a common fallacy in the great philosophers Descartes, Locke, and Berkeley: representational idealism, which postulates that "the mind knows not things immediately, but only by the intervention of the ideas it has of them" (Essay on Intellectual Powers, IV,4,3). That is, ideas are an intermediary between the mind and things, which prevents direct knowledge of the actual things, so that we do not immediately know the external reality in itself, but only the idea (or representation or impression) that it causes in us.

On the contrary, the human mind, argued Reid, perceives external objects directly through intuitive knowledge. We know reality, not by a "conjunction" of separated sense experiences, but by immediate "judgements of nature," which we make because our mind is constituted by God to know reality directly. These "original and natural judgements" (by which we know real objects) "make up what is called the common sense of mankind; and what is manifestly contrary to any of those first principles is what we call absurd" (Inquiry, VII, 4). These first principles, of course, cannot and need not be proved: they are "self - evident" to the common experience of mankind. Among these principles are the existence of external objects, cause and effect, and the obligations of morality. Any philosophy that denies these commonly accepted principles on which all men must base their lives is of necessity defective.

Dugald Stewart (1753 - 1828), professor at Edinburgh and a distinguished successor of Reid, laid more stress on observation and inductive reasoning, and subscribed to an empiricist approach to psychology. Stewart's successor, Thomas Brown, moved even further in an empiricist direction, and is considered a bridge between Scottish Realism and the empiricism of J S Mill. Sir William Hamilton (1791 - 1856), Edinburgh professor, attempted the impossible task of uniting the epistemologies of Reid and Kant (who tried to meet the skepticism of Hume in an entirely different way, by asserting that unity and structure are imposed upon the phenomena of sensation by forms in the mind). J S Mill's Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy administered an empiricist death blow to Scottish Realism. Empiricism in Britain and idealism in Germany drove realism from the field.

The Scottish philosophy, however, had wide and profound effects. Royer - Collard, Cousin, and Jouffroy gave it wide circulation in early nineteenth century France. Sydney Ahlstrom has shown that it exercised supreme influence over American theological thought in the nineteenth century. While it has long been recognized that the conservative Calvinist theologians of Princeton adopted Scottish Realist epistemology wholesale. Ahlstrom demonstrates a less noted fact: moderate Calvinists of Andover, liberals of Yale, and Unitarians of Harvard were also deeply indebted to the same commonsense realism. Thus it provided the epistemological structure utilized by both "liberals" and "conservatives" in nineteenth century America.
but this doesn't tell me what book to read to get a handle on the philosophy, that is from someone who knows the field.

so, can anyone recommend a book to start with?
tia.

[learning]

Thank you for posting that, that is wonderful news to me.

Here are a few links that may be of help, I didn't see 'Thomas Reid' on them, but they are about the Reformation and one is called 'Scottish Ministers' so someone there might be able to point you in the right direction. I'ld advise going to the University web site that these persons attended and ask if they have any online works of these persons available, or any texts of interest to the subject available in the U.S.

www.spurgeon.org/~phil/rformers.htm


www.newble.co.uk/hall/index.html

here's another link that shows how Thomas Reid had influence on the American thought when it came to the idea of how the government was set up. Interesting.

www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/107/11.0.html

Eureka! I think I found what you might want, the Papers of Thomas Reid

www.abdn.ac.uk/diss/heritage/collects/reid/reid2

[learning]

Here's another link I found that may be of interest

www.fact-index.com/c/co/common_sense.html

[rmwilliamsjr]

i found:
The Cambridge companion to Thomas Reid


Chronology of Events Relating to Thomas Reid and His Context -- Introduction / Terence Cuneo and Rene van Woudenberg -- 1. Reid in Context / Alexander Broadie -- 2. Thomas Reid and the Culture of Science / Paul Wood -- 3. Reid on Common Sense / Nicholas Wolterstorff -- 4. Reid's Theory of Perception / James van Cleve -- 5. Reid's Reply to the Skeptic / John Greco -- 6. Nativism and the Nature of Thought in Reid's Account of Our Knowledge of the External World / Lorne Falkenstein -- 7. Reid and the Social Operations of Mind / C. A. J. Coady -- 8. Reid on Memory and the Identity of Persons / Rene van Woundenberg -- 9. Thomas Reid's Theory of Freedom and Responsibility / William L. Rowe -- 10. Reid's Moral Philosophy / Terence Cuneo -- 11. Reid's Philosophy of Art / Peter Kivy -- 12. Reid's Philosophy of Religion / Dale Tuggy -- 13. Reid's Influence in Britain, Germany, France, and America / Benjamin W. Redekop
i'll start the reading here.
thanks for the help.
if anyone finds anything else on the topic, please post.

[learning]

Is this online, do you have a link?

[rmwilliamsjr]

Is this online, do you have a link? university library.
on dead trees.

[learning]

'on dead trees' are you sure? some paper is made out of recycled jeans, rags
I've heard. :)

[Da Lone-Warrior]

Scottish Realism came to the US in part through the writings of Adam Smith in "Wealth of Nations". A lot of what he does is compile earlier writings/insights from the french physiocrats, the mercantilists, with Scottish insights.

I think the writings of his teacher Francis Hutcheson are also worthy of note.
http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/profiles/hutches.htm

What is noticeable about Scottish Realism is that it permits changes over time in the practical content of "common sense", but does so with continuity with past values.

dlw