Charles Bradford Bow | University of Aberdeen (original) (raw)
Books by Charles Bradford Bow
Oxford University Press, 2022
Dugald Stewart’s Empire of the Mind recasts the cultivation of a democratic intellect in the late... more Dugald Stewart’s Empire of the Mind recasts the cultivation of a democratic intellect in the late Scottish Enlightenment. It comprises an intellectual history of what was at stake in moral education during a transitional period of revolutionary change between 1772 and 1828. Stewart was a child of the Scottish Enlightenment, who inherited the Scottish philosophical tradition of teaching metaphysics as moral philosophy from the tuition of Adam Ferguson and Thomas Reid. But the Scottish Enlightenment intellectual culture of his youth changed in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Stewart sustained the Scottish school of philosophy by transforming the tradition of teaching the science of mind as professor of moral philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. His elementary system of moral education fostered an empire of the mind in the universal pursuit of happiness. The democratization of Stewart’s didactic Enlightenment—the instruction of moral improvement—in a globalizing, interconnected nineteenth-century knowledge economy will be examined in this book.
Oxford University Press, 2018
Common sense philosophy was one of eighteenth-century Scotland's most original intellectual produ... more Common sense philosophy was one of eighteenth-century Scotland's most original intellectual products. It developed as a viable alternative to modern philosophical scepticism, known as the 'Ideal Theory' or 'the way of ideas'. The nine specially written essays in this volume explore the philosophical and historical significance of common sense philosophy in the Scottish Enlightenment. Thomas Reid and David Hume feature prominently as influential authors of competing ideas in the history and philosophy of common sense. The contributors recover anticipations of Reid's version of common sense in seventeenth-century Scottish scholasticism; revaluate Reid's position in the realism versus sentimentalism dichotomy; shed new light on the nature of the 'constitution' in the anatomy of the mind; identify changes in the nature of sense perception throughout Reid's published and unpublished works; examine Reid on the non-theist implications of Hume's philosophy; show how 'polite' literature shaped James Beattie's version of common sense; reveal Hume's response to common sense philosophers; explore English criticisms of the Scottish 'school', and how Dugald Stewart's refashioning of common sense responded to a new age and the British reception of German Idealism. In recovering the ways in which Scottish common sense philosophy developed during the long eighteenth century, this volume takes an important step toward a more complete understanding of 'the Scottish philosophy' and British philosophy more broadly in the age of Enlightenment.
Articles by Charles Bradford Bow
Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques, 2019
This article examines the “progress” of Scottish metaphysics during the long eighteenth century. ... more This article examines the “progress” of Scottish metaphysics during the long eighteenth century. The scientific cultivation of natural knowledge drawn from the examples of Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626), John Locke (1632–1704), and Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) was a defining pursuit in the Scottish Enlightenment. The Aberdonian philosopher George Dalgarno (1616–1687); Thomas Reid (1710–1796), a member of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society known as the Wise Club; and the professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh University Dugald Stewart (1753–1828), contributed to that Scottish pattern of philosophical thinking. The question of the extent to which particular external senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell) might be improved when others were damaged or absent from birth attracted their particular interest. This article shows the different ways in which Scottish anatomists of the mind resolved Molyneux’s Problem of whether or not an agent could accurately perceive an object from a newly restored external sense.
Historical Research, 2018
In different ways the watershed events of the 1707 Anglo-Scottish Treaty of Union, the Jacobite r... more In different ways the watershed events of the 1707 Anglo-Scottish Treaty of Union, the Jacobite rising of 1745, and Britain's agricultural revolution transformed Scottish political economy. These transitional moments were rooted in the British Atlantic empire's contiguous system of mercantile exchange and its commonwealth defence. Scottish nationalism changed under this far-reaching shadow of empire. This article examines the ways in which the jurist and polymath Henry Homes, Lord Kames's political economy of husbandry attempted to reform an Enlightenment version of Scottish national identity as a safeguard against the uncertainties of the British empire. Gentlemen farmers led Lord Kames's agricultural Enlightenment.
History: The Journal of the Historical Association , 2016
The Ottoman provinces of Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis, and the independent sultanate of Morocco, known... more The Ottoman provinces of Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis, and the independent sultanate of Morocco, known as Barbary States, terrorized merchant ships with piracy of cargoes and enslavement of their sailors throughout the early modern period. Barbary privateers, known as corsairs, justified their selective targeting of 'kafir' or 'infidel' merchant ships as waging 'sea jihad'. Agents of empire struggled to reconcile principles of 'just war' in the natural law tradition with the negotiated payment of Barbary tributes for unobstructed passage through the Mediterranean. Resolving this Barbary threat by way of war or tribute involved American interests after 1783. This article examines the ways in which William Eaton, as the United States Consul for Tunis, intervened between Enlightenment and imperial responses to Barbary piracy. Eaton defied Thomas Jefferson's foreign policies by engineering the first American attempt at coup d'´ etat in a foreign government. In doing so, Eaton's strategy of military interventionism offered an alternative to perennial Enlightenment and imperial designs for war and peace in the Islamic world.
Modern Intellectual History, 2016
This article considers how American Enlightenment moralists and Evangelical religious revivalists... more This article considers how American Enlightenment moralists and Evangelical religious revivalists responded to “Jacobinism” at the College of New Jersey, which later became Princeton University, from 1800 through 1817. At this time, disruptive student activities exemplified alleged American “Jacobin” conspiracies against civil society. The American response to “Jacobins” brought out tensions between two different competing intellectual currents at the College of New Jersey: a revival of Christian religious principles led by Princeton trustee Reverend Ashbel Green and, in contrast, the expansion of Samuel Stanhope Smith's system of moral education during his tenure as college president from 1795 through 1812. As a moralist, Smith appealed to Scottish Common Sense philosophy in teaching the instinctive “rules of duty” as a way to correct unrestrained “passions” and moderate “Jacobin” radicalism. In doing so, Smith developed a moral quasi-relativism as an original feature of his moral philosophy and contribution to American Enlightenment intellectual culture. Green and like-minded religious revivalists saw Princeton student uprisings as Smith's failure to properly address irreligion. This essay shows the ways in which “Jacobinism” and then the emerging age of religious revivalism, known as the Second Great Awakening, arrived at the cost of Smith's “Didactic Enlightenment” at Princeton.
The Scottish Historical Review, 2013
During a transitional period of Scottish history, responses to the French Revolution in the 1790s... more During a transitional period of Scottish history, responses to the French Revolution in the 1790s significantly affected Enlightenment intellectual culture across Scotland and, in particular, its existence in Edinburgh. The emergence of powerful counter-Enlightenment interests—championed by Henry Dundas—sought to censure the diffusion of ideas and values associated with France's revolution. In doing so, they targeted all controversial philosophical writings and liberal values for censorship and, in turn, gradually crippled the unique circumstances that had birthed the Scottish Enlightenment. Alarmed by the effect counter-Enlightenment policies had on Scottish intellectual culture, Dugald Stewart professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh University (1785–1810) countered this threat with a system of moral education. His programme created a modern version of Thomas Reid's Common Sense philosophy whilst advancing that the best way to prevent the adoption of supposedly dangerous political and philosophical ideas was examining their errors. The tensions between counter-Enlightenment policies and Stewart's system of moral education erupted in the 1805 election of John Leslie as professor of mathematics at Edinburgh University, but the Leslie affair was not an isolated episode. This controversy embodied tensions over ecclesiastical politics in the Church of Scotland, national secular politics, and Scottish Enlightenment moral philosophy. At the same time, Stewart believed the Leslie affair would determine the fate of not only Edinburgh University but also the Scottish universities’ entwined relationship with Enlightenment. This article examines how Dugald Stewart's prominent role in the 1805 John Leslie affair pitted counter-Enlightenment interests against those of an emerging generation of the Scottish Enlightenment.
History of European Ideas, 2013
The College of New Jersey (which later became Princeton University) provides an example of how Sc... more The College of New Jersey (which later became Princeton University) provides an example of how Scottish philosophy influenced American higher education in an institutional context during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This article compares the administrations of John Witherspoon (served from 1768 to 1794), Samuel Stanhope Smith (served from 1795 to 1812) and James McCosh (served from 1868 to 1888) at Princeton and examines their use of Scottish philosophy in restructuring the curriculum and reforming its institutional purpose. While presiding over Princeton during its most significant transitional moments, these philosophers of the Scottish School of Common Sense instituted different versions of moral education. Meanwhile, Witherspoon's legacy of balancing the interests of Evangelicalism and Scottish philosophy as Princeton's driving purpose influenced the creation and reception of nineteenth-century programmes of moral education. The broader question this article addresses is: how did the interconnecting points among Scottish philosophy, Calvinism and moral education inform notions of didactic Enlightenment at Princeton across a century?
Intellectual History Review, 2013
In examining Dugald Stewart's contribution to ethics, the Scottish philosopher and historian Jame... more In examining Dugald Stewart's contribution to ethics, the Scottish philosopher and historian James Mackintosh wrote that 'few men ever lived, who poured into the breasts of youth a more fervid, and yet reasonable, love of liberty, of truth, and of virtue'. 1 As the professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh University from 1785 to 1810, Stewart flourished as one of the most influential moral educators of his time. Yet he taught at a time when conservative clergymen and politiciansclustered around Henry Dundaswere increasingly hostile toward free intellectual expression and the teaching of metaphysics. As Biancamaria Fontana has shown, this conservative campaign resulted 'in the virtual paralysis of political and intellectual life in Edinburgh'. 2 In response to emerging counter-Enlightenment policies, Stewart developed one of his greatest contributions to Scottish moral philosophy: a modern and practical system of moral education.
History of European Ideas, 2013
The Introduction contextualises the development of Thomas Reid's Common Sense philosophy as the f... more The Introduction contextualises the development of Thomas Reid's Common Sense philosophy as the foundation for what would be known as the Scottish School of Common Sense. This introductory discussion of Reid's philosophical system bridges his thought in the Scottish Enlightenment with the special issue's focus of Scottish philosophy in the nineteenth-century Atlantic World.
Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 2010
In this article, I discuss how Samuel Stanhope Smith advanced Reidian themes in his moral philoso... more In this article, I discuss how Samuel Stanhope Smith advanced Reidian themes in his moral philosophy and examine their reception by Presbyterian revivalists Ashbel Green, Samuel Miller, and Archibald Alexander. Smith, seventh president and moral philosophy professor of the College of New Jersey (1779-1812), has received marginal scholarly attention regarding his moral philosophy and rational theology, in comparison to his predecessor John Witherspoon. As an early American philosopher who drew on the ideals of the Scottish Enlightenment including Common Sense philosophy, Smith faced heightened scrutiny from American revivalists regarding the danger his epistemology presented to the institution of religion. The Scottish School of Common Sense was widely praised and applied in nineteenth-century American moral philosophy, but before the more general American acceptance of Common Sense, Smith already appealed to Reidian themes in his methodology and treatment of external sensations, internal sensations, intellectual powers, and active powers of the human mind. In this paper, I argue that Smith's use of Reidian themes for grooming his student's morality conflicted with the educational expectations from revivalists on Princeton's board of trustees who demanded more attention on orthodox theology. I identify Smith's notions of causation, liberty, and the moral faculty as primary reasons for this tension over Princeton's educational purpose during the first decade of the nineteenth century.
Book Chapters by Charles Bradford Bow
This volume of essays considers the philosophical and historical significance of common sense phi... more This volume of essays considers the philosophical and historical significance of common sense philosophy in the Scottish Enlightenment. As one of eighteenthcentury Scotland's most original intellectual products, common sense philosophy dominated the teaching of moral philosophy and the "science of the mind" at Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen universities during the last quarter of the century, and also informed many Presbyterian clergymen's treatment of human nature from the pulpit.¹ Reflecting on the importance of this philosophical system, which was widely known as "the Scottish philosophy" by the nineteenth century, the Presbyterian divine and philosopher James McCosh wrote:
Book Reviews by Charles Bradford Bow
Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 2016
Papers by Charles Bradford Bow
Oxford Scholarship Online
This chapter examines Dugald Stewart’s (1751–1828) efforts to reform, defend, and sustain the leg... more This chapter examines Dugald Stewart’s (1751–1828) efforts to reform, defend, and sustain the legacy of Scottish common sense philosophy throughout his professional life. The first section discusses Stewart’s enrichment of Reid’s philosophy by developing a modern program of moral education that encouraged scientific innovation during an age of revolutionary change. This campaign to preserve Scottish Enlightenment intellectual and religious culture from modern philosophical skepticism encountered competition at the end of Stewart’s career. Section two turns to Stewart on the endurance of Scottish common sense philosophy in response to the early nineteenth-century Scottish reception of German Idealism and the rise of Scottish Romanticism at Edinburgh University. Considered by many to be the “Scotian Plato,” Scottish common sense philosophy flourished under the care of Dugald Stewart during two of the most transitional moments in the final decades of the Scottish Enlightenment before i...
History, 2016
The Ottoman provinces of Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis, and the independent sultanate of Morocco, known... more The Ottoman provinces of Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis, and the independent sultanate of Morocco, known as Barbary States, terrorized merchant ships with piracy of cargoes and enslavement of their sailors throughout the early modern period. Barbary privateers, known as corsairs, justified their selective targeting of 'kafir' or 'infidel' merchant ships as waging 'sea jihad'. Agents of empire struggled to reconcile principles of 'just war' in the natural law tradition with the negotiated payment of Barbary tributes for unobstructed passage through the Mediterranean. Resolving this Barbary threat by way of war or tribute involved American interests after 1783. This article examines the ways in which William Eaton, as the United States Consul for Tunis, intervened between Enlightenment and imperial responses to Barbary piracy. Eaton defied Thomas Jefferson's foreign policies by engineering the first American attempt at coup d'état in a foreign government. In doing so, Eaton's strategy of military interventionism offered an alternative to perennial Enlightenment and imperial designs for war and peace in the Islamic world. T he Ottoman provinces of Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis, and the independent sultanate of Morocco, notoriously referred to as Barbary States, terrorized merchant ships by pirating their cargoes and enslaving their sailors throughout the early modern period. 1 Barbary privateers, known as corsairs, justified their selective targeting of merchant ships as waging 'sea jihad '. 2 The French philosopher Voltaire, like other Enlighteners, staunchly criticized 'the continual depredations of the Barbary corsairs'. Voltaire wrote: Our friends and our relatives, men and women, are made slaves; and we must humbly supplicate the barbarians to deign to receive our money for restoring to us their captives. .. Some Christian states have had the shameful prudence to treat with them, and send them arms wherewith
Oxford University Press, 2022
Dugald Stewart’s Empire of the Mind recasts the cultivation of a democratic intellect in the late... more Dugald Stewart’s Empire of the Mind recasts the cultivation of a democratic intellect in the late Scottish Enlightenment. It comprises an intellectual history of what was at stake in moral education during a transitional period of revolutionary change between 1772 and 1828. Stewart was a child of the Scottish Enlightenment, who inherited the Scottish philosophical tradition of teaching metaphysics as moral philosophy from the tuition of Adam Ferguson and Thomas Reid. But the Scottish Enlightenment intellectual culture of his youth changed in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Stewart sustained the Scottish school of philosophy by transforming the tradition of teaching the science of mind as professor of moral philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. His elementary system of moral education fostered an empire of the mind in the universal pursuit of happiness. The democratization of Stewart’s didactic Enlightenment—the instruction of moral improvement—in a globalizing, interconnected nineteenth-century knowledge economy will be examined in this book.
Oxford University Press, 2018
Common sense philosophy was one of eighteenth-century Scotland's most original intellectual produ... more Common sense philosophy was one of eighteenth-century Scotland's most original intellectual products. It developed as a viable alternative to modern philosophical scepticism, known as the 'Ideal Theory' or 'the way of ideas'. The nine specially written essays in this volume explore the philosophical and historical significance of common sense philosophy in the Scottish Enlightenment. Thomas Reid and David Hume feature prominently as influential authors of competing ideas in the history and philosophy of common sense. The contributors recover anticipations of Reid's version of common sense in seventeenth-century Scottish scholasticism; revaluate Reid's position in the realism versus sentimentalism dichotomy; shed new light on the nature of the 'constitution' in the anatomy of the mind; identify changes in the nature of sense perception throughout Reid's published and unpublished works; examine Reid on the non-theist implications of Hume's philosophy; show how 'polite' literature shaped James Beattie's version of common sense; reveal Hume's response to common sense philosophers; explore English criticisms of the Scottish 'school', and how Dugald Stewart's refashioning of common sense responded to a new age and the British reception of German Idealism. In recovering the ways in which Scottish common sense philosophy developed during the long eighteenth century, this volume takes an important step toward a more complete understanding of 'the Scottish philosophy' and British philosophy more broadly in the age of Enlightenment.
Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques, 2019
This article examines the “progress” of Scottish metaphysics during the long eighteenth century. ... more This article examines the “progress” of Scottish metaphysics during the long eighteenth century. The scientific cultivation of natural knowledge drawn from the examples of Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626), John Locke (1632–1704), and Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) was a defining pursuit in the Scottish Enlightenment. The Aberdonian philosopher George Dalgarno (1616–1687); Thomas Reid (1710–1796), a member of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society known as the Wise Club; and the professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh University Dugald Stewart (1753–1828), contributed to that Scottish pattern of philosophical thinking. The question of the extent to which particular external senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell) might be improved when others were damaged or absent from birth attracted their particular interest. This article shows the different ways in which Scottish anatomists of the mind resolved Molyneux’s Problem of whether or not an agent could accurately perceive an object from a newly restored external sense.
Historical Research, 2018
In different ways the watershed events of the 1707 Anglo-Scottish Treaty of Union, the Jacobite r... more In different ways the watershed events of the 1707 Anglo-Scottish Treaty of Union, the Jacobite rising of 1745, and Britain's agricultural revolution transformed Scottish political economy. These transitional moments were rooted in the British Atlantic empire's contiguous system of mercantile exchange and its commonwealth defence. Scottish nationalism changed under this far-reaching shadow of empire. This article examines the ways in which the jurist and polymath Henry Homes, Lord Kames's political economy of husbandry attempted to reform an Enlightenment version of Scottish national identity as a safeguard against the uncertainties of the British empire. Gentlemen farmers led Lord Kames's agricultural Enlightenment.
History: The Journal of the Historical Association , 2016
The Ottoman provinces of Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis, and the independent sultanate of Morocco, known... more The Ottoman provinces of Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis, and the independent sultanate of Morocco, known as Barbary States, terrorized merchant ships with piracy of cargoes and enslavement of their sailors throughout the early modern period. Barbary privateers, known as corsairs, justified their selective targeting of 'kafir' or 'infidel' merchant ships as waging 'sea jihad'. Agents of empire struggled to reconcile principles of 'just war' in the natural law tradition with the negotiated payment of Barbary tributes for unobstructed passage through the Mediterranean. Resolving this Barbary threat by way of war or tribute involved American interests after 1783. This article examines the ways in which William Eaton, as the United States Consul for Tunis, intervened between Enlightenment and imperial responses to Barbary piracy. Eaton defied Thomas Jefferson's foreign policies by engineering the first American attempt at coup d'´ etat in a foreign government. In doing so, Eaton's strategy of military interventionism offered an alternative to perennial Enlightenment and imperial designs for war and peace in the Islamic world.
Modern Intellectual History, 2016
This article considers how American Enlightenment moralists and Evangelical religious revivalists... more This article considers how American Enlightenment moralists and Evangelical religious revivalists responded to “Jacobinism” at the College of New Jersey, which later became Princeton University, from 1800 through 1817. At this time, disruptive student activities exemplified alleged American “Jacobin” conspiracies against civil society. The American response to “Jacobins” brought out tensions between two different competing intellectual currents at the College of New Jersey: a revival of Christian religious principles led by Princeton trustee Reverend Ashbel Green and, in contrast, the expansion of Samuel Stanhope Smith's system of moral education during his tenure as college president from 1795 through 1812. As a moralist, Smith appealed to Scottish Common Sense philosophy in teaching the instinctive “rules of duty” as a way to correct unrestrained “passions” and moderate “Jacobin” radicalism. In doing so, Smith developed a moral quasi-relativism as an original feature of his moral philosophy and contribution to American Enlightenment intellectual culture. Green and like-minded religious revivalists saw Princeton student uprisings as Smith's failure to properly address irreligion. This essay shows the ways in which “Jacobinism” and then the emerging age of religious revivalism, known as the Second Great Awakening, arrived at the cost of Smith's “Didactic Enlightenment” at Princeton.
The Scottish Historical Review, 2013
During a transitional period of Scottish history, responses to the French Revolution in the 1790s... more During a transitional period of Scottish history, responses to the French Revolution in the 1790s significantly affected Enlightenment intellectual culture across Scotland and, in particular, its existence in Edinburgh. The emergence of powerful counter-Enlightenment interests—championed by Henry Dundas—sought to censure the diffusion of ideas and values associated with France's revolution. In doing so, they targeted all controversial philosophical writings and liberal values for censorship and, in turn, gradually crippled the unique circumstances that had birthed the Scottish Enlightenment. Alarmed by the effect counter-Enlightenment policies had on Scottish intellectual culture, Dugald Stewart professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh University (1785–1810) countered this threat with a system of moral education. His programme created a modern version of Thomas Reid's Common Sense philosophy whilst advancing that the best way to prevent the adoption of supposedly dangerous political and philosophical ideas was examining their errors. The tensions between counter-Enlightenment policies and Stewart's system of moral education erupted in the 1805 election of John Leslie as professor of mathematics at Edinburgh University, but the Leslie affair was not an isolated episode. This controversy embodied tensions over ecclesiastical politics in the Church of Scotland, national secular politics, and Scottish Enlightenment moral philosophy. At the same time, Stewart believed the Leslie affair would determine the fate of not only Edinburgh University but also the Scottish universities’ entwined relationship with Enlightenment. This article examines how Dugald Stewart's prominent role in the 1805 John Leslie affair pitted counter-Enlightenment interests against those of an emerging generation of the Scottish Enlightenment.
History of European Ideas, 2013
The College of New Jersey (which later became Princeton University) provides an example of how Sc... more The College of New Jersey (which later became Princeton University) provides an example of how Scottish philosophy influenced American higher education in an institutional context during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This article compares the administrations of John Witherspoon (served from 1768 to 1794), Samuel Stanhope Smith (served from 1795 to 1812) and James McCosh (served from 1868 to 1888) at Princeton and examines their use of Scottish philosophy in restructuring the curriculum and reforming its institutional purpose. While presiding over Princeton during its most significant transitional moments, these philosophers of the Scottish School of Common Sense instituted different versions of moral education. Meanwhile, Witherspoon's legacy of balancing the interests of Evangelicalism and Scottish philosophy as Princeton's driving purpose influenced the creation and reception of nineteenth-century programmes of moral education. The broader question this article addresses is: how did the interconnecting points among Scottish philosophy, Calvinism and moral education inform notions of didactic Enlightenment at Princeton across a century?
Intellectual History Review, 2013
In examining Dugald Stewart's contribution to ethics, the Scottish philosopher and historian Jame... more In examining Dugald Stewart's contribution to ethics, the Scottish philosopher and historian James Mackintosh wrote that 'few men ever lived, who poured into the breasts of youth a more fervid, and yet reasonable, love of liberty, of truth, and of virtue'. 1 As the professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh University from 1785 to 1810, Stewart flourished as one of the most influential moral educators of his time. Yet he taught at a time when conservative clergymen and politiciansclustered around Henry Dundaswere increasingly hostile toward free intellectual expression and the teaching of metaphysics. As Biancamaria Fontana has shown, this conservative campaign resulted 'in the virtual paralysis of political and intellectual life in Edinburgh'. 2 In response to emerging counter-Enlightenment policies, Stewart developed one of his greatest contributions to Scottish moral philosophy: a modern and practical system of moral education.
History of European Ideas, 2013
The Introduction contextualises the development of Thomas Reid's Common Sense philosophy as the f... more The Introduction contextualises the development of Thomas Reid's Common Sense philosophy as the foundation for what would be known as the Scottish School of Common Sense. This introductory discussion of Reid's philosophical system bridges his thought in the Scottish Enlightenment with the special issue's focus of Scottish philosophy in the nineteenth-century Atlantic World.
Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 2010
In this article, I discuss how Samuel Stanhope Smith advanced Reidian themes in his moral philoso... more In this article, I discuss how Samuel Stanhope Smith advanced Reidian themes in his moral philosophy and examine their reception by Presbyterian revivalists Ashbel Green, Samuel Miller, and Archibald Alexander. Smith, seventh president and moral philosophy professor of the College of New Jersey (1779-1812), has received marginal scholarly attention regarding his moral philosophy and rational theology, in comparison to his predecessor John Witherspoon. As an early American philosopher who drew on the ideals of the Scottish Enlightenment including Common Sense philosophy, Smith faced heightened scrutiny from American revivalists regarding the danger his epistemology presented to the institution of religion. The Scottish School of Common Sense was widely praised and applied in nineteenth-century American moral philosophy, but before the more general American acceptance of Common Sense, Smith already appealed to Reidian themes in his methodology and treatment of external sensations, internal sensations, intellectual powers, and active powers of the human mind. In this paper, I argue that Smith's use of Reidian themes for grooming his student's morality conflicted with the educational expectations from revivalists on Princeton's board of trustees who demanded more attention on orthodox theology. I identify Smith's notions of causation, liberty, and the moral faculty as primary reasons for this tension over Princeton's educational purpose during the first decade of the nineteenth century.
This volume of essays considers the philosophical and historical significance of common sense phi... more This volume of essays considers the philosophical and historical significance of common sense philosophy in the Scottish Enlightenment. As one of eighteenthcentury Scotland's most original intellectual products, common sense philosophy dominated the teaching of moral philosophy and the "science of the mind" at Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen universities during the last quarter of the century, and also informed many Presbyterian clergymen's treatment of human nature from the pulpit.¹ Reflecting on the importance of this philosophical system, which was widely known as "the Scottish philosophy" by the nineteenth century, the Presbyterian divine and philosopher James McCosh wrote:
Oxford Scholarship Online
This chapter examines Dugald Stewart’s (1751–1828) efforts to reform, defend, and sustain the leg... more This chapter examines Dugald Stewart’s (1751–1828) efforts to reform, defend, and sustain the legacy of Scottish common sense philosophy throughout his professional life. The first section discusses Stewart’s enrichment of Reid’s philosophy by developing a modern program of moral education that encouraged scientific innovation during an age of revolutionary change. This campaign to preserve Scottish Enlightenment intellectual and religious culture from modern philosophical skepticism encountered competition at the end of Stewart’s career. Section two turns to Stewart on the endurance of Scottish common sense philosophy in response to the early nineteenth-century Scottish reception of German Idealism and the rise of Scottish Romanticism at Edinburgh University. Considered by many to be the “Scotian Plato,” Scottish common sense philosophy flourished under the care of Dugald Stewart during two of the most transitional moments in the final decades of the Scottish Enlightenment before i...
History, 2016
The Ottoman provinces of Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis, and the independent sultanate of Morocco, known... more The Ottoman provinces of Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis, and the independent sultanate of Morocco, known as Barbary States, terrorized merchant ships with piracy of cargoes and enslavement of their sailors throughout the early modern period. Barbary privateers, known as corsairs, justified their selective targeting of 'kafir' or 'infidel' merchant ships as waging 'sea jihad'. Agents of empire struggled to reconcile principles of 'just war' in the natural law tradition with the negotiated payment of Barbary tributes for unobstructed passage through the Mediterranean. Resolving this Barbary threat by way of war or tribute involved American interests after 1783. This article examines the ways in which William Eaton, as the United States Consul for Tunis, intervened between Enlightenment and imperial responses to Barbary piracy. Eaton defied Thomas Jefferson's foreign policies by engineering the first American attempt at coup d'état in a foreign government. In doing so, Eaton's strategy of military interventionism offered an alternative to perennial Enlightenment and imperial designs for war and peace in the Islamic world. T he Ottoman provinces of Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis, and the independent sultanate of Morocco, notoriously referred to as Barbary States, terrorized merchant ships by pirating their cargoes and enslaving their sailors throughout the early modern period. 1 Barbary privateers, known as corsairs, justified their selective targeting of merchant ships as waging 'sea jihad '. 2 The French philosopher Voltaire, like other Enlighteners, staunchly criticized 'the continual depredations of the Barbary corsairs'. Voltaire wrote: Our friends and our relatives, men and women, are made slaves; and we must humbly supplicate the barbarians to deign to receive our money for restoring to us their captives. .. Some Christian states have had the shameful prudence to treat with them, and send them arms wherewith