WAB
Veteran Member
from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Reid
I used to trot out Thomas Reid in the old threads, not because I thought his thought was as sophisticated as someone like...oh... Decartes, Hegel, Kant, or my boy Spinoza, but because of his very humorous and gentle way of criticizing Hume and Berkeley. I read him on a PDF file, one of those older texts where some of the 's's look exactly like 'f''s— and whose bloody idea that was, well, I'd like to wring his bloody neck— and I couldn't believe how funny it was. Reid had a very fine, not terribly complex prose style, but he was FUNNY!
And now, I see that Kant attacked him without even reading him. Rats! I wish I had known that back then.
I realize that anything that comes within a thousand miles of the words "common sense", in the Ivory Tower, is going to immediately make it a H U G E target for scorn. But what bugs me is, Reid didn't use the term in quite the dunderheaded & simplistic way that most people imagine. In fact, Reid was quite brilliant, if conservative to a fault and totally at ease with tradition, the church, etc. Nonetheless, he was FUNNY!
Even if you didn't agree with his 'take-downs' of Hume and Berkeley, it is tremendously entertaining to hear him go about expressing his thought, which is not nearly as simple as the term "common sense" would imply.
**
Anyway, what scholar goes about attacking a book or a theory S/he hasn't read? Ayn Rand did that, and she was duly slammed, in C20. How come Kant got away with it so easily? It's one thing for the peanut gallery to pshaw, leap to conclusions, mock, and hand-wave; but an academic?
Or perhaps he was and I am not aware of it. ?
Bear in mind, this is NOT about whether Reid's criticism was apt, which is why I didn't post this in metaphysics or epistemology. To me it's about principles. Peanut gallery, armchair philosophers, fine; but major high-brows, I would imagine one would read a work, or works, one was planning to attack?
ETA: If anyone should be curious, whatever you do, DON'T read any of those butchered and bowlderized texts put out by someone (whose name escapes me) who thought S/he'd just go prancing through Reid's perfectly lucid prose and "modernize" it. I took a heartfelt look at it and I remember being incensed by what a hack job it was.
It has been claimed that his reputation waned after attacks on the Scottish School of Common Sense by Immanuel Kant (although Kant, only 14 years Reid's junior, also bestowed much praise on Scottish philosophy - Kant attacked the work of Reid, but admitted he had never actually read the works of Thomas Reid)
I used to trot out Thomas Reid in the old threads, not because I thought his thought was as sophisticated as someone like...oh... Decartes, Hegel, Kant, or my boy Spinoza, but because of his very humorous and gentle way of criticizing Hume and Berkeley. I read him on a PDF file, one of those older texts where some of the 's's look exactly like 'f''s— and whose bloody idea that was, well, I'd like to wring his bloody neck— and I couldn't believe how funny it was. Reid had a very fine, not terribly complex prose style, but he was FUNNY!
And now, I see that Kant attacked him without even reading him. Rats! I wish I had known that back then.
I realize that anything that comes within a thousand miles of the words "common sense", in the Ivory Tower, is going to immediately make it a H U G E target for scorn. But what bugs me is, Reid didn't use the term in quite the dunderheaded & simplistic way that most people imagine. In fact, Reid was quite brilliant, if conservative to a fault and totally at ease with tradition, the church, etc. Nonetheless, he was FUNNY!
Even if you didn't agree with his 'take-downs' of Hume and Berkeley, it is tremendously entertaining to hear him go about expressing his thought, which is not nearly as simple as the term "common sense" would imply.
**
Anyway, what scholar goes about attacking a book or a theory S/he hasn't read? Ayn Rand did that, and she was duly slammed, in C20. How come Kant got away with it so easily? It's one thing for the peanut gallery to pshaw, leap to conclusions, mock, and hand-wave; but an academic?
Or perhaps he was and I am not aware of it. ?
Bear in mind, this is NOT about whether Reid's criticism was apt, which is why I didn't post this in metaphysics or epistemology. To me it's about principles. Peanut gallery, armchair philosophers, fine; but major high-brows, I would imagine one would read a work, or works, one was planning to attack?
ETA: If anyone should be curious, whatever you do, DON'T read any of those butchered and bowlderized texts put out by someone (whose name escapes me) who thought S/he'd just go prancing through Reid's perfectly lucid prose and "modernize" it. I took a heartfelt look at it and I remember being incensed by what a hack job it was.
Last edited: