Thomas Reid's Critique of Dugald Stewart

Thomas Reid's Critique of Dugald Stewart DANIEL N. ROBINSON IN THE FIRSTEDITIONof his Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind (1792), dedicated to Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart combines panegyrical summaries of Reid's major contributions with any number of pointed criticisms of the same.~As Reid's most celebrated student, Stewart enjoyed special standing as an exegete of the Reidian "system," his reservations taken all the more seriously because of the sincere and publicized admiration he had for his teacher. Reid's own final works on matters pertaining to philosophy of mind were published as his Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785) and Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind (1788). ~Nonetheless, Reid was alive and fully accessible during the years when Stewart was composing his Elements and for four years following its publication. We have it on Stewart's own authority that, except for an apparent decline in his once prodigious memory, Reid was keen and intellectually active right to the end of his long life, and that Stewart had occasion to spend more than an ordinary amount of time in his company during this period.3 And, although in various places in the Elements and in the i Referred to here and throughout is the first edition of Stewart's Elements of the Philosophyof the Human Mind (London: Strahan & Cadeli, in the Strand, and Edinburgh: W. Creech, 179a). The copy I have used was obtained from the Rare Books Collection of the Library of Congress, and once belonged to Thomas Jefferson. Inserted in this copy is a letter from Dugald Stewart to Mr. Jefferson that reads: "Dear Sir The Book which accompanies this letter is the only performance which I have yet ventured to publish. I hope you do me the Honour to give it a place in your Library, and that you will accept of it as a mark of my grateful recollection of the attentions which I received from you at Paris. I am Dear Sir your most obedient & faithful Servant Dugald Stewart." It is return-addressed "College of Edinburgh 1 October 1792." ' Thomas Reid's Essayson theIntellectual PowersofMan (1785) and Essayson theActive Powers of the Human Mind (1788) are available in several modern editions, e.g., Baruch Brody, ed. (Cambridge : M.I.T. Press, 1969). 3 Stewart makes this claim in his Account of theLife and Writings of ThomasReid, originally read before the Scottish Royal Society and included in a number of editions of Reid's published works. The Edinburgh edition of 18o3 provides the authoritative text. An illuminating discussion of this [405] 406 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 27:3 JULY 1989 two succeeding volumes of his trilogy,4 Stewart does refer to points of disagreement between himself and some of his "friends," he makes no note of such objections as Reid might have voiced after reading the Elements or early drafts of it. There is no evidence to suggest that Stewart's silence led readers to conclude that Reid either accepted the criticisms or had no reply to them. Nonetheless, Thomas Brown--another of Reid's admiring disciple-critics-would be fortified in his own refutations of Reid by the apparent vulnerability of Reidian notions exposed in the Elements.5 As it happens, the Birkwood Collection, the largest extant collection of Reid's unpublished papers, includes a brief and vigorous critique of Stewart's Elements, and does much to clarify Reid's position on the nature of attention, perception, imagination, and conception. 6 In the process of clarifying these notions, Reid also permits us to arrive at a fuller understanding of his version of Realism, his aversion to theorizing, his attachment to Bacon's philosophy of science. Indirectly, these same few but rich pages alert the reader to the ease with which Reid's subtle arguments could be incompletely grasped even by one who had the benefit of his friendship and tuition. It is useful to begin by noting that the version of the Elements addressed by Reid was almost certainly not the published volume itself but an earlier draft. The evidence for this is circumstantial but compelling. The Reid manuscript ~logeis P. B. Wood, "The...