Common Sense and Improvement: Thomas Reid as Social Theorist (review)

Hume Studies Volume XXIV, Number 2, November 1998, pp. 380-383 PETER J. DIAMOND. Common Sense and Improvement: Thomas Reid as Social Theorist.Bem: Peter Lang, Scottish Studies International, Volume 24,1998. 406 pages. ISBN 38204360 US $56.95 paper. Peter J. Diamond's Common Sense and Improvement offers an interpretation of Reid's philosophy of decision, action and morality that relies not only on Reid's published materials and manuscripts but also takes into account the broader context of his Aberdeen background. Diamond attempts to persuade us that Reid's main purpose in teaching philosophy, if not in writing it, was to fulfill a commitment to human improvement. Following the lead of his "scientistic" regent, George Turnbull, Reid holds that an anatomy of the mind conducted on Newtonian lines confirms the view that "man is very well fitted and qualified for attaining to a very high degree of moral perfection even here," a view in tune with the well-known episcopalian strain in Aberdonian religious belief of the time rather than the Calvinist strain (37-61). Reid comes into his own in virtue of his insight that refuting the theory of ideas is the first crucial step towards prosecuting an adequate empirical and inductive science of man of which an anatomy of the human mind is a principal component. Hume, too, had an agenda based on a science of man and a consequent anatomy of the mind, but one which, by contrast, embraced the theory of ideas. Diamond describes Hume's plainly secular agenda in the following terms: Nevertheless, at a minimum he believed that philosophy and the other liberal arts can produce a disposition of mind "best suited to love and friendship" by refining a man's sensibilities, calming violent passions and affording opportunities for communicating knowledge. As tempers are softened and knowledge is improved, men are instilled with a greater sense of humanity; in the political realm, "Factions are then less inveterate, revolutions less tragical, authority less severe, and sedition less frequent." (220) But Reid—according to Diamond—sees more fundamental and widely based improvement as surely possible. For an adequate mental anatomy reveals the importance of "carrying on the improvement of Mankind in Knowledge and Virtue" in a style best suited to "the capacity of the greater 381 Book Reviews part [of one's audience], which in all congregations [is] the unlearned, & unimproved" (223). What makes this improvement possible, in Reid's view, is an adequate representation of the foundations of morality, which resides not in feelings in reaction to character traits, as in Hume, but which springs from another source (229). As Reid put it, in his Essays on the Active Powers, "if virtue and vice be a matter of choice they must consist in voluntary actions, or infixed purposes of acting according to a certain rule when there is opportunity, and not in qualities of mind which are involuntary." Hence Reid's emphasis on morality as yet another department of judgment based on first principles alongside an emphasis on active power and choice, in opposition to Hume's compatibilism and his sentimentalist version of the moral sense. So far, so good. Diamond seems to have made out his basic contention. There are, however, plenty of other contentions that he wants—or needs—to make which oblige him to confront Reid's published philosophical texts. And in this, and related activities, he does not appear as surefooted as could be desired. Consider the topic of first principles: Diamond repeatedly tells us that it is wrong to assume that Reid was a "providential naturalist." This appears to be because "Reid did not believe that our faculty of judgments is supernaturally guaranteed to be free from error" (20). But surely no one of any substance ever believed that, not even Turnbull. No, providential naturalism extends this guarantee only to successful candidates for first principle status. Diamond perhaps recognizes this point as he makes some remarks that indicate that Reid may be, after all, a providential naturalist. He says, for example, that for Reid the principle of veracity and the principle of credulity are "'simple and original' first principles" and we can give no account of them "but...