Vol. 10 (2025): Philosophy of the Sensus Communis. The Public, the Individual, the Cultural Practices
Dossier: Philosophy of the Sensus Communis. The Public, the Individual, the Cultural Practices

Scottish Common Sense Philosophy: Twelve Theses

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  • Douglas McDermid
Douglas McDermid
Trent University, Canada
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/ds-15898

Published 2025-12-31

Keywords

  • Scottish Enlightenment,
  • common sense,
  • scepticism,
  • Thomas Reid,
  • Dugald Stewart

How to Cite

McDermid, D. (2025). Scottish Common Sense Philosophy: Twelve Theses. Diciottesimo Secolo, 10, 63–73. https://doi.org/10.36253/ds-15898

Copyright (c) 2025 Douglas McDermid

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

What was Scottish common sense philosophy? Understood in purely historical terms, this question is easily answered: it was a school of thought which came into being during the middle third of the 18th century, and which formed a vital part of that many-sided whole now known as the Scottish Enlightenment. But what was its philosophical content? Answering this question is the raison d’être of the present essay. In what follows, I shall identify twelve theses which are central to the distinctive brand of common-sensism articulated by Reid and Stewart. My modus operandi is simple: after stating each thesis, I shall summarize the principal arguments for it and explain its philosophical significance.

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