Scottish School

SCOTTISH SCHOOL. - Also called the school of "common sense," whose founder and leader is T. Reid (v.) and, after him, his best disciple D. Stewart (v.). The influence of the Scottish school constitutes not only a chapter in English philosophy between the last two decades of the 18th century and the first decades of the 19th, but also, in the same period, in French and Italian philosophy. It is the affirmation of so-called "psychologism" (v.) in philosophy, whose object is "consciousness" and whose method is therefore the psychological one.

The works of Reid and Stewart, translated into French and some into Italian, had a wide diffusion and effectively entered into the critique of empiricism (v.) and of rationalism (v.) in relation to the "new philosophy" of Kant (v.). But while in France and in England itself an attempt was made to bring together and reconcile Reid and Kant, in Italy the Scottish philosophy was used to criticize Kant himself and to point to Reid as the true critic of Hume's scepticism (v.). Referring for the doctrine of the Scottish school to the entries on its major representatives (Reid, Stewart), its most salient historical developments are indicated here.

I. ENGLAND

The Reidian philosophy, besides being continued by Stewart, was carried on with originality by W. Hamilton (v.), to whom we owe the standard edition of Reid's works (1846-63), reprinted several times and containing some studies by Hamilton himself; these represent a phase of his thought which, influenced by Kant, pushed the philosophy of common sense (v.) toward agnosticism (v.) not only metaphysical but also gnoseological; one step further, toward skepticism, is taken by Mansel (v.), a pupil of Hamilton. Thus the Scottish school exhausts its cycle: at first, with Reid, it believes it can overcome the skeptical consequences of empiricism through the immediate "belief" (or the subjective and instinctive "suggestion") in the existence of an internal and external reality, and subsequently, with its not immediate continuators, it uses the same principle to consolidate the constitutional insufficiency of human knowledge to resolve the problem of the absolute or of the unconditioned.

II. FRANCE

The works of Reid (and also those of Stewart) were translated into French by M. T. Jouffroy (Oeuvres complètes de T. Reid, 4 vols., Paris 1836) with a critical "Introduction" by Jouffroy himself and a "life" of Reid by Stewart. This translation increased the diffusion and influence of the philosophy of the Scottish school in France and in Italy. Above all psychology came to be studied, followed and adopted as a critique of that of Condillac (v.) and his followers, as well as of the materialism of Cabanis (v.). The concepts of "effort", of the "activity" of consciousness and of "immediate apperception", typical of the psychology of Maine de Biran (v.), are influenced by the doctrines of the Scottish school. It was Royer-Collard who officially introduced the philosophy of common sense at the Sorbonne and developed it in the psychological sense (gnoseology and also metaphysics are identified with psychology or reduced to it). "Our pleasures and our pains, our hopes and fears, all our sensations, our acts, our thoughts flow before consciousness, like the waters of a river beneath the eye of a spectator motionless on the bank" (Royer-Collard, Leçons, in Oeuvres de T. Reid, cit., IV, p. 433). The mind is a reality to be observed and the observer (the philosopher) must be an indifferent spectator so as not to disturb the analysis with his interventions. Spiritual unity is only a presupposition of the analysis, which limits itself to "describing" psychic facts. The eclecticism of Cousin (v.) too was influenced by the Scottish school, whose doctrines are found there combined with those of Kant and of German idealism. Cousin likewise raises psychology to a method and a system and considers introspection as the key to resolving all philosophical problems. Among the other French thinkers influenced by the Scottish school, mention should be made of Degerando (very well known in Italy especially through Galluppi [v.]), Damiron, Laromiguière, etc.

III. ITALY

The influence of the Scots was very notable, especially on the thinkers of the Kingdom of Naples, but the interest they aroused in Rosmini (v.), Gioberti (v.), etc., is not negligible either. Among the Reidians of Naples, mention should be made of Marquis Luigi Dragonetti, whose correspondence (Spigolature nel carteggio letterario e politico del march. L. D., Florence 1886) is a fundamental document for the history of the Scottish school in Italy, and of Antonio Papadopoli, a correspondent of Dragonetti, as well as Giacinto De Pamphilis, author of a Genografia dello Scibile considerato nella sua unità di utile e di fine etc. (Naples 1829; 2nd ed. ibid. 1867), praised by Tommaseo (Antologia, Feb. 1931), who was himself an admirer of Reid, and naturally of Dragonetti. All were convinced (including Galluppi and, to some extent, Rosmini and Gioberti) that Scottish philosophy, more than Kant's criticism, was capable of combating and defeating subjectivism, sensism and scepticism. This conviction distinguishes Italian Reidism from English and French Reidism, which allows itself to be influenced by Kant rather than combating him with the help of the Scots. But the most Reidian is Galluppi (v.), whom Gioberti (Primato, III, Brussels 1842-43, p. 47) calls "the Reid of Italy". Besides his well-known writings, two of Galluppi's articles should be cited as documents of interest for the Scots in Italy, published in Il progresso (1 [1832], pp. 221-31; 35, 4 of the new series, [1945], pp. 5-13): Sul metodo di studiare la filosofia intellettuale, which is that of Reid, and Alcune osservazioni sul senso comune, which is critical. This is significant: the moment of adherence to Scottish philosophy, considered valid for combating scepticism and materialism (and also the "subjectivism" of Kant), is followed by the critical moment, that is, of awareness of the limits and insufficiency of that philosophy, something of which Rosmini, though well disposed toward the Scots, had been aware from the outset. Reid was studied, in relation to French eclecticism, by Gaspare Capone in five memoirs entitled Sposizione dei principali fondamenti della filos. scozz. e della sua influenza sulla moderna francese, read between 1834 and '35, but published in the Atti della R. Accademia di Napoli of 1851 (VI, pp. 1-146). Mention should also be made of Baron David Winspeare, author of three volumes of Saggi di filosofia intellettuale (Naples 1843-46), which also contain a polemic with the Galluppian L. Palmieri concerning Scottish philosophy in Naples. But when Winspeare published his work, the influence of the Scottish school in Italy had declined and the attitude of Italian philosophy toward it was almost exclusively critical.

Michele Federico Sciacca