Scottish School

SCOZZESE, SCUOLA. — Also called the school of “common sense,” whose leading figure was T. Reid (v.) and, after him, his finest disciple D. Stewart (v.). The influence of the Scottish school constitutes not only a chapter in English philosophy between the last twenty years of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth, but also, during the same period, in French and Italian philosophy. It represents the affirmation of so-called “psychologism” (v.) in philosophy, whose object is “consciousness” and whose method is therefore psychological.

The works of Reid and Stewart, translated into French and some of them into Italian, enjoyed wide circulation and effectively entered into the criticism of empiricism (v.) rationalism (v.) in relation to Kant’s (v.) “new philosophy.” But while in France and in England itself attempts were made to bring Reid and Kant together and reconcile them, in Italy Scottish philosophy was used to criticize Kant himself and to identify Reid as the true critic of Hume’s (v.) skepticism. Referring, for the doctrine of the Scottish school, to the entries on its principal representatives (Reid, Stewart), we shall indicate here its most significant historical developments.

I. ENGLAND

Reid’s philosophy, besides being continued by Stewart, was developed with originality by W. Hamilton (v.), to whom we owe the first 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, common sense (v.) agnosticism (v.), not only metaphysical but also epistemological; a step further, toward scepticism, Mansel (v.), a pupil of Hamilton. Thus, the Scottish school completes its cycle: at first, with Reid, it believes that it can overcome the sceptical 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 non-immediate continuators, it employs the same principle to consolidate the constitutional insufficiency of human knowledge to resolve the problem of the absolute or 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 dissemination and influence of the philosophy of the Scottish school in France and Italy. Above all, its psychology was studied, followed, and adopted as Condillac (v.) and his followers, as well as of Cabanis’materialism (v.). The concepts of “effort,” of the “activity” of consciousness, and of “immediate apperception,” characteristic of Maine de Biran (v.), were 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 a psychological direction (gnoseology and even metaphysics are identified with or reduced to psychology). “Our pleasures and our pains, our hopes and our fears, all our sensations, our acts, our thoughts pass 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, cited above, IV, p. 433). The spirit is a reality to be observed, and the observer (the philosopher) must be an indifferent spectator in order not to disturb the analysis through his interventions. Spiritual unity is merely a presupposition of the analysis, which limits itself to “describing” psychic facts. Cousin’eclecticism (v.) was also influenced by the Scottish school, whose doctrines are there combined with those of Kant and of German idealism. Cousin, too, elevates psychology into a method and a system and regards 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 (well known in Italy especially through Galluppi [v.]), Damiron, Laromiguière, and others.

III. ITALY

The influence of the Scots was particularly notable among the thinkers of the Kingdom of Naples, but ROSMINIANI (v.), Gioberti (v.), etc., was by no means negligible. Among the Neapolitan Reidists, mention should be made of the 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 s. s. in Italy, and Antonio Papadopoli, Dragonetti’s correspondent, 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. there 1867), praised by Tommaseo (Antologia, February 1931), 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 overcoming subjectivism, sensationalism, and scepticism. This conviction distinguishes Italian Reidism from English and French Reidism, which allowed itself to be influenced by Kant rather than combating him by making use of the Scots. But GALLUPPI, PASQUALE (v.), whom Gioberti (Primato, III, Brussels 1842–43, p. 47) defines as “the Reid of Italy.” In addition to Galluppi’s well-known writings, two of his articles should be cited as documents concerning 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 follows Reid’s method, and Alcune osservazioni sul senso comune, which is critical in character. This is significant: the stage of adherence to Scottish philosophy, regarded as valid for combating scepticism and materialism (and also Kant’s “subjectivism”), was followed by the critical stage, that is, an awareness of the limitations and insufficiency of that philosophy—something which Rosmini, although well disposed towards the Scots, had recognized from the outset. Gaspare Capone studied Reid in relation to French eclecticism in five papers entitled Sposizione dei principali fondamenti della filos. scozz. e della sua influenza sulla moderna francese, read between 1834 and 1835 but published in the Atti della R. Accademia

of Naples in 1851 (VI, pp. 1–146). The baron David Winspeare should also be mentioned, 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 by the time Winspeare published his work, the influence of the s. s. in Italy had waned, and the attitude of Italian philosophy towards it had become almost exclusively critical.