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Summary
The history of Scottish philosophy in the nineteenth century is written by migrant philosophers attempting to use the Scottish tradition as the foundation for philosophy in their new homelands. In the accounts of John Clark Murray (Canada), James McCosh (the United States) and Henry Laurie (Australia), different evaluations are made of the continuing relevance of the Scottish Common Sense School, but all are committed Christians for whom David Hume cannot be part of a Scottish tradition. As a result, none of these accounts gives any suggestion of there having been a ‘Scottish Enlightenment’. That concept was only made possible by the radical reinterpretation of Hume by Norman Kemp Smith, which linked his philosophy to Hutcheson and dismissed his opposition to Reid. The subsequent emergence of ‘the Scottish Enlightenment’ eclipsed nineteenth-century Scottish ‘idealism’, shaped by Edward Caird, which Murray, Laurie and Kemp Smith had regarded as the foundation of their own philosophies.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Charles (Brad) Bow for inviting me to participate in the conference from which this paper derives, and Gordon Graham of the Princeton Theological Seminary, who also invited me to give a paper on the work of John Clark Murray. The AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen made possible the research on which this paper is based and I wish to thank the AHRC for their support.
Notes
1 James McCosh, ‘Introduction’, in J. Clark Murray, Outline of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (Boston, MA, 1870), xxiii.
2 McCosh, ‘Introduction’, in Murray, Outline, xxiii.
3 McCosh, ‘Introduction’, in Murray, Outline, xxiii–xxiv.
4 McCosh, ‘Introduction’, in Murray, Outline, xxiv.
5 McCosh, ‘Introduction’, in Murray, Outline, xxiv.
6 J. Clark Murray, ‘Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy: An Exposition and Criticism’, The Canadian Journal, 64 (1867), 224 (207).
7 A. B. McKillop, A Disciplined Intelligence: Critical Inquiry and Canadian Thought in the Victorian Era (Montreal, QC, 1979).
8 Thomas Reid, An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense, in Thomas Reid: Inquiry and Essays, edited by Ronald A. Beanblossom and Keith Lehrer (Indianapolis, IN, 1983), 118.
9 Reid, Inquiry, in Reid: Inquiry and Essays, 113.
10 Daniel Wilson, ‘The President's Address’, quoted McKillop, Disciplined Intelligence, 96, from The Canadian Journal, 6 (1861), 120.
11 Peter R. Eakins and Jane Sinnamon Eakins, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, <http://www.biographi.ca/009004-119.01-e.php?id_nbr=6059> [accessed 12 March 2012].
12 McKillop, Disciplined Intelligence, 127.
13 Alexander Bain, John Stuart Mill: A Criticism; with Personal Recollections (London, 1882), 119.
14 J. Clark Murray, ‘Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy: An Exposition and Criticism’, The Canadian Journal, 66 (1867), 366–388 (371–372).
15 J. Clark Murray, Introduction to Psychology (Boston, MA, 1905), 3.
16 J. Clark Murray, ‘Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy: An Exposition and Criticism’, The Canadian Journal, 67 (1868), 57–85 (58–59).
17 Sir William Hamilton in Thomas Reid, The Works of Thomas Reid, edited by Sir William Hamilton, 2 vols (Edinburgh and London, 1846), II, 817 note.
18 Murray, ‘Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy: An Exposition and Criticism’, Canadian Journal, 67 (1868), 58–59.
19 J. Clark Murray, The Ballads and Songs of Scotland, in View of Their Influence on the Character of the People (London, 1874), 47.
20 Murray, Ballads and Songs of Scotland, 17.
21 Murray, Ballads and Songs of Scotland, 46.
22 Murray, ‘Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy: Exposition and Criticism’, Canadian Journal, 64 (1867), 210.
23 J. Clark Murray, A Handbook of Christian Ethics (Edinburgh, 1908), 157.
24 Murray, ‘Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy: Exposition and Criticism’, Canadian Journal, 64 (1867), 208.
25 Murray, ‘Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy: Exposition and Criticism’, Canadian Journal, 64 (1867), 208–09.
26 Murray, ‘Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy: An Exposition and Criticism’, Canadian Journal, 64 (1867), 221. We can perhaps trace the influence here of Alexander Campbell Fraser, who was the first professor of logic in the Free Church's New College after the Disruption in 1843, and subsequently Hamilton's successor at Edinburgh; his Complete Works of Berkeley was published in 1871.
27 Murray, ‘Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy: An Exposition and Criticism’, Canadian Journal, 64 (1867), 224.
28 James McCosh, The Scottish Philosophy: Biographical, Expository, Critical, from Hutcheson to Hamilton (London, 1875), 178.
29 J. Clark Murray, ‘The Scottish Philosophy’, Macmillan's Magazine, XXXIX, (December 1878), 121.
30 Murray, ‘Scottish Philosophy’, Macmillan's, 121.
31 Murray, ‘Scottish Philosophy’, Macmillan's Magazine, 123.
32 Murray, ‘Scottish Philosophy’, Macmillan's Magazine, 126.
33 George Elder Davie, The Democratic Intellect: Scotland and her Universities in the Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh, 1981, first published in 1961), 324.
34 Davie, Democratic Intellect, 325.
35 Davie, Democratic Intellect, 326.
36 Davie, Democratic Intellect, 330.
37 Davie, Democratic Intellect, 328.
38 Davie, Democratic Intellect, 330.
39 Davie, Democratic Intellect, 337.
40 Murray, ‘Scottish Philosophy’, Macmillan's Magazine, 125.
41 Murray, ‘Scottish Philosophy’, Macmillan's Magazine, 125.
42 Murray, ‘Scottish Philosophy’, Macmillan's Magazine, 125.
43 Edward Caird, Essays on Literature and Philosophy (Glasgow, 1892), 403.
44 Caird, Essays on Literature and Philosophy, 469–70.
45 Murray, ‘Scottish Philosophy’, Macmillan's Magazine, 125–26.
46 Murray, ‘Scottish Philosophy’, Macmillan's Magazine, 121.
47 Davie, Democratic Intellect, 328–29.
48 Davie, Democratic Intellect, 327.
49 Quoted in McKillop, Disciplined Intelligence, 186.
50 John Watson, ‘The Idealism of Edward Caird’, The Philosophical Review, 18 (1909), 147–163 (151).
51 Caird, Essays on Literature and Philosophy, 234–35.
52 Watson, ‘Idealism of Caird’, The Philosophical Review, 18 (1909), 152.
53 J. Clark Murray, ‘Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy: An Exposition and Criticism’, The Canadian Journal, 65 (1867), 319.
54 Quoted in McKillop, Disciplined Intelligence, 186.
55 John Watson, ‘The Idealism of Edward Caird: II’, The Philosophical Review, 18, 3 (1909), 259–280 (266).
56 Watson, ‘Idealism of Caird: II’, The Philosophical Review, 18, 3 (1909), 266.
57 Watson, ‘Idealism of Caird: II’, The Philosophical Review, 18, 3 (1909), 274.
58 Watson, ‘Idealism of Caird: II’, The Philosophical Review, 18, 3 (1909), 263.
59 McCosh, Scottish Philosophy: Biographical, Expository, 424.
60 McCosh, Scottish Philosophy: Biographical, Expository, 115.
61 McCosh, Scottish Philosophy: Biographical, Expository, 122.
62 James McCosh, Incidents of my Life in Three Countries, typescript, in Princeton University Library, Mudd LD4605.M3 A3, 183–84.
63 Brian Kennedy, A Passion to Oppose: John Anderson, Philosopher (Melbourne, 1995), 74. Jones's lectures were published as Henry Jones, Idealism as a Practical Creed: Being the Lectures on Philosophy and Modern Life Delivered before the University of Sydney (Glasgow, 1909).
64 Murray, ‘Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy: An Exposition and Criticism’, Canadian Journal, 64 (1867), 216–17.
65 Murray, ‘Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy: An Exposition and Criticism’, Canadian Journal, 64 (1867), 215.
66 Henry Laurie, Scottish Philosophy in its National Development (Glasgow, 1902), 89.
67 Laurie, Scottish Philosophy in its National Development, 93–94.
68 McCosh, Scottish Philosophy: Biographical, Expository, 249.
69 This is a point emphasised by Kenneth White, On Scottish Ground (Edinburgh, 1998), 181 and following.
70 W. R. Scott, Francis Hutcheson: His Life, Teaching and Position in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge, 1900), 265.
71 Scott, Francis Hutcheson, 266.
72 Scott, Francis Hutcheson, 266.
73 Scott, Francis Hutcheson, 7; final quotation from James Beattie, Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, in Opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism (1770).
74 Norman Kemp Smith, ‘The Naturalism of Hume (I.)’, Mind, 54 (1905), 149–173 (151).
75 Norman Kemp Smith, The Philosophy of David Hume: A Critical Study of its Origins and Central Doctrines (London, 1966, first published in 1941), 43.
76 Kemp Smith, Philosophy of Hume, 45.
77 Kemp Smith, Philosophy of Hume, 11.
78 This was an argument which had been made in Hume's defence as early as 1806 by Thomas Brown, who argued that the ‘circumstances, which Dr. Reid has urged, in opposition to this almost inconceivable scepticism, which he ascribes to Mr Hume, are, we shall accordingly find, equally consistent with Mr Hume's theory, as with that which he has himself asserted’; see Thomas Brown, Observations on the Nature and Tendency of the Doctrine of Mr Hume concerning the Relation of Cause and Effect (Edinburgh, 1806), 194.
79 Kemp Smith, Philosophy of Hume, 174–75.
80 Philosophers and the Enlightenment, edited by S. C. Brown (Sussex, 1979), 156–57.