Scottish Philosophy

When I studied at St Andrews in the 1970s, a year of general philosophy was still a compulsory subject for arts degrees, as it had been for centuries; sadly, this is no longer the case. The editor of this reader is Director of the Centre for the Study of Scottish Philosophy, and is ideally placed to bring together this volume. Scottish philosophy was regarded as the jewel in the crown of the Scottish Enlightenment with its central figures of Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Adam Smith and Thomas Reid. An earlier 19^th century volume already identified 47 philosophers of note, almost all of whom were associated with the ancient universities 'that had persisted with the basic mediaeval curriculum in which moral philosophy and logic play an important, and compulsory part.' My own great-grandfather, Prof James Lorimer was a moral philosopher who corresponded with John Stuart Mill while Professor of International Law at Edinburgh. He wrote an important paper on the curriculum of Scottish universities in the 1850s.

Graham identifies five elements in this tradition: a methodology or science of mind, a focus on human nature, an overriding concern to answer Humean scepticism, an appeal to common sense within the University. The first figure of note is Gershom Carmichael (1672-1729) and the 13 philosophers featured include JF Ferrier and Edward Caird from the 19^th century, and AE Taylor, CA Campbell and John Macmurray from the 20^th. Interestingly, my Edinburgh mentor Norman Cockburn gave me copies of books on Platonism by Caird and Taylor as well as a number of works by Macmurray and various volumes of the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion. The content will mainly be of interest to readers already familiar with philosophy, although the last extract by Macmurray still speaks to the crisis of our time, dealing as it does with the personal (only yesterday I was reading an article on this theme by Umair Haque) associating the expansion of civilisation with that of the personal, which is in danger of being overtaken by the impersonal and the purely functional. For him, the personal is the experiential, and philosophy should be grounded in human experience and existential values – a timely reminder.