Abstract
To be drawn by study away from active life is contrary to moral duty. For the whole glory of virtue is in activity; activity, however, may often be interrupted, and many opportunities for returning to study are opened. Besides, the working of the mind, which is never at rest, can keep us busy in the pursuit of knowledge even without conscious effort on our part. Moreover, all our thought and mental activity will be devoted either to planning for things that are morally right and that conduce to a good and happy life, or to the pursuits of science and learning.(1)
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Notes
Cicero (1913, p. 21).
Corr, Letter to James Gregory (Works, p. 88).
AP, I, vii (Works, p. 530).
Reid (1977, p. 946).
Reid (1977, p. 949).
I shall follow eighteenth-century usage in interchanging ‘philosophy’ and ‘science’.
Cf. Phillipson (1979, pp. 140–61).
Hume (1978, p. 492).
Hume (1963, p. 570; Cf. pp. 3–7).
Hume (1963, pp. 172–3).
See Phillipson (1979).
Although Glasgow was a city of merchants and manufacturers, during Reid’s tenure university life was dominated by the Church. Forty-eight percent of the matriculated students of Glasgow University during the period 1765–74 entered the ministry, whereas just over twelve percent turned to industry and commerce. See Matthew (1966, p. 85).
See Hirschmann (1977, pp. 24–6; 31–42).
AUL MSS 2131/4/II/1 and 2131/7/V/4.
Ibid. I assume that pneumatology, ethics and politics together constitute Reid’s science of human nature. However, Reid did not (I think) explicitly make this claim. But Reid’s manuscripts suggest that he would not in principle have disagreed with this description.
See AUL MS 2131/4/II/14. The reader is confronted, in Reid’s manuscripts especially, with a panoply of the mind’s powers, i.e. active, rational, social, social intellectual, which, in certain cases, overlap. Their variety reflects Reid’s determination to counteract the “disposition in human nature to reduce things to as few principles as possible” (I, VII (Works, p. 206)). On the Baconian character of Reid’s thought see AUL MS 2131/4/I/31.
Quoted in Hirschmann (1977, P. 22).
AUL MS 2131/4/I/31.
See AP, III, II, viii (Works, pp. 577–8).
See Pocock (1983, PP. 235; 246).
Diamond (1985).
Pocock (1983, p. 235).
Robertson (1983, p. 138).
AUL MS 2131/4/III/2.
AUL MS 2131/4/III/9.
AUL MSS 2131/4/III/3 AND 2131/4/III/1.
AUL MS 3061/6.
Reid (1977, pp. 937–8).
AUL MS 2131/4/III/3.
AUL MS 2131/4/III/8.
AUL MS 2131/4/III/6, emphasis added.
See Hume (1963, pp. 501–2).
AUL MS 2131/4/III/6.
See AUL MSS 2131/4/III/10 and 2131/4/111/17.
For example, Dr. Johnson defined ‘art’ as skill, “the result of habit regulated by rules; as opposed to science which is determined by laws”. Reid’s usage (as well as Johnson’s) conforms to the Aristotelian notion of praxis, and th refers to an activity which has as its object the good that is aimed at by action. Harrington also believed that the ‘frame of government’ depends upon art. See Harrington (1977, pp. 802–3).
This is apparent in Reid (1977, pp. 934; 942; 949–56) where, despite the fact that he sometimes uses ‘art’ and ‘science’ interchangeably, he explained that “arts do not owe their origin to the laws governing them, but, on the contrary, laws arise from the progress and advanced state of the art itself”.
See Reid (1977, p. 955).
AUL MS 2131/4/III/3.
Cf. Hume (1963, pp. 40–47).
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Diamond, P.J. (1989). Reid and Active Virtue. In: Dalgarno, M., Matthews, E. (eds) The Philosophy of Thomas Reid. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 42. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2338-6_21
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