Common-Sense School

Common-Sense School, philosophical movement that originated in Scotland in the 18th century and spread abroad, particularly to France and the United States. The movement is also known as Scottish realism or the Scottish School. Its founder was Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid, who described the movement’s basic tenets in these words:

Common-sense philosophy was a rejection of the “ideal system” that originated in the writings of 17th-century French philosopher René Descartes. The idea of this system culminated in the 18th century in the skepticism of British philosophers John Locke and David Hume, who questioned the objective value of reasoning based on the senses. The Common-Sense School maintained that ordinary human experience was all that was needed for proving (1) the existence of the self, (2) the existence of real objects directly perceived, and (3) certain so-called first principles, upon which sound morality and religious beliefs may be established.

Basically sound and appealing in its purpose and intent, common-sense philosophy was weak in the technical development of its leading ideas. It aimed, in the words of Scottish philosopher Sir William Hamilton, to “appeal from the heretical conclusions of particular philosophies to the catholic principles of all philosophy.” But the Common-Sense School often fell into the error of dogmatically asserting the prejudices of untutored opinion against careful and competent criticism.

The most notable achievement of the Common-Sense School was a realistic treatment of sense perception by its founder Thomas Reid, although even this treatment contained confusions and contradictions. Other proponents of the school included Reid’s contemporaries James Oswald and James Beattie, who exalted the philosophically untrained common man as a court of last appeal on moral and religious questions. Scottish theologian George Campbell used his sermons to reply to Hume's famous essay Of Miracles (1748). Sir William Hamilton, a historian of ideas who introduced the works of German philosopher Immanuel Kant to Scottish readers, also regarded himself as a member of the Common-Sense School.

The principles of the Common-Sense School became a force in France through the translation of Reid's works into French and their subsequent adoption by Victor Cousin, founder of the modern school of eclecticism. In the United States, the Common-Sense School formed the dominant academic philosophy throughout the middle decades of the 19th century. James McCosh carried common-sense philosophy with him when he left Scotland in 1868 to become president of Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. Noah Porter taught common-sense realism to generations of students at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, during the mid- and late 1800s. The Common-Sense School declined, both in the academic world and in literary circles, before the rise of the idealistic tradition that stemmed from Kant and Hegel. The school’s influence on philosophy has resurfaced in the 20th-century realistic schools of thought.