Thomas Reid on the Ethical Life

This Element presents Thomas Reid's agency-centered ethical theory. This means, one according to which agency intersects with the subject matter of ethics in a sufficiently wide range of important ways that we cannot satisfactorily engage in ethical theorizing without committing ourselves to and, ultimately developing, particular understandings of agency. Reid's agency-centered approach to ethics is introduced, and some ambiguities and puzzling features of his understanding of these components of agency are discussed. The Element explores how Reid might respond to challenges raised by the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition, on the one hand, and sentimentalism, on the other. The distinctiveness of Reid's approach is also examined here, indicating ways in which his view is not characteristically modern.