Ferrier and the Myth of Scottish Common Sense Realism

James Frederick Ferrier (1808–64), the first notable British idealist of the nineteenth century and the greatest Scotch metaphysician since Thomas Reid, waged a ferocious dialectical war against common sense realism. This chapter examines “Reid and the Philosophy of Common Sense” (1849), an essay in which Ferrier challenges four aspects of the received view about Reid: (1) That Reid was the first noteworthy opponent of the representationalist doctrine of perception that dominates modern philosophy from Descartes to Hume. (2) That Reid vanquished representationalism, and defended a doctrine of immediate perception. (3) That Reid put paid to Berkeleyan idealism and to veil of ideas scepticism. (4) That Reid vindicated realism by appealing to the plain dictates of common sense. If Ferrier is right in thinking that Reid’s scheme is fundamentally unsound, the tradition of Scottish common sense realism represented by Hamilton has no future.