The pervasiveness of Protestant natural law in the early modern period and its significance in the Scottish Enlightenment have long been recognized. This book reveals that Thomas Reid (1710-1796)--the great contemporary of David Hume and Adam Smith--also worked in this tradition. When Reid succeeded Adam Smith as professor of moral philosophy in Glasgow in 1764, he taught a course covering pneumatology, practical ethics, and politics. This section on practical ethics took its starting point from the system of natural law and rights published by Francis Hutcheson. Knud Haakonssen has...

Thomas Reid on Society and Politics reveals the Enlightenment philosopher's acute comments on the Scottish political, social, and economic scene. Thomas Reid may not have published much on politics, but his manuscripts reveal that he was deeply concerned with social, political, and economic issues throughout his career. Published here for the first time, Reid's Glasgow lecture notes and his papers to learned societies in Aberdeen and Glasgow show that he was an acute commentator on contemporary politics and that his theoretical ideas framed solutions to some of the practical...

A philosopher, scholar of the natural world, and gifted mathematician, Thomas Reid holds a distinctive place in the Scottish Enlightenment. This volume reconstructs Reid's lifelong engagement with the physical sciences and makes clear why these fields were central to his epistemology and moral and social philosophy.

Placing Reid's "Essay on Quantity" alongside his previously unpublished writings on mathematics and the physical sciences, Paul Wood shows that, in contrast to Francis Hutcheson and David Hume, Reid was a philosopher rooted not only in the science of man but also in the...