ABSTRACT
The passage from Kant continues as follows: Chisels and hammers may suffice to work a piece of wood, but for steel-engraving we require an engraver’s needle. Thus common sense and speculative understanding are each useful in their own way, the former in judgments which apply immediately to experience, the latter when we judge universally from mere concepts, as in metaphysics, where sound common sense, so called in spite of the inapplicability of the word, has no right to judge at all. (Kant 1902, 7-8) Regarding the epistemic priority of common sense, Kant and Reid are in
agreement: common sense has authority ‘in judgments which apply immediately to experience.’ Regarding methodological priority, however, Reid would insist that Kant has it wrong. In metaphysics, Kant thinks, common sense ‘has no right to judge at all.’ On the contrary, Reid thinks, common sense has an important role to play in metaphysics and in philosophy more generally: methodologically, common sense should serve as a check on ‘speculative understanding,’ on pains of falling into dishonor and metaphysical lunacy.
