ABSTRACT
Thomas Reid (1710-1796) was a contemporary of both Hume and Kant. Like Kant, Reid cited Hume’s Treatise as the main spur to his own philosophical work. In Reid’s case, this led him to challenge ‘the theory of ideas’, which he saw as the cornerstone of Hume’s (and many other philosophers’) theories. Indeed, late in his life Reid wrote, in a letter to James Gregory, that,
“ . . . there is some merit in what you are pleased to call my Philosophy; but I think it lies chiefly in having called in question the common theory of Ideas, or Images of things in the mind being the only objects of thought . . . ”1 For those familiar with Reid’s work, it is clear that its significance extends
well beyond his challenging the theory of ideas. The present collection of papers attests to the richness and variety of Reid’s philosophical contributions, and the persisting relevance of his work to contemporary philosophical debates. The original papers included here deal with aspects on Reid’s views on topics ranging from perception, to epistemology, to ethics and meta-ethics, through to language, mind, and metaphysics.
