Abstract

This chapter singles out just one important strand of the history of Scottish philosophy in America—the relationship between ‘Scottish Common Sense’ and ‘American Pragmatism’. It begins with an account of Scottish common sense philosophy as articulated by its greatest exponent, Thomas Reid, and investigates the presuppositions that gave it coherence. The chapter then traces the arrival of common sense in colonial America, and the subtle ways in which it was transformed. The third part of the chapter gives extended treatment to C. S. Peirce’s ‘common sensism’, its development into American pragmatism, and the deep differences in presupposition that underlie it. Special attention is given to the influence of changing intellectual contexts in this process, especially the prominence of providential theism in the world of thought within which Reid was working, and its near eclipse in the intellectual world of Peirce and William James.