Oct 7, 2014
Thomas Reid, the philosopher and founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense, did not publish much on politics, but his manuscripts reveal that he was deeply concerned with social, political and economic issues throughout his career. In this talk, Knud Haakonssen presents an analysis of Reid's hitherto unpublished Glasgow lecture notes, and shows that Reid was an acute commentator on contemporary politics and that his theoretical ideas framed solutions to some of the practical political and economic problems of his day.