LAURIE, Henry.
Scottish philosophy in its national development. Glasgow, James Maclehose and Sons, 1902.
8vo, pp. viii, 344; a fine copy, in contemporary prize binding of half calf, panelled spine decorated in gilt, brown morocco label, cloth boards, upper board stamped with Aberdeen University arms and motto, presentation leaf bound at front (to Agnes S. Thomson, winner of the University prize for logic in 1906).
First edition, a fine copy. As one of the (many and appreciative) reviewers wrote, Laurie’s innovative aim ‘is to include in his list every thinker whose impulse to philosophize has been mainly due to his Scottish traditions’, rather than complying with the mainstream narrower definition of Scottish philosophy as the ‘common sense’, anti-sceptical and anti-Humean school of Reid and his followers.
While doing full justice to many, sometimes long-neglected voices (James Ferrier among others), Laurie’s assessment brings to the fore three epoch-making thinkers: Hume (whose scepticism Laurie regards as an essentially destructive – if necessary and deeply influential – tool), Reid, and Hamilton, with important chapters on his role in the assimilation of Kant’s thought into Scottish philosophy.
See A.T. Ormond’s review in The Philosophical Review XII, 5 (1903), pp. 575-577.