Abstract

After over a century of total neglect, the philosophy of Thomas Reid has attracted increasing interest over the past several decades. A new scholarly edition of Reid’s works is underway, with two volumes already available. Even more important than such scholarship is the fact that contemporary philosophers too numerous to list are finding in Reid’s philosophy substantial material useful for their own work in epistemology, philosophy of mind, ethics, and action theory. This book is a welcome addition to the growing Reid literature, but readers should be on guard while reading it because Wolterstorff, with breathtaking audacity, says that his “aim throughout is not so much to present what Reid said as to discover what he was trying to say”, as though Reid were somehow incompetent at saying what he meant or meaning what he said, despite being “one of the two great philosophers of the latter part of the eighteenth century”, “one of the most lucid writers of philosophy in the history of philosophy”, and “the greatest stylist of all who have written philosophy in the English language”.