Rejoinder to Stewart

Horton, Robin. Patterns of Thought in Africa and the West. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. xi + 471 pp. including chapter references and index. $64.95 cloth

Masolo, D. A. African Philosophy in Search of Identity. Bloomington and Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1994. ix + 301 pp. including chapter references and index. $39.95 cloth, $15.95 paper.     

Stewart,Kant, and the Reworking of Common Sense

Summary

Dugald Stewart was the first metaphysician of any significance in Britain who attempted to take account of Kantian philosophy, although his analysis appears generally dismissive. Traditionally this has been imputed to Stewart's poor understanding of Kant and to his efforts to defend the orthodoxy of common sense. This paper argues that, notwithstanding Stewart's reading, Kant's philosophy helped him in a reconsideration and reassessment of common sense philosophy. In his mature works—the Philosophical Essays (1810), the second volume of the Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind (1814), and the second part of his historical ‘Dissertation? (1815–1821)—Stewart's analysis of Kantian philosophy is far from being uniform. In the first two works, he takes a cautious approach to transcendentalism, showing some interest in the challenge it might represent for common sense; in the last, he turns to rash criticism. This change may appear confusing and inconsistent unless considered in the light of a precise ‘nationalistic’ strategy. In fact, once Stewart had taken from Kantian philosophy what he deemed useful for his own aims, he eventually dismissed it in order to show that his reworked version of common sense was the most original and most consistent outcome of the whole Anglo-Scottish philosophical tradition.     

Adaptations: History,Gender, and Political Economy in the Work of Dugald Stewart

Summary

This paper notes and explores the attraction of Dugald Stewart's moral philosophy for women readers and a few women writers. Student lecture notes reveal the chronological development of his ideas, as he drew upon the works of Thomas Reid, Adam Smith, and Adam Ferguson, and responded to political events. Particular attention is paid to Stewart's comments relating to women and gender, through discussions of education, the institution of marriage, and population questions. After 1800, he shifted away from a speculative conjectural history towards a philosophy of moral progress rooted in common sense philosophy and a belief in perfectibility. He taught a system of practical morality relevant to the education of children and strongly emphasised the importance of the association of ideas in childhood. For women readers, the message was contradictory in that he united an apparently conservative reinforcement of the relations of the sexes with a belief in the improvement of the condition of women through education in a modern, progressive, and commercial society.     

Notes on a Piece of Painted Glass within a Genealogical Tree of the Family of Stewart

Skipwith church's west tower, of ‘pre-Norman’, ‘Saxo-Norman’ or ‘early Romanesque’ style, has been the focus of a campaign of investigation and analysis which included structural recording and archaeological excavation. A building earlier than this tower was identified; within and around it were burials, some in iron-bracketed wooden coffins, and a piece of newly discovered early ninth-century sculpture confirms the contemporary importance of this site. This building was replaced by a church incorporating the standing tower; hitherto unrecognized details of its construction are reported, together with its subsequent structural evolution. Attention is drawn to an extensive series of cross slabs and to a considerable quantity of painted alabaster fragments representing one or more altarpieces.