Abstract

This concluding chapter addresses the conceptual questions that arise in connection with identifying a philosophical tradition, and giving it a distinctive national label. It argues against the common identification of ‘Scottish philosophy’ with the ‘School of Common Sense’, and argues that Francis Hutcheson initiated an approach to philosophical questions that pre-dates the appeal to common sense developed by Reid. It contends that the ‘School of Common Sense’ was just one attempt to formulate a satisfactory response to David Hume. By examining the work of Andrew Seth and Henry Jones, it explores the idea of a shared philosophical agenda, and argues that a common project rooted in a long-standing institutional framework is what sustained the Scottish philosophical intellectual tradition. The chapter ends by considering the factors that may be said to have brought that tradition to an end.