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WorkThomas Reid

Essays on the Active Powers of Man

Against Priestley's necessity, Reid argues that a person, not a motive, is the cause of a free choice.

by Thomas Reid533 passages held

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(aged 78)
Original language
English

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Overview

In the 1960s two American philosophers, Roderick Chisholm and Richard Taylor, revived an account of free will in which the person who chooses, and not some earlier event, is the cause of the choice. Philosophers trace that account, now called agent causation, to this book, which Reid published in Edinburgh in 1788, in his late seventies. Its opponent was necessity: the doctrine that every choice is fixed by the motives acting on the mind, so that no one could have chosen otherwise. The English deist Anthony Collins had argued it, and Joseph Priestley, the chemist and dissenting minister, restated it in The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Illustrated (1777). Against this, Reid holds that a motive may influence a choice but does not itself act. Only a being with understanding and will can properly be a cause, and to be free is to have power over one's own will — to will something or to refrain. Without that power, he argues, praise and blame lose their meaning, since nothing outside our power can be charged to us. The final essay, on morals, takes on Hume directly. Hume had called justice an artificial virtue, a product of human convention; Reid argues that it is natural, and that the first principles of morals are as self-evident as the axioms of mathematics.

Key concepts

What does Reid mean by active power?

The power of an agent to produce an effect, which we conceive only relatively, through its exertions, and first learn of from our own voluntary acts. Power is one thing and its exertion another: a person may have power to speak while silent. Strictly, Reid holds, only a being with understanding and will has active power, so the word cause, applied to inanimate things, is used loosely.

What is moral liberty in the Active Powers?

Power over the determinations of one's own will. An agent is free in an action if he had power to will it or not to will it; if every volition follows necessarily from something involuntary in the state of his mind, he is not free. Liberty presupposes understanding and will and extends only to voluntary actions, which is why it is the condition of moral responsibility.

How does Reid rank the principles of action?

In three tiers. Mechanical principles, instinct and habit, operate without will or thought. Animal principles, appetites, desires, and benevolent and malevolent affections, move the will without judgment and are partly shared with other animals. Rational principles, regard to our good on the whole and the sense of duty, require judgment and alone carry authority as well as force. Virtue lies in the lower being governed by the higher.

What is conscience, as the Active Powers describes it?

The faculty by which we judge what we ought and ought not to do, which philosophers have also called the moral sense or the moral faculty. It judges as well as feels: moral approbation includes a judgment that an action is right, with a feeling that follows. Like reason, it comes to maturity by degrees, and it carries its own authority over the other principles of action.

Why does Reid reject the maxim that the strongest motive always prevails?

Because those who assert it never say how strength is measured except by which motive won, and then the maxim says only that the strongest motive is the strongest. If strength is measured by the effect instead, as the heaviest weight is known by the scale it bears down, the argument assumes the point in dispute: that motives act on a passive will as weights act on a balance.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

The Person as Cause

When someone chooses, is the choice their own act or the last link in a chain of motives? The book answers that only a being with understanding and will can properly be a cause, and a motive is no such being.

Moral liberty, Reid writes, is power over the determinations of one's own will: having been able to will the action or not to will it. Against Collins and Priestley he argues that a motive is not an agent and does nothing; it is a reason a person weighs, and the comparison of a will to a balance moved by weights simply assumes what is in dispute. The maxim that the strongest motive always prevails is never given a measure of strength apart from the result, so it says only that the strongest is the strongest. Our very notion of power comes from being agents ourselves.

  • free will
  • agency
  • active power
  • causation
  • necessity
  • will
  • moral responsibility
  • intention
  • action

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Instinct, Habit, Passion and Reason

What actually moves a person to act, before any question of right and wrong arises? The book sorts the answer into three tiers and asks which of them has the right to rule.

Essay III ranks the principles of action. The mechanical ones, instinct and habit, work without will or thought, as a man who stumbles recovers his balance before he can decide to. The animal ones, appetites, desires and the benevolent and malevolent affections, move the will without judgment; among them is resentment, which Reid, following Butler, divides into sudden anger and a deliberate resentment that requires the opinion of an injury. Above them stand the rational principles. Hume's paradox that reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions works, Reid argues, only by filing the most important part of reason under passion.

  • instinct
  • habit
  • passions
  • desire
  • benevolence
  • motivation
  • human nature
  • moral psychology

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Duty, Interest and Conscience

If a clear view of one's own good leads to every virtue, why does anyone need a sense of duty as well? The book keeps two ruling principles, and argues that the one aimed at happiness is the weaker guide.

Regard to our good on the whole, Reid grants, is a rational principle, and the best moralists of antiquity derived all the virtues from it. Acting against it is folly; acting against duty is immorality, and the two are not the same charge. Made the only rule, self-interest would be an uncertain guide and would give far less perfection to the human character. Conscience, the faculty by which we judge what we ought to do, carries its own authority and grows with understanding, like reason itself. Whoever simply does his duty, Reid concludes, consults his happiness best, without anxious calculation of what will follow.

  • conscience
  • duty
  • moral obligation
  • moral judgment
  • moral motivation
  • happiness
  • virtue
  • reason

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Justice Against Convention

Is justice a human invention, valued because it is useful, or something people grasp before they count its uses? The final essay answers Hume by taking the second view.

Hume had argued that justice is an artificial virtue: no one has a natural motive to repay a loan, so the obligation must come from conventions adopted for their utility. Reid answers that as soon as people have any rational conception of a favour and of an injury, they have the conception of justice and see its obligation apart from its usefulness. Utility, he adds, is not a moral conception at all; on this point Hume's system differs only in words from Epicurus's. The first principles of morals are as self-evident as Euclid's axioms, so a knave's subtle case against honesty may be set aside unexamined.

  • justice
  • utility
  • language
  • belief

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Within this work

passages held
533
distinct concepts
531
by passages held, corpus-wide
#140

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “free will” and “moral responsibility”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 21 pairings. 88 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
free willmoral responsibility34
causationfree will16
consciencemoral judgment13
consciencejustice10
consciencemoral responsibility10
consciencevirtue9
moral judgmentvirtue8
moral responsibilityvirtue8
human naturevirtue7
causationmoral responsibility5
consciencehuman nature5
moral judgmentmoral responsibility5
justicemoral responsibility4
justicevirtue4
causationhuman nature3
free willhuman nature3
human naturemoral responsibility3
justicemoral judgment3
free willmoral judgment2
human naturejustice2
human naturemoral judgment2

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1748 An Essay on Quantity

    A sixteen-page paper, published sixteen years before Reid's first book, the Inquiry into the Human Mind.

     EN
  2. 1764 An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense

    Reid's first book briefly states the case against the theory of ideas that his two later volumes of Essays argue at length.

     EN
  3. 1774 A Brief Account of Aristotle's Logic, with Remarks

    A chapter in another man's book rather than a book of its own, and the fullest account of formal logic that Reid published.

     EN
  4. 1785 Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man

    The book many scholars now rank as Reid's greatest, and the one that sets out his theory of knowledge in full.

     EN
  5. 1788 Essays on the Active Powers of Man you are here EN
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