(Skip)
"As you know, the American Founders claimed they were guided by self-evident truths. They relied on self-evident truths because their deliberations were deeply informed by the thinking of Thomas Reid. And Reid continued to be at the center of American thought for more than a century. Generations of American academics were common-sense realists, and until the Civil War, every major American collegiate intellectual was a common-sense realist.
Reid is all but forgotten in America today. He is routinely missing from survey courses in philosophy and even from courses in American thought. You may very well have never heard of him. But you dont have to read his Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense to understand common sense. You already have everything you need for that."
I was unfamiliar with this guy. I would say that his "first principles" are god-given abilities that are present in any normal person - until they are corrupted by modern philosophy, such as Leftism.
BFL