title: The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Reid (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy)
author: Terence Cuneo
description: 'The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Reid is easily the best guide yet to Reid's thought as a whole. Every aspect of Reid's philosophy is covered, from his epistemology and account of perception, through his studies of testimony and memory, to this theory of action and his moral philosophy, and further on still to his philosophy of religion and philosophy of art.' The Times Literary Supplement
zlib_text: Cambridge Companions Online © Cambridge University Press, 2006
  terence cuneo and ren´e van woudenberg
  Introduction
  History can be a fickle judge. After enjoying enormous popularity
  in the United States, Great Britain, and France for almost one hun-
  dred years after his death, Thomas Reid (1710–96) disappeared from
  the philosophical canon. Reid’s disappearance did not have the conse-
  quence that his thought failed to influence subsequent philosophers:
  One can discern, for example, distinctly Reidian themes and method-
  ology at work in Moorean “ordinary language” philosophy. But it did
  mean that Reid made no appearance in the story that philosophers
  in the last century have told – and continue to tell – about the devel-
  opment of early modern philosophy. The basic shape of this story is
  familiar enough and goes something like this:1
  Early modern philosophy was animated by two central worries: First, given
  its dismal history of disagreement and present state of faction, how could
  philosop