Campbell, George

« Campbell's philosophy was influenced by that of David Hume , though Campbell employed much effort in correcting Hume.

Campbell followed Hume in equating experience with the habitual associations of ideas in the mind, but thought that Hume's extreme emphasis on personal experience seriously undervalued the importance of memory (the only voucher for the past evidence of the senses) and of testimony to human knowledge as a whole. He therefore employed Common Sense philosophy to defend the necessary reliance of human beings on their own memories and on the testimony of others ( Common Sense School ).

His theory of evidence was a significant and original contribution to Common Sense philosophy, particularly in its explication of intuitive knowledge and its emphasis on testimony, though his use of that philosophy was otherwise minimal and not nearly as extensive as the version employed by Thomas Reid . The methods and concerns of The Philosophy of Rhetoric were those of the Scottish Enlightenment, but its rhetorical strategy was aimed primarily at religious persuasion.

Campbell's theory of evidence provided a philosophical foundation for his Christian apologetics, as exemplified by A Dissertation on Miracles (1762).

This work was written against Hume's essay 'Of Miracles' (1748), which had claimed that a miracle could not be believed because the testimonial evidence in its favour necessarily contradicted our uniform experience of the laws of nature.

Campbell argued that our knowledge of the laws of nature depended more upon the testimony of others than upon our personal experience.

We could therefore no more reject the testimony of reliable witnesses concerning particular facts than we could the general testimony that had established the empirical laws of nature in the first place.

He then attempted to demonstrate that only early Christian claims of miracles were sufficiently reliable to overturn the general experience of human history. Campbell was a relentless advocate for religious toleration and freedom of expression.

His Address to the People of Scotland (1779; see Campbell 1762 ) defended the civil rights of Roman Catholics, though his outspokenness earned him the wrath of many of his Protestant countrymen.

He argued that persecution was unchristian, counterproductive and philosophically indefensible.

In a later manuscript (now in Aberdeen University Library) he contended that belief in abstract doctrines is the involuntary consequence of the passive mind's perception of evidence.

Only argument and persuasion are compatible with the realities of the human mind and with the spirit of the gospel of Christ. Campbell's reputation in his own lifetime rivalled that of almost any participant in the Scottish Enlightenment, and rested primarily on his religious writings, which included his posthumously-published divinity lectures.

His contemporaries believed his masterpiece to be The Four Gospels (1789), which contained dissertations on the proper method of translating ancient documents, and which advocated enlightened principles of biblical criticism. Since his death, The Philosophy of Rhetoric has become a standard text on the subject as well as the object of considerable scholarly interest.

It has eclipsed all his other writings.. »