Esiti dell’empirismo tra XVIII e XIX secolo: Mary Shepherd sull’universo esterno

The controversy concerning the link between skepticism and atheism, as well as Brown’s attempts to rehabilitate Hume’s image, continue to lie at the origin of the writings of the Scottish philosopher Lady Mary Primrose Shepherd (1777–1847), who develops a metaphysics and a theory of knowledge aimed at demonstrating the existence of external reality by means of reason. Strongly critical of those empiricist tendencies that lead to the denial of the rational validity of thought, as well as to the exclusion of divinity from philosophical discourse, Shepherd nonetheless proves to be a thinker who displays significant connections with Locke’s realism and Reid’s inductivism. Her insistence on the centrality of reason in matters of knowledge of external reality should therefore not be read as a continuation of rationalism tout court, but rather as a refoundation of empiricism itself on the basis of rational principles.