William Drummond of Logiealmond

Sir William James Charles Maria Drummond of Logiealmond FRS FRSE DCL (bapt. 26 September 1769 – 29 March 1828) was a Scottish diplomat and Member of Parliament, poet and philosopher. His book Academical Questions (1805) is arguably important in the development of the ideas of English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Life

He was born in Perthshire the son of John Drummond of Perth and educated at both St Andrew's University and Oxford University.

In 1798 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, his proposers being Dugald Stewart, Alexander Keith and John Playfair. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London the following year.

He lived in London from 1809 and died in Rome on 29 March 1828.

Career

In 1795 he was MP for St. Mawes, and in the elections of 1796 and 1801 was returned for Lostwithiel. These were both rotten boroughs in Cornwall. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1799 He became sworn as a Privy Counsellor in 1801, and left Parliament as a diplomat, as Envoy to the court of Naples.

In 1803 he became British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Appointed by the Levant Company on 14 January 1803, he arrived at the Dardanelles the following May. He was there for less than a year and then he returned to England in 1804. From 1806 to 1809 he served as Envoy to the Court of Naples for a second time.

He was knighted in 1813 or 1814.

The French writer Hippolyte Auger entered his service in Italy.

The Argument of Academical Questions

The title of Drummond's book refers to the later Platonic Academy, which was, in fact, not so much Platonist as Sceptical in orientation, based on the work of Pyrrho the Sceptic and later followers of Pyrrho such as Carneades. Academical Questions is a work in the Sceptic tradition, in this case influenced by the Sceptical Scottish philosopher David Hume.

According to C. E. Pulos's 1954 book The Deep Truth: A Study of Shelley's Scepticism, Drummond uses Sceptical Humean ideas in an attempt to refute the British philosophy predominant in his day, the Common Sense ideas of Thomas Reid and his followers. These had been enunciated first in Reid's An Enquiry into the Human Mind (1765).

Drummond failed to unseat Reid's ideas in popularity; they remained dominant in English philosophy for the first half of the 19th century.

The well-known quotation: "He, who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot, is a fool; and he, who dares not, is a slave", originates in the preface of this book.

Legacy

In contrast to other scholars he names, Pulos argues that Shelley was decisively influenced by Academical Questions, and under its influence confidently abandoned 18th-century French materialism. According to Pulos, Drummond altered the poet Shelley's beliefs. He ceased being an 18th-century French materialist; Shelley asserted that some passions (of the heart) are "innate."

Other writings

His Oedipus Judaicus references the Oedipus Aegyptiacus of Athanasius Kircher, and was printed for private circulation. It was reprinted in 1866, having proved highly controversial (introduction to 1986 reprint by James P. Carley). It interprets passages from the Book of Genesis (in particular the Chedorlaomer story), and the Book of Joshua, in allegorical fashion, with a detailed argument based on astrology.

Works

• A Review of the Government of Sparta and Athens (1794)
• Academical Questions (1805)
• Herculanensia (1810) with Robert Walpole
• Memoir on the Antiquity of the Zodiacs of Esneh and Dendera (1821)
• Oedipus Judaicus (1811, privately circulated and reprinted in 1866)
• Odin (1818), poem
• Origines, or Remarks on the Origin of several Empires, States, and Cities (1824–29)

External links

• The Oedipus Judaicus by Sir William Drummond
• Origines; or, Remarks on the Origin of Several Empires, States, and Cities by Sir William Drummond Vol. I, Vol. II, Vol. III
• "On the Antiquity of the Zodiacs of Esneh and Dendera" by Sir William Drummond Part I, Part II, Part III
• "On the Science of the Egyptians and Chaldeans" by Sir William Drummond Part I, Part II
• Biography
• Genealogy
• Obituary
• Old Cyclopaedia article