A History of Scottish Philosophy is a series of collaborative studies by expert authors, each volume being devoted to a specific period. Together they provide a comprehensive account of the Scottish philosophical tradition, from the centuries that laid the foundation of the remarkable burst of intellectual fertility known as the Scottish Enlightenment, through the Victorian age and beyond, when it continued to exercise powerful intellectual influence at home and abroad. The books aim to be historically informative, while at the same time serving to renew philosophical interest in the problems with which the Scottish philosophers grappled, and in the solutions they proposed. This new history of Scottish philosophy will include two volumes that focus on the Scottish Enlightenment. In this volume a team of leading experts explore the ideas, intellectual context, and influence of Hutcheson, Hume, Smith, Reid, and many other thinkers, frame old issues in fresh ways, and introduce new topics and questions into debates about the philosophy of this remarkable period. The contributors explore the distinctively Scottish context of this philosophical flourishing, and juxtapose the work of canonical philosophers with contemporaries now very seldom read. The outcome is a broadening-out, and a filling-in of the detail, of the picture of the philosophical scene of Scotland in the eighteenth century. General Editor: Gordon Graham, Princeton Theological Seminary

This two-volume set presents a comprehensive and up-to-date history of eighteenth-century philosophy. The subject is treated systematically by topic, not by individual thinker, school, or movement, thus enabling a much more historically nuanced picture of the period to be painted.

English Philosophy in the Age of Locke presents a set of new essays investigating key issues in English philosophical, political, and religious thought in the second half of the seventeenth century. Particular emphasis is given to the interaction between philosophy and religion in the leadingpolitical thinkers of the period, and connections between philosophical debate on personhood, certainty, and the foundations of faith, and new conceptions of biblical exegesis.Paul Dumouchel examines church-state relations from the viewpoint of Hobbes's political theory. Knud Haakonssen explores the basis of obligation in Cumberland's theory of natural law, and Ian Harris the relation of Locke's account of justice to his theory of rights, each tracing his subject'sdistinctive views to a particular conception of God's design. John Milton reappraises the documentary evidence for Locke's reading of Gassendi. The theology of the Unitarian Controversy and Locke's relation to both Socinian and non-Socinian writers are explored at length by John Marshal. VictorNuovo places the Socinian debate itself in a broader context of Locke's lifelong concern to view all history and knowledge within a theocentric perspective to which the key was sound scriptural exegesis and a rationally founded faith. Udo Thiel's analysis of the personal identity debate amongEnglish theologians like Sherlock and South provides the philosophical context for Locke's place in these debates. M. A. Stewart investigates the philosophical background to Edward Stillingfleet's attacks on Locke; and Beverley Southgate explores the place of John Sergeant in the backlash againstscepticism precipitated by some of the philosophical trends of the day.

Dugald Stewart was appointed assistant professor of mathematics in the University of Edinburgh in 1772, aged only 19. He became one of the most influential academics in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European ‘Republic of Letters'. Both Stewart's contemporaries and modern scholars have recognised the impact his influential figure had over many young minds. He was one of the leading figures of the Scottish Common Sense school, a name by which we are used to identifying the philosophical tradition headed by Thomas Reid. The selection given here departs in some ways from Stewart’s own division of the subject, and aims to reflect the logical priority of each discipline, a priority which Stewart himself seems to give in the internal development of his ‘system’.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1881.

A deepening interest in both social and interior experience was a distinguishing feature of the cultural life of eighteenth-century Britain, influencing writers in all genres from fiction to philosophy. Focusing on this interplay of ideas and genres, Mark Phillips explores the ways in which writers and readers of history, memoir, biography and related literatures responded to the social and sentimental concerns of a modern, commercial society. He shows that the writing of history, which once concentrated exclusively on political events, widened its horizons in ways that often paralleled better-known developments in the contemporary novel. Ultimately, Phillips proposes a new model for the study of historiographical narrative. Countering tropological readings identified with Hayden White, he offers a more historically nuanced approach that stresses questions of genre and reception as a guide to understanding how narratives were reshaped by new audiences and new social needs. Drawing inspiration from both the social analysis of the Scottish Enlightenment and the sentimental aesthetics of the contemporary novel, historical writing began to explore the areas of social experience and private life for which there was no place in classical historiography. The consequence, Phillips argues, was a significant reframing of historical thought that expressed itself through new themes, including the histories of commerce, manners, literature, and women, and through some lively experiments in narrative form. This book offers a rich picture of historiography that will interest students of history and fiction alike.

Enlightenment studies are currently in a state of flux, with unresolved arguments among its adherents about its dates, its locations, and the contents of the 'movement'. This book cuts the Gordian knot. There are many books claiming to explain the Enlightenment, but most assume that it was a thing. J. C. D. Clark shows what it actually was, namely a historiographical concept. Currently 'the Enlightenment' is a term widely accepted across popular culture and in a variety of academic disciplines, notably history, philosophy, political theory, political science, literary studies, and theology; Clark calls for a fundamental reconsideration in each. The Enlightenment: An Idea and Its History provides a critical historical analysis of the Enlightenment in England, Scotland, France, Germany, and the United States from c. 1650 to the present. It argues that the degree of commonality between social and intellectual movements in each--and, more broadly, between the five societies--has been overstated for polemical purposes. Clark shows that the concept of 'the Enlightenment' was not widely adopted in those societies until the mid-twentieth century; indeed, that it was unknown in the eighteenth. Without the concept, people at the time were unable to act in ways that would have created the Enlightenment as a coherent movement. Since the conventional account has held that the Enlightenment was a phenomenon, the idea could be used as a component of what has been called a 'civil religion': a summing up of the myths of origin, aims, and essential values of a society from which dissent is not permitted. An appreciation that it was instead a historiographical concept undermines, in turn, the idea that there was any great transition to what came to be called 'modernity'.