Moral Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Britain
God, Self, and Other

A new account of a vital period in the history of ethics, focusing on the content of morality.

Colin Heydt (Author)

9781108431316, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 13 June 2019

297 pages
23 x 15.3 x 2 cm, 0.42 kg

'Heydt's scholarship is formidable. For those immersed in the literature of the period, this book will further their researches. For those, like this reviewer, who lack background knowledge in which to place the great figures, Heydt supplies a huge amount of information that could not otherwise be obtained except by great (and even tedious) labour. All those interested in [eighteenth-century] ethics are in his debt.' David McNaughton, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

The long eighteenth century is a crucial period in the history of ethics, when our moral relations to God, ourselves and others were minutely examined and our duties, rights and virtues systematically and powerfully presented. Colin Heydt charts the history of practical morality - what we ought to do and to be - from the 1670s, when practical ethics arising from Protestant natural law gained an institutional foothold in England, to early British responses to the French Revolution around 1790. He examines the conventional philosophical positions concerning the content of morality, and utilizes those conventions to reinterpret the work of key figures including Locke, Hume, and Smith. Situating these positions in their thematic and historical contexts, he shows how studying them challenges our assumptions about the originality, intended audience, and aims of philosophical argument during this period. His rich and readable book will appeal to a range of scholars and students.

Part I. Foundations: 1. 'Morality not in accordance with virtues but in accordance with duties': the Pufendorfian shift in moral philosophy
2. The structure of practical ethics: duty and virtue
3. The structure of practical ethics: duty and right
Part II. Relations to God: 4. Duties to God, revelation, and morality's history
5. Breaking with convention: Hume, Smith, moral philosophy, and the God of natural religion
Part III. Relations to Self: 6. Moral relations to self and the significance of self-harm
7. Anthropological optimism, pessimism, and the scope of self-cultivation
Part IV. Relations to Others: 8. Relating to others: natural rights and community
9. Why not polygamy? Natural law and the family
10. Political jurisprudence and its limits.

Subject Areas: Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ], Western philosophy: c 1600 to c 1900 [HPCD], Philosophy [HP], British & Irish history [HBJD1]