The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment

Provides a comprehensive introduction to the full range of achievements of the Scottish thinkers who so profoundly influenced western culture.

Alexander Broadie (Edited by), Craig Smith (Edited by)

9781108420709, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 September 2019

394 pages
23.5 x 15.6 x 2.5 cm, 0.66 kg

The second edition of this Companion presents a philosophical perspective on an eighteenth-century phenomenon that has had a profound influence on Western culture. A distinguished team of contributors examines the writings of David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, Adam Ferguson and other Scottish thinkers. Their subjects range across philosophy, natural theology, economics, anthropology, natural science, and law and the arts, and in addition, they relate the Scottish Enlightenment to its historical context and assess its impact and legacy. The result is a comprehensive and accessible volume that illuminates the richness, the intellectual variety and the underlying unity of this important movement. This volume contains five entirely new chapters on morality, the human mind, aesthetics, sentimentalism and political economy, and eleven other chapters have been significantly revised and updated. The book will be of interest to a wide range of readers in philosophy, theology, literature and the history of ideas.

Introduction Alexander Broadie
1. Several contexts of the Scottish Enlightenment Roger L. Emerson and Mark G. Spencer
2. Religion and rational theology M. A. Stewart
3. The human mind and its powers Jacqueline Taylor
4. Anthropology: the 'original' of human nature Aaron Garrett
5. Science in the Scottish Enlightenment Paul Wood
6. Scepticism and common sense Heiner F. Klemme
7. Moral sense theories and other sentimentalist accounts of the foundations of morals Christel Fricke
8. The political theory of the Scottish Enlightenment Fania Oz-Salzberger
9. Political economy Craig Smith
10. Natural jurisprudence and the theory of justice Knud Haakonssen
11. Legal theory John W. Cairns
12. Sociality and socialisation Christopher J. Berry
13. Historiography Murray G. H. Pittock
14. Art and aesthetic theory Catherine Labio
15. Literature and sentimentalism Deidre Dawson
16. The impact on America: Scottish philosophy and the American founding Samuel Fleischacker
17. The nineteenth-century aftermath Gordon Graham
Select bibliography, Index.

Subject Areas: Western philosophy: Enlightenment [HPCD1], British & Irish history [HBJD1]