Hume and the Scottish Enlightenment

1978 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 94-109
Author(s):  
Duncan Forbes
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Technical Term ◽  
Civic Humanism ◽  
Century Thought

The term ‘Scottish Enlightenment’ annoys some Scottish historians, because to them it seems to suggest that a state of unenlightenment prevailed in Scotland before the mideighteenth century, but ‘enlightenment’ when used by the historian of ideas is simply a technical term to describe certain aspects of eighteenth-century thought. The trouble is in defining precisely what aspects of eighteenth-century thought it is meant to describe. Different people study the eighteenth century Scottish thinkers for different reasons; for Professor Pocock, for example, they belong to the tradition of ‘civic humanism’ and constitute one of his Machiavellian moments. But they are more widely known nowadays for the modernity and sophistication of their social theory.

Hume and the Scottish Enlightenment

1978 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 94-109
Author(s):  
Duncan Forbes
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Technical Term ◽  
Civic Humanism ◽  
Century Thought

The term ‘Scottish Enlightenment’ annoys some Scottish historians, because to them it seems to suggest that a state of unenlightenment prevailed in Scotland before the mideighteenth century, but ‘enlightenment’ when used by the historian of ideas is simply a technical term to describe certain aspects of eighteenth-century thought. The trouble is in defining precisely what aspects of eighteenth-century thought it is meant to describe. Different people study the eighteenth century Scottish thinkers for different reasons; for Professor Pocock, for example, they belong to the tradition of ‘civic humanism’ and constitute one of his Machiavellian moments. But they are more widely known nowadays for the modernity and sophistication of their social theory.

The Machiavellian Moment

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. G. A. Pocock ◽  
Richard Whatmore
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
American Revolution ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Social Consciousness ◽  
Civic Humanism ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Renaissance Italy ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Century Thought ◽  
The Ideal

Originally published in 1975, this book remains a landmark of historical and political thought. The book looks at the consequences for modern historical and social consciousness arising from the ideal of the classical republic revived by Machiavelli and other thinkers of Renaissance Italy. It shows that Machiavelli’s prime emphasis was on the moment in which the republic confronts the problem of its own instability in time, which the book calls the “Machiavellian moment.” After examining this problem in the works of Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and Giannotti, the book turns to the revival of republican ideology in Puritan England and in Revolutionary and Federalist America. It argues that the American Revolution can be considered the last great act of civic humanism of the Renaissance and it relates the origins of modern historicism to the clash between civic, Christian, and commercial values in eighteenth-century thought.

The Decay of Trade: The Politics of Economic Theory In Eighteenth-Century Britain

1996 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 319-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. Kleer
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Civic Humanism ◽  
Economic Theories ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Intellectual Traditions

In the last decade or so, intellectual historians have tried to alter and enhance our understanding of the Scottish Enlightenment by situating the classic writings in the context of contemporary political debates and intellectual traditions. Two main approaches have emerged to date, tied to the themes of natural jurisprudence and civic humanism respectively. While both have much to offer to historians of economic thought, the present paper seeks to evaluate only the latter. It focuses in particular on civic humanist interpretations of the economic theories of David Hume and Adam Smith.

Lord Dacre and the Politics of the Scottish Enlightenment

2005 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Kidd
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
North East ◽  
The Social ◽  
Romantic Movement ◽  
Scottish History

Hugh Trevor-Roper (Lord Dacre) made several iconoclastic interventions in the field of Scottish history. These earned him a notoriety in Scottish circles which, while not undeserved, has led to the reductive dismissal of Trevor-Roper's ideas, particularly his controversial interpretation of the Scottish Enlightenment, as the product of Scotophobia. In their indignation Scottish historians have missed the wider issues which prompted Trevor-Roper's investigation of the Scottish Enlightenment as a fascinating case study in European cultural history. Notably, Trevor-Roper used the example of Scotland to challenge Weberian-inspired notions of Puritan progressivism, arguing instead that the Arminian culture of north-east Scotland had played a disproportionate role in the rise of the Scottish Enlightenment. Indeed, working on the assumption that the essence of Enlightenment was its assault on clerical bigotry, Trevor-Roper sought the roots of the Scottish Enlightenment in Jacobitism, the counter-cultural alternative to post-1690 Scotland's Calvinist Kirk establishment. Though easily misconstrued as a dogmatic conservative, Trevor-Roper flirted with Marxisant sociology, not least in his account of the social underpinnings of the Scottish Enlightenment. Trevor-Roper argued that it was the rapidity of eighteenth-century Scotland's social and economic transformation which had produced in one generation a remarkable body of political economy conceptualising social change, and in the next a romantic movement whose powers of nostalgic enchantment were felt across the breadth of Europe.

scholarly journals From the organism of a body to the body of an organism: occurrence and meaning of the word ‘organism’ from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
TOBIAS CHEUNG
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Technical Term ◽  
Latin Word ◽  
Entire World

This paper retraces the occurrence of the word ‘organism’ in writings of different authors from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. It seeks to clarify chronological and conceptual shifts in the usage and meaning of the word. After earlier uses of the word in medieval sources, the Latin word organismus appeared in 1684 in Stahl's medico-physiological writings. Around 1700 it can be found in French (organisme), English (organism), Italian (organismo) and later also in German (Organismus). During the eighteenth century the word ‘organism’ generally referred to a specific principle or form of order that could be applied to plants, animals or the entire world. At the end of the eighteenth century the term became a generic name for individual living entities. From around 1830 the word ‘organism’ replaced the expressions ‘organic’ or ‘organized body’ as a recurrent technical term in the emerging biological disciplines.

Ethics and the Science of Legislation: Legislators, Philosophers, and Courts in Eighteenth-Century Scotland

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W Cairns
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Legal Philosophy ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment

This chapter examines how the jurisprudence of the Scottish Enlightenment influenced the reform of the Court of Session and its procedure. It first provides an overview of legislation and courts in eighteenth-century Scotland before discussing the idea of the ‘legislator’, with particular emphasis on some of the attitudes taken to it and the ambiguities of the term. It then considers the development of ethical theory in Scotland during the period, along with Adam Smith's legal philosophy. It also analyses Smith's science of legislation and its implications in the context of Scottish legal history. It concludes by showing how Scottish rejection of ethical rationalism and Smith's science of legislation provided what can be described as a sustained critique of the contemporary structure of the Court of Session and of its operation.

Borderlands of Identity and the Aesthetics of Disjuncture: An Introduction to Scottish Gothic

2017 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Carol Margaret Davison ◽  
Monica Germanà
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
British History ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Cultural Image ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
A Site ◽  
Enlightenment Philosophy

The idea of a ‘Gothic Scotland’, however, did not prove difficult to conceptualise in the late eighteenth century and the early nineteenth when a Romanticised portrait of Scotland furnished the nation’s most prevalent cultural image. As Ian Duncan astutely observes in regard to the politics of literary history, it was ‘Scotland’s fate to have become a Romantic object or commodity’ rather than a site of Romantic production (Duncan et al. 2004: 2). Such an objectification was ironic given the existence of Scottish Enlightenment philosophy and its rationally fuelled preoccupations. That objectification was also, notably, expressed in two forms – in both the lighter and darker, more Gothic, shades of Romanticism. Despite the differences in these two manifestations, the Highlands served in both as a synecdoche for a Scotland that exemplified two primary attitudes towards ‘British’ history and rapid modernisation.

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