The Scholastic and Conciliar Roots of Samuel Rutherford’s Political Philosophy

Samuel Rutherford’s Lex Rex remains a source of perennial fascination for historians of political thought. Written in 1644 in the heat of the Civil Wars it constitutes an intellectual and theological justification of the entire Covenanting movement and a landmark in the development of Protestant political theory. Rutherford’s argument in the Lex Rex was deeply indebted to scholastic and Conciliarist sources, and this chapter examines the way he deployed these, especially the political philosophy of John Mair and Jacques Almain, in order to construct a covenantal model of kingship undergirded by an interwoven framework of individual and communal rights. In doing so it shows the ongoing influence of the Conciliarist tradition on Scottish political discourse and also highlights unexpected connections between Rutherford’s Covenanting and his Augustinian and Scotistic theology of grace and freedom.

Scotland and the European Republic of Letters around 1700

This chapter focuses on the extent to which the discussion of philosophical subjects at Scottish universities drew on and was informed by the writings of thinkers in other parts of Europe around 1700. In spite of the practical difficulties in obtaining publications from abroad, Scots around 1700 had many, if not most, of the main recent texts available to them. Regents at the Scottish universities discussed contemporary European (including English) authors and used their writings. The references to heterodox or ‘radical’ authors such as Spinoza or Hobbes were generally dismissive, and sometimes bordered on caricature, but Scots did incorporate other up-to-date material into their lectures and disputations. On the whole, the intellectual concerns of Scots at this time were not radically dissimilar from those of the learned in many other parts of Europe.

Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of Scottish philosophy in the seventeenth century. Seventeenth-century Scotland produced a vibrant philosophical culture rich in achievement, with philosophers responsive to each other and responsive to philosophers of other countries. With regard to its philosophical culture, the century between the Age of Reformation and the Age of Enlightenment was an age in which there flourished the intellectual vigour that one might reasonably have expected given the philosophical achievements of the flanking centuries. Almost all the literature on Scottish philosophy attends exclusively to the philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment. This means that in providing a narrative that embraces philosophical writing antecedent to the Scottish Enlightenment, there is likely to be pressure to approach the subject in a teleological spirit, that is, by seeing the earlier century’s work in terms of the eighteenth century’s and attending to that earlier work on the basis of terms of reference dictated by what came later.

Robert Baron’s Metaphysica generalis on the Nature of Free Judgment

This chapter expounds the concept of ‘judgment’, a concept deployed by seventeenth-century Scottish philosophers in their philosophy of mind. Close attention is paid to the discussion on judgment in the Metaphysica generalis of Robert Baron, where he addresses the idea of judgment as a free act. A notable feature of Baron’s treatment of judgment is his contrast between, on the one hand, the logician’s concern with judgment as a bearer of truth in inferences in which canons of inference are deployed that ensure that if the judgments serving as premises are true then so also must be the judgment drawn as a conclusion from those premises; and, on the other hand, a judgment that is passed by an arbiter, a person agreed upon by two parties in dispute who undertake to accept the judgment he makes as to which party is in the right.

‘For the Advancement of Religion and Learning’

This chapter explores the history of the five universities which were active in Scotland during the seventeenth century. It places particular emphasis on the distinctive origins and evolution of each institution as an important determinant of academic experiences between 1600 and 1700. It shows that while the universities were a crucible in which key political and religious ideas which shaped seventeenth-century Scotland were forged, academic life itself was profoundly shaped by the wider controversy and upheaval afflicting Scottish society in this period.

James Dalrymple, 1st Viscount of Stair, on Legal Normativity

The chapter concentrates on Stair’s understanding of laws, whether human-made or divine. Scots law is a particular application of a rational legislation, which ultimately rests upon God’s perfections. However, positive law cannot be entirely derived from natural law, mainly because of the Fall and also for pragmatic reasons. One important aspect of Stair’s contribution to legal and moral philosophy is his distinction between conventional and obediential obligations (from the will of God only), and his account of the principle of ‘engagement’ at work in conventional obligations. Also, Stair’s view that a promise is binding per se, without acceptance by the promisee, deserves attention.

On the Edge of Reason

This chapter explores engagement at the Scottish universities with new intellectual trends between the Reformation and Enlightenment. The chapter begins by assessing the impact of the reformation on Scottish higher education, and the role of the humanist and reformer Andrew Melville in creating a network of modern godly seminaries out of the three pre-reformation universities and the two new protestant arts colleges established in Edinburgh and in New Aberdeen. It then reviews the limited range of Scottish curricular innovations that emerged in response to broader European developments in ‘proto-empirical’ thinking and research in the early seventeenth century. The chapter concludes that intellectual innovations at Scotland’s universities across this period were disjointed and circular, with teaching ultimately remaining Aristotelian in form and content. However, a broader continuity of aim—the creation of a ‘godly’ commonwealth and the education of ministers to populate it—underpinned all the developments in this period.

Human Nature, the Passions, and the Fall

This chapter offers an overview of some major themes and developments in academic and non-academic moral philosophy in seventeenth-century Scotland, and it addresses several points of comparison between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It includes a discussion of the strong presence of themes from Reformed theology in the ethical sections of academic theses philosophicæ, the characterization of different paths of reception of classical philosophers and schools, and the analysis of reactions to major seventeenth-century figures such as Descartes, Hobbes, and Henry More. The chapter closes with a discussion of George Mackenzie’s moral essays, which are an exceptional attempt to combine Christian and Stoic themes.

Scottish Philosophy Teachers at the French Protestant Academies in the Seventeenth Century

This chapter discusses the Scots who taught philosophy in the French protestant academies. It shows how and why the Scots were recruited, the role they played, and the interaction between the Scottish universities and the Protestant academies. The essay also focuses on the career of Mark Duncan and his contribution, through his book Institutiones Logicae, to the teaching of philosophy in Saumur. It appears that these Scottish teachers who, for the most, were masters for many years, had a share in the government of the academies and that they represented a very significant element in the intellectual life of French reformed education, well beyond the teaching of philosophy.

Logic in Seventeenth-Century Scottish Academic Philosophy

For a seventeenth-century Scottish regent, logic was preliminary to all other disciplines and secondary only to Latin. Logic was the trait-d’union between natural language (Latin, grammar, classical literature, the Bible) and the technical philosophical jargon. Logic was also important for theology and apologetics. Until the 1650s, logic is scholastic, centred on the trivium of logic, rhetoric, and grammar. The influence of Humanism, especially Ramism, is visible in the importance of induction, the treatment of method as a branch of logic, the orientation of logic towards practical tasks. Later in the century, alongside Aristotle, the key figures are René Descartes and Francis Bacon. The ‘old’ Aristotelian logic is made compatible with the ‘new’ method for the acquisition of new truths developed from Cartesian and Baconian insights. The reception of Descartes and Bacon has a common root in scholastic empiricism.