Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 The contexts of the Scottish Enlightenment
- 2 Religion and rational theology
- 3 The human mind and its powers
- 4 Anthropology: the ‘original’ of human nature
- 5 Science in the Scottish Enlightenment
- 6 Scepticism and common sense
- 7 Moral sense and the foundations of morals
- 8 The political theory of the Scottish Enlightenment
- 9 Economic theory
- 10 Natural jurisprudence and the theory of justice
- 11 Legal theory
- 12 Sociality and socialisation
- 13 Historiography
- 14 Art and aesthetic theory
- 15 The impact on Europe
- 16 The impact on America: Scottish philosophy and the American founding
- 17 The nineteenth-century aftermath
- Select bibliography
- Index
17 - The nineteenth-century aftermath
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- 1 The contexts of the Scottish Enlightenment
- 2 Religion and rational theology
- 3 The human mind and its powers
- 4 Anthropology: the ‘original’ of human nature
- 5 Science in the Scottish Enlightenment
- 6 Scepticism and common sense
- 7 Moral sense and the foundations of morals
- 8 The political theory of the Scottish Enlightenment
- 9 Economic theory
- 10 Natural jurisprudence and the theory of justice
- 11 Legal theory
- 12 Sociality and socialisation
- 13 Historiography
- 14 Art and aesthetic theory
- 15 The impact on Europe
- 16 The impact on America: Scottish philosophy and the American founding
- 17 The nineteenth-century aftermath
- Select bibliography
- Index
Summary
It is a striking fact that while Scottish philosophy of the eighteenth century is studied to the point of being a major academic industry, Scottish philosophy in the nineteenth century is not only neglected but virtually unknown. Hume, Reid and Hutcheson are names familiar to almost all philosophers; Hamilton, Ferrier and Bain to hardly any. Evidence for this sharp contrast between eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Scottish philosophy lies in this startling statistic: the Philosopher's Index currently lists over 4,000 publications relating to the first three names, fewer than 40 relating to the next three.
Why should this be the case? Why should one period of Scottish philosophy be so perennially interesting and intensively studied and that which followed it have fallen so completely into oblivion? In this chapter I aim to offer a partial answer to this question, an answer couched in terms of the story of Scottish philosophy itself. The nineteenth century, I shall argue, saw the unravelling of the great philosophical project that had animated the eighteenth.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment , pp. 338 - 350Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003
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