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
16 - The impact on America: Scottish philosophy and the American founding
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
Over the past half century or so, there has been an outpouring of literature on the many ways in which Scottish thinkers influenced America in the period of the founding. For social and cultural historians, this literature has meant a deeper understanding of the 'outlying provinces' of the British Empire; for historians of ideas, it has meant a better understanding of the reception of Scottish thought in its time; and for political theorists, it has inspired a reinterpretation of the political vision represented by the founding of the American republic.
As a political philosopher, I am primarily interested in this last project. The Scottish influence has been used to counter an earlier picture of the founders, according to which they were putting into practice the natural-rights theories, and concomitant radical individualism, to be found in Hobbes and Locke. So the debate between the Scottish and the Hobbesian-Lockean view of the founders is part of a larger controversy over whether the political philosophy expressed in the American Declaration of Independence and Constitution is primarily a ‘liberal’ or a ‘civic republican’ one. Like most scholars who attend to the role of the Scots, I agree that the Hobbes-Locke picture, still very common in schools and popular literature, is badly misleading.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment , pp. 316 - 337Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003
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