Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T00:06:43.806Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE PHILLIPSONIAN ENLIGHTENMENT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 March 2014

COLIN KIDD
COLIN KIDD*
Affiliation:
School of History, University of St Andrews E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

A founding editor of Modern Intellectual History (MIH), an acclaimed biographer of Adam Smith and a prolific essayist on all aspects of the Scottish Enlightenment, from its origins to its aftermath, Nicholas Phillipson needs little introduction to the readers of this journal. However, Phillipson's recent retirement from his editorial duties on MIH provides a suitable moment to celebrate one of the pioneers in our field. When the current editors set out to commission a historiographical overview of Phillipson's oeuvre and career, I was honoured to be asked and delighted to accept.

Type
Essays
Information
Modern Intellectual History , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , April 2014 , pp. 175 - 190
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Scott, W. R., Francis Hutcheson (Cambridge, 1900)Google Scholar.

2 Forbes, D., “Scientific Whiggism: Adam Smith and John Millar”, Cambridge Journal, 7 (1954), 643–70Google Scholar.

3 Trevor-Roper, H. R., “The Scottish Enlightenment”, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 58 (1967), 1635–58Google Scholar.

4 Robertson, J., “The Scottish Contribution to the Enlightenment”, in Wood, P., ed., The Scottish Enlightenment: Essays in Reinterpretation (Rochester, NY, 2000), 37–62, 37Google Scholar. Phillipson took Forbes's special subject in a cohort of students which included Quentin Skinner and John Dunn.

5 Macfie, A. L., The Individual in Society: Papers on Adam Smith (London, 1967)Google Scholar; Skinner, A., “Economics and History: The Scottish Enlightenment”, Scottish Journal of Political Economy, 12 (1965), 1–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Skinner, , “Natural History in the Age of Adam Smith”, Political Studies, 14 (1967), 32–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Meikle, H. W., Some Aspects of Later Seventeenth-Century Scotland (Glasgow, 1947)Google Scholar.

7 Mossner, E., The Life of David Hume (Oxford, 1970)Google Scholar.

8 Bryson, G., Man and Society: The Scottish Inquiry of the Eighteenth Century (Princeton, 1945)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lehmann, W. C., Adam Ferguson and the Beginnings of Modern Sociology (New York, 1930)Google Scholar; Lehmann, , John Millar of Glasgow, 1735–1801: His Life and Thought and His Contribution to Sociological Analysis (Cambridge, 1960)Google Scholar.

9 Pascal, R., “Property and Society: The Scottish Historical School of the Eighteenth Century”, Modern Quarterly, 1 (1938), 167–79Google Scholar; Meek, R., “The Scottish Contribution to Marxist Sociology”, in Saville, J., ed., Democracy and the Labour movement (London, 1954), 84–102Google Scholar.

10 David Daiches, The Paradox of Scottish Culture (London, 1964). McElroy, D., Scotland's Age of Improvement (Pullman, WA, 1969)Google Scholar.

11 Phillipson, , “James Beattie and the Defence of Common Sense”, in Fabian, B., ed., Festschrift für Rainer Gruenter (Heidelberg, 1978), 145–54, 146Google Scholar; Phillipson, , “Hume as Moralist: A Social Historian's Perspective”, in Brown, S. C., ed., Philosophers of the Enlightenment (Brighton, 1979), 140–61, 144Google Scholar; Phillipson, , “The Scottish Enlightenment”, in Porter, R. and Teich, M., eds., The Enlightenment in National Context (Cambridge, 1981), 19–40, 38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Phillipson, , “Adam Smith as Civic Moralist”, in Hont, I. and Ignatieff, M., eds., Wealth and Virtue: the shaping of political economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1983), 179–202, 201CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Clive, J. and Bailyn, B., “England's Cultural Provinces: Scotland and America”, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, 11 (1954), 200–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Phillipson, , “Culture and Society in the Eighteenth-Century Province: The Case of Edinburgh and the Scottish Enlightenment”, in Stone, L., ed., The University in Society, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1975), 2: 407–48, 410 nGoogle Scholar.

14 Phillipson, , “Towards a Definition of the Scottish Enlightenment”, in Fritz, P. and Williams, D., eds., City and Society in the Eighteenth Century (Toronto, 1973), 125–47, 127Google Scholar.

15 Phillipson, N., “Scottish Public Opinion and the Union in the age of the Association”, in Phillipson, R. and Mitchison, R., eds., Scotland in the Age of Improvement (Edinburgh, 1970), 125–47, 142–3Google Scholar.

16 Phillipson, “Culture and Society”, 407.

17 Cf. Phillipson, “Smith as Civic Moralist”.

18 This pioneering thesis was eventually published—unrevised—under the auspices of Scotland's learned society in the field of legal history: Phillipson, The Scottish Whigs and the Reform of the Court of Session 1785–1830, Stair Society 37 (Edinburgh, 1990).

19 Cf. Phillipson, , “Propriety, Property and Prudence: David Hume and the Defence of the Revolution”, in Phillipson, and Skinner, Q. R. D., eds., Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge, 1993), 302–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Phillipson, , “Lawyers, Landowners and the Civic Leadership of Post-Union Scotland”, Juridical Review, New Series, 21 (1976), 97–120Google Scholar; Phillipson, , “The Social Structure of the Faculty of Advocates in Scotland, 1661–1840”, in Harding, A., ed., Law-Making and Law-Makers in British History (London, Royal Historical Society, 1980), 145–56Google Scholar.

21 There were, of course, other influences, not least the social fact of being simultaneously welcome insider and keenly observant outsider in Scottish life. Although English by background, Phillipson had been largely educated in Aberdeen, at Aberdeen Grammar School and then Aberdeen University, before going to Cambridge. Phillipson's father, Andrew Phillipson (1910–77), an eminent veterinary physiologist and leading authority on ruminants, had been appointed from Cambridge to head the Department of Physiology at the Rowett Research Institute at Aberdeen. For the ODNB article on Andrew Phillipson, see www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/31545. Phillipson's first undergraduate degree at Aberdeen (1954–8) was in history and politics; here he came under the influence of a pioneering figure in the study of political and legal thought, the late J. H. “Jimmy” Burns (1921–2012). Phillipson also had a further period as an undergraduate at St Catharine's College, Cambridge (1958–60), and undertook National Service in the Royal Air Force (1960–62) flying Chipmunks—akin, perhaps, to Gibbon's time in the Hampshire militia—before embarking on doctoral research.

22 Phillipson, “Definition”, 125.

23 Carter, J. and Pittock, J., eds., Aberdeen and the Enlightenment (Aberdeen, 1987)Google Scholar; Hook, A. and Sher, R., eds., The Glasgow Enlightenment (East Linton, 1995)Google Scholar.

24 Phillipson, , “The Pursuit of Virtue in Scottish University Education: Dugald Stewart and Scottish Moral Philosophy in the Enlightenment”, in Phillipson, , ed., Universities, Society and the Future (Edinburgh, 1983), 82–101, 92Google Scholar.

25 Phillipson, “Definition”, 145.

26 Phillipson, “Culture and Society”, 416.

27 Ibid., 417.

28 Ibid., 437.

29 Phillipson, “Hume as Moralist”, 144.

30 Phillipson, “Culture and Society”, 437.

31 Phillipson, “Hume as Moralist”, 140.

32 Phillipson, , “Politics, Politeness and the Anglicisation of Early Eighteenth-Century Scottish Culture”, in Mason, R. A., ed., Scotland and England 1286–1815 (Edinburgh, 1987), 226–46Google Scholar.

33 Phillipson, , “Propriety”; Phillipson, “Politeness and Politics in the Reigns of Anne and the Early Hanoverians”, in Pocock, J. G. A. (ed), The Varieties of Political Thought 1500–1800 (Cambridge, 1993), 211–45Google Scholar.

34 Phillipson, “Definition”, 138; Phillipson, “Culture and Society”, 447.

35 Phillipson, “Culture and Society”, 448.

36 Ibid., 442.

37 Ibid., 448.

38 Ibid., 432.

39 Phillipson, “Beattie”, 147.

40 Phillipson, “Culture and Society”, 443.

41 Phillipson, “Beattie”, 148.

42 Phillipson, “Defintion”, 142.

43 Ibid., 136.

44 Phillipson, “Beattie”, 148.

45 Phillipson, “Pursuit of Virtue”, 97.

46 Ibid., 99.

47 See esp. Phillipson, “The Export of Enlightenment”, Times Literary Supplement, 2 July 1976, 823–4.

48 Phillpson, “Definition”, 147.

49 Phillipson, “Culture and Society”, 424.

50 Phillipson, “Politeness and Politics”; Phillipson, “Providence and Progress: An Introduction to the Historical Thought of Robertson, William”, in Brown, S. J., ed., William Robertson and the Expansion of Empire (Cambridge, 1997), 55–73Google Scholar.

51 See also Phillipson, , “Scott as Story-Teller: An Essay in Psychobiography”, in Bell, A. S., ed., Scott Bicentenary Essays (Edinburgh and London, 1973), 87–100Google Scholar.

52 Erikson and his theories are now themselves being contextualized; see Friedman, L., Identity's Architect: A Biography of Erik H. Erikson (London, 1999)Google Scholar.

53 See also the acute pen portraits in his account of Boswell's relationships with his wife and father: Phillipson, “Boswell at Forty”, Times Literary Supplement, 5 May 1978, 490–91.

54 Phillipson, Hume (London, 1989).

55 Phillipson, , Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life (London, 2010)Google Scholar.

56 Cf. Phillipson, , “Language, Sociability and History: Some Reflections on the Foundations of Adam Smith's Science of Man”, in Collini, S., Whatmore, R. and Young, B., eds., Economy, Polity and Society: British Intellectual History 1750–1950 (Cambridge, 2000), 70–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 For a fuller review see C. Kidd, “Maiden Aunt’, London Review of Books, 7 Oct. 2010.

58 Cf. Phillipson, “Politics, Politeness and Anglicisation”, 226.

59 Davie, G. E., The Democratic Intellect (Edinburgh, 1981; first published 1961)Google Scholar.

60 Phillipson, “The Evangelist of Common Sense”, Times Literary Supplement, 23 Oct. 1981, 1245–6.

61 Buckle, H. T., On Scotland and the Scotch Intellect, ed. Hanham, H. J. (Chicago, 1970)Google Scholar.

62 Phillipson, , “Henry Thomas Buckle on Scottish History and the Scottish Mind”, History of Education Quarterly, 14 (1974), 407–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 Phillipson, “Definition”, 128; Phillipson, “Culture and Society”, 417–18, 432.

64 Phillipson, , “Nationalism and Ideology”, in Wolfe, J. N., ed., Government and Nationalism in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1969), 167–88, 186Google Scholar.