It was in the nineteenth century that a philosophical enterprise begun in the eighteenth century was first identified as ‘Scottish philosophy’, and arguably, philosophical discussion and debate were more intense and more culturally prominent in nineteenth-century Scotland than it had ever been before. Yet, while philosophy in the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment is now studied to the point of being a major academic industry, Scottish philosophy in the nineteenth century is virtually unknown. Hutcheson, Hume, Reid and Smith are names familiar to almost all philosophers, Brown, Hamilton, Ferrier and Bain to hardly any. This chapter aims to explain why one period of Scottish philosophy should remain perennially interesting and intensively studied and the period that followed it should fall so nearly into oblivion. It elaborates an answer couched in terms of the story of Scottish philosophy itself and argues that the nineteenth century saw the unravelling of the great philosophical project that had animated the eighteenth.

This chapter examines the awareness of modern philosophy and its methods that Scottish thinkers brought to bear on the workings of the human mind. Both George Turnbull and Thomas Reid extend elements of Newton’s regulae, while they and others also deploy methods from Bacon, natural history, and the experimental philosophy more generally. Locke figures also as an important source of explanation for perception, and the Scots, principally Francis Hutcheson, extend this perceptual model to account for the sense of beauty and the moral sense. Both Turnbull and David Hume are notable for their constructive development of associationism, while Reid, emphasizing the objects of the mind s conscious awareness, introduces a new realism into Scottish philosophy.

The chapter explores conjectural history, stadial history, and anthropology in the Scottish Enlightenment. In the writings of Adam Smith, John Millar, David Hume, Lord Kames, and many others concepts that had been assumed to have no history — such as sentiment — were rethought against the background of a theory of historical stages and progress. Special attention is paid to the analogies between animals and humans, and to race.

Driven above all by the desire to reconcile aesthetic and moral value, Scottish philosophers, poets and artists made essential contributions to eighteenth-century aesthetics and art theory. This essay examines some of the key moments in the history of Scottish aesthetics from the 1720s to the early years of the nineteenth century. In particular, it surveys the ways in which Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, George Turnbull, Allan Ramsay, Lord Kames, William Duff, Alexander Gerard, Thomas Reid, Archibald Alison and Dugald Stewart debated the respective roles of the senses, reason and the imagination in the appreciation of beauty; asked whether beauty is in the object or the subject; pondered the relationship between virtue, wealth and aesthetic judgement; and considered the existence of a universal standard of taste.

The legal theory of the Scottish Enlightenment is marked by the engagement of the legal profession generally in theorizing, with a strong interest in history and law, leading on to investigations of a proto-anthropological and proto–sociological nature. This led to a move away from an emphasis on legislation to one on development of the law through the formulation of new rules through the decision of specific cases. The legal theorizing of the Scottish Enlightenment did not lead to codification projects, but favoured piecemeal incremental reform of the law through the operation of the courts in the elaboration of law in their decisions and opinions.

Interest in what has been called a ‘moral sense’ originated in the late 17th century, as part of a philosophical debate about humans’ moral nature. Participants in the debate agreed on rejecting four views of human morality commonly held at the time. They found (1) the Cambridge Platonists’ moral rationalism and (2) Gershom Carmichael’s (and others’) natural law theories of morality too remote from actual processes of moral judgment and decision making; (3) they rejected Thomas Hobbes’ psychological egoism as excessively reductive; and (4) they found moral relativism objectionable on normative grounds, since they were committed to the defence of moral universalism. The article provides an overview over the history of moral sense theories. It briefly presents the versions developed by Thomas Burnet, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Francis Hutcheson, Joseph Butler, and Henry Home Lord Kames, and then provides a brief account of the moral theories by David Hume and Adam Smith who, while adherents of moral sentimentalism, rejected the assumption of a moral sense.

The Scottish Enlightenment, a remarkable intellectual flourish that lasted for much of the eighteenth century, was an event of great significance for Western culture. During it, scientific, economic, philosophical and other advances were made which had an immediate impact in Europe, America and beyond, and the impact is still felt. The seminal writings of the time are discussed by scholars who return to them in search of insights that can then be put to work in ongoing debates. Hence, though there is an antiquarian interest in the Scottish Enlightenment, interest in it is by no means solely antiquarian, as witness the numerous references we find to Hume, Smith, Reid and other Enlightenment thinkers in present-day discussions of contemporary issues. In this book the historical circumstances of the Scottish Enlightenment will be described; and thereafter attention is focused on the leading ideas, without however losing sight of the fact that the Scottish Enlightenment is a historical event located in a set of historical circumstances that were essential to the movement’s birth and growth. Attention is also focused on the highly social nature of the movement. The writers were held together by bonds of friendship; they argued and debated with each other and created many clubs and societies designed to facilitate discussion. This aspect of the Scottish Enlightenment is a crucial feature of it and will be noted in the following pages. But these historical and social considerations would hold our attention a good deal less if it were not for the brilliant ideas that were the products of all this high-level clubbing. In the end it is because of what they said, not because of whom they talked to, that Hume, Smith, Millar, Black, Hutton and others matter to us, and since the Scottish Enlightenment is essentially about ideas, this book is in large measure an investigation of those ideas.

Sentimentalism in eighteenth-century Scottish literature reflected the ideas of moral philosophers like Francis Hutcheson, David Hume and Adam Smith, who argued that our sense of morality has its origins in feelings aroused by impressions conveyed by the senses. The influence of Smith’s concept of the impartial spectator, an imaginary witness and judge of human interactions, is evident in novels by Henry Mackenzie and Tobias Smollett, whose characters’ emotional responses to scenes of suffering are described in great detail. In theatre, John Homes’ Douglas was deemed a success by the amount of tears shed by the audience, while Joanna Baillie’s plays dramatised moral sentiments by illustrating particular vices and virtues. Macpherson’s Ossianic poems became an international sensation through their nostalgic sentimentalism, which depicted the pure and noble virtues of a bygone era. Sentimentalism in the poetry of Robert Burns celebrates both individual subjectivity and common humanity through his treatment of universal themes like love and nature. Unlike the Romantic movement that would follow it, which tended to privilege individual autonomy and subjectivity over sociability, sentimentalism in Scottish literature depicted individuals as social beings whose sensibility was stimulated and defined by their interactions with others.

What impact did the Scottish Enlightenment have on the American founding? Given the variegated, feisty composition of the Scottish Enlightenment, this chapter resists the idea that that movement had any single, unequivocal effect on America. It instead surveys the rich array of ways in which Scottish thought found its way into America and then examines a series of interactions between particular Scottish thinkers and particular American activists. What was Frances Hutcheson’s influence on Thomas Jefferson? Did David Hume or Adam Smith have a greater influence on Madison? What lessons did various American educational leaders take away from Thomas Reid’s response to David Hume? By looking in detail at these three cases, the chapter attempts to convey the flavour, as well as the content, of the reception of Scottish philosophy in America.

From the premise that humans are social beings, the Scots develop negative and positive arguments. Negatively, they reject all contractarian/rationalistic accounts of social living and downplay any crucial role for ‘Great Men’. Positively, they emphasise the effects of socialisation and underline the factors underpinning social coherence (here called institutional stickiness). Customary ways of behaving, and the institutions thus constituted, not only stabilise but also constrain, and since habits are creatures of time, then it is gradual alterations in the sentiments of people that changes them. In contrast to any glib confidence in ‘progress’, the Scots are more cautious. They do believe in improvement, but it is not guaranteed and is a gradual process.

Adam Smith has acquired the reputation as the father of economics, but he was not alone among the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment in his interest in the emerging discipline of political economy. This chapter examines the broader context of the political economy of the Scottish Enlightenment and relates it to the general move from the mercantile attitudes behind the great disaster of the Darien project to the critique of them developed by Smith in the Wealth of Nations. The economic thinking of David Hume and Sir James Steuart and others is examined in order to illustrate the breadth of the Scottish contribution to the development of thinking about the economy.

This chapter argues for the centrality of the natural sciences in the Scottish Enlightenment. Beginning in the mid-seventeenth century, the activities of mathematical practitioners such as George Sinclair and virtuosi such as Sir Robert Sibbald laid the institutional foundations for the cultivation of natural knowledge in the Enlightenment era and incorporated the sciences of nature into Scotland s emerging public sphere. The restructuring of the Scottish universities in the decades following the Glorious Revolution enhanced the facilities for teaching and research in the sciences and, in doing so, fostered the rise of Newtonianism in Scotland. Newton’s writings inspired innovative work by Colin Maclaurin and other Scottish Newtonians across the many branches of mathematics and natural philosophy and also shaped the methods employed in the nascent ‘science of man’. The compatibility of the Newtonian system with religious belief, in turn, served to solidify the place of natural knowledge in Enlightenment culture, as did the harnessing of such knowledge to economic improvement. Even though the debate over James Hutton s theory of the earth in the 1790s challenged the alliance between science and religion, the natural sciences had by then established themselves as integral and vital components of the Scottish Enlightenment.