Gordon Graham

This chapter places succeeding chapters, and the relation between them, in a narrative intellectual history of philosophy in Scotland after the Enlightenment, as well as its influence in intellectual developments abroad. It highlights a recurrent instability that lies within the Scottish Enlightenment project of a ‘science of human nature’, namely the tension between traditional metaphysical questions, and the emerging empirical sciences of economics, politics, sociology, and psychology. It traces the slow fracturing of the Enlightenment project, and its replacement by a division between philosophical Idealism on the one hand and positivistic social science on the other. The chapter concludes by exploring the impact of this division into the twentieth century.

This chapter is divided into three separate sections devoted in order to Europe, North America, and Australasia. In the first section, attention is given to the reception of Scottish philosophical writings principally in France and Germany, from the late decades of the eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century. The second section recounts the place and influence of Scottish philosophy in the liberal arts colleges of colonial America, and the great influence of key figure such as Francis Allison, John Witherspoon, and Samuel Stanhope Smith in post-revolutionary politics and education. The story is traced into the early years of the twentieth century, with some reference to John Clark Murray and the place of Scottish philosophy in Canada also. The third section deals with the role of philosophy in the establishment of universities in Australia. It details the notable number of Scottish educated philosophers who contributed to the study of philosophy in Australia and ends with the best known of them—John Anderson.

This concluding chapter addresses the conceptual questions that arise in connection with identifying a philosophical tradition, and giving it a distinctive national label. It argues against the common identification of ‘Scottish philosophy’ with the ‘School of Common Sense’, and argues that Francis Hutcheson initiated an approach to philosophical questions that pre-dates the appeal to common sense developed by Reid. It contends that the ‘School of Common Sense’ was just one attempt to formulate a satisfactory response to David Hume. By examining the work of Andrew Seth and Henry Jones, it explores the idea of a shared philosophical agenda, and argues that a common project rooted in a long-standing institutional framework is what sustained the Scottish philosophical intellectual tradition. The chapter ends by considering the factors that may be said to have brought that tradition to an end.

This chapter recounts the rise, eminence, and rapid fall in the philosophical standing of Sir William Hamilton. It sets out the philosophical resources that Hamilton called upon to amend and sustain the ‘common sense’ philosophy of Thomas Reid, responding especially to the criticisms of Thomas Brown. It examines in detail the criticisms that were brought against his philosophy from both sympathizers and opponents. Special attention is given to books on Hamilton published in the nineteenth by Henry Calderwood, Hutchison Stirling, and most notably J. S. Mill’s hugely influential ‘Examination’ of Hamilton. The chapter aims to explain both the high regard in which Hamilton was widely held and the reasons for his speedy relegation to the status of a minor philosopher. It also aims at a ‘Re-examination’ by assessing the cogency of Mill’s criticisms.

This chapter discusses four principal themes of Scottish aesthetics over the course of the eighteenth century. The first is the question of ‘taste’ and its relation to the perception and reality of beauty. Does beauty exist independently of its being perceived, or is it in some sense the product of our perception? The second is the matter of aesthetic criticism. Can aesthetic judgements be rational, and if so on what basis? The third main topic is the rhetorical use of language. Is oratory an art? If it is, how does rhetoric relate to literary and poetic language, to the expression of thought and the cogency of argument? Finally, is there something to be learned on these subjects from the study of the origins of language? On each of these topics, the Scottish philosophers had interesting, insightful, and in some cases enduringly important things to say.

Adam Smith and J-J Rousseau share some common ground when it comes to religion, namely that they were born into and educated in cultural contexts deeply shaped by Reformed Christianity. However, close consideration of their writings on religion reveal marked difference. This paper explores those differences and finds that Rousseau and Smith are radically at odds on this score. Smith has almost nothing to say about personal spirituality, and locates the significance of religion in its social role. Rousseau, on the other hand, accords religion no social role whatever, and finds its value to be purely of a personal and spiritual nature. This difference is not without some contemporary relevance, since it highlights some of the issues surrounding the distinction between ‘religion’ and ‘spirituality’ in modern secularized societies.