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34The “historical question” at the end of the Scottish Enlightenment: Dugald Stewart on the natural origin of religion, universal consent, and religious diversityIntellectual History Review 28 (4): 529-554. 2018.This study examines the leading early nineteenth-century Scottish moral philosopher Dugald Stewart’s discussion of the origin and development of religion. Stewart developed his account in his final work, The Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man (1828), in an effort to show that the fact that polytheism was the first religion of humankind does not undermine the truth of monotheism. He wrote in response to similar discussions presented in David Hume’s “Natural History of Religion” (175…Read more
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31The Scottish Enlightenment: Human Nature, Social Theory and Moral Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Christopher J. Berry (edited book)Edinburgh University Press. 2021.
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24Utilitarianism in the Age of Enlightenment: The Moral and Political Thought of William PaleyIntellectual History Review 30 (2): 352-354. 2020.
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23The Reception of ‘That Bigoted Silly Fellow’ James Beattie's Essay on Truth in Britain 1770–1830History of European Ideas 41 (8): 1049-1079. 2015.SummaryThis article examines the Scottish philosopher James Beattie's controversial work of moral philosophy An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, noted for its pugnacious attack on the sceptical philosophy of David Hume. Usually treated only as an ephemeral success in the early 1770s, the Essay actually had two distinct periods of enormous popularity that account for its contemporary significance in the period between 1770 and 1830. The prominence of the Essay is demonstrated by its…Read more
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22Hobbes on Politics and Religion, edited by Van Apeldoorn, Laurens and Robin DouglassHobbes Studies 32 (2): 243-247. 2019.
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21The imagination in Hume’s philosophy: the canvas of the mind: by Timothy M. Costelloe, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2018, 312 pp., £80.00 (hb), ISBN: 978-1-474436397British Journal for the History of Philosophy 28 (1): 202-204. 2020.Volume 28, Issue 1, January 2020, Page 202-204.
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20William Falconer’s Remarks on the Influence of Climate(1781) and the study of religion in Enlightenment EnglandIntellectual History Review 28 (2): 293-315. 2018.This study argues that the English-born, Edinburgh-educated and Bath-based physician William Falconer (1744–1824) authored the only stadial history published during the British Enlightenment that analysed the influence of socio-economic context upon religious belief. A survey of the conjectural histories of religion written by the leading literati demonstrates that discussion of religion by the Scottish literati was undertaken separate from the “Scottish narrative” of stadial economic and politi…Read more
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17Archibald Campbell's Necessity of Revelation —the Science of Human Nature's First Study of ReligionHistory of European Ideas 41 (6): 728-746. 2015.SummaryThis article argues that Archibald Campbell's Necessity of Revelation can be viewed as the first application of the ‘science of human nature’, a characteristic branch of the Scottish Enlightenment, to the study of religious belief. Adopting Baconian and Newtonian methodological principles, Campbell set hypotheses, collected historical data, and inferred conclusions about the capabilities of human nature to come to fundamental religious ideas without the aid of revelation. He did so not on…Read more
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17David Hume and the myth of the ‘Warburtonian School’History of European Ideas 49 (2): 200-223. 2023.David Hume (1711–1776) believed a ‘confederacy of authors’, brought together by the notoriously pugnacious William Warburton (1698–1779), were his most consistent and scurrilous critics. Warburton and his ‘School’ were Hume’s bêtes noires and embodied so much of what he fought against. Only there is reason to believe that the ‘Warburtonian School’ was more a useful fiction than a historical reality. The following deep dive into Humeana and the ‘stuff of anecdote’ digs up substantial conclusions …Read more
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16Gibbon’s Christianity: religion, reason, and the fall of RomeHistory of European Ideas 49 (2): 477-479. 2023.Gibbon was a far more subtle, serious and empathetic historian of the triumph of Christianity than his reputation as a sneering infidel historian implies, or so argues Liebert in this short and wel...
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16A glorious liberty: Frederick Douglass and the fight for an antislavery constitutionIntellectual History Review 32 (2): 345-346. 2022.
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15The history of political thought: a very short introduction The history of political thought: a very short introduction, by Richard Whatmore, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2021, 160 pp., £8.99/$11.95 (pb), ISBN 978-0-198853725 (review)Intellectual History Review 33 (4): 761-763. 2023.We are living through a cultural moment in which strident criticisms are being made of the ethical validity and utility of the discipline of the history of political thought (H.P.T.). While not alo...
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15Egyptomania and religion in James Burnett, Lord Monboddo’s ‘History of Man’History of European Ideas 47 (1): 119-139. 2021.ABSTRACT The Scottish judge and ‘eccentric’ philosopher James Burnett, Lord Monboddo’s (1714–1799) significance within Enlightenment thought is usually seen as stemming from his Origin and Progress of Language (6 vols., 1773–1792). The OPL was a major contribution to the Enlightenment’s debate over the philosophy of language, and established Monboddo’s reputation as an innovative and influential, yet controversial and credulous proto-anthropologist. In the following I explore Monboddo’s Egyptoma…Read more
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13Beyond anglicised politeness: Addison in eighteenth-century ScotlandHistory of European Ideas 48 (1): 3-22. 2022.ABSTRACT Joseph Addison played a key role in Nicholas Phillipson's pioneering studies of eighteenth-century Scottish culture and philosophy. Post-Union Scots were in search of renewed civic purpose now political power had headed to Westminster. They found it in Addison's Spectator essays discussing virtuous living. This article pays homage to Phillipson's work by expanding the scope of the study of Addison's reception in eighteenth-century Scotland. A survey of the publishing history of Addison'…Read more
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13Adam Smith: by Craig Smith, Cambridge, Polity, 2020, viii, 210 pp., £16.99 (paperback), £55 (hardback), ISBN 9781509518234 (review)History of European Ideas 47 (5): 811-812. 2021.
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12Conservatism: the fight for a tradition: by Edmund Fawcett, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2020, 544 pp., £30.00/$35.00 (hardback), ISBN 9780691174105 (review)History of European Ideas 47 (6): 1040-1042. 2021.
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12Religion, scepticism and John Gregory’s therapeutic science of human natureHistory of European Ideas 46 (7): 916-933. 2020.ABSTRACT This article recovers the discussion of the relationship between religion, human nature and happiness in the Scottish Enlightenment physician John Gregory’s (1724–1773) A Comparative View of Human Nature (1765). Through examining Gregory’s best-selling but understudied text, this article explores how the Aberdeen Enlightenment’s own branch of the wider Scottish ‘science of human nature’, centred at the famous Aberdeen Philosophical Society, was as deeply concerned with the study of reli…Read more
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12Anecdotes of Enlightenment: human nature from Locke to Wordsworth Anecdotes of Enlightenment: human nature from Locke to Wordsworth, by James Robert Wood, Charlottesville, VA, and London, University of Virginia Press, 2019, xv + 241pp., $49.00(hb), ISBN 978-0-8139-4220-9 (review)Intellectual History Review. forthcoming.
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11Principles and agents: the British slave trade and its abolitionHistory of European Ideas 49 (3): 633-636. 2023.The paradox that has challenged historians of abolitionism is how Britain’s outlawing of trafficking of enslaved Africans in 1807 could take place when the country’s involvement in the trade was as...
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9Human empire: mobility and demographic thought in the British Atlantic World, 1500–1800 Human empire: mobility and demographic thought in the British Atlantic World, 1500–1800, by Ted McCormick, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, Ideas in Context, 2022, 320 pp., £75 (hardback), ISBN: 978-1009123266 (review)History of European Ideas. forthcoming.This review roundtable discusses Ted McCormick’s Human Empire: Mobility and Demographic Thought in the British Atlantic World, 1500–1800, an ambitious study charting the transformation of early mod...
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8The imagination in Hume’s philosophy: the canvas of the mind: by Timothy M. Costelloe, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2018, 312 pp., £80.00 (hb), ISBN: 978-1-474436397 (review)British Journal for the History of Philosophy 28 (1): 202-204. 2020.Volume 28, Issue 1, January 2020, Page 202-204.
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8Introduction to a Symposium on Gary Kates, The books that made the European Enlightenment: a history in 12 case studies_ _ Introduction to a Symposium on Gary Kates, _The books that made the European Enlightenment: a history in 12 case studies_ , London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2022, 456 pp., £75 (hbk), £24.99 (pbk), £22.49 (ebook), ISBN: 9781350277656 (review)History of European Ideas 50 (2): 317-318. 2024.Study of the European Enlightenment could do with a fillip. Perhaps the best tonic we have is combining the close reading of significant works with the study of print history and reader reception....
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7Introduction: The Work of Christopher J. Berry – An AppreciationIn R. J. W. Mills & Craig Smith (eds.), The Scottish Enlightenment: Human Nature, Social Theory and Moral Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Christopher J. Berry, Edinburgh University Press. pp. 1-25. 2021.
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7Introduction to a Symposium on Gary Kates, The books that made the European Enlightenment: a history in 12 case studies : London, Bloomsbury Academic, 2022, 456 pp., £75 (hbk), £24.99 (pbk), £22.49 (ebook), ISBN: 9781350277656 (review)History of European Ideas 50 (2): 317-318. 2024.Study of the European Enlightenment could do with a fillip. Perhaps the best tonic we have is combining the close reading of significant works with the study of print history and reader reception....
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7James Beattie, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the character of Common Sense philosophyHistory of European Ideas 46 (6): 793-810. 2020.ABSTRACT Professor of Moral Philosophy at Marischal College, Aberdeen, James Beattie (1735–1803) was one of the most prominent literary figures of late eighteenth-century Britain. His major works, An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth (1770) and the two-canto poem The Minstrel (1771–1774), were two of the best-sellers of the Scottish Enlightenment and were key to Beattie’s role in the emergence of both the ‘Scottish School’ of Common Sense Philosophy and British Romanticism. Intellect…Read more
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7Politics, religion and ideas in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain: essays in honour of Mark Goldie Politics, religion and ideas in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain: essays in honour of Mark Goldie, ed. Justin Champion, John Coffey, Tim Harris and John Marshall,Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 2019, 341pp., £80.00 (hardback), ISBN 978-1783274505 (review)Intellectual History Review. forthcoming.
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7The decline of magic: Britain in the EnlightenmentIntellectual History Review 31 (4): 722-724. 2021.
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6British Enlightenment theatre: dramatizing differenceIntellectual History Review 1-2. forthcoming.
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6Religion, Enlightenment and Empire: British Interpretations of Hinduism in the Eighteenth Century Religion, Enlightenment and Empire: British Interpretations of Hinduism in the Eighteenth Century, by Jessica Patterson, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2021, 350 pp., £90 (hb), ISBN 978-1-316510636 (review)Intellectual History Review 33 (4): 771-773. 2023.In the decades following the British victory at the Battle of Plassey (1757), officials of the East India Company transmitted new knowledge of Indian religious texts and traditions to European read...