• A green field with a hedge in the left background. The field is covered with thin, eerie mist.

Community Experiences of Sectarianism

In the August 2015 issue of Scottish Affairs, a team of researchers explore the findings of a study they carried out for the Scottish government on community experiences of sectarianism. Here, one of the authors, Kay Goodall, sets out some…

The Post-Mortem of Labour Scotland

Three years ago, Gerry Hassan and I published a book entitled ‘The Strange Death of Labour Scotland’. We envisaged that, unless radical steps were taken, Labour’s influence in Scotland would steadily decline. Speaking personally, I did not envisage a total…

The Absence of God and Its Contextual Significance for Hume

In our featured article this week, “The Absence of God and Its Contextual Significance for Hume”, David Fergusson of the University of Edinburgh sets Hume’s thoroughgoing religious scepticism within the context of the Scottish Enlightenment. Much of Hume scholarship today…

Scottish Affairs

“Spotlight on”…Scottish Affairs

Scottish Affairs is published quarterly in February, May, August and November of each year. Founded in 1992, it is Scotland’s longest running journal on contemporary political and social issues. Fully peer-reviewed, Scottish Affairs provides the opportunity for analysis of Scottish…

Realism and Scepticism

By Gordon Graham For the Scottish philosophers of the 18th and 19th centuries, Hume was the great ‘sceptic’ awaiting an answer, which many of them thought Thomas Reid had provided. Thanks to Norman Kemp Smith’s seminal papers, philosophers in the…

Common Sense and Moral Philosophy

By Gordon Graham Scottish philosophy has regularly been identified with the ‘School of Common Sense’ because of the high regard in which Thomas Reid’s Inquiry was held in his lifetime and for many decades thereafter. Nevertheless, some major Scottish philosophers…

Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games

Sports and the Commodification of Scottish Identity

Glasgow 2014 opened with a celebration of Scottish folklore and identity, themes intrinsically associated with Highland Games. Read: Manly Games, Athletic Sports and the Commodification of Scottish Identity: Caledonian Gatherings in New Zealand to 1915, by Tanya Bueltmann, Scottish Historical…

Scotland’s Referendum

By Michael Rosie, Special Editor for Scottish Affairs, Volume 23.3 (2014) Scotland does not stand still. The last 15 years have seen four elections, the death of a First Minister, the transition from a Scottish Executive to a Scottish Government.…