What the Scottish Enlightenment Can Teach Us about Science and Religion
Lewis Ashman explores how 18th century Scottish Enlightenment philosophers reconciled science with religious belief.
Q&A with JoEllen DeLucia: ‘Frances Wright’s A Few Days in Athens’
Frances Wright redefines feminist philosophy through Epicurus's ideals of pleasure and virtue in her 1822 novel.
David Hume and Scottish Philosophy
By Gordon Graham Not so very long ago, it was quite widely accepted that Britain’s most significant contribution to the development of philosophy was ‘empiricism’ and that its great exponents were the Englishman John Locke, the Irishman George Berkeley, and…
The semantic dimension of Newtonian Power
By Asher Jiang The concept of physical power in its modern forms has been introduced by Sir Isaac Newton in his great work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Although Newton has embedded this concept into a precise mathematical framework, the power…
Descartes in Scotland and pre-Enlightenment Scottish philosophy
By Giovanni Gellera Until recently, the question ‘What was philosophy like in Scotland before the Enlightenment?’ met a standard answer reminiscent of the famous Augustinian warning to those who dared to ask what was there before the beginning of time:…
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…
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…
Scottish Philosophy: Mind and Society
By Gordon Graham The tradition of Scottish philosophy had always had twin foci – the working of the human mind, and the social life of human beings. Some philosophical traditions hold these two areas of inquiry largely apart – Rationalism…
Scottish Philosophy: Neglect and Renewal
By Gordon Graham Philosophy played a key role in the curriculum of the Scottish universities from their foundation in the 15th century to the closing decade of the 19th century. By the middle of the 20th century, however, Hume’s great…