ABSTRACT John Pocock, Istvan Hont, and scholars of the Scottish Enlightenment have profoundly shaped how historians understand eighteenth-century debates about commerce and ‘commercial society’. Their influential interpretations – ranging from republican anxieties about corruption to the political-economic dynamics of trade and state power – continue to frame the field. This paper takes these positions as analytical starting points and examines them computationally. Using the largest existing corpus of eighteenth-century printed publications, we extract and model large-scale linguistic patterns to test three hypotheses about the discursive relationship of commerce to other topics of political thought. Against the backdrop of overall ‘commercialisation’ of political thought taking place, the evidence aligns most strongly with Hont’s account of ‘jealousy of trade’, in which commerce is entwined with foreign rivalry and power-political concerns. Pocockian republican scepticism receives more limited support, and the broader Scottish Enlightenment narrative is only weakly reflected at scale. By situating early modern authors within these wider discursive structures, the paper demonstrates how computational methods can clarify, modify, and challenge established historiographical interpretations.

Nella storia del pensiero occidentale, molte teorie hanno agito potentemente nell’affermazione di inclinazioni, sentimenti e concetti su cui si è poi concretamente costruita e retta la costituzione sociale: e questo al di là della loro valenza logico-sperimentale. Lo dimostra l’idea di “società civile” che, durante tutto il secolo XVIII, svolse un ruolo importante nello sviluppo dell’importante fenomeno giuspolitico che va sotto il nome di “illuminismo scozzese”. Con questo saggio, l’Autore focalizza l’attenzione sui personaggi di spicco di questo movimento (Smith, Hume, Kames, Robertson e Ferguson, fra gli altri), all’interno del quale venne via via a crearsi un “spazio concettuale” (conceptual space) con cui si sviluppò una nuova idea di società civile: un’idea dotata di sue peculiari caratteristiche rispetto alle nozioni di “Stato” e di “Costituzione”, con le quali veniva spesso associata negli altri contesti dottrinari. Nell’ambiente illuminista scozzese la società civile veniva invece ad essere identificata con quell’insieme di regole e di istituzioni che, assieme alle regole familiari, religiose ed economiche, includevano anche le abitudini, le credenze e i costumi capaci di tenere assieme il tessuto sociale di una nazione.

Pan-Europeanism as an Eighteenth-Century Scottish Form of Cosmopolitanism: Another Lineage of Thought from David Hume to Adam Smith

This essay deals with Scottish intellectual history, beginning with John Duns Scotus (d. 1308) and ending on the threshold of the early Scottish Enlightenment. The essay is structured through the prism of three perspectives that complement each other. The first level is the foundational idea that Scottish intellectual life between the Fourteenth and Eighteenth centuries was given a certain unity and continuity by the early impulse of Duns Scotus’ work. The crucial and tragic intersections of the ecclesiastical history played a major role in the development of a cultural uniqueness. The second level is that Scottish thought in this period was distinctively open to continental European influence, much more so than England, and certainly in the area of the law. Finally, there is a more implicit and submerged level according to which the specific features of the Enlightenment in Scotland were owing to this distinctively Scotist intellectual tradition and in particular to an entirely local evolution of a (reformed) scholastic orientation which - integrated with the theological novelties of Humanism and the Reformation as well as challenged by the breach of Cartesianism - ventures towards very original epistemological forms, which lay the foundations for the flowering of an exceptional period for Scotland.

Abstract While pre-modern intellectual cultures are recognized to have engaged with pessimism, nihilism is, by contrast, often understood to be a distinctly modern phenomenon. The sources of nihilism should then be traceable to or reflected in certain differences between modern and pre-modern thought. This paper identifies one such difference: a conceptual category for large-scale social and political phenomena understood as the product of human activity but not of human design. The paper briefly sketches the development of this concept in the Scottish Enlightenment and its development of a diachronic dimension in Hegel’s philosophy of history. It then points out the implications of this conceptual category both for our understanding of human beings as historical agents and for theories of normativity and the justification of social and political norms. These implications are identified by way of a contrast to the intellectual culture of Classical Greece. Finally, it is argued that this concept contributed to the development of trends in thought and culture commonly associated with nihilism by weakening notions of the historical agency of both individuals and groups.

ABSTRACT The aims of this paper are twofold. First, we draw attention to the contributions that Catharine Trotter Cockburn and her niece Anne Hepburn Arbuthnot made to Scottish Enlightenment philosophy and argue on these grounds that they should be acknowledged as Scottish philosophers. Second, we highlight how Cockburn and Arbuthnot, who, like other women of their day, were excluded from attending universities, created spaces for learning outside institutional settings. Cockburn’s parents and husband were Scottish and she lived in Scotland from 1726 until sometime between 1738 and 1740. Arbuthnot lived in Scotland for her entire life. Cockburn prepared her Remarks upon some Writers during the years that she spent in Scotland. We argue that her moral views share sufficient common ground with other Scottish writings that her Remarks upon some Writers deserves to be recognized as contributing to the moral debates in Scotland and beyond. The only extant writings by Arbuthnot that we are aware of are her correspondence with Cockburn and with the Scottish philosopher James Beattie. Based on a close analysis of Cockburn’s and Arbuthnot’s correspondence, we show that both women had detailed familiarity with the philosophical debates of their day. Furthermore, we highlight Arbuthnot’s own independent philosophical thinking.

This essay reads Frances Wright's A Few Days in Athens (1822) as a contribution to the Scottish Enlightenment's larger engagement with Epicurean thought and positions it as a response to James Mylne, Thomas Brown, Thomas Reid, and David Hume. Wright's engagement with Epicureanism can be traced to her studies with Mylne, her great uncle, and her experiences in his Glasgow household. After situating A Few Days in Athens within the Scottish Enlightenment and untangling its complicated publishing history, this essay centers the text's discussion of ‘virtuous pleasure’ and the greatest advocate of this Epicurean idea in Wright's tract, Leontium. In her study of Hellenistic philosophy, Wright uncovered Leontium, a historical analogue for the woman philosopher and a documented member of Epicurus's Garden. Through Leontium, Wright adapts and blends Epicurean ideas and Scottish Enlightenment thought to imagine women as philosophers and sketch a philosophy of embodiment distinct from that of many of her contemporaries. Ultimately, Epicurus provided Wright with a language for virtue, one that includes embracing pleasure, the senses and embodiment, not as practices of hedonism but as tools for measuring the individual and the social good.

This article addresses a pertinent case example of Popular Enlightenment: Westerkirk Parish Library. Dealing with the social aspect of reading, the argument is a twofold one. First, the library’s minute book reveals practices of what has been called the popularization of the Enlightenment – practices of disseminating Scottish Enlightenment texts and ideas into the larger rural community through the material sharing of books. Second, the article makes a methodological point. It argues that such a study of Westerkirk miners’ library and the founding committee’s minutes requires a media materialist perspective. Drawing on Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) and recent reflections on the materiality of the archive, I foreground sources that at first sight do not seem to offer promising footholds for conventional literary scholarship – such as membership lists, accounts of items purchased or damaged, and lists of infractions. The emphasis is thereby placed on notational practices rather than on discourse. As such, I review two autobiographical attempts to frame Westerkirk and the adjacent sister library in Langholm in terms of what I call the ‘Enlightenment master plot’ and propose instead that we regard Westerkirk library as a dynamic archive of books held together by the meticulous actions of reader bureaucrats. Two steps for engaging with this archive are suggested as the interpretative keys for navigating ‘un-discursive’ material such as the Westerkirk minute book: specialization and inscription. Thinking of the minute book’s contents in terms of specialization and inscription forms the clue to understanding how ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment could be put in practice to start a library in an isolated community of antimony miners.

David Hume, a seminal figure in the Scottish Enlightenment, proposed a functionalist theory of the state that diverges significantly from the reliance of his contemporaries on divine right or social contract theories. Hume posited that the state emerges from practical societal necessities rather than philosophical or divine origins, emphasizing its role in managing complexity and facilitating social and economic interactions. This theory posits that a state’s legitimacy and functions are contingent upon its effectiveness in addressing societal needs. This article critically examines Hume’s rejection of divine right and social contract theories, highlighting his empirical approach to understanding the state’s organic development from human interactions and societal norms. It also explores the strengths and weaknesses of Hume’s functionalist perspective, including its pragmatic foundation, alignment with social conventions, and potential inconsistencies in addressing individual agency and state complexity. Ultimately, Hume’s theory provides a compelling framework for evaluating political institutions based on their practical outcomes and societal benefits, offering valuable insights into contemporary political thought.

This article examines the philosophy of common sense abolitionism in the thought of John Witherspoon and James Beattie. It explores the timely question of how Witherspoon reconciled his moral philosophy with his complex relationship to slavery. Witherspoon baptised a runaway slave, taught anti-slavery sentiments in his course of lectures on moral philosophy, personally tutored three black freemen, enslaved at least two people of colour, and voted against the immediate abolition of human bondage in New Jersey. These activities seemingly appear to be contradictions. However, the transatlantic contexts of an emerging abolitionist movement during the American War of Independence harboured radically different approaches to abolish the institution of chattel slavery. Witherspoon drew from the example of another Scottish Enlightenment moralist, Beattie, on emancipation. Like Beattie, Witherspoon consistently advanced a belief in the divinely inspired self-evident or ‘common sense’ understanding of universal liberty, which applied to all races, in response to David Hume’s mitigated scepticism and racism. They shared a gradual approach to preparing enslavers and enslaved for the inevitable end of human bondage as a condition deemed incompatible with Christianity. This article argues that their philosophy of common sense abolitionism exemplified Scottish Enlightenment thought on either side of the Atlantic. By exploring the philosophical origins and pedagogy of their anti-slavery and gradual approach to abolishing the institution of chattel slavery, this comparative case study sheds new light on the legacies of Witherspoon at Princeton and Beattie at Marischal College, Aberdeen.

This essay explores Samuel Miller’s understanding of the epistemological capacity of the mind regenerated by God’s Spirit and sanctified by God’s Word. In response to those who would argue that Miller—as a theologian standing in the mainstream of ‘the Witherspoon tradition’, a founder of Princeton Seminary, and an architect of the Princeton theology—accommodated an epistemological paradigm that was compromised by the naïve realism of the Scottish Enlightenment, this essay establishes that despite what the historiographical consensus contends, he was in fact a consistently Reformed scholar who recognised that the work of God’s Spirit is essential to right knowledge not just of God’s Word, but of his world as well. In so doing this essay offers a fresh perspective not just on Miller’s understanding of the relationship between piety and learning, but also on the understanding of enlightened education that animated the founding of Princeton Seminary in 1812 and that was paradigmatic for those standing in ‘the Witherspoon [or Old Princeton] tradition’ throughout the long nineteenth century.

Abstract This article studies labour‐saving technologies among eighteenth‐century pupils, students, and academics by looking at the organisation of paper. The mathematician Colin Campbell of Achnaba (1644–1726), a minister of the Church of Scotland, repurposed the letters which were sent to him, turning them into notebooks by cutting up the paper and reusing the blank spaces for mathematical notes. Following the sources of Campbell's ‘letters‐as‐notebooks’, I suggest that the study of reuse should not only trace materials in households but also include their wider circulation in networks beyond the home. Campbell's workplace thus illuminates his mediating role as minister in the confessional culture of the early Scottish Enlightenment.

Scottish Enlightenment discussions of historical advancement influenced Thomas Jefferson. Ironically, they complemented his tendency to connect Scottishness with foreignness. That connection underscored the common cause of American independence, including with respect to institutions such as racial slavery. Slavery was said to have remained in the American union as an unfortunate but also unmovable historical legacy of earlier Anglo-Scottish corruption. As a regrettable remnant of their historical mistreatment, enslaved people had become akin to a foreign entity. Consequently, according to Jefferson, they could not necessarily be trusted to support American civic norms after their immediate emancipation. That characterization contributed to the broader intellectual context in which John Witherspoon lived and worked, including his role as a Scottish-born signatory to Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. Witherspoon promoted a greater degree of anti-slavery sentiment than Jefferson and was relatively progressive in his support for biracial higher education. Yet ambiguities and tensions remained in his approach to racial slavery, including his support for gradual rather than immediate emancipation. Witherspoon hoped that his signature on the Declaration of Independence would help uncouple Scottishness from Patriot discussions of historically rooted foreign danger. But it also appeared at the foot of a document that described immediate emancipation as a security threat to American civic life. 

Vassiliou, <i>Moderate Liberalism and the Scottish Enlightenment: Montesquieu, Hume, Smith and Ferguson</i>

This article focuses on James Mill’s views on war and peace. On the one hand, much of the existing scholarship emphasizes Jeremy Bentham’s influence. Typically, this involves a contrast between Mill’s early and mature views. The ‘mature Mill’, under the spell of Bentham, was consistently pro peace in preaching the master’s ‘gospel’. On the other hand, contextually nuanced studies of Mill’s writings on the Napoleonic wars highlight his Scottish Enlightenment heritage and, consequently, the common ground between Mill and other Edinburgh-educated writers, known for criticizing Benthamic radicalism. Mill’s advocacy for peace is thus situated within the discourses on ‘Balance of Power’ and ‘Law of Nature and Nations’ rather than utilitarianism. Trying to solve the puzzle of Mill’s intellectual tools in unearthing the causes of inter-state conflict reveals a consistent undercurrent: a political economy of war and peace. The analysis of Mill on conflict accounts for the common error in taking his emphasis on the miseries of war as merely an example of the propagation of Bentham’s ideas and reaffirms the connection to the Scottish Enlightenment. In the process of disentangling the various threads of Mill’s intellectual make-up, the consistency and independent merit of his argument for democratic peace comes to the fore.

Fragments of Failure? An Unfinished History of Colonial America in the Scottish Enlightenment

During the early 19 th century, the intellectual currents of Scottish Enlightenment significantly infiltrated New South Wales. Macquarie instigated reforms that had a direct bearing on the economic, ideological, and cultural landscape of New South Wales. The ideological framework established by these reforms continues to exert influence on contemporary Australian political culture. Employing a methodology that synthesizes and analyzes secondary qualitative data, this article elucidates the formation and evolution of the Australian economy in conjunction with British foreign trade and Enlightenment philosophical discourse of the early 19 th century, aiming to reconstruct the contextual backdrop that led to the inevitable emergence of Macquarie’s reforms and their ramifications. The article assesses the legacy of the reforms on Australian economy, ideology, culture to critically evaluate their contributions and significance. Building upon this foundation, the article draws parallels with certain reforms enacted in Asia during the 19 th century to elucidate some distinctive characteristics inherent in the reforms instituted by Macquarie.

Abstract This article sheds light on the logic of sociability in the Scottish Enlightenment, which has been regarded as a characteristic mode of thought and action, given the authoritative influence of David Hume’s “Science of Man” (1739). Hume’s “Science” focuses on the interaction between the moral self and other fellow beings able to display feelings of sympathy and thus to participate in the moral good and wellbeing of civil society. Hume’s influential argument left a legacy to other Scottish Enlightenment philosophers, among them being Thomas Reid, one of his well-known opponents, who was the first to coin and discuss “the social operations of mind.” The article seeks to provide an overall epistemological account of “social operations,” with particular focus on the act of promising and testimony. Opposed to “solitary operations” (cf. Reid), “social operations” become successful if and only if their expression by words or signs elicits the addressee’s reaction understood as the latter’s choice to accept it or not. In the case of testimony, I will show how Reid’s argument – sometimes paradoxical or contradictory – cannot get rid of judgement or reasoning when it comes to checking the veracity of what is testified, on the one hand, and of what is to be believed, on the other.

This article explores the role and influence of elite women in 18th-century Scotland, focusing on their engagement with polite social practices during the Scottish Enlightenment. The Scottish Enlightenment, characterized by its integration of various disciplines and emphasis on both theoretical and practical knowledge, was a period of significant cultural intellectual development. Central to this movement was the concept of politeness, which shaped the social interactions of the elite and played a crucial role in their personal and societal advancement. Elite women were integral to the social fabric of this era, participating in mixed-gender activities and shaping the cultural landscape through their involvement in social gatherings, education, and print culture. Despite being formally excluded from public office and direct political power, these women exercised significant influence through social networks, family ties, and patronage, subtly navigating the political and intellectual currents of their time. The study highlights how these women, while adhering to socially accepted norms, found ways to circumvent formal exclusions, thereby contributing to the broader cultural and political life of Scotland. Their participation in polite sociability not only facilitated their integration into elite society but also played a vital role in the broader program of social improvement that characterized the Scottish Enlightenment. This article underscores the complex interplay between gender, power, and politics, revealing how elite women helped shape “The Golden Age” of Scotland through their engagement in polite social practices.

This essay considers the profound influence of Aristotle’s philosophy on Adam Smith’s theories of sympathetic morality and imagination. In particular, it examines how Smith’s theories, often seen as Stoic, align with Aristotelian concepts; also, it analyses Smith’s interpretation of wonder as more than a philosophical catalyst, but also as a force that enhances sensitivity to virtue and informs moral judgement: which is similar to Aristotle’s view of wonder as the genesis of philosophical and scientific inquiry. Consequently, Smith’s understanding of imagination is seen as a transformative cognitive faculty similar to Aristotle’s idea of it as an innate capacity for mental imagery and sensory perception. This juxtaposition underscores the role of the imagination as a creative dynamics that transcends individual perspective and captures the essence of human experience. Smith’s integration of Aristotelian thought represents thus a distinctive and nuanced contribution to the classical legacy within the Scottish Enlightenment, shaping a deeper understanding of moral and philosophical inquiry.