Synopses & Reviews
The Scottish Enlightenment was one of the greatest intellectual and cultural movements that the world has ever seen. Its legacy in philosophy, history, science, music, art, architecture, economics, and many other disciplines cannot be overstated. The New Town of Edinburgh would be inconceivable without the doctrines of Enlightenment, equally so would the writings of Karl Marx or the US Constitution. To this day, the doctrines of Enlightenment are still quoted and misquoted. There can be few countries that have produced such a galaxy of talent in so small a compass. David Hume and Adam Smith merely stand as two of the best known. Yet this is the first book for the general reader to consider in its totality the achievement of this most astonishing period of Scottish history, not simply the thoughts, ideas, and people who lived then, but also the creations that were animated by that thought. This is a book not simply about ideas but also about those ideas made flesh and about the new tra
Synopsis
The Scottish Enlightenment was one of the truly great intellectual and cultural movements of the world. Its achievements in science, philosophy, history, economics, and many other disciplines were immense; and its influence has hardly, if at all, been dimmed in the intervening two centuries. This book, written for the general reader, considers the achievement of this most astonishing period of Scottish history. It attends not only to the ideas that made the Scottish Enlightenment such a wondrous moment but also to the people themselves who generated these ideas—men such as David Hume and Adam Smith who are still read for the sake of the light they shed on contemporary issues.
About the Author
Alexander Broadie is a Professor of Logic and Rhetoric at Glasgow University—a chair once occupied by Adam Smith—and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He was appointed the first Henry Duncan Prize lecturer in Scottish Studies at the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1990-1993) and Gifford Lecturer in Natural Theology at Aberdeen University in 1994 before taking up post at Glasgow University in 1995. He was awarded the degree of Doctorat de l'université honoris causa by Blaise Pascal University, Clermont-Ferrand, for his contribution to Franco-Scottish relations in the field of the history of philosophy. Alexander was born in Edinburgh in 1942.