Essays on Hume, Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment

Chris Berry is Professor Emeritus of Political Theory at the University of Glasgow, which he joined from 1970, from the LSE where he completed his doctorate. He is best known for his work on the Scottish Enlightenment and on the ‘Idea of Luxury’ and he has given invited keynote lectures on these themes in China, Japan, Chile, the US and in Europe. He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

• Preface and AcknowledgementsAbbreviations1. The Study of the Scottish Enlightenment: an Autobiographical JourneyPart I: Scottish EnlightenmentIntroduction to Part I2. James Dunbar and Ideas of Sociality and Language in Eighteenth Century Scotland3. James Dunbar and the Enlightenment Debate on Language4."Climate" in the Eighteenth Century: James Dunbar and the Scottish Case5. Sociality and Socialisation6. Rude Religion: The Psychology of Polytheism in the Scottish Enlightenment7. ‘But art itself is Natural to Man’: Ferguson and the Principle of Simultaneity8. Finding Space for Civil SocietyPart II: David HumeIntroduction to Part II9. Hume on Rationality in History and Social Life10. Lusty Women and Loose Imagination: Hume’s Philosophical Anthropology of Chastity11. Hume and the Customary Causes of Industry, Knowledge and Commerce12. Hume’s Universalism: The Science of Man and the Anthropological Point of View13. Hume and Superfluous Value (or the problem with Epictetus’ Slippers)14. Science and Superstition: Hume and Conservatism15. Hume on HappinessPart III: Adam SmithIntroduction to Part III16. Adam Smith’s ‘Considerations’ on Language17. Smith and Science18. Adam Smith: Commerce, Liberty and Modernity19. Adam Smith and the Virtues of a Modern Economy20. Adam Smith’s Science of Human Nature21. Adam Smith on Liberty ‘in our present sense of the word’

Chris Berry’s hybrid conceptual inquiries into the political theory of the Scottish Enlightenment are utterly distinctive. Though skeptical of a distinctive ‘Berry-view’, nobody else writes about these topics as he has done for a generation, and reading these essays newly arranged together gives a singularly enlightening sense of both his intellectual evolution and the transformation of his field of study since the 1960s.