This book examines how enlightened Scottish social theorists c.1740 to c.1800 understood the origin and development of religion. Challenging scholarly disregard for the topic, it shows how most prominent thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment thought deeply about the relationship between religion, human nature and historical change. The Scots viewed this relationship as an important strand within the study of the ‘science of human nature’ and the ‘history of man.’ The fruits of this investigation were a sophisticated and innovative account of religious change that is characterized by a striking modernity and naturalism, even by the more devout theorists. The views of the literati surveyed here need to be incorporated into our larger histories of the ‘science of religion’ as much as they do into our understanding of the social theory of the Scottish Enlightenment.
Table of Content
Chapter 1 Introduction.- Chapter 2 Religion and the Start of the Science of Human Nature: Campbell, Turnbull and Hume.- Chapter 3 David Hume and the Emptiness of Natural Religion.- Chapter 4 Adam Smith on Religious Psychology in Society.- Chapter 5 Henry Home, Lord Kames on Mechanistic Human Nature.- Chapter 6 David Hume’s ‘Natural History of Religion’ (1757).- Chapter 7 William Robertson on Revelation and the Limits of Progress.- chapter 8 Adam Ferguson, Stoicism and the Individual Alone.- Chapter 9 George Campbell on Miracles and the Weakness of Hume’s ‘Science of Man’.- Chapter 10 John Gregory on Human Nature, Happiness and Religious Devotion.- Chapter 11 James Dunbar on Climate and Civil Religion..- Chapter 12 James Burnett, Lord Monboddo on Egyptian Daemons.- 13. The Radicalism of James Hutton.- 14. Dugald Stewart, Religion and the End of the ‘Science of Human Nature’.- 15 Conclusion.
About the author
R. J. W. Mills is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of Intellectual History, University of St Andrews, UK.
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