The Scottish Enlightenment1998

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 traditions thus created that still animate and inspire the world and the Scotland of today.