BSE SS21 THE SCOTTISH ENLIGHTENMENT OF THE 18TH CENTURY
I. Introduction
In mathematics, natural science and social
sciences, France gave every indication during the
later 18th century becoming the intellectual leader of
the western world.
Scotland
The only competitor for France’s supremacy
most unlikely place in Europe
th
Mid-18 century
Mists of ignorance cleared Scotland vaulted
from being the most backward countries.
Led historians to call the 18th century as
“The Age of Enlightenment”
Economic changes that invigorated Scottish
industry in the latter half of the 18th century
had some influence
Scottish Moral Philosophy
Moral Philosophy is a branch of
philosophy that deals with ethics.
The term was very much broader,
embracing not only the whole of
what we todays classify as
philosophy
Historians often drawn attention to the fact that the
social sciences developed from subjects that were
previously included in moral philosophy.
Sometimes inferred from this that the fountainhead
of the modern social science was ethics—
HISTORICALLY INCORRECT.
The subject matter of moral philosophy that later
developed into the several social sciences was not
totally divorced from ethics, but it had no
particularly strong connection with it.
David Hume (171-1776)
Born on April 26, 1711 on the tenement on
the Lawn market in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Had a good grounding in Greek & Latin
Scottish Philosopher, Economist, Historian
Together with John Locke & Bishop George
they recognize as the important figure in the
Scottish Enlightenment
Fierce opponent of the rationalism of
Descartes, Leibniz and Spinoza
Atheist & skeptic
Influencer of Immanuel Kant
Works of David Hume
1. A Treatise of Human Nature (1737)
This book which he subtitled, “An
Attempt to Introduce The
Experimental Method of Reasoning
into Moral Subjects”
Consider as abstract and
unintelligible that’s why he
immediately set to work to produce
an “ABSTRACT” or shortened
version of it.
But some philosophers consider it as
Hume’s most important work
He definitively articulated the so-
called “is-ought problem” and it
became so important in Meta-Ethics.
Being an attempt to introduce
“Experimental Method of reasoning
into Moral Subjects” (1739-1740)
Note 1: Experimental Method doesn’t mean
laboratory experiment but more broadly the
general approach of the sciences.
Note 2: But when he was 18 yrs. old he
made a great Philosophical Discovery
(which remains somewhat unexplained and
mysterious) that led him to devote the next
10 yrs. of his life to a concentrated period of
study, reading & writing.
2. Philosophical Essays Concerning
Human Understanding (1748) but
published as “An Enquiry Concerning
Human Understanding”
3. History of Great Britain (1750) - which
consolidated his reputation in the literary
world.
4. An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of
Morals (1751)
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Note: Those publications proved hardly more
successful than the original “Treatise” on which
they based.
Between 1745 and 1760- “History of England”
(subtitled “From the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the
Revolution in 1688), is a work of immense sweep,
running to over a million words. It became a best-
seller in its day and became the standard work on
English History for many years.
After his death, the “Dialogues Concerning
Natural Religion” in 1779 was published (but it
was written 25 yrs. earlier before his death) and it
has a greatest attack on religion.
Human Nature
They did not view man in religious or
theological forms
“Man was not regarded as a child of
God”
All important is NATURE
Great Controversy
The evidence for religious belief was
provided by REVELATION. Therefore,
the work of God directly shown to man
through the holy scriptures & miracles.
Who believed that the evidence existed
in natural phenomena whose
arrangement offered proof of having
been ordered by superior being.
Example: The existence of clock must
have a clockmaker, so the existence of
the world is evidence for the existence
of a cosmic designer.
“Who designed the designer?”
He gave the classic criticism of the
teleological argument for the existence
of God (also known as the argument
from design, that order & apparent
purpose in the world bespeaks a divine
origin)
Adam Smith (1723-1790)
Born on June 1723 in Kirkcaldy,
Scotland
THE SCOTTISH ENLIGHTENMENT OF THE 18TH CENTURY
Scottish economist, philosopher and
author
one of the key figures in the Scottish
Enlightenment
“Father of Modern Economics” or
“Father of Capitalism”
Works of Adam Smith
He made essays in the beginning of his
career.
1. The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759)
1st book; instant success
He became popular on his work so he
became tutor to the young Duke of
Buccleugh in 1764
He considered it his most important work
He continued to revise it throughout his life,
making extensive revisions to the final (6th)
edition shortly before his death in 1790.
The theory of moral sentiments was an
importance in the history of social science
It was neglected by the Historians mainly
because of the greater significance of the
same author’s work titled the Wealth of
Nations
2. An Inquiry Into The Nature & Causes of
the Wealth of Nations (1776)
Clearly written account of political
economy at the dawn of the Industrial
Revolution
1st and most influential modern work of
economics
He argued that, while human motives
are often selfishness & greed, the
competition in the free market would
tend to benefit society as a whole by
keeping prices low, while still building in
an incentive for a wide variety goods
and services.
Smith is not inclined to push arguments
as far as Hume but he recognize the
importance of Hume’s Philosophy and
most important is Hume’s secular
approach to knowledge.
Note: 18th century Scottish philosophers took this
general approach to history, that it should be
scientific or, as they called it, ‘philosophical’, and
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also held ‘stages’ view of history and regarded
economic factors as fundamental.
II. Idea of Progress
The notion of progress refers to the fact
of something going forward towards an
advanced or improved version of itself.
Progress is the movement towards a
refined, improved, or otherwise desired
state or, in the context of progressivism,
the idea that advancements in
technology, science, and social
organization can result in an improved
human condition; the latter may happen
as a result of direct human action, as in
social enterprise or through activism, or
as a natural part of sociocultural
evolution.
Some scholars consider the idea of
progress that was affirmed with the
Enlightenment, as a secularization of
ideas from early Christianity, and a
reworking of ideas from ancient Greece
The Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns was a
cover, often a witty one, for deeper opposed views.
The very idea of Progress was under attack on the
one side, and Authority on the other. The new
antiquarian interests led to critical reassessment of
the products of Antiquity that would eventually bring
Scripture itself under the magnifying glass of some
Moderns. The attack on authority in literary criticism
had analogues in the rise of scientific inquiry, and
the Moderns' challenge to authority in literature
foreshadowed a later extension of challenging
inquiry in systems of politics and religion.
Disputes among scholars concerning the
superiority of classical Greek and Roman authors
over contemporary writers have occurred at least
since the time of the Renaissance. In the late
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries,
however, such debates turned into heated conflicts,
particularly in France and England. In these two
countries the Querelle des Anciens et des
Modernes and the Battle of the Books pitted the
Ancients—who upheld the authority of the writers of
antiquity in intellectual matters—against the
Moderns—who maintained that writers of the
present day possessed greater knowledge and
more-refined tastes than their predecessors.
THE SCOTTISH ENLIGHTENMENT OF THE 18TH CENTURY
The Ancients viewed Greco-Roman
civilization as the apex of human
achievement and all subsequent culture
as a decline from this high point. Thus,
they contended, writers of the present
were in no position to judge the
ancients, who were their superiors. The
Moderns, on their side, saw human
knowledge and understanding as
progressing since antiquity
The Ancients maintained the
precedence of classical works, the
enduring wisdom and beauty of which
were to be sought after and imitated.
The Moderns, to the contrary, valued
innovation and invention and strove to
use the past creatively, adapting it to
present conditions.
III. Idea of Perfect Social Role
Perfection is a flawless state
where everything is exactly right.
It can also be the action of
making something perfect. Since
perfect things are without fault or
flaw, perfection is a perfect
condition
A Utopia is an ideal and perfect
society in which everyone lives
in harmony and everything is
done for the good of its citizens
An ideal society can be defined
as a society where every
individual is self-content and
lives a healthy and peaceful
life. A society, to be termed as
ideal, needs to fulfill certain
criteria. First of all, an ideal or
perfect society should have
equality among men.
A Good Society is what we
strive for and we aim to build it
around core values: Equality,
Democracy and Sustainability.
Rather than being a specific
vision, or end point, the Good
Society is a framework that
enables us to evaluate political
ideas and actions against our
core values.
Plato's Theory of Forms
asserts that the physical realm is
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only a shadow, or image, of the
true reality of the Realm of
Forms. He Forms are abstract,
perfect, unchanging concepts or
ideals that transcend time and
space; they exist in the Realm of
Forms.
IV. Classical Political Economy
Adam Smith - founder of economics as a
branch of social science
Classical political economy- large body of
writings on economic questions
The most important names in this literature
are Thomas Robert Malthus (1776–1834),
David Ricardo (1772–1823), and John
Stuart Mill (1806–73).
A new set of developments in economic theory,
starting in the 1870’s, culminated in the
replacement of classical political economy by
neoclassical economics, which is, basically, the
model structure that one still finds today in college
courses in ‘microeconomics’. The other branch of
contemporary economics, ‘macroeconomics,’ is
even more recent, stemming mainly from the work
of John Maynard Keynes in the 1930’s.
Change in terminology occurred during the
nineteenth century: the subject was first
called ‘political economy’ and later
‘economics’, the name it commonly wears
today. The word ‘economics’ derives from
a compound of two classical Greek words:
oikos and nomos, meaning respectively
‘household’ and ‘law’. Some writers of the
Greek classical era used the word
oikonomiai to refer to the basic principles
(i.e. ‘laws’) of household management. This
use survives today in the college subject of
Home Economics, but plain Economics, as
every student of it is aware, deals with the
economic problems of a much larger
entity—the nation and, indeed, the world as
a whole.
More than the name had changed. The basic
analytical model of neoclassical economics was
different in some fundamental respects from
that of the older classical political economy, and
there was an important shift of emphasis too—
away from the study of economic growth and
historical development, towards a detailed
analysis of how markets function and how
limited productive resources can be efficiently
used. So historians have retained the term
‘political economy’ as a handy label for the
set of ideas, concepts, and theories, associated
most intimately with the name of David Ricardo,
which dominated economic thought during the
half century of rapid economic development
that took place in Europe following the final
defeat of Napoleon in 1815.
DAVID RICARDO
David Ricardo was the third child of a Jewish dealer
in financial securities who had immigrated to
England, from Holland. Following this he returned
to London and began working in his father’s
business. He fell in love with the daughter of a
Quaker and their marriage in 1793 led to a
complete break with his family.
But David knew enough about the securities and
financial markets by then to go into business on his
own, so successfully in fact that at the age of forty-
two he was able to retire to a modest country estate
in Gloucestershire. Before his Principles of Political
Economy and Taxation appeared in 1817, Ricardo
was already well known because of his
participation, through newspaper articles and
pamphlets, in the controversies over economic
policy that punctuated the Napoleonic War period.
Not long after the Principles was published he
obtained a seat in Parliament by lending the owner
of the ‘rotten borough’ of Portarlington, in Ireland, a
large sum of money in return for naming him the
borough’s parliamentary representative. In
Parliament Ricardo participated extensively in
debates, especially on economic matters. He was
also a strong advocate of the extension of the
franchise and other measures of parliamentary
reform, despite the nature of his own seat.
A. THEORY OF VALUE
Ricardo begins his Principles by quoting Adam
Smith on the distinction between ‘value in use’ and
‘value in exchange’. He agrees with Smith that the
two are unrelated and gives the same argument,
that some very useful things are low in value and
some things of little use are high in value. The
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labour theory of value suggested that two
commodities will trade for the same price if they
embody the same amount of labour-time, or else
they will exchange at a ratio fixed by the relative
differences in the two labour-times.
B. RENT
Rent, according to Ricardo, is a kind of surplus; it is
not due, however, to the munificence of nature in
supplying free rain and sunlight, but to the limitation
in the amount of fertile land.
High rents are due to high prices; they do not
cause prices to be high.
C. POPULATION
In his 1798 work, An Essay on the Principle of
Population, Malthus examined the relationship
between population growth and resources. From
this, he developed the Malthusian theory of
population growth in which he wrote that population
growth occurs exponentially, so it increases
according to birth rate.
According to Malthus, there are two types of
'checks' that can reduce a population's growth rate.
Preventive checks are voluntary actions people can
take to avoid contributing to the population. Positive
checks to population growth are things that may
shorten the average lifespan, such as disease,
warfare, famine, and poor living and working
environments. According to Malthus, eventually
these positive checks would result in a Malthusian
catastrophe (also sometimes called a Malthusian
crisis), which is a forced return of a population to
basic survival.
D. THE MODEL OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
The theory of development is based upon two
fundamental principles, principle of diminishing
returns and the principle of population growth.
Economic growth takes place, according to
Ricardo, because of an increase in the nation’s
stock of capital. Therefore, growth is due to the
devotion of a portion of the national income to
investment—the creation of new production
facilities. Only one of the three social classes plays
THE SCOTTISH ENLIGHTENMENT OF THE 18TH CENTURY
a significant role in this process. Labourer’s
consume all their income, because they are too
poor to do otherwise; landowners are rich, but they
are so fond of high living that they too spend all
their current income. Only capitalists save a portion
of their income and thereby provide the means to
increase the nation’s capital stock by investment.
D. INTERNATIONAL TRADE
International trade is the exchange of
goods and services between countries.
Trading globally gives consumers and
countries the opportunity to be exposed
to goods and services not available in
their own countries, or which would be
more expensive domestically.
The importance of international trade was
recognized early on by political
economists like Adam Smith and David
Ricardo.
Principle of Comparative Advantage-
proposed by David Ricardo -encourages a
nation to specialize in producing or
supplying only those goods and services
which it can deliver more effectively and
at the best price.
Aristotle classified trade as an "Acquisitive
activity" in contrast to the productive
activities of farming and other
occupations that produce goods not
otherwise available.
Mercantilism- a policy that assure that
one’s own nation would be a gainer, not a
loser. It can only be achieved if there are
more exports than imports.
Protectionism- It holds that regulation of
international trade is important to ensure
that markets function properly.
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V. The Idea of Harmonious Order
A. THE METAPHYSICS OF HARMONY
The notion that the world is a harmonious order,
despite the manifest appearances of conflict,
muddle, and formless happenstance, has a long
history, going back to the great Greek thinkers of
the classical era, but we will confine our attention
here to the development of the doctrine in the
seventeenth century. The accelerated interest of
philosophers in non- theological metaphysics in
that period was in great part due to the scientific
advances then taking place, especially in physics
and astronomy. The immediate issue that gave
rise to the metaphysical literature of the
seventeenth century was a problem in empiricism
first clearly formulated by Rene Descartes.
Descartes’s work initiated an unending debate
in philosophy that centered on the relation of
physical phenomena to mental phenomena—
the problem of ‘dualism’. Descartes made a hard
categorical distinction between ‘body’ and ‘mind’,
which stimulated intense efforts by
metaphysicians to re-establish a monistic unity,
which still continues in the present day.
A distinguished modern philosopher, writing in
1982, states that ‘the question of what is
implied by saying that one and the same
event has both mental and physical
characteristics still waits for a sufficient
answer’ (A.J.Ayer, Philosophy in the Twentieth
Century, 1982, p. 190). It must suffice for our
purposes here simply to note that if it is possible
to demonstrate that the world is a complete
harmonious order then all parts or aspects of it
are in harmony with all other parts or aspects; the
harmony between a perception in the mind and
an event in the world is merely an instance of the
harmonious nature of the general order of things.
This is the line of response to Descartes’s
problem that gave rise to much of metaphysical
philosophy during the era of the scientific
revolution. I will here confine discussion to the
ideas of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716).
The Leibnizian doctrine of harmony
Gottfried Leibniz's theory of pre-
established harmony (French: harmonie
préétablie) is a philosophical theory about
causation under which every "substance"
affects only itself, but all the substances
(both bodies and minds) in the world
nevertheless seem to causally interact with
each other because they have been
programmed by God in advance to
"harmonize" with each other. Leibniz's
term for these substances was "monads".
Leibniz did not simply assert that the
world is a harmonious order, he
attempted to demonstrate this as a
conclusion following rigorously from two
primary axioms: (1) the existence of God,
a perfect being, who created the world;
and (2) the principle of ‘sufficient
reason’—that nothing exists or occurs
without a reason and, moreover, nothing
fails to exist or fails to occur without a
reason
Monads- entities that are totally
independent of one another.
B. The Ideology of Laissez-Faire
Popularized in the mid-1700s, the doctrine
of laissez-faire is one of the first
articulated economic theories. It
originated with a group known as the
Physiocrats, who flourished in France from
about 1756 to 1778; led by a physician,
they tried to apply scientific principles and
methodology to the study of wealth.
Unfortunately, an early effort to test
laissez-faire theories did not go well. As
an experiment in 1774, Turgot, Louis XVI's
Controller-General of Finances, abolished
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all restraints on the heavily controlled
grain industry, allowing imports and
exports between provinces to operate as a
free trade system. But when poor harvests
caused scarcities, prices shot through the
roof; merchants ended up hoarding
supplies or selling grain in strategic areas,
even outside the country for better profit,
while thousands of French citizens starved.
Riots ensued for several months. In the
middle of 1775, order was restored—and
with it, government controls over the
grain market.
Despite this inauspicious start, laissez-faire
practices, developed further by such
British economists as Smith and David
Ricardo, ruled during the Industrial
Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th
century.
Laissez-faire is an economic theory from
the 18th century that opposed any
government intervention in business
affairs. The driving principle behind
laissez-faire, a French term that translates
as "leave alone" (literally, "let you do"), is
that the less the government is involved in
the economy, the better off business will
be.
Legend has it that the origins of the
phrase "laissez-faire" in an economic
context came from a 1681 meeting
between the French finance minister Jean-
Baptise Colbert and a businessman named
Le Gendre. As the story goes, Colbert
asked Le Gendre how best the
government could help commerce, to
which Le Gendre replied "Laissez-nous
faire" – basically, "Let us do (it)." The
Physiocrats popularized the phrase, using
it to name their core economic doctrine.