The Sociological Heritage of the Scottish Enlightenment: (Edinburgh Studies in Scottish Philosophy)

About the Book

This book provides answers to two sorts of questions. It explores, on the one hand, how and what sociological ideas were developed in the Scottish Enlightenment. And, on the other hand, how the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment would emerge and develop in subsequent traditions of sociology. Scottish Enlightenment thinkers developed and refined a descriptive-explanatory approach and methodology to explore social and economic processes – an approach that was different from the normative and justificatory aspirations of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century social and political philosophies. This distinct contribution of the Scottish Enlightenment is frequently overlooked, even if some of its central figures are acknowledged as important forerunners of contemporary social sciences.
This book offers a synoptic view on individual contributions and a connective view of theoretical achievements that are otherwise typically treated in isolation.

Table of Contents:
Notes on Contributors Abbreviations Chapter 1. The Sociological Heritage of the Scottish Enlightenment: An Introduction - Tamás Demeter Part I. General perspectives Chapter 2. Human Nature and Social Change: Historical Institutionalism in the Scottish Enlightenment - Christopher Berry Chapter 3. The Adventitious Sociology: Dispassion and Insight in the Scottish Enlightenment - Kenneth Macdonald Part II. Sociological Ideas in the Scottish Enlightenment Chapter 4. Adam Ferguson as Founding Father of Sociology - Craig Smith Chapter 5. "Partly social, partly selfish": The Social Evolutionism of Henry Home, Lord Kames - Robin Mills Chapter 6. Pre-Weberian Theories of Charismatic Leadership and the Aesthetics of Deference in the Scottish Enlightenment - Spyridon Tegos Chapter 7. Sociology within the Statistical Account of Scotland - Kenneth Macdonald Part III. The Sociological Afterlife of the Scottish Enlightenment Chapter 8. Hegel and the Notion of Retroactive Necessity in the Scottish Enlightenment - Dirk Schuck Chapter 9. Traces of Hume in Sociology - Angela Coventry Chapter 10. Hume and Durkheim: Common Views on Sociality - Catherine Dromelet Chapter 11. Westermarckian Evolutionary Perspective on Scottish Moral Sentimentalism - Otto Pipatti Chapter 12. In Praise of Adam Smith, or the Workings of Commercial Society - John A. Hall Chapter 13. John Millar and Sociology: Disciplinary History and Its Discontents - Nicholas Miller Chapter 14. ‘Das Adam Smith Problem’: A Sociological Reassesment - Aldo Mascareno and Leonidas Montes Chapter 15. The Foundational Document of the Sociology of Knowledge - Tamás Demeter

About the Author :
Tamás Demeter is Professor of Philosophy at the Corvinus University of Budapest and Senior Research Fellow at the HUN-REN Research Centre for the Humanities, Budapest. He has published widely on David Hume, the connections of Scottish moral and natural philosophy, and the sociology of knowledge in Monist, Synthese, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, History of the Human Sciences, Early Science and Medicine. He has contributed chapters to collections Newton and Empiricism, The Oxford Handbook of Newton, and the forthoming Scottish Philosophy in the Eighteenth Century, vol. II (all OUP). He is editor of Intellectuals, InstInequalities and Transitions, co-editor of Conflicting Values of Inquiry and (both Brill), and special issues of Synthese on “The Uses and Abuses of Mathematics in Early Modern Philosophy” and “Humeanisms”. He is author of David Hume and the Culture of Scottish Newtonianism (Brill, 2016).

Review :
Social scientists these days often attempt to identify ideal types that can be described by mathematical models. Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, in contrast, have found the foundations of inquiry in “the experimental method”, in the practice of empirical reasoning that would become the foundation of various social sciences – or as they back in the eighteenth century called them comprehensively: the “science of human nature”. In their hands, human nature turns out to be the product of society that varies with history, and whose understanding requires imagination and a study of actual processes. This book is recommended to social scientists who intend to go beyond the elegant, but infertile, mathematical modelling of human behaviour. The Scottish Enlightenment has been of intense interest for philosophers and the history of economics. It’s long overdue to reclaim it for social theory and sociology. This wonderful collection re-introduces and deepens our knowledge of this fertile intellectual period. While the collection displays impeccable historical scholarship, it also re-invites us to return to contemporary social theory with fresh and wiser questions.