Book Description

Philosophy and Religion in Enlightenment Britain explores some of the themes and issues that exercised thinkers concerned with religion and philosophy, and their interrelatedness, in the period known as the long eighteenth century, while illustrating the techniques and style of intellectual history as practised in the early twenty-first century. The volume will encourage further understanding of the influences that were current at the time that some of the most significant works in western philosophy were written, and use primary materials to achieve this. The essays presented here have been specially commissioned from both established, distinguished collaborators and young, up-and-coming scholars, to illustrate the breadth and diversity of philosophy in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This was a period when ideas were being formed and developed against a background of evolving views in science, politics, and religion, and in light of their implications for traditional religious belief and thought. The figures examined range from Locke and Hume to lesser known personalities who provide a different perspective on the intellectual environment of the time, such as Samuel Halliday, Martin Clifford, and Henry Scougal. In addition, the volume contains new transcriptions of two revealing works by Hume: a letter illustrating his later attitude to political theory, and an early essay on ethics and chivalry.