Description
Book SynopsisAn interesting and ambitious comparative study of the emergence of Enlightenment in Scotland and Naples. Challenging the tendency to fragment the Enlightenment in eighteenth-century Europe into multiple Enlightenments, John Robertson demonstrates the extent to which thinkers in two societies at the opposite ends of Europe shared common intellectual preoccupations.
Trade Review'I look forward … to the debates that this fine book will produce.' The Times Literary Supplement
'John Robertson's excellent new book presents a sustained comparison of intellectual life in Naples and Scotland … in order - among other things - to argue against Israel's revisionist periodisation.' The Philosophers' Magazine
Table of ContentsPreface; 1. The case for the Enlightenment; 2. Scotland and Naples in 1700; 3. The intellectual worlds of Naples and Scotland 1680–c.1725; 4. The predicament of 'kingdoms governed as provinces'; 5. Vico, after Bayle; 6. Hume, after Bayle and Mandeville; 7. The advent of Enlightenment: political economy in Naples and Scotland 1730–1760; Conclusion: the Enlightenment vindicated?; Bibliography; Index.
