Francis Hutcheson was the first major philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment, and one of the great thinkers in the history of British moral philosophy. He firmly rejected the view, common then as now, that morality is nothing more than the prudent pursuit of self-interest, arguing in favor of a theory of a moral sense. The two previously inaccessible texts presented here are the most eloquent expressions of this theory. Thomas Mautner's introduction provides a mass of new information on the intellectual context of Hutcheson's work.

Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746) was the first major philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment, and one of the great thinkers in the history of British moral philosophy. He firmly rejected the reductionist view, common then as now, that morality is nothing more than the prudent pursuit of self-interest, arguing in favour of a theory of a moral sense. The two texts presented here are the most eloquent expressions of this theory. The Reflections on our Common Systems of Morality insists on the connection between moral philosophy and moral improvement, and was a preview of his first major work, the Inquiry of 1725. The lecture On the Social Nature of Man, arguing against the psychological egoism of Hobbes, appears here in an English translation for the first time. Thomas Mautner's introduction and editorial apparatus provide a mass of new information, helping to give the reader a sense of the intellectual climate in which Hutcheson lived.

In this landmark volume, Samuel Hollander presents a fresh and compelling history of moral philosophy from Locke to John Stuart Mill, showing that a ‘moral sense’ can actually be considered compatible with utilitarianism. The book also explores the link between utilitarianism and distributive justice. Hollander engages in close textual exegesis of the works relating to individual authors, while never losing sight of the intellectual relationships between them. Tying together the greatest of the British moral philosophers, this volume reveals an unexpected unity of eighteenth and nineteenth century ethical doctrine at both the individual and social level. Essential reading for advanced students and researchers of the history of economic thought, political economy, history of ethics, history of political thought and intellectual history.

An 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.

American States of Nature transforms our understanding of the American Revolution and the early makings of the Constitution. The journey to an independent United States generated important arguments about the existing condition of Americans, in which rival interpretations of the term "state of nature" played a crucial role. "State of nature" typically implied a pre-political condition and was often invoked in support of individual rights to property and self-defense and the right to exit or to form a political state. It could connote either a paradise, a baseline condition of virtue and health, or a hell on earth. This mutable phrase was well-known in Europe and its empires. In the British colonies, "state of nature" appeared thousands of times in juridical, theological, medical, political, economic, and other texts from 1630 to 1810. But by the 1760s, a distinctively American state-of-nature discourse started to emerge. It combined existing meanings and sidelined others in moments of intense contestation, such as the Stamp Act crisis of 1765-66 and the First Continental Congress of 1774. In laws, resolutions, petitions, sermons, broadsides, pamphlets, letters, and diaries, the American states of nature came to justify independence at least as much as colonial formulations of liberty, property, and individual rights did. In this groundbreaking book, Mark Somos focuses on the formative decade and a half just before the American Revolution. Somos' investigation begins with a 1761 speech by James Otis that John Adams described as "a dissertation on the state of nature," and celebrated as the real start of the Revolution. Drawing on an enormous range of both public and personal writings, many rarely or never before discussed, the book follows the development of America's state-of-nature discourse to 1775. The founding generation transformed this flexible concept into a powerful theme that shapes their legacy to this day. No constitutional history of the Revolution can be written without it.

"The author focuses on Adam Smith and his contemporaries, who pondered these issues, particularly the nature and development of commercial society. They attempted to come to terms with the claim that, on the one hand, the market was a decisive element in economic progress, and, on the other, that its workings depended upon the release of the immoral desires of fallen men and that its consequences were socially and politically destabilizing. Hont reconstructs the salient features of this controversy between the proponents of market sociability and its most trenchant critics. In doing so, he has helped to locate historically the most important arguments at the heart of the emergence of modernity."--Jacket.

David and Mary Norton present the definitive scholarly edition of one of the greatest philosophical works ever written. This second volume begins with their 'Historical Account' of the Treatise, an account that runs from the beginnings of the work to the period immediately following Hume's death in 1776, followed by an account of the Nortons' editorial procedures and policies and a record of the differences between the first-edition text of the Treatise and the critical text that follows. The volume continues with an extensive set of 'Editors' Annotations', intended to illuminate (though not intepret) Hume's texts; a four-part bibliography of materials cited in both volumes; and a comprehensive index.