Scottish Philosophy

abstract The discussion on the relationship between Hume and utilitarianism has been lively for many decades. To contribute to this discussion, I identify four main features of a utilitarian view: a) a consequentialist theory of the right, b) a hedonist theory of the good, c) some kind of impartiality in evaluating consequences, and d) an essentially prescriptive, rather than merely explicative, attitude. I then show that, first, although he borrowed the word 'utility' from Hume, Bentham did not consider Hume as a utilitarian and, second, that Hume's ethics does not really endorse any of the four main tenets of utilitarianism, either in the Treatise or in the Enquiry. I thus conclude that, notwithstanding recent interpretations to the contrary, Hume was no utilitarian in any substantial sense.

My reading of Knox's life disagrees with that of most of his other biographers since M'Crie. It is on the whole supported, however, by the eighteenth century estimate represented by David Hume and Burns. If I show bias it is not, at any rate, theological bias. The object of this book is somewhat different from that of the biographies which I have mentioned: it is to give a critical account of a representative Calvinist and Puritan. The temper in which I have attempted this may perhaps best be described as realistic; I have attempted to tell in contemporary terms how a typical Calvinist and Puritan lived, felt and thought. With the historical figure I am not particularly concerned'. As one may note the date of publication was similar to D. H. Lawrence' banned book and at the height of Catholic persecution in Scotland at the hands of John White the Church of Scotland's sectarian and racist moderator. I will relate to a few examples from Muir he writes about Knox; ' Between 1540 and 1543 we find him engaged as an ecclesiastical notary, and up to March of 1543 he was certainly in the Catholic Church. Of the life he led during this time his fellow reformers tell us not a word, but the Catholics maintain that he was notorious for his immorality, and even assert that he was guilty of committing adultery with his stepmother (his father's second wife).

A number of recent interpretations defend the description of Adam Smith as “a strong supporter of natural theology.”  This paper argues against that claim using both novel evidence and familiar evidence applied in novel ways. What I demonstrate here is that Smith took positions at odds with a commitment to natural religion’s importance for morality. In particular, I show that it is hard to square Smith’s alleged support of natural religion with his account of conscience, his natural rights theory, and his omission of piety from his catalogue of virtues. To put the argument form most simply: If natural religion, then (typically) x; not x; therefore, not natural religion.

What can a liberal education and especially philosophy accomplish, either theoretically or practically? The question, or insinuation, is familiar to anyone in the liberal arts today. Precisely because it is familiar, we may too casually dismiss it. In his four essays on happiness—“The Epicurean,” “The Stoic,” “The Platonist,” and “The Sceptic”—Hume takes this charge most seriously, and in its most serious form: Can philosophy provide a theory of happiness that does justice to the diversity of human lives? And, if so, can knowing it make one happy, or happier? “The Sceptic” and of the four essays as whole are generally taken to answer with a resounding “no.” I propose, however, that we reconceive “The Sceptic” as a trial of philosophy’s presumption to provide a theoretically true and practically useful account of happiness. The Skeptic’s arguments against these presumptions lead him to conclude no. Yet, within “The Skeptic,” Hume identifies the error that produces this conclusion, and thereby Hume’s corrective to the argument. On Hume’s conception of philosophy, philosophy—and the essay itself—provides a theory of human life and happiness devoid of the usual errors and capable of producing practical benefit.

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Alpha. _ 6th of April, 1320. ' For as long as but one hundred of us remain alive, we will never on any conditions submit to the domination of the English. It is not for glory nor riches, nor honours that we fight, but for freedom alone, which no good man gives up except with his life.' Signed by the council of Earls, Barons and Freeholders at Newbattle Abbey near Edinburgh. Part of The Declaration of Arbroath, written shortly after Robert De Brus had defeated English invaders at Bannockburn, following in the footsteps of Scotland's greatest warrior hero and defender of freedom William Wallace! Oh Wallace William out of the west came to claim justice, freedom and a nation for God his Lord's holy name, no cry or deed or want for himself of glory or fame. At Stirling Bridge the might of Proud Edward's army fell, the cream of England died, lived not a man to tell. Victory for bold Wallace and his fighters, river awash with invaders blood did swell. The great General whom Napoleon followed his thought train, half of one thousand years again.

This is my unpublished MSc thesis from a part-time research degree that I took at Edinburgh University from 2002-04. It is primarily a study of the influence of Edward Caird (1835-1908) on the personalist philosopher John Macmurray (1891-1976). It is cited in Scottish Philosophy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Ed. G. Graham. Oxford: UP, 2015). A summary appeared in the John Macmurray Fellowship Newsletter. The summary is reproduced on my "Scottish Hegelian" blog and was cited in Dale Schlitt's German Idealism's Trinitarian Legacy (SUNY, 2016).

This volume of essays considers the philosophical and historical significance of common sense philosophy in the Scottish Enlightenment. As one of eighteenthcentury Scotland's most original intellectual products, common sense philosophy dominated the teaching of moral philosophy and the "science of the mind" at Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen universities during the last quarter of the century, and also informed many Presbyterian clergymen's treatment of human nature from the pulpit.¹ Reflecting on the importance of this philosophical system, which was widely known as "the Scottish philosophy" by the nineteenth century, the Presbyterian divine and philosopher James McCosh wrote:

This is the English version of a paper published in French as 'Les Lumières Écossaises et le roman philosophique de Descartes', in Y. Senderowicz, Y. Wahl eds, Descartes: Reception and Disenchantment, Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects, 2000, pp. 65-88.
The paper reconstructs the reception of Descartes's work by Scottish eighteenth-century philosophers. The Scots' image of Descartes was a by-product of a scientific controversy; philosophical arguments were brought into the picture more as implications than the primary focus of interest. As soon as Cartesian physics withered away as a real alternative to Newtonian physics, only the philosophical arguments were left, with no memory of the context out of which they originated, and the focus of the discussion shifted from physics to the philosophy of mind and the theory of knowledge.

The College of New Jersey (which later became Princeton University) provides an example of how Scottish philosophy influenced American higher education in an institutional context during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This article compares the administrations of John Witherspoon (served from 1768 to 1794), Samuel Stanhope Smith (served from 1795 to 1812) and James McCosh (served from 1868 to 1888) at Princeton and examines their use of Scottish philosophy in restructuring the curriculum and reforming its institutional purpose. While presiding over Princeton during its most significant transitional moments, these philosophers of the Scottish School of Common Sense instituted different versions of moral education. Meanwhile, Witherspoon's legacy of balancing the interests of Evangelicalism and Scottish philosophy as Princeton's driving purpose influenced the creation and reception of nineteenth-century programmes of moral education. The broader question this article addresses is: how did the interconnecting points among Scottish philosophy, Calvinism and moral education inform notions of didactic Enlightenment at Princeton across a century?

The issue free will and determinism is one of the oldest controversies in philosophy. During the second half of the 18th century, the two dominant advocates of determinism – or necessitarianism as it was then called – were David Hume and Joseph Priestley. Defenders of free will – then called liberty – typically targeted Hume or Priestley, attempting to show the absurdity of their views. In 1792 Edinburgh physician James Gregory (1753-1821) published his two-volume Philosophical and Literary Essays in which he specifically attacks Hume’s conception of necessity. Approaching the issue as a scientist as well as a philosopher, Gregory argued that if human actions were causally necessitated, then our actions would obey the same kind of causal laws that we observe in the physical world. However, Gregory continues, human actions simply do not parallel physical causes as Hume supposes. Thus, we must reject Humean necessity and embrace liberty.

Scotland and the Borders of Romanticism, edited by Leith Davis, Ian Duncan, and Janet Sorensen. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004, viii+250 p. ISBN 0-521-83283-7. In E-rea, 2005. En ligne : http://www.up.univ-mrs.fr/e-rea/3_2/3_2_Reviews/CR_Tholoniat.htm.

Although Adam Ferguson is regarded typically as a secular thinker, the larger frame of this thought may reflect his theism. After recounting, in summary fashion, elements of Ferguson's life, the paper sets forth his embrace of standard doctrines of eighteenth-century natural theology, including the metaphysical basis between mind, activity, and moral happiness, as well as Ferguson's treatment of an important theme of Christian belief – human sinfulness. Turning to Ferguson's moral theory, it is argued that energetic and moralized activity, vigour, may be less an expression of ‘civic humanism’ than of Ferguson's practical experience within the Scottish Church. More important, the very idea of vigorous exertion manifests, in Ferguson's own view, the human reflection of the Divine. Even if Ferguson remains a secular thinker, there is reason to regard him as a man whose thought bears the marks of religious belief and institutional practice.

By founding morality on the particular sentiments of approbation and disapprobation, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith implied that the nature of moral judgment was far more intuitive and accessible than their rationalist predecessors and contemporaries would, or at least easily could, allow. And yet, these ‘Sentimentalists’ faced the longstanding belief that the human affective psyche is a veritable labyrinth – an obstacle to practical morality if not something literally brutish in us. The Scottish Sentimentalists thus implicitly tasked themselves with distinguishing and locating the particular sentiments of approbation and disapprobation in the human psyche. In this paper, I argue that this task led Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith to adopt a remarkable thesis when it came to the nature of the moral sentiments, namely, that the sentiments of moral approbation and disapprobation are peculiar – somehow radically unlike other sentiments.

The paper is a comparative study of the methodologies of Malthus and Ricardo. Its claims are: (i) economic laws almost always admit of exceptions for Malthus; for Ricardo even contingent predictions allow no exception apart from random temporary variations; (ii) both rely on the prestigious Newtonian paradigm, while interpreting it according to two distinct methodological traditions (the one deriving from MacLaurin, the other from Priestley); (iii) the choice of stressing what happens during intervals or in permanent states leads to opposing definitions of the main problem of economic science in so far as equilibrium is always already given for Ricardo and is never given for Malthus; (iv) their use of the ambiguous notion of "tendency" leaves unclear for both  the degree of predictive power with which theories are endowed; (v) what both share is the idea of a natural order and this idea is the source of both shortcomings and endless disagreement.

In the decades before Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species (1859), there was a decisive intellectual clash between religious and purely secular accounts of the world’s origin. In 1829, Alexander Crombie (1762-1840) entered the debate with his two-volume Natural Theology, which defends a religious explanation. General defences of natural religion  – such as William Paley’s Natural Theology (1802) – were common by this time. However, Crombie took a unique approach to the subject. Rather than simply amass scientific examples of natural design, much of Crombie’s work is an assault on materialistic and atheistic systems – most notably those of David Hume, Baron d’Holbach, William Drummond, William Herschel, Pierre-Simon Laplace and Erasmus Darwin. Examining the details of these systems, Crombie attempted to show their logical flaws and scientific errors.

Both Adam Smith's epistemology and his political theory lead to a stalemate. The former is under the opposing pulls of an essentialist ideal of knowledge and of a pragmatist approach to the history of science. The latter still tries to provide a foundation for a natural law, while conceiving it as non-absolute and changeable. The consequences are (i) inability to complete both the political and the epistemological works projected by Smith; (ii) decentralization of the social order, giving rise to several partial orders, such as that of the market.

David Hume's "Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects" is his authorized collection of published philosophical writings, which he often referred to as simply “my philosophy.” The collection first appeared in 1753 and was revised by him in ten later editions, the last of which appeared posthumously in 1777. This essay discusses history and evolving contents of that collection.

The graduation theses of the Scottish universities in the first half of the seventeenth century are at the crossroads of philosophical and historical events of fundamental importance: Renaissance and Humanist philosophy, Scholastic and modern philosophy, Reformation and Counterreformation, the rise of modern science. The struggle among these tendencies shaped the culture of the seventeenth century. Graduation theses are a product of the Scholasticism of the modern age, which survived the Reformation in Scotland and decisively influenced Scottish philosophy in the seventeenth century, including the reception of early modern philosophy. We can therefore speak of a ‘Scottish Scholasticism’, characterised by an original reception and interpretation of the long traditions of Scholastic philosophy and Aristotelianism. The aim of the thesis is the analysis of the general physics of the graduation theses: the two central theories are prime matter and movement. Natural philosophy is a partic...

In issue 6.1 of In t the Journal of Scottish Philosophy, James Van Cleve addresses Thomas Reid’s theory of vision and then presents what he feels to be an unanswered challenge to this theory in the works of David Hume. Because Van Cleve believes that Reid does not himself take up this challenge, after systematizing Hume’s challenge, Van Cleve presents several ways that Reid could have responded to it. Near the end of his article, Van Cleve writes: ‘I have canvassed several responses to the argument from double vision without making a definite choice among them – that is a task I must leave for another occasion’ (Van Cleve 2008:8–9). This paper is an attempt to pick up where Van Cleve leaves off. It is my opinion that although Van Cleve presents several good responses to Hume’s challenge, we do not need to choose from among them because Hume’s challenge is not, in fact, a new or unanswered challenge to Reid’s theory of vision. Therefore we my find Reid’s answer already within his works and chiefly within the Inquiry. To make this argument, this paper begins with Reid’s general theory of perception and then addresses his theory of vision, which fits under the previous, more general theory. Next, it explicates Reid’s understanding of the causes of double vision and his arguments against a Berkelian associationist account. Finally, it turns to Van Cleve’s schematic presentation of Hume’s argument and, based upon the previous material, attempts to show that Reid has already answered its challenge.

I argue that some of the most prominent interpretations of Reid's response to skepticism marginalize a crucial aspect of his thought: namely, that our common sense beliefs meet whatever normative standards of rationality the skeptic might fairly demand of them. This should be seen as supplementary to reliabilist or proper functionalist interpretations of Reid, which often ignore this half of the story. I also show how Reid defends the rationality of believing first principles by appealing to their naturalness and irresistibility. The resulting interpretation supplies Reid with a more satisfying and formidable response to the skeptic than interpretations currently offer.

By investigating one of the major inconsistencies that Hume’s parallel treatment of the identity of persons and objects issues, this essay offers an unconventional account of what it needs to avoid a dualist picture of mind and world. It will be argued that much hinges on the question of whether or not one is willing to allow the principally unperceivable to enter into one’s concept of reality. Hume, as will be shown, rejects this approach: he denies that we have reason to think that there are substances that divide the world into two separate realms. The strategic value of this move is that it enables us to think of minds in terms similar to those underlying our conception of physical objects without urging us to engage in reductionist or eliminativist projects.

This paper sketches a recently emerging divide between two interpretations of Hume's methodology and philosophy of science. On the first interpretation Hume relies on an inductive methodology and provides a (Newtonian) dynamic theory of the mind, and his philosophy of science reflects this methodology. On the second, Hume relies on inferences to the best explanation via comparative analysis of instances, and offers an anatomy of the mind relying on a chemical and organic imagery. The paper also aspires to lean the reader's sympathies toward the latter interpretation while outlining some of its potential consequences for the character of Hume's psychology, the limits of associationism, and his empiricism.

Disseminated by biblical and classical sources (and by Aristotle in particular), the image of an uncultivated, barbarian north shaped medieval socio-geography. Based on climatic considerations, it seemed obvious that these cold zones did not allow for the establishment of civilization and rationality. At the end of the Middle Ages, however, Scottish intellectuals who were embarrassed by this prevailing image started to defy it. In order to inscribe themselves into the realm of European civilization, they presented, on the one hand, a sometimes quite creative reshaping of the climatic scheme. On the other hand, they reinforced an alternative explanation for cultural differences and varying states of rationality, resorting to a conception of different natures within the human species. After introducing two exponents of these developments in the 16th century ( John Mair and Hector Boece), this paper turns to the Scottish Enlightenment of the late 18 th century. Focusing on David Hume and Adam Ferguson, it describes how these same two arguments, based on either climate or inherent nature, still governed the discussion about different states of civilization in this period, the latter alternative having now been developed into a full-fledged theory of race.

Hume's thoroughgoing religious scepticism is set within the context of the Scottish Enlightenment. Against some interpreters, it is argued that, although elusive, his ‘attenuated deism’ (Gaskin) is not wholly dismissive of all forms of religious thought and practice. His position is further compared with contemporary expressions of ‘new atheism’. Despite some obvious similarities, Hume's position is judged more nuanced both in terms of content and rhetorical strategy.

An example from TC Smout;
" In Berwickshire in 1556 twenty two churches were derelict, a few without walls a few without roofs, most without vestments, fonts or books and the mass could not be celebrated. The destruction of parish churches and abbeys, which popular legend blames on the followers of John Knox".           

Popular legend is correct with blaming Knox for all the wrongs committed by Protestants not only against the Roman Catholics, but also for the crimes he had perpetrated against the Scottish nation.

Professor Gordon Donaldson exclaimed that he could not understand why students giggled and sniggered whenever he or any other historian  was giving a lecture and mentioned the name of Knox.

Harry Reid a former editor with the Glasgow broadsheet The Herald wrote a book recently
' Outside Verdict' published 2002 by the Kirk’s own publishers.

Reid expresses his ignorance also as to why Knox is treated with derision he writes;
" It generally seems ignorant of John Knox ( The Protestant Church) its founding father, a Titan of a man who is still more than 400 years on, internationally acclaimed, yet who has here within Scotland so often been traduced, absurdly, as a killjoy and a knave, or even worse".

He goes on to explain about the Protestant Church;
" It does not seem proud, or even particularly aware, of its ( for the most part) great and noble past, and of the good it has done in Scotland and beyond".

I am astounded that these people cannot see the evil that Knox and his " Rascal Multitude" ( Knox's own words for his followers) have perpetrated upon the Scottish people.

The paper reconstructs the reception of Descartes's work by Scottish eighteenth-century philosophers. The Scots' image of Descartes was a by-product of a scientific controversy; philosophical arguments were brought into the picture more as asides than as a primary focus of interest. As soon as the Cartesian physics withered away as a real alternative to Newtonian physics, only the philosophical arguments were left, with no memory of the context out of which they originated, and the focus of the discussion shifted from physics to the philosophy of mind and the theory of knowledge.

The last issue of the London Review contains an editorial response to a letter they received from James Beattie. The context of the London Review response indicates that Beattie's letter was to have been printed in that journal. Strangely, however, the letter never appeared. Enough detail is provided in the London Review's response to reconstruct the thrust of Beattie's letter: Beattie contends that, contrary to the London Review's accusations, he did not abuse Hume in the Essay, and that Hume's criticisms of Beattie's poetic writings were based on prejudice. The letter is important since it represents Beattie's only attempt at a public defense of his treatment of Hume, and an explanation of Hume's unfavorable reaction to his poetical writings. After presenting the London Review's "Answer," I will discuss the nature of the conflict between Beattie and the London Review, and reconstruct the key points in Beattie's letter. It will be helpful to begin with background on the London Review itself.

In this article are published, for the first time together, all the letters of David Hume preserved at the Princess Czartoryski Library in Krakow (Poland). There are six letters written by Hume and three received by himself. The collection range from Hume’s stay in France to the end of his life.  Notably, within these letters, there is one, written by the Earl of Chesterfield, which was never published before. The article include an historiographical introduction and rich bio-bibliographical notes.


In questo articolo sono pubblicate per la prima volta assieme tutte le lettere di David Hume conservate presso la Biblioteca della Principessa Czartoryski a Cracovia (Polonia). Sono presentate sei lettere scritte da Hume e tre ricevute da lui stesso. La raccolta spazia dal suo soggiorno in Francia fino al termine della sua vita. In particolare è presente una lettera totalmente inedita inviata dal Conte di Chesterfield. L’articolo include un’introduzione storiografica e ricche note bio-bibliografiche.

In a 1766 letter, Beattie states his intention to write a book on the nature of truth with this central thesis: "that as we know nothing of the eternal relations of things, that to us is and must be truth, which we feel that we must believe; and that to us is falsehood, which we feel that we must disbelieve." In more contemporary wording, his bold point is that we must reject the correspondence theory of truth (i.e., that true statements are those that correspond with reality) since we do not have access to the world of facts. Instead, we must adopt a common sense standard of truth, which bases truth upon an instinctive conviction of foundational concepts. He states this thesis prominently in the first edition of his Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth (1770) -- in wording very similar to that in the letter. However, in his final revision of the Essay in 1776, he deleted the relevant sentences, thereby diluting -- if not destroying -- the book’s most innovative point. Why did he do this? He was apparently swayed by harsh criticisms of his thesis, particularly by Joseph Priestley. I discuss Beattie's claim, the attacks, and suggest ways in which a common sense standard of truth might be viable.

THE CONCEPTION OF THE SELF IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF THOMAS REID

Thomas Reid, the founder of the Scottish philosophy of common sense, is recognized today as one of the most important British philosophers of the 18th century whose thought offered an alternative to Humean skepticism, Kantian idealism and Cartesian rationalism. Central issues in his theory of sensation and perception as well as in his theory on personal identity are connected with his criticism of the modern theory of ideas and especially with a refutation of David Hume’s philosophical skepticism considered as the logic outcome of Berkeley’s subjectivity and of various other trends that dominated philosophy since Descartes. Combining a significant response to the skeptical and idealist views of his days with a robust realism about mind and the world, Reid construct a theory of human mind and its epistemic operations in a very different way from the usual 18th century epistemological theories, arguing that knowledge deriving from the mental process is based on first principles, the so-called common sense beliefs that are common in all languages. Wishing to rid the field of philosophy of skepticism and uncertainty concerning the possibility of knowledge, Reid formulated a theory of direct perception, by distinguishing sensation from perception and by stressing the importance of judgment, suggestion and belief in every act of perception. Reid presupposes that the mind is endowed with a number of powers and faculties through which it explains features of the mental life as well as futures of the external world. In his theory of perception he discusses the importance of the intentionality of our mental states that accounts for the fact that our perceptions are directed at objects and shows that the Self is in every mental action aware of intentional objects mind-dependent as well as of physical objects mind-independent. Reid is referring to the existence of a Self equipped with mental functions but also to the existence of mental situations that we are aware of. By distinguishing between subject and object, between thought and the subject of thought, act and agent, Reid points out that the word ‘Self’ denotes the subject that possesses various mental experiences, stresses the active character of the mind and attempts to connect the intellect with consciousness and to define personal identity by distinguishing between ‘incomplete identity’ and ‘perfect identity’. According to him, the ‘Self’, by having innate and acquired capacities, perceives and at the same time conceives the external world and restructures it via consciousness’ mental conditions, formulating thus a relation through which the Self immediately recognizes, through reason and the senses, the function of the consciousness as well as the objects of the material world.

In The British Moralists on Human Nature and the Birth of Secular Ethics Michael Gill studies some of the steps involved in the rise, in Britain, of philosophical views of morality in which God plays absolutely no role. He concentrates on Whichcote, Cudworth, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume, who is the culminating thinker in the development toward a secular view. There are occasional references to other British philosophers, and to British exponents of Protestantism. A few non-British writers are mentioned, but none are listed among primary sources or appear in the index. His organizing theme is what he calls 'the Human Nature Question'. Are human beings naturally good or naturally evil? Answers to the question, Gill says, have been central to accounts of morality 'throughout the ages'. Studying it is one way-in his opinion the best way-of getting clear about major themes in British moral thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (1-2). There are two answers to the Human Nature Question. The Negative Answer is that of the Calvinists, represented for Gill mainly by William Perkins. The Negative Answer asserts 'the inherent and ineradicable sinfulness of human nature'. Due to Adam's fall every one of us is 'corrupt through and through'. All our faculties were affected by the fall. We all deserve damnation in hell, though a fortunate few are chosen for salvation. The choice of who is damned and who is saved is eternal and irrevocable: God decided it before anyone was born and so before anyone could do anything to deserve either fate (7-8,11). The Positive Answer takes an opposing view. 'All humans have and always will have within themselves the law of how to live, and they need only follow the principles of their own soul to achieve righteousness' (16). Whichcote, Cudworth, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson give varying versions of the Positive Answer. Hume, by contrast, undermines the very question. For him the Human Nature Question cannot even be raised.

injury and of being injured. However, what counts as injury is not a universal matter; it varies dramatically from one type of society to another" (p. ix). Haakonssen's emphasis on Smith's culturally sensitive approach makes TMS all the more relevant for contemporary readers. He shows Smith's anticipation of those who claim that identity is, in some sense, constructed by community, writing that for Smith, "we only become aware of ourselves-gain self-consciousnessthrough our relationship to others" (xiv). It may have been beneficial for Haakonssen to provides specifics in the essay, citing, for example, III.i.3 where Smith asserts that agents in isolation are incapable of moral and aesthetic judgment, but armed with Haakonssen's preparatory remarks, the reader will hopefully recognize the point when he or she encounters it. Haakonssen's TMS will be useful for the pedagogue who wishes to present a more accessible Smith to an introductory audience. However, and ironically, while the primary text will be less interesting to the scholar, it is the introductory essay geared towards the layperson that will prove as necessary for the specialist as it is for the uninitiated.

That India once had a sustained ‘dialogue’ with Scottish Philosophy is not generally known, or that the exchange occurred in the medium of Sanskrit, not English. The essay explores an important cross-cultural encounter in the colonial context of mid 19th-century Benares where two Scots, John Muir and James Ballantyne, served as principals of a Sanskrit college established by the East India Company. Educated toward the end of the Scottish Enlightenment, they endeavoured to translate such distinctive concepts of ‘Scotch Metaphysics’ as Externalism into Indian philosophical categories. The ensuing ‘dialogue’ with Brahmin interlocutors shows that the problems they faced were less terminological than conceptual, having to do with contrastive ways of understanding ‘mind’ and ‘man’. Between the two Scots, there were also significant differences, although both had gone to India as Scottish Calvinists. While Muir remained largely impervious to Indian influence, Ballantyne was profoundly changed, becoming, in effect, a ‘Vedantic Calvinist’.