The Moral Culture of the Scottish Enlightenment

Abstract

In the European Enlightenments it was often argued that moral conduct rather than adherence to certain theological doctrines was the true measure of religious belief. This book shows that the characteristically “enlightened” emphasis on conduct in religion was less reliant on arguments from reason alone than is commonly believed. In fact, the champions of the Scottish Enlightenment were deeply skeptical of the power of unassisted natural reason in achieving “enlightened” virtue and piety. They advocated a practical program of “moral culture,” in which revealed religion was of central importance. The book traces this to theological controversies going back as far as the Reformation concerning the key question of early modern theology, the conditions of salvation. It examines these themes in Scottish Enlightenment thought in the period from the Glorious Revolution until the early nineteenth century.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 100 citations exist upstream.