Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment - (Edinburgh Classic Editions) 2nd Edition by Richard B Sher (Paperback)

About the Book

This book is a major contribution to the social history of ideas. It brings to life the intellectual, moral and political milieu that fostered the Scottish Enlightenment in the second half of the 18th century.

Book Synopsis

Since its original publication in 1985, Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment has come to be regarded as a classic work in eighteenth-century Scottish history and Enlightenment studies. It depicts Hugh Blair, Alexander Carlyle, Adam Ferguson, John Home, and William Robertson as an intimate coterie that played a central role in the Scottish Enlightenment, seen here not only as an intellectual but as a cultural movement. These men were among the leaders in the University of Edinburgh, in the Moderate party in the Church of Scotland, and in Edinburgh's thriving clubs. They used their institutional influence and their books, plays, sermons, and pamphlets to promulgate the tenets of Moderatism, including polite Presbyterianism, Christian Stoicism, civic humanism, social and political conservatism, and the tolerant, cosmopolitan values of the international Enlightenment. Using a wide variety of sources and an interdisciplinary methodology, this collective biography portrays these "Moderate literati" as zealous activists for the cause in which they believed, ranging from support for a Scots militia, Ossian, and Roman Catholic relief to opposition to the Jacobite rebellion of 1745 and the American and French Revolutions.

From the Back Cover

'One of the best works to have appeared so far on the Scottish Enlightenment. Though a work of profound scholarship, with a full critical bibliography, [it] . . . can also be read with pleasure and profit by the general reader.' Times Literary Supplement Since its original publication in 1985, Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment has come to be regarded as a classic work on the subject and a major contribution to the social history of ideas. It brings to life the intellectual, moral, and political milieu that fostered the Scottish Enlightenment in the second half of the eighteenth century. This thirtieth-anniversary Edinburgh Classic Edition contains a new preface by the author which reviews the book's origins, clarifies certain aspects of the book's argument, and updates the bibliographical essay. The body of the work depicts Hugh Blair, Alexander Carlyle, Adam Ferguson, John Home, and William Robertson as an intimate coterie that played a central role in the Scottish Enlightenment, seen here not only as an intellectual but as a cultural movement. These men were among the leaders in the University of Edinburgh, in the Moderate party in the Church of Scotland, and in Edinburgh's thriving clubs. They used their intellectual influence to promulgate the tenets of Moderatism, including polite Presbyterianism, Christian Stoicism, civic humanism, social and political conservatism, and the tolerant, cosmopolitan values of the international Enlightenment. Richard B. Sher is Distinguished Professor of History in the Federated History Department of New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University, Newark. He is the author of The Enlightenment and the Book: Scottish Authors and Their Publishers in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and America (2006) and co-editor of The Glasgow Enlightenment (1995), Sociability and Society in Eighteenth-Century Scotland (1993), and Scotland and America in the Age of the Enlightenment (1990). Cover image: The Parliament Close and Public Characters of Edinburgh, Fifty Years Since, style of John Kay, oil on panel (City Art Centre, Edinburgh Museums and Galleries) Cover design:

Review Quotes

Produced as an Edinburgh Classic Edition, Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment is positioned now as what it was when it first appeared in print: a magisterial consideration of the society that undergirded a particular Scottish enlightenment. This text is no less important now than it was in 1985... He opens with 'Reflections' that position the book more fully in its academic context in 1985, and in the debates thereafter. (There is also a helpful update to the bibliography.) What emerges brings the historian of 1985 into focus, a move increasingly necessary, and increasingly revealing, as we move toward the third decade of the twenty-first century.

--Caroline McCracken-Flesher, University of Wyoming "Journal of Scottish Historical Studies "

About the Author

Richard B. Sher is Distinguished Professor of History in the Federated History Department of New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University, Newark. He is the author of The Enlightenment and the Book: Scottish Authors and Their Publishers in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and America (2006) and co-editor of The Glasgow Enlightenment (1995), Sociability and Society in Eighteenth-Century Scotland (1993), and Scotland and America in the Age of the Enlightenment (1990).