Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Sebastiani, Silvia

Titel

The Scottish Enlightenment: Race, Gender, and the Limits of Progress

Auflage

1

Ort / Verlag

New York: Palgrave Macmillan

Erscheinungsjahr

2013

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• 01 02 The Scottish Enlightenment shaped a new conception of history as a gradual and universal progress from savagery to civil society. Whereas women emancipated themselves from the yoke of male-masters, men in turn acquired polite manners and became civilized. Such a conception, however, presents problematic questions: why were the Americans still savage? Why was it that the Europeans only had completed all the stages of the historic process? Could modern societies escape the destiny of earlier empires and avoid decadence? Was there a limit beyond which women's influence might result in dehumanization? The Scottish Enlightenment's legacy for modernity emerges here as a two-faced Janus, an unresolved tension between universalism and hierarchy, progress and the limits of progress. 19 02 This is likely the most original book on the Scottish Enlightenment published in nearly twenty years The book offers new insights into thinkers such as David Hume and Adam Smith as well as a host of other contemporary intellectuals Sebastiani provides a much-needed new perspective on this period by examining it through the lenses of race and gender 13 02 Silvia Sebastiani is Maître de Conférences (Associate Professor) at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Socials in Paris, France, where she teaches seminars on the experiences and ideologies of race in the early modern period and on Enlightenment historiography, and coordinate the group of research mondes britannique . 04 02 Introduction: The Scottish Enlightenment as Historiographic Problem 1. Hume versus Montesquieu: Race Against Climate 2. The Natural History of Humankind and the Natural History of Man 3. Ignoble Savages: a Blank in the History of the Species 4. Universal Prerogatives of Humankind 5. Measures of Civilization: Women, Races, and Progress Conclusion 31 02 Examines the difference between monogenist and polygenist accounts of the origin of the human race 02 02 Examines how the difference between monogenist and polygenist accounts of the origin of the human race was reflected in, and helped to shape, Scottish Enlightenment accounts of society's progress through historical stages. Reveals how concepts of race and the role of women were treated by historians, philosophers, and other thinkers. 08 02 to come