SAMUEL GREGG: Scotland’s Intellectual Triumph.
The 250th anniversary of The Wealth of Nations has brought a burst of renewed attention to the Scottish Enlightenment. Discussions have ranged widely, from Adam Smith’s conception of aesthetics to how the thought of his teacher, the “never-to-be-forgotten” Francis Hutcheson, shaped the American Revolution.
But amidst these discussions, one important question has received little consideration. Why did such a remarkable group of thinkers appear in one of eighteenth-century Europe’s most physically isolated, sparsely populated, and poorest nations?
On the face of it, the Scottish Enlightenment was a highly unlikely phenomenon. In 1603, Scotland lost a major stimulus for cultural development in early modern Europe when the Scottish king and court relocated to London following James VI’s succession to the throne of England. Many Scottish artists, musicians, and writers subsequently moved south to chase the type of royal patronage that stimulated intellectual life. The debilitating effects of this were accentuated 104 years later when the Scottish Parliament voted to dissolve itself and incorporate Scotland into what was always going to be an English-dominated Kingdom and Parliament of Great Britain. After 1707, some Scots called themselves “North Britons.” No one in England thought to label himself a “South Briton.”
This background does not suggest a self-confident and powerful nation, let alone one on the brink of an intellectual revolution in fields as wide-ranging as economics, medicine, and philosophy.
Yet that’s exactly what happened. This is a lovely essay, and well worth your time.
