Scottish reconnaissance

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David Hume and Adam Smith at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery

The Scottish Enlightenment ( English Scottish Enlightenment , Scots Scots Enlichtenment , Gaelic  Soillseachadh na h-Alba ) was a period in the 18th century in which Scotland had a large number of outstanding personalities in the fields of art and literature, science, technology and architecture as well as made significant technical and scientific advances. This happened just at a time when Scotland had lost its political independence and significant parts of the old ruling class and political power were moving to London .

The term itself was coined around 1900 and has been researched systematically since the 1960s. The Scottish enlighteners, technologists and intellectuals were long subsumed as British or English and only explored in their independence in the 20th century. The economic prosperity experienced in Scotland was emphasized against the power of the kings and the nobility and was seen as the cornerstone of the onset of cultural prosperity. The Scottish Enlightenment was more materialistic than the idealistic French or German version; the still virulent competition with England contributed to their success.

background

At the beginning of the 18th century, Scotland, with its 1.2 million inhabitants, was significantly poorer than England. Its rural population was forced to leave their villages in the area around the Clearances to make way for sheep. The union with England in 1707 and the final end of Scottish independence after the Battle of Culloden in 1746 caused parliament, politicians, aristocrats and their clientele (the so-called placemen) to migrate to London.

However, Scottish law remained different from English. The courts and associated lawyers remained in Edinburgh, as did the Presbyterian Church , universities and the medical establishment in Scotland. Far from the political center, a new middle class was emerging with greater intellectual freedom. In the course of the 18th century schools established themselves in the church districts as did five universities. Reading societies and intellectual circles such as the Select Society and the Poker Club flourished in Edinburgh as well as in the other university towns of St Andrews , Glasgow and Aberdeen .

Many of the protagonists, namely Adam Smith , described themselves as North English and were not at all interested in an independent Scottish profile. The Enlightenmentists, designated as Scottish only after 1900 , emphasized human reason and its ability to change society and nature for the better. The pragmatic and empirical approach set the Scottish Enlightenment apart from the continent. The Scottish Enlightenment also shone far beyond Scotland - not only because of the reputation of Scottish scholars in Scotland, but because the education system and its graduates operated in other centers and regions. The change from traditional theories of natural law to the modern social sciences is temporally connected with it.

Centers

Arthur's Seat and Edinburgh

The Scottish Enlightenment had its center in Edinburgh . It was there that the first theory of progress emerged in Britain, represented by the Scottish philosophers David Hume (1711–1776) and Adam Ferguson (1723–1816). They recognized in the historical tragedy of their own country the full span of human social development: from gatherers and hunters to agriculture and true civilization - the commercial, industrial and scientific world of cities. An expression of this Enlightenment period with its optimism for progress can still be seen today in the New Town of Edinburgh. It is thanks to George Drummond , the mayor at the time, that the image of the city and its situation changed so drastically in view of the overpopulation of the old town. Important architects were active in Scotland. One of them was Robert Adam , who designed the Edinburgh facility around Charlotte Square in New Town.

Hardly a generation after Culloden , the cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh became known as places of intellectual productivity. The novelist Tobias Smollet (1721–1771) was able to let his hero Matthew Bramble determine in the epistolary novel Humphrey Clinker (1771): "Edinburgh is a hotbed of genius" ("hot-bed of genius"). Within a few decades, an intellectual elite developed there that was unparalleled even on the continent.

The Scot who worked furthest in the field of economics was Adam Smith (1723-1790). In his work Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations , he assumed that mankind has a natural tendency towards self-improvement. If you allow her to follow her natural needs, she also unwittingly creates a better world: richer, freer and better educated. Governments shouldn't stand in the way of developing markets. In addition to his role as a forerunner of political economy, he also created a comprehensive moral-philosophical work, such as the theory of ethical feelings .

Some other prominent figures of the Scottish Enlightenment were writers and poets such as Robert Burns (1759–96) and Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832), painters such as Allan Ramsay (1713–84) and Henry Raeburn (1756–1823) or technicians such as James Watt (1736-1819). David Hume , Dugald Stewart , Thomas Reid , Adam Ferguson , John Playfair , Joseph Black and the geologist James Hutton should also be mentioned. The role of women in the process has only been investigated for a relatively short time. Interestingly, there were no Scottish blue stockings and significantly more well-known female intellectuals in England than in Scotland.

Effects

economy

Settlement remains in the highlands near Kilmaluag

At the beginning of the union with England, Scotland's population was only a fifth of Britain's, and economic output and wealth were only a fraction of British figures. But then Scotland began to catch up. In particular, the gentry and the nobility tried to bring agriculture to the English level, which at the same time caused considerable rural exodus. The American colonies became crucial in international trade. Glasgow profited in particular from the trade in industrial goods and as a hub for the tobacco trade. The Royal Bank of Scotland was founded in 1727, as a competitor of the Jacobite sympathies suspected Bank of Scotland . Local banks in Glasgow and Ayr also followed, which also acted as financiers of trade and infrastructure improvements.

Upbringing and intellectual climate

In 1496, under the Education Act, all sons of barons and freemen were required to attend extended school. The network of schools in the parishes, which had already been established in the 17th century, was further strengthened, expanded and better financed, with the Lowlands being provided for faster and better. The myth of the many a lad of pairts, which was already widespread in the 19th century . The rise of boys of simple origin, which is now possible in Scotland in contrast to England, is due to this. The historiography sees this in the meantime a little more differentiated, whereby the success of the Scottish educational expansion is basically not in question. At the beginning of the 18th century, university access was easier and wider than in England, France or Germany, which then began to pay off. In England, compulsory education was introduced in the 1880s, and the top layer not only defended their privileges, but put much less emphasis on formal education as elsewhere, about the Prussian educated middle class . At the end of the 17th century Scotland had five universities, England still only two. Mathematics and astronomy were established, in particular the medical schools in Edinburgh became important nationwide. Robert Sibbald helped found the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (1681).

Library of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh

The French Enlightenment culminated in the salons and the great Encyclopédie (1751–72) by Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d'Alembert , to which hundreds of leading intellectuals contributed. In Scotland (similar to Germany) private clubs, associations and networks became important; The importance of printing and publishing was already noticeable in Edinburgh, where between 1763 and 1783 the number of publishers rose from six to 16 and that of paper mills from three to 12. The Encyclopædia Britannica was first published in Edinburgh between 1768 and 1771 and was also published there until 1898.

According to Jonathan Israel , an intellectual infrastructure was found in the middle of the 18th century and universities, reading societies, libraries and magazines and (Masonic) lodges began to network with one another. The coinage was mainly Calvinist and Newtonian and was based on a (in the original 'design') educational concept of supraregional importance, which made it possible to reinterpret and describe social conditions. The first clubs were founded in Edinburgh in the 1710s, David Hume and Adam Smith were members of the Select Society, others of the so-called Adam Fergusons Poker Club . Clubs reached Glasgow in the 1740s. In Glasgow, the Political Economy Club sought a link between academics and craftsmen. Among other things, the Select Society (long version Select Society for Promoting the Reading and Speaking of the English Language in Scotland) aimed to promote English. The leading scholars found the Scottish dialect to be provincial and vulgar, and pure English with no accent was declared the ideal.

heritage

The completion of the Scottish Enlightenment is often believed to have occurred at the end of the 18th century. However, a disproportionate Scottish contribution to British intellectual life remained noticeable long later, for example with Thomas Carlyle , James Watt , William Murdoch , Lord Kelvin and Sir Walter Scott . Scottish thinkers also influenced the founding fathers of the United States and their concept of common sense . One of the first American consulates after independence and on British soil was also established in Edinburgh in 1789.

Even later, personalities from Scotland accomplished a considerable number of first deeds, discoveries and achievements in the most diverse fields. Among them were Charles Lyell (1797–1875; actuality principle ), James Clerk Maxwell (1831–79; natural philosopher and physicist, electricity and magnetism), Sir James “Young” Simpson (1811–70; anesthesia), Joseph Lister (1827–1912 ; Antisepsis), the writers Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) and Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930), the Africa explorer David Livingstone (1813–73) and the doctor Alexander Fleming (1881–1955), who discovered penicillin . John Logie Baird (1888–1946) invented color television .

Effects in Germany

Only David Hume's thinking, who combined his rationalism with a deep skepticism (also towards the role of reason itself), was of great importance on the continent. Hume is not only regarded as the awakening of Immanuel Kant , but also as an important impetus in German irrationalism . He also influenced the German-Scottish theologian Johann Joachim Spalding . Spalding, for his part, shaped a whole generation of preachers and created schools with the neology and continuation of rational theology . Hume also contributed to Comparative Religious Studies, which is influential in Germany .

When it was received in Germany, some important aspects of the Scottish Enlightenment were misinterpreted as a result of the translation into the German environment and also adapted to the other conditions. Scottish politeness , for example, was more than politeness , but the expression of refined social interaction. For Adam Ferguson, politeness was explicitly interpreted in the republican sense and seen as a symbol of increased political participation as well as upright male virtues beyond courtly intercourse. In Germany, however, the Scottish terms were transferred to the culture of inwardness , which was shaped by Pietism . Robert Burns 'poem A Man's a Man for A' That from 1795 has now been turned into a leftist, initially oppositional hymn in Germany by Ferdinand Freiligrath as a  defiance of all this . In the USA, on the other hand, it was seen as a lyrical version of the United States' Declaration of Independence and an inspiration to Thomas Jefferson, and in the context of the abolition of slavery it was closely linked to the policies of Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party. Despite all this, the GDR claimed for itself as well as its socialist ideology.

Spalding 1762

A prominent example of the effect in Germany (and Bavaria) is the geophysicist Johann von Lamont . He came from a relatively simple background in Scotland and, as a gifted half-orphan, received a scholarship to study theology in Regensburg (1817) through the agency of the Dean of the Scottish Benedictines. There he attended the Royal Bavarian Grammar School and after initially studying theology, he continued his natural science education. Lamont founded and operated the first Bavarian geophysical observatory in Munich.

The Scottish Enlightenment was taken up as a worthwhile research topic from the 1960s and the achievements of many individuals who were previously associated with England were recognized as genuinely Scottish. The discussion did not reach Germany until the 1990s with a considerable delay.

literature

  • Berry, CJ, Social Theory Of The Scottish Enlightenment , Edinburgh University Press 1997.
  • Broadie, Alexander. The Scottish Enlightenment: The Historical Age of the Historical Nation. Birlinn 2002.
  • Broadie, Alexander, ed. The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlightenment. (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy) Cambridge University Press , 2003.
  • Bruce, Duncan A. The Mark of the Scots: Their Astonishing Contributions to History, Science, Democracy, Literature, and the Arts. 1996.
  • Campbell, RH and Andrew S. Skinner, eds. The Origins and Nature of the Scottish Enlightenment (1982), 12 essays by scholars, esp. on history of science.
  • Daiches, David, Peter Jones and Jean Jones. A Hotbed of Genius: The Scottish Enlightenment, 1730-1790 (1986), 170 pp; well-illustrated introduction.
  • Daiches, David , Peter Jones, Jean Jones (eds). A Hotbed of Genius: The Scottish Enlightenment 1731-1790. (Edinburgh University Press, 1986)
  • Colin Russell : Who Made the Scottish Enlightenment ?: A Personal, Biographical and Analytical Inquiry.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Karl Ballestrem: Adam Smith. CH Beck, 2001, p. 10 ff.
  2. ↑ SEHEPUNKTE - Review of: Considerations - Encouragements - Improvements - Edition 12 (2012), No. 4. In: www.sehepunkte.de. Retrieved June 24, 2015 .
  3. ↑ Bernd Carqué: Style and memory: French court art in the century of Charles V and in the age of their interpretation. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 978-3-525-35190-1 , p. 121 ff.
  4. ↑ Alexander Broadie: The Scottish Enlightenment. 1997, p. 10.
  5. ↑ Michael Lynch (Ed.): Oxford Companion to Scottish History. 2001, pp. 133-137.
  6. ^ Matthew Daniel Eddy: Natural History, Natural Philosophy and Readership . In: Stephen Brown, Warren McDougall (Eds.): The Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland . Vol. II: Enlightenment and Expansion, 1707-1800. University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh 2012, pp. 297-309 .
  7. ↑ Mark RM Towsey: Reading the Scottish Enlightenment: Books and Their Readers in Provincial Scotland, from 1750 to 1820 . 2010.
  8. ↑ Krzysztof Michalski (ed.): Enlightenment today. Klett-Cotta, 1997, footnote p. 195.
  9. ↑ Maximilian Oettingen-Wallerstein: Hume's thesis. Königshausen & Neumann, 2008, p. 66.
  10. ^ Gender and Enlightenment Culture in Eighteenth-Century Scotland - Edinburgh University Press. (No longer available online.) In: www.euppublishing.com. Formerly in the original ; accessed on June 23, 2015 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.euppublishing.com  
  11. ↑ Women and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Britain | Reviews in History. In: www.history.ac.uk. Retrieved June 23, 2015 .
  12. ^ RH Campbell: The Anglo-Scottish Union of 1707. II: The Economic Consequences. In: Economic History Review. vol. April 16, 1964.
  13. ^ JD Mackie, B. Lenman, G. Parker: A History of Scotland. Penguin, London 1991, ISBN 0-14-013649-5 , pp. 288-291.
  14. ^ JD Mackie, B. Lenman, G. Parker: A History of Scotland. Penguin, London 1991, ISBN 0-14-013649-5 , p. 292.
  15. ^ JD Mackie, B. Lenman, G. Parker: A History of Scotland. Penguin, London 1991, ISBN 0-14-013649-5 , p. 297.
  16. ↑ PJ Bawcutt, JH Williams: A Companion to Medieval Scottish Poetry. Brewer, Woodbridge 2006, ISBN 1-84384-096-0 , pp. 29-30.
  17. ^ School education prior to 1873 . In: Scottish Archive Network . 2010.
  18. ↑ a b c d R. Anderson: The history of Scottish Education pre-1980. In: TGK Bryce, WM Humes (Ed.): Scottish Education: Post-Devolution. 2nd Edition. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2003, ISBN 0-7486-1625-X , pp. 219-228.
  19. ^ TM Devine: The Scottish Nation, 1700-2000. Penguin Books, London 2001, ISBN 0-14-100234-4 , pp. 91-100.
  20. ^ Matthew Daniel Eddy: The Shape of Knowledge: Children and the Visual Culture of Literacy and Numeracy . In: Science in Context . tape 26 , 2013, p. 215–245 , doi : 10.1017 / s0269889713000045 .
  21. ^ RA Houston: Scottish Literacy and the Scottish Identity: Illiteracy and Society in Scotland and Northern England, 1600-1800. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2002, ISBN 0-521-89088-8 , p. 245.
  22. ^ A b A. Herman: How the Scots Invented the Modern World. Crown Publishing Group, London 2001, ISBN 0-609-80999-7 .
  23. ↑ Yasemin Soysal Nuhoglu, David Strand: Construction of the First Mass Education System in Nineteenth-Century Europe. In: Sociology of Education. Vol. 62, No. 4 (Oct. 1989), pp. 277-288, American Sociological Association
  24. ^ Matthew Daniel Eddy: The Language of Mineralogy: John Walker, Chemistry and the Edinburgh Medical School, 1750-1800 . Ashgate, 2008.
  25. ^ TM Devine: The rise and fall of the Scottish Enlightenment. In: TM Devine, J. Wormald: The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-162433-9 , p. 373.
  26. ↑ RB Sher: Scotland Transformed: The Eighteenth Century. In: J. Wormald (Ed.): Scotland: A History. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2005, p. 169.
  27. ↑ Jonathan Israel: Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750–1790 . Oxford UP, 2011, pp. 233 .
  28. ^ RA Houston, WWJ Knox: The New Penguin History of Scotland. Penguin, London 2001, p. 342.
  29. ^ M. MacDonald: Scottish Art. Thames and Hudson, London 2000, ISBN 0-500-20333-4 , p. 57.
  30. ^ M. Lynch: Scotland: A New History. Pimlico, London 1992, ISBN 0-7126-9893-0 , p. 348.
  31. ^ M. Lynch: Scotland: A New History. Pimlico, London 1992, ISBN 0-7126-9893-0 , p. 346.
  32. ↑ Iris Fleßenkämper: Considerations - Encouragements - Improvements. The Select Society, Edinburgh 1754–1764. (= Colloquia Augustana. Volume 27). Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2010.
  33. ↑ Magnus Magnusson : Northern lights ( Memento of September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) . In: New Statesman . Review of the book James Buchan: Capital of the Mind: Edinburgh (Crowded With Genius: Edinburgh's Moment of the Mind).
  34. ^ E. Wills: Scottish Firsts: a Celebration of Innovation and Achievement. Mainstream, Edinburgh 2002, ISBN 1-84018-611-9 .
  35. ^ Daniel Walker Howe: Why the Scottish Enlightenment Was Useful to the Framers of the American Constitution. In: Comparative Studies in Society and History . Vol. 31, No. 3 (July 1989), pp. 572-587. in JSTOR
  36. ^ Robert W. Galvin, America's Founding Secret: What the Scottish Enlightenment Taught Our Founding Fathers. Rowman & Littlefield, 2002.
  37. ^ Michael Fry: How the Scots Made America. Thomas Dunne Books, 2004.
  38. ^ Sydney E. Ahlstrom: The Scottish Philosophy and American Theology. In: Church History. Vol. 24, No. 3 (Sep. 1955), pp. 257-272. in JSTOR
  39. ↑ Consulate History | Consulate General of the United States Edinburgh, UK. (No longer available online.) In: edinburgh.usconsulate.gov. Archived from the original on October 16, 2011 ; accessed on June 22, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / edinburgh.usconsulate.gov
  40. ^ Isaiah Berlin : Hume and the Sources of German Anti-Rationalism. In: Against the Current: Essays in the History of Ideas. Princeton University Press, 2013, pp. 204-235.
  41. ↑ Friedrich Wilhelm Graf : He did not let David Hume take the butter off his bread - an identity card of the enlightened Protestant theologian elite is available again: Johann Joachim Spalding in an excellent edition. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . Feuilleton, No. 249 / p. 39, 2003.
  42. ^ Marianne Schröter: Transformations of the concept of theology in the Enlightenment. In: Stefan Alkier, Hans-Günter Heimbrock (ed.): Protestant theology at state universities. Concepts and constellations of Protestant theology and research on religion. Göttingen 2011, pp. 182-202.
  43. ↑ C. Hodge: Systematic theology. 1873, p. 43.
  44. ↑ a b History of religion as criticism of religion? David Hume and the aftermath. Lecture by Hans Joas , November 14, 2013 at the Institute for Human Sciences
  45. ↑ T. Penelhum: God and Skepticism. Springer Science & Business Media, 1983.
  46. ↑ a b c d Simone Zurbuchen: Scottish Enlightenment in Dialogue. Three new releases. In: Carsten cell (ed.): The eighteenth century. (= The eighteenth century - communications from the German Society for Research in the Eighteenth Century. Volume 21/2). 1997, ISBN 3-89244-273-8 .
  47. ↑ Kenneth Lyftogt: Iowa's Forgotten General: Matthew Mark Trumbull and the Civil War. University of Iowa Press, May 1, 2009
  48. ↑ Abraham Lincoln and Robert Burns: Connected Lives and Legends. Ferenc Morton Szasz SIU Press, September 25, 2008 - 242 pages
  49. ^ Heinrich Soffel: Johann von Lamont (1805–1879). In: Akademie aktuell. Journal of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. No. 14, Issue 2, 2005, ISSN  1436-753X , pp. 30-35.