246 research outputs found
Volney, 'The ruins' and 'Catechism of natural law'
No full textVolney was once as influential as Tom Paine, and the author of one of the most popular works of the French Revolutionary era. The Ruins makes an argument for popular sovereignty, couched in the alluring and accessible form of an Oriental dream-tale. A favourite of both Thomas Jefferson, who translated it, and the young Abraham Lincoln, the Ruins advances a scheme of radical, utopian politics premised upon the deconstruction of all the world’s religions. It was widely celebrated by radicals in Britain and America, and exercised an enormous influence on poets from Percy Bysshe Shelley to Walt Whitman for its indictments of tyranny and priestcraft. Volney instead advocates a return to natural precepts shorn of superstition, set out in his sequel, the Catechism of Natural Law. These days Volney enjoys a high profile in African-American Studies as a proponent of Black Egyptianism
Union and Unionisms: Political Thought in Scotland, 1500-2000
No full textAlthough the dominant political ideology in Scotland between 1707 and the present, unionism has suffered serious neglect. One of the most distinguished Scottish historians of our time looks afresh at this central theme in Britain’s history, politics and law, and traces the history of Scottish unionist ideas from the early sixteenth century to the present day. Colin Kidd demonstrates that unionism had impeccably indigenous origins long predating the Union of 1707, and that it emerged in reaction to the English vision of Britain as an empire. Far from being the antithesis of nationalism, modern Scottish unionism has largely occupied a middle ground between the extremes of assimilation to England or separation from it. At a time when the future of the Scottish union is under scrutiny as never before, its history demands Colin Kidd’s lucid and cogent examination, which will doubtless generate major debate, both within Scotland and beyond
Introduction
No full textAn account of Volney’s life and career, his connections with the Ideologues, the arguments and approaches of his main works, and the longer-term reception of his ideas, especially in Britain and America
Beyond the Enlightenment:Scottish intellectual life, 1790-1914
No full textThis collection explores the richness of Scottish intellectual life, its currents and controversies from the French Revolution to the First World War, focusing in particular on the legacy of the Scottish Enlightenment. Offering a series of cutting-edge interventions, the contributors cast light on a range of individuals, themes and episodes from the period. Topics range from the role of women as intellectuals to the rise of a science of race, and from freethinking secularism to the debate over George Davie’s influential account of 19th-century universities
Beyond the Enlightenment:Scottish intellectual life, 1790-1914
No full textThis collection explores the richness of Scottish intellectual life, its currents and controversies from the French Revolution to the First World War, focusing in particular on the legacy of the Scottish Enlightenment. Offering a series of cutting-edge interventions, the contributors cast light on a range of individuals, themes and episodes from the period. Topics range from the role of women as intellectuals to the rise of a science of race, and from freethinking secularism to the debate over George Davie’s influential account of 19th-century universities
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