Scottish Philosophy After the Enlightenment

Highlights the continued flourishing of Scottish philosophy after the Enlightenment by exploring the work of underappreciated figures (such as Alexander Bain, J. F. Ferrier, Thomas Carlyle and John Macmurray) and debates (such as realism vs idealism; metaphysics vs psychology; evolution vs religion; and theism vs agnosticism).

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Beginning with Sir William Hamilton's revitalisation of philosophy in Scotland in the 1830s, Gordon Graham takes up the theme of George Davie's The Democratic Intellect and explores a century of debates surrounding the identity and continuity of the Scottish philosophical tradition. Graham identifies a host of once-prominent but now neglected thinkers - such as Alexander Bain, J. F. Ferrier, Thomas Carlyle, Alexander Campbell Fraser, John Tulloch, Henry Jones, Henry Calderwood, David Ritchie and Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison - whose reactions to Hume and Reid stimulated new currents of ideas. He concludes by considering the relation between the Scottish philosophical tradition and the 20th-century philosopher John Macmurray.