The Scottish Enlightenment: Race, Gender, and the Limits of Progress (Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History)

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. 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 Front Matter....Pages i-xiv Introduction: The Scottish Enlightenment as Historiographic Problem....Pages 1-21 Hume versus Montesquieu: Race against Climate....Pages 23-43 The Natural History of Humankind and the Natural History of Man....Pages 45-71 Ignoble Savages: A Blank in the History of the Species....Pages 73-101 Universal Prerogatives of Humankind....Pages 103-131 Measures of Civilization: Women, Races, and Progress....Pages 133-162 Conclusion....Pages 163-172 Back Matter....Pages 173-255