ABSTRACT
Much of intellectual life in eighteenth-century Scotland is marked by the phenomenon nowadays called the “Scottish Enlightenment” – a flourishing exchange of ideas in a quite remarkably tolerant public space, involving thinkers interested in topics like philosophy, ethics, religion, psychology, history, law, politics, the natural sciences and the arts. Many shared a belief in the possibility of improving the world in both natural and moral matters. Some famous authors associated with the Scottish Enlightenment are Francis Hutcheson, David Hume and Adam Smith (to whom this chapter is going to devote much attention), Hugh Blair, George Campbell, Adam Ferguson, Henry Home (Lord Kames), Thomas Reid, William Robertson and Dugald Stewart. Scotland before the Enlightenment was not devoid of interest in classical antiquity, yet
during the eighteenth century one can identify an increased interest in Greek and Latin authors – in particular in the Stoics and Cicero, and slightly less so in the Epicureans and the Skeptics (Harris 2009: 161). When analyzing the implicit influence of Stoic ideas upon thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment and their explicit treatment of the Stoics, one should bear in mind two risks. One is to see “Stoics” or “Neostoics” too readily, for example by stretching nomenclature and calling someone a Stoic just in virtue of ambiguous commonplace statements in favor of controlling the passions or against the pursuit of riches, for a view of human nature as sociable, or for considering virtue as something not unpleasant. One should be similarly careful with the loose use of concepts in eighteenth-century polemics. The second, opposite danger is to rely on far too rigid classifications, which would render invisible interesting influences, proximities and overlaps between early modern and ancient thinkers, keeping us from understanding how ideas were used in new contexts for new purposes. Given the absence of systematic attempts to rebuild a Stoic philosophy, it may not be
apposite to speak of the presence of genuine Stoicism in the Scottish Enlightenment. With the famous exception of Hume, however, many Scottish thinkers undeniably expressed positive views of some (but not all) Stoic philosophers, and of some (but not all) of the central Stoic tenets. Some of these they appear to have integrated into their new philosophies in more or less eclectic ways, often motivated by the Enlightenment’s interest in a Science of Man. The favorite sources seem to have been Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and Cicero rather than Seneca, Zeno and Diogenes Laertius, and inspiration was found in Stoic moral philosophy rather than cosmology, theology or logic.
