This chapter juxtaposes This Too a Philosophy of History with Herder’s treatises On the Origin of Language and On the Cognition and Sensation of the Human Soul to specify the specific targets and the theoretical foundations of his radical criticisms directed at European societies and morality in the 1770s. It also explores his alternative account of moral psychology and modern moral virtue. A fundamental continuity exists between Herder’s writings of the 1760s and the Treatise as far as Herder’s views on human nature, morality, and sociability are concerned. The significant changes include Herder’s embrace of Ferguson’s account of the unsocial sociability of tribal groups, and his claim that Providence had foreseen that mankind would be reunified at a higher mental level thanks to the process of Bildung. Herder’s ridicule of modern liberty, ‘love of mankind’ and linear moral progress in This Too should not be seen as a full-scale rejection of these values; rather, he cautioned against modern self-complacency and ethical and political blind spots. In This Too, Herder emphatically drew attention to historical forms of human sociability, whilst he in On the Cognition highlighted human freedom and self-determination as the core of Christian virtue.

In the last decades, scholars have carved out Herder’s original and interconnected ideas about epistemology, metaphysics, philosophical anthropology, language, and aesthetics, situating his thinking in various strands of Enlightenment philosophy, natural history and hermeneutics. Several recent studies have also dissected Herder’s moral and political ideas. However, Herder’s views on modern European politics and the evolution of his political thought have remained largely unexplored. In particular, his self-avowed ‘German patriotism has not been studied at any depth. At the same time, a debate on Herder’s relationship to nationalism still lingers on. This study proposes that reconstructing Herder’s serial contributions to eighteenth-century discussions on the moral psychological foundations of, and the possible reforms in, modern societies provides a key to understanding the evolution of his political thought, including his relationship to nationalism. In engaging with thinkers such as Rousseau, Montesquieu, Möser, Ferguson, and Kant, Herder addressed questions on how to close the gap between moral principles and action, as well as law and ethics, in contemporary societies.

The long reach of racism in American society is an important part of the Mass Incarceration story, but contrary to some recent accounts, the two phenomena are not the same. There are aspects of Mass Incarceration that can best be explained through a race lens and others that cannot. This chapter offers a way to distinguish between these aspects and explains why the distinction matters in understanding the rise of Mass Incarceration and the prospects for reform.

This chapter examines eighteenth-century moral debates about wealth, poverty and corruption in the emerging commercial state. In particular, it discusses four important moments in these debates: Bernard Mandeville’s celebration of avarice and vice, the fustigations of writers like Bolingbroke, Trenchard and Gordon about the corruption they attributed to financial and commercial innovations, Adam Ferguson’s worries about the corruptions of commercial modernity, and, finally, Adam Smith’s indignation at the spirit of monopoly that threatened to undermine the moral and material gains of commercial society.

From the premise that humans are social beings, the Scots develop negative and positive arguments. Negatively, they reject all contractarian/rationalistic accounts of social living and downplay any crucial role for ‘Great Men’. Positively, they emphasise the effects of socialisation and underline the factors underpinning social coherence (here called institutional stickiness). Customary ways of behaving, and the institutions thus constituted, not only stabilise but also constrain, and since habits are creatures of time, then it is gradual alterations in the sentiments of people that changes them. In contrast to any glib confidence in ‘progress’, the Scots are more cautious. They do believe in improvement, but it is not guaranteed and is a gradual process.

‘Historiography’ charts the profound influence the historiography of the Scottish Enlightenment has had on the way history has been understood in the Anglosphere. It charts the growth of stadial history, which introduced the codification of progress and development into historical time and now is the dominant mode of history throughout the world. The chapter locates the roots of stadial thinking on Scotland’s political and historical position in the eighteenth century and explains how these have been systematically misrepresented by the historiography designed to address them, leading to fundamental ethnic and political misunderstandings about the nature of the Scottish past.

This chapter offers a new overview of the Scottish Enlightenment political theory, deploying both classic and recent scholarship to delineate its canon, scope, major concerns, inner tensions and European contexts. Emphasis is placed on the major Scottish thinkers David Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson and others – who developed a profoundly novel vision of political thought itself as a vital political and moral act, and hence of their own historical agency. The chapter juxtaposes Scotland s historical uniqueness, its rich sources of inspiration, and its pioneering vantage points on modern society, economy and human autonomy. It traces the tensions between statehood and citizenship, law and civic alertness, commerce and virtue, unintended consequences and affective human volition. It is argued that, while mostly moderate in political temperament, the Scottish Enlightenment thus helped revolutionize political theory as well as practice.