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Series:   Elements in Eighteenth-Century Connections

The Epistemologies of Progress

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 April 2025

Richard Adelman
Richard Adelman
Affiliation:
University of Sussex

Summary

The Epistemologies of Progress brings together two recent critical trends to offer a new understanding of Scottish-Enlightenment narratives of progress. The first trend is the new consideration of the ambiguities inherent in eighteenth-century thought on this subject. The second is the fast-growing body of scholarship identifying the surprising role of scepticism in Enlightenment philosophy across Europe. The author's analysis demonstrates that stadial history is best understood through the terms of contemporary scepticism, and that doing so allows for the identification of structural reasons why such thought has been characterized by its ambiguities. Seen in this light, contemporary accounts of progress form a spectrum of epistemological rigour. At one end of this spectrum all knowledge is self-reflexively recognized to be analogy, surmise, 'speculation', and 'conjecture', untethered from lay-conceptions facticity. At the other end stand quotidian political claims, but made alongside reference to the sceptical conception of knowledge and argumentation.
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Keywords

scepticismprogressScottish enlightenmentepistemologyOssian
Type
Element
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Series: Elements in Eighteenth-Century Connections
Online ISBN: 9781009614191
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 29 May 2025

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