Overview
- Reassesses the ethics of moral reasoning in the Age of the Enlightenment
- Argues that conscience was a central feature of British Enlightenment ethical rationalism
- Refines Enlightenment ethical rationalism by reinterpreting its most influential proponents in eighteenth-century Britain
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About this book
This book reassesses the ethics of reason in the Age of the Reason, making use of the neglected category of conscience. Arguing that conscience was a central feature of British Enlightenment ethical rationalism, the book explores the links between Enlightenment philosophy and modern secularisation, while responding to longstanding criticisms of rational intuitionism and the analogy between mathematics and morals, derived from David Hume and Immanuel Kant. Questioning in what sense British Enlightenment ethical rationalism can be associated with a secularising ‘Enlightenment project’, Daniel investigates the extent to which contemporary, and secular liberal, invocations of reason and conscience rely on the early modern Christian metaphysics they have otherwise disregarded.
The chapters cover a rich collection of subjects, ranging from the Enlightenment’s secular legacy, reason and conscience in the history of ethics, and controversies in the Scottish Enlightenment, to the role of British moralists such as John Locke, Joseph Butler and Adam Smith in the secularisation of reason and conscience. Each chapter expertly refines Enlightenment ethical rationalism by reinterpreting its most influential proponents in eighteenth-century Britain – the followers of ‘Isaac Newton’s bulldog’ Samuel Clarke – including Richard Price (Edmund Burke’s opponent over the French Revolution) and John Witherspoon (the only clergyman to sign the US declaration of Independence).
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Keywords
Table of contents (6 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Dr Dafydd Mills Daniel is McDonald Lecturer in Theology and Ethics at the University of Oxford, UK. His BBC radio documentaries include: Sir Isaac Newton and the Philosophers’ Stone and Where do human rights come from? He is the author of Briefly: Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, and co-author (with David Mills Daniel) of Ethics and Moral Philosophy and Briefly: 25 Great Philosophers from Plato to Sartre.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Ethical Rationalism and Secularisation in the British Enlightenment
Book Subtitle: Conscience and the Age of Reason
Authors: Dafydd Mills Daniel
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52203-2
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-52202-5Published: 23 October 2020
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-52205-6Published: 24 October 2021
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-52203-2Published: 22 October 2020
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XII, 344
Topics: History of Philosophy, Ethics, Philosophy of Religion