The Gentleman Farmer: Being an Attempt to Improve Agriculture by Subjecting It to the Test of Rational Principles

Henry Home

Franklin Classics Trade Press

The Essays is commonly considered Kames’s most important philosophical work. In the first part, he sets forth the principles and foundations of morality and justice, attacking Hume’s moral skepticism and addressing the controversial issue of the freedom of human will. In the second part, Kames focuses on questions of metaphysics and epistemology to offer a natural theology in which the authority of the external senses is an important basis for belief in the Deity. Like Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Butler, Kames rejected the idea that morality is founded on self-interest and argued that human beings naturally possess a moral sense,” or conscience. At the same time, Kames believed our naturally benevolent inclinations could become law-like only through the principle of justice, which guards the persons, the property, and the reputation of individuals, and gives authority to promises and covenants.” He also sought to counter the epistemological skepticism of Berkeley and Hume, insisting that our sense perceptions must be trustworthy because they have been designed for us by a benevolent Deity. In its concern to vindicate the veracity of our common moral intuitions and sense perceptions that are rooted in our very nature,” Mary Catherine Moran writes, the Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion helped found the Scottish Common Sense school,” a philosophy that was given its classic formulation by Kames’s friend Thomas Reid. The text of this volume is based on the third edition of 1779, while the appendix presents substantial variant readings in the first and second editions.. 
Henry Home, Lord Kames (16961782), one of the leaders of the Scottish Enlightenment, was a judge in the supreme courts of Scotland and wrote extensively on morals, religion, education, aesthetics, history, political economy, and law, including natural law. His most distinctive contribution came through his works on the nature of law, where he sought to combine a philosophical approach with an empirical history of legal evolution. Mary Catherine Moran taught in the Department of History at Columbia University. Knud Haakonssen is Professor of Intellectual History and Director of the Centre for Intellectual History at the University of Sussex, England.

Essays on Principles of Morality and Natural Religion (Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics)

History

Lord Kames

World

Liberty Fund, Inc.

Sketches of the History of Man: v. 1

Historical Study & Educational Resources

Liberty Fund Inc.,U.S.

Sketches of the History of Man: v. 2

Sketches of the History of Man: v. 3

Henry Home, Lord Kames, was by nature an advocate for reform and improvement and stood at the heart of the modernizing and liberalizing movement now known as the Scottish Enlightenment. The reaction to his Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion was a defining moment in the establishment of the predominance of moderation in the Church of Scotland. Divided into three books, Kames' Sketches of the History of Man draws together the concerns of many of his earlier works. The first book considers man in the private sphere and presents Kames' version of the four-stage theory of history: the progress, that is, from hunting, through 'the shepherd state' to agriculture, and thence to commerce. It contains, in addition, sketches on progress in the arts, taste, manners, and appetite for luxury goods. The second book takes as its subject man in the public sphere and explores the implications of his natural 'appetite for society'. Kames develops the notion that political, legal, and financial institutions are best regulated when it is understood that they are outgrowths of aspects of human nature. logic, morals, and theology. He seeks to vindicate the claim that human understanding is in a progress towards maturity, however slow. Throughout the entire work, Kames expounds on his fundamental hypothesis that at the beginning of the history of the human race, savagery was ubiquitous and that the human story is one of an emergence out of barbarism and toward maturity.

Liberty Fund

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1778. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... SKETCH IV. Progress of States from small to great, and from great to small. WHen tribes, originally small, spread wider and wider by population till they become neighbours, the slightest differences enflame mutual aversion, and instigate hostilities that never end. Weak tribes unite for defence against the powerful, and become insensibly one people: other tribes are swallow'd up by conquest. And thus states become more and more extensive, till they be confined by natural boundaries of seas or mountains. Spain originally contained many small states, which were all brought under the Roman yoke. In later times, it was again possessed by many states, Christian and Mahometan, continually at war, till by conquest they were united in one great kingdom. Portugal still maintains its independency, a blessing it owes to the weakness of Spain, not to advantage of situai tion. tion. The small states of Italy were subdued by the Romans; and those of Greece . by Philip of Macedon, and his son Alexander. Scotland escaped narrowly the fangs of Edward I. of England; and would at last have been conquered by its more potent neighbour, had not conquest been prevented by a federal union. But at that rate, have we not reason to dread the union of all nations under one universal monarch ? There are several causes that for ever will prevent a calamity so dreadful. The local situation of some countries, defended by strong natural barriers, is one of these. Britain is defended by the sea; and so is Spain, except where divided from France by the Pyrenean mountains. Europe in general, by many barriers of seas, rivers, and mountains, is fitted for states of moderate extent: not so Asia, which being divided by nature into very large portions, is prepared for extensive monarchies *. Russia is ...

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Introduction to the Art of Thinking, 1775

Thoemmes Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Henry Home. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Henry Home