Overview

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries represent a period of remarkable intellectual vitality in British philosophy, as figures such as Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and Smith attempted to explain the origins and sustaining mechanisms of civil society. Their insights continue to inform how political and moral theorists think about the world in which we live. From Moral Theology to Moral Philosophy reconstructs a debate which preoccupied contemporaries but which seems arcane to us today. It concerned the relationship between reason and revelation as the two sources of mankind's knowledge, particularly in the ethical realm: to what extent, they asked, could reason alone discover the content and obligatory character of morality? This was held to be a historical, rather than a merely theoretical question: had the philosophers of pre-Christian antiquity, ignorant of Christ, been able satisfactorily to explain the moral universe? What role had natural theology played in their ethical theories - and was it consistent with the teachings delivered by revelation? Much recent scholarship has drawn attention to the early-modern interest in two late Hellenistic philosophical traditions - Stoicism and Epicureanism. Yet in the English context, three figures above all - John Locke, Conyers Middleton, and David Hume - quite deliberately and explicitly identified their approaches with Cicero as the representative of an alternative philosophical tradition, critical of both the Stoic and the Epicurean: academic scepticism. All argued that Cicero provided a means of addressing what they considered to be the most pressing question facing contemporary philosophy: the relationship between moral philosophy and moral theology.

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9780198835585

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From Moral Theology to Moral Philosophy is an excellent piece of work. The main narrative is compelling, and StuartButtle clarifies and enriches our understanding of the period from Locke to Hume. No scholar of the subject matter should ignore his achievement. * Eric Entrican Wilson, Georgia State University, Journal of British Studies 61 * The power behind the book is Stuart-Buttle's breath-taking erudition and exemplary scholar-ship. One of his many virtues is that he is not only well-read in all the relevant books (primary and secondary) but also uses more manuscript sources than is common among conventional intellectual historians...his deft use of unpublished material contributes to the extraordinary richness of this fine book. * Max Skjoensberg, Intellectual History Review * [a] rich and rewarding study of British moral philosophy from Locke to Hume * James A. Harris, Journal of the History of Philosophy * In this rigorous, persuasive, and highly accomplished book, Tim Stuart-Buttle sets out to uncover and bring to the fore a crucial but neglected aspect of the history of moral thought in Britain from John Locke to David Hume: the evolution of a fully secular moral philosophy which came to both separate itself from, and in turn repudiate, the moral theology from which it was born. Marshalling a dazzling array of thinkers and sources, which are brought to bear in an impressively focused and unified historical narrative, this monograph constitutes one of the major achievements of recent intellectual history, and provides a significant advance in our understanding of early modern moral philosophy. * Paul Sagar, History of European Ideas *

In this rigorous, persuasive, and highly accomplished book, Tim Stuart-Buttle sets out to uncover and bring to the fore a crucial but neglected aspect of the history of moral thought in Britain from John Locke to David Hume: the evolution of a fully secular moral philosophy which came to both separate itself from, and in turn repudiate, the moral theology from which it was born. Marshalling a dazzling array of thinkers and sources, which are brought to bear in an impressively focused and unified historical narrative, this monograph constitutes one of the major achievements of recent intellectual history, and provides a significant advance in our understanding of early modern moral philosophy. * Paul Sagar, History of European Ideas *

Author Information

Tim Stuart-Buttle is Lecturer in Politics at the University of York and a member of the Leverhulme Trust-funded project, Rethinking Civil Society: History, Theory, Critique. Prior to this, he held a postdoctoral research associateship at the University of Cambridge. He has published articles in journals including Locke Studies, History of Political Thought and Political Theory, and essays in collected volumes including The Cambridge Companion to Edward Gibbon (Cambridge 2018). He is the co-editor, with Subha Mukherji, of Literature, Belief, and Knowledge in Early Modern England: Knowing Faith (Palgrave Macmillan 2018).

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