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A Weak State and a Weak Church

In: Adam Smith, Radical and Egalitarian

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  • Iain McLean

Abstract

Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith and David Hume lived under a weak state and a weak church. If they had not, Smith and Hume might have been unable to publish their devastating demolitions of politics, economics and religion as they found them. Had they depended on the universities of Oxford or Cambridge rather than Edinburgh or Glasgow, they might have been silenced as effectively as their great predecessor John Locke. Locke fled to the Netherlands in 1683 as the political climate in England became more hostile to him and his friends, was expelled from his Oxford fellowship in 1684 and did not publish his great work in philosophy and politics until after the change of regime — the ‘Glorious Revolution’, which his work was seen to justify — in 1689. This chapter explores the institutions whose weakness gave the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment the space to write, but also a political and intellectual vacuum to be filled by better institutions.

Suggested Citation

  • Iain McLean, 2006. "A Weak State and a Weak Church," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Adam Smith, Radical and Egalitarian, chapter 2, pages 27-45, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-349-73822-9_2
    DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-73822-9_2
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