ABSTRACT
The social contract did have its moment of Scottish splendor late in the century in the person of Thomas Reid. And a number of prominent spokespersons for enlightenment in France, including Helvetius, d'Alembert, Suard, and Grimm, did not pursue theories of the social contract when addressing public affairs. Thomas Reid, typical of thinkers in the social contract tradition, drew a sharp distinction between the "science of politics" and natural jurisprudence—a distinction between an empirical study in the first case, a normative study in the second. "Across the Channel, within the ranks of the French philosophies, even those who did not participate in the resurgence of social contract theory usually ignored it, only rarely choosing to write against it. The revolutionary politics of the age of Enlightenment led to a break between the two great Enlightenments of Scotlandand France.
