ABSTRACT
What the preceding chapter demonstrates is that the Scots saw the virtuous as defined in part by the beautiful. Obviously, beauty was one of the great integrating ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment. In nearly every aspect of philosophical investigation and ultimate pronouncement, beauty was screened as the result of various perfections, whether in the natural world or through human artifice. Emotion was the motivator behind the human response to “perfect” nature, with the outcomes being universal authenticity and happiness. In the following, I will explore those ideas as four separate targets: first, through a synopsis of how the Scots regarded the qualities of beauty; second, by isolating the sublime as a specific kind of beauty; third, through a view of beauty as a type of moral truth; and fourth, by exploring the ways beauty instills pleasure and how this in turn instills goodness.
