Introduction

This volume is concerned with European philosophy from the late seventeenth century through most of the eighteenth-the period of ‘the Enlightenment’ as broadly conceived. Some apology is due for the overall emphasis on what is commonly referred to as ‘British philosophy’. But the attention to English early Enlightenment figures, such as Newton and Locke, is easily justified, since they were important influences on the Enlightenment elsewhere. Philosophy flourished in Britain and Ireland in the eighteenth century. Wales produced Richard Price,1 while Ireland could boast of Berkeley and Burke.2 Ireland also produced Francis Hutcheson, to whom Hume and the Scottish Enlightenment owed a considerable debt.3 The Scots in turn had a considerable influence on the Enlightenment or Aufklärung in Germany, not least on the thought of Kant.4