ABSTRACT
The death of the Scottish Enlightenment was caused by a growing malignancy in the institutions which had supported it, and through which it had been expressed. In a sense, then, the Scottish Enlightenment was too successful, because it helped to create and develop circumstances and conditions in which it could no longer survive. The Scottish Enlightenment suffered as a result: while it had been in part a movement which had sought to make the most of English intellectual influences channelled through traditional Scottish institutions to make the union a success, it was itself snuffed out by a much more blunt and less subtle instrument working for union, namely industrialisation. The Scottish Enlightenment contributed to its own demise by ‘the great multiplication’ of the branches of study which had been a feature of the movement, and which, even by 1810, Francis Jeffrey thought had contributed to the decline of philosophy.
