Lectures in Intellectual History

2013 sees the centenary of the birth of Douglas Young, one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century Scottish... Read more

The political thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau is typically identified with two aspects of that of Thomas Hobbes. The fi... Read more

Stefan Collini offers a few brief reflections on the history and current state of the institution we call the university... Read more

How was the Hobbesian proposition - that man was not naturally sociable - answered by recourse to sacred history, the ac... Read more

How does the concept of exile permeate the life and work of the formative political thinker Judith N. Shklar? In this ta... Read more

Dr Nathan Alexander (Erfurt) delivered this talk at the University of St Andrews on February 2, 2019.

Richard Whatmore (St Andrews) delivered this talk at the University of St Andrews on April 3, 2019. The talk was based o... Read more

The years between 1864 and 1867 were among the most fulfilling of Marx’s life. Not only were these the years in which he... Read more

Modern cosmopolitanism traces its routes back to the Enlightenment. In its individual and collectivist strains, it has b... Read more

Demoracy in America' by Alexis de Tocqueville is possibly the most famous book about America, but what did Tocqueville s... Read more

What kind of narrative order can be imposed on the intellectual development of David Hume, a man demonstrably interested... Read more

Aristotle’s conception of wealth begins with the distinction he makes between two spheres of wealth: its possession (acq... Read more

During the period that saw the creation of the classical Ottoman Empire, the Alexander of pseudo-Callisthenes functioned... Read more

After the Second World War, political philosophy was dead. This changed in 1971 when John Rawls published his Theory of ... Read more

Jeremy Bentham has two very strong commitments in his thought: one is to the principle of utility, or the greatest happi... Read more

What is the nature of the relationship between intellectual history and the study of historiography? Where is it going? ... Read more

Dr Alex Douglas is a lecturer in philosophy at the University of St Andrews.

Henry Sidgwick was already something of an enigma in Cambridge less than six years after his death, and recent interest ... Read more

The emergence of a Scottish 'school' of common sense philosophy has not yet been given the historical attention it deser... Read more

The hallmark of Athenian democracy was equality. From at least the beginning of the 5th century, Athens was a place wher... Read more