Publisher's Synopsis
Lord Monboddo (1714-99) is well known to Scottish Enlightenment scholars and historians for his major work Of the Origin and Progress of Language (1773-92). Less well known, and virtually inaccessible to the modern reader, is his epic work Antient Metaphysics, which first appeared over a period of 20 years, between 1779 and 1799.
The first two volumes are concerned with mind and causation while the third covers the origin of language. Volumes four and five bear the subtitle 'History of Man' and the final volume discusses the being and nature of God. The work includes, among much else, critiques of Hume, Locke and Newton, and Cudworthian attacks on materialism, revivals of neo-Platonized Aristotelian wisdom mixed with heavy doses of Rousseauian nostalgia, and lengthy and important discussions of the progress of civilization and the history of man. The work also contains considerations on orangutan virtues, morals, wild children, and even attacks on Hume's racism. It is both one of the most intriguing and strangest products of the Scottish Enlightenment but, until this reprint, exceedingly rare. The Thoemmes Press edition features a new introduction by Professor Aaron Garrett.
-of particular interest to scholars of the history of language and its relation to conjectural history
-the second major work of one the Enlightenment's most unusual and interesting figures
-an important document for broadening our understanding of eighteenth-century Scottish philosophy
-exceedingly rare
The first two volumes are concerned with mind and causation while the third covers the origin of language. Volumes four and five bear the subtitle 'History of Man' and the final volume discusses the being and nature of God. The work includes, among much else, critiques of Hume, Locke and Newton, and Cudworthian attacks on materialism, revivals of neo-Platonized Aristotelian wisdom mixed with heavy doses of Rousseauian nostalgia, and lengthy and important discussions of the progress of civilization and the history of man. The work also contains considerations on orangutan virtues, morals, wild children, and even attacks on Hume's racism. It is both one of the most intriguing and strangest products of the Scottish Enlightenment but, until this reprint, exceedingly rare. The Thoemmes Press edition features a new introduction by Professor Aaron Garrett.
-of particular interest to scholars of the history of language and its relation to conjectural history
-the second major work of one the Enlightenment's most unusual and interesting figures
-an important document for broadening our understanding of eighteenth-century Scottish philosophy
-exceedingly rare
