Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Books
  3. Reason, Grace, and Sentiment
  • Cited by 83
  • Volume 2: Shaftesbury to Hume
  • Isabel Rivers, St Hugh's College, Oxford
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
December 2009
Print publication year:
2000
Online ISBN:
9780511484476
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511484476
Subjects:
Literature, British History after 1450, Religion, English Literature 1700-1830, Religion: General Interest
Series:
Cambridge Studies in Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Thought (37)
Information

Book description

This volume completes Isabel Rivers' widely acclaimed exploration of the relationship between religion and ethics from the mid-seventeenth to the later eighteenth centuries. She investigates the effect of attempts to separate ethics from religion, and to locate the foundation of morals in the constitution of human nature. Focusing on moral philosophy and the educational institutions in which (or in spite of which) these ideas were developed, the book pays close attention to the movement of ideas through the British Isles, in particular the spread of Shaftesbury's thought from England to Ireland and Scotland, and the varied reception of Hume's scepticism north and south of the border. It also demonstrates the enormous influence of Shaftesbury's moral thought and the ultimate triumph of the English interpretation of Shaftesbury with the rise of Butler. Meticulously researched and accessibly written, this volume makes a vital contribution to our understanding of eighteenth-century thought.

Reviews

‘Isabel Rivers … offers a beautifully organised and lucidly written account of the movement of ideas in the period ‘from Shaftesbury to Hume’ - her two key figures … A splendid book for the scholarly library.’

Michael Wheeler Source: Church Times

‘This is a magisterial book, intricate, coherent, learned, lucid, luminously fair minded.’

Source: Review of English Studies

'This is an exemplary scholarly study that provides rich insights into the complex and sometimes subtle debates on religion and on morality that make the later seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries such a fascinating period in the history of thought and is a most welcome addition to Isabel Rivers's previous volume on the subject.'

David A. Pailin Source: Journal of Theological Studies

'Isabel Rivers has concluded her important book on the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century discourses about the connection, or lack thereof, between religion and ethics. Her second volume is informed by the same wide learning, sustained balance, and encompassing generosity that distinguished its predecessor.'

Robert Sullivan Source: Eighteenth-Century Studies

‘Rivers does an exceptional job … This richly detailed book makes a substantial contribution to our understanding of the moral philosophy and religious thought of the period.’

Source: The Virginia Quarterly Review

‘Will remain essential reading for students of history, theology and literature for many years.’

Literature and History

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

Contents

Contents

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.