Research Theme: Dialogues of Enlightenment

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Hume Tercentenary events

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Spring Semester 2012

"English Literature 1762-2012" seminar series

"Hugh Blair: His Life and Legacy", 5 March

English Literature 1762-2012

Tuesdays at 5.30, Faculty Room South, David Hume Tower

In the Spring Semester 2012, as part of the celebrations to mark the 250th Anniversary of English Literature at Edinburgh, the Institute is hosting a series of five talks -

24 January
Eve Bannet (George Lynn Cross Professor, University of Oklahoma): Hugh Blair, belletrism and popular reading

7 February
Nigel Leask (Regius Professor of English Literature, University of Glasgow): From Belles Lettres to English Lit.: the Victorian Regius Chair in Glasgow and Edinburgh

21 February
Alistair Fowler (Emeritus Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature, University of Edinburgh) and Greg Walker (Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature, University of Edinburgh): The Regius Chair and its incumbents

6 March
Deidre Lynch (Chancellor Jackman Professor of English, University of Toronto): Daniel Wilson, Scotland and Canada: the export of English

20 March
Olga Taxidou (English Literature, University of Edinburgh), Peter Arnott (Resident playwright, Genomics Forum) and David MacLennan (Director Òran Mór, Glasgow): Theatres of Learning: Drama, the University and performance in Scotland

Monday, 5 March 2012

2.00 - 4.00 pm, IASH, Hope Park Square

"Hugh Blair: His Life and Legacy"

Speakers: Professor Stewart J. Brown (Divinity, University of Edinburgh); Dr. William Zachs (English Literature, University of Edinburgh); Dr. David Miller (Visiting Research Fellow, IASH)

Please email iash@ed.ac.uk if you plan to attend

Click on the following links for further information about these events:

Dialogues with Hume: January - June 2011
For information about the other Hume Tercentenary events in 2011, click on the link to the left.

IASH Fellows' Hume Workshop: 1 February 2011

Scottish Philosophy in Transnational Contexts: Debating the Transnational Dissemination of Scottish Moral Philosophy: 29 April 2011

Workshop on "Nature's Commerce: Environment and Science in the Scottish Enlightenment": 26 May 2010

Symposium Series: Spring 2010

Conference: "Darwin and Lincoln on Race and Society": 13 November 2009 at the Royal Society of Edinburgh
(A joint RSE/IASH One-day conference)
and
"Believing in Change: Darwin, Lincoln, Obama": 13 November 2009

Symposium Series "Society and Enlightenment": Autumn 2009

Conference: "Dialogues of Enlightenment": 11-13 June 2009 - Annual Meeting of the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes

"Dialogues with Darwin: Darwin in Edinburgh": Spring 2009

"Kant in Koenigsberg: Imperial Cosmopolitanism": 9 March 2009

Symposium Series: Autumn 2008

Friday 29 April 2011
Scottish Philosophy in Transnational Contexts: Debating the Transnational Dissemination of Scottish Moral Philosophy

The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, STAR, and the Scottish Centre for Diaspora Studies, The University of Edinburgh

Description:
This symposium investigates the transnational reception, adaptation, and transmission of Scottish moral thought during the long eighteenth century. The symposium addresses how Scottish moral philosophy emerged from unique national contexts while also owing its formation to a wider dialogue in the Republic of Letters. In addition, the symposium offers a forum for scholarly debate amongst prominent historians of Scottish thought. Scottish moral philosophy will be treated in an inclusive manner that envelops the themes of ethics (both applied and abstract), aesthetics, political economy, morals, metaphysics, natural theology, social and societal progress or improvement, education, and methodology.

This event offers a unique opportunity for delegates and attendees to envision the significance of eighteenth-century Scottish moral philosophy from different transnational contexts. This will encourage questions regarding why particular themes of Scottish moral thought resonated with certain national cultures, the significance of their adaptations, and should Scottish moral thought be considered original. The symposium's overarching objective involves advancing knowledge of the migration and dissemination of Scottish moral philosophy by treating a wide range of themes in different transnational contexts during different periods of the long eighteenth century.

Programme:

Friday 29 April 2011

For further information about the symposium email C.Bow@sms.ed.ac.uk

REGISTRATION: The event is free but space is limited so registration is essential.
Please email iash@ed.ac.uk to reserve a place.

Dialogues with Hume
A series of seminars organised by the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities as part of the Hume Tercentenary celebrations

Tuesdays at 4 p.m. in the Institute, Hope Park Square

25 January
Emeritus Professor Peter Jones (University of Edinburgh): Conversation: And the Reception of David Hume

1 March
Gathering Uncertainties: A Conversation between Linda McLean and Susan Manning.
Playwright Linda McLean is IASH/Traverse Creative Fellow in 2010-11 and has been commissioned to write a play related to Hume during her residency at the Institute.

5 April
Professor Daniel Schulthess (University of Neuchâtel): Hume and Searle: The 'is/ought' gap vs. speech act theory
Abstract: David Hume had a strikingly original view of the way promises work and generate obligations (Treatise III.ii.5). John Searle did contradict Hume on these issues. Through the years, he developed an alternative position, grounded in speech act theory, and extended this into a broad analysis of the way in which obligations arise in the social world. In my presentation of the issues, I shall take account of the broader context of the discussion in modern systems of natural law, and present a stance concerning the Hume/Searle debate.

3 May
Dr. James Harris (University of St. Andrews): Hume's intellectual development: an overview
Abstract: I shall sketch some central problems facing an intellectual biographer of Hume: what account to give of the origins of the Treatise; how to understand the move from philosophy, narrowly construed, to issues in politics, political economy, and political history; how to construe Hume's attitude to religion, and what significance to give his religious writings in his career taken as a whole. I shall argue that Hume's political writings form the intellectual centre of gravity of his life's work, and that the intentions behind his writings on religion have generally been mischaracterized.

FRIDAY 17 June
A dialogue between Professor Don Garrett (New York University and Carnegie Centenary Professor, IASH) and Dr. Peter Millican (Hertford College, Oxford and Illumni Hume Fellow, IASH) on Reason, Induction, and Causation in Hume's Philosophy
Abstract: Hume is justly famous for his claims about reason, induction, and causation, but his leading interpreters have often disagreed about what those claims amount to. What does he understand by the faculty of reason, are inferences from experience a function of that faculty, and is Hume really - as so widely assumed - a sceptic about induction? His view on causation has been even more controversial in recent years: is he a believer in real causes, and what are we actually doing when we believe that one thing causes another? Moving their friendly debates from print to the stage, Don Garrett and Peter Millican try to set the record - and each other - straight!

IASH Fellows' Hume Workshop

Tuesday, 1 February, 2 - 4 p.m. in the Institute, 2 Hope Park Square

Livia Guimaraes (Philosophy, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil):
Hume and Feminism

Jo Clifford (Playwright, IASH/Traverse Creative Fellow in 2010):
'No quality in human nature is more remarkable than that propensity we have to sympathise with others': Dramatising David Hume

Wednesday, 26 May 2010 at 3 p.m.
Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, 2 Hope Park Square

Joint workshop with the Scottish Centre for Diaspora Studies

"Nature's Commerce: Environment and Science in the Scottish Enlightenment"

Professor Fredrik Albritton Jonsson (Department of History, University of Chicago)

Responses from Dr. Thomas Ahnert (History, University of Edinburgh) and Professor C.W.J. Withers (Professor of Historical Geography, University of Edinburgh)

Places at the workshop are limited; please email iash@ed.ac.uk to book a place.

Spring Semester 2010
Dialogues of Enlightenment Symposia

Tuesdays at 4 p.m. (unless otherwise stated)
Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, 2 Hope Park Square

26 January
Dr. Peter Millican (Hertford College, Oxford; Illumni David Hume Fellow, IASH): "Hume's understanding of the faculties"
Abstract: Hume frequently talks of human faculties, and some of his most celebrated discussions are presented as revolving around the identification of which faculty – for example reason, the senses, or the imagination – is responsible for some vital cognitive operation. Perhaps the four most familiar examples concern induction (in Treatise 1.3.6 and Enquiry 4), belief in the external world (in Treatise 1.4.2), human motivation (in Treatise 2.3.3), and the foundation of morals (in Treatise 3.1.1 and the Moral Enquiry). The interpretation of all of these famous arguments will inevitably depend significantly on what exactly Hume's faculty terms mean. So it is rather surprising that very little work has been done to investigate in detail his general taxonomy and treatment of the faculties, and thus to illuminate his understanding of the faculty terms. My agenda in this paper is to examine Hume's use of faculty language throughout his philosophical system, with the ultimate aim of shedding light on these famous arguments, and on his view of induction in particular. I lead up to an analysis of Hume's position on induction that differs significantly from previous accounts (including my own).

9 February
Michael Fry (School of Law, University of Edinburgh): "Cities of Light: civil law and civic life in Edinburgh and Leipzig 1707-1806"
Abstract: Scholars of the Enlightenment tend to concentrate on its high intellectual achievements, and quite rightly so. But it is worth recalling that all this ratiocination was in the end meant to make life better for the masses of the common people, who would otherwise remain lost in ignorance and superstition. In certain respects something was already being achieved by the end of the eighteenth century. This paper will look at two examples of improvement to the urban environment, at the intellectual inspiration behind it and at how enlightened principles fared in contact with the real world.

23 February
Dr. Philippa Hubbard (Postdoctoral Fellow, IASH): "Visual Dialogues in Eighteenth-Century Print: Graphic Advertising and Cultures of Consumption and Knowledge"
Abstract: Shopping in the eighteenth century was a source of both pedagogy and pleasure. Well-stocked shops facilitated the exchange of useful information and the leisurely perusal of consumer goods. A range of printed materials also supported consumer experiences away from shop spaces and enabled commercial knowledge to be freely circulated and exchanged. Advertising trade cards, commercial dictionaries, journals and single-sheet prints offered buyers and sellers information on the changing world of goods. Graphic and textual descriptions of new mechanical processes, materials and objects helped to form ideas about production as well as consumption and played a part in creating active economic agents. The visual and textual dialogues between ephemeral prints helped form a system of knowledge and language of consumption through which buyers and sellers expressed their needs and desires. The paper considers the connections between visual information and ideas about invention, ingenuity, design and display in the eighteenth century.

11 March (Thursday)
Professor Adam Potkay (Professor of English and William R. Kenan Professor of Humanities, College of William and Mary): "Ethics as Dialogue: Hume's 'Four Philosophers'"
Abstract: Hume’s quartet of essays known either as “Four Philosophers” or “Essays on Happiness”—in order, “The Epicurean,” “The Stoic,” “The Platonist,” and “The Sceptic”—is an exemplary engagement, both thematically and formally, with the classics and particularly classical philosophy. Published in Hume’s Essays of 1742, at mid-century, these four essays provide a good vantage point from which to see both the earlier innovations of classical philosophical tradition upon which Hume drew, and later developments to which he contributed. I consider each of Hume’s essays as a means of understanding the broader reception of the ancient philosophic sects in the discursive and philosophical prose of the long eighteenth century, noting especially the ways in which other authors’ engagements with this living tradition (e.g., in writings of Saint-Évremond and Shaftesbury) inform Hume’s sketches of his philosophical types. Hume’s four interlocked essays also offer us a way into a more general consideration of the uses of classical-rhetorical form in the long eighteenth century. Specifically, what does it mean to present ethics rhetorically or, more generally, conceive of philosophy as rhetoric? “Four Philosophers” presents four speeches or monologues, each one contrasting with but no one explicitly responding to the last, and asks the reader to judge between them, using any one as a lens for seeing the shortcomings of the others. Hume’s method thus requires the active involvement of his reader, offering a lesson in, or test of, rhetorical proficiency.

23 March
Dr. Gabor Gango (Institute for Philosophical Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences): "Dinner Parties in Kant's Anthropology"
Abstract: In this paper I argue that Kant's Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798) can be read as a description of a society being continually polished by learning and knowledge transfer. The dinner parties in Kant's vision with their aesthetic, culinary and cultural enjoyments are excellent promoters of this social refinement. From this point of view, the necessity of revisiting main controversial issues on Kant's anthropology thus emerges naturally. I will hold first that Kant, in spite of remaining actually within the borders of prudential reason, nonetheless aimed to bridge the gap between prudence and morality through cultivation. Secondly, that in the 1798 version of Anthropology he exploited more profoundly the insights of British moral philosophers - Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume - to highlight social refinement than he did in his university lectures on anthropology during the 1770's-1780's.

"Darwin and Lincoln on Race and Society"
A joint RSE/IASH One-day conference

13 November 2009
The Royal Society of Edinburgh, 22-26 George Street

Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born on the same day in the same year:
12 February 1809. The 200th anniversary celebrations on both sides of the Atlantic remind us that the American President and the British zoologist jointly helped to shape the modern world. Questioning established hierachies of nature, race and class, their legacy of civil and scientific liberalism still holds radical potential today. The day conference explored connections and conflicts between Darwin's and Lincoln's work including the origins of their thinking in Enlightenment discussions of human nature and society, the nature of their original contribution and its reverberations in contemporary culture and politics.

Speakers:
Professor Catherine Clinton (Queen's University Belfast)
Dr Jon Hodge (University of Leeds)
Professor James A. Moore (The Open University)

Programme:

The Conference was followed by a public lecture by Marek Kohn (author and columnist): "Believing in Change: Darwin, Lincoln, Obama".

Marek Kohn writes books and articles about a range of interconnected themes, including ideas about human nature and human difference, evolutionary thinking and its impact on society, national identity, and trust. His books include: A Reason for Everything: Natural Selection and the English Imagination; As We Know It: Coming to Terms with an Evolved Mind; and The Race Gallery: The Return of Racial Science. He writes for the Independent, the Guardian and the New Statesman. He is also a fellow in the Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics at the University of Brighton.

Autumn Semester 2009
Dialogues of Enlightenment Symposium Series: "Society and Enlightenment"

Tuesdays at 4 p.m.
Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, 2 Hope Park Square

29 September
Professor Pawel Luków (Institute of Philosophy, Warsaw University):
"Kant's redefinition of virtue"
Following Aristotle, the dominant accounts of virtue define it as an acquired, morally- worthy trait of character. By contrast, Kant characterizes virtue as fortitude or strength in the face of the demands of morality and connects it to his elaborate theory of duties of virtue. Against the background of Kant's educational goals, I offer an explanation of the dramatic differences between these two conceptions of virtue (and the ethical theories to which they belong) in terms of (i) the dissimilarities in the audiences each philosopher addressed and (ii) the respective goals of their ethical inquiries. I argue that Aristotle wrote for a community united by a view of the good life, whereas Kant directed his work to a society marred by moral diversity and discord.

13 October
Dr. Petra van Brabandt (Department of Philosophy, University of Antwerp): "Hume's A Dialogue: a defence of universalism?"
In the Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, Hume argues that moral distinctions cannot be discovered by reason. Because this implies the risk of moral relativism, this position is often objected to. If there is no apriori criterion to distinguish right from wrong; the implication is that everything goes. Because moral relativism is no option for Hume, he refers to the uniformity of human nature to object to this conclusion. It is precisely in "A Dialogue" that this thesis is put to the test: Palamedes has collected empirical evidence that contradicts this human uniformity. Hume however is not impressed and reproaches him for having committed "a historical forgery" in his description of the facts. Hume introduces his method of (what I call) the charitable interpretation, which leads to a generous contextualism, and disarms at once moral scepticism and relativism.

27 October
Professor Philip Stratton-Lake (Department of Philosophy, University of Reading):
"Morality, autonomy and reasons we can share"
A central theme in Enlightenment thinking is that one should take nothing merely on authority, but should submit all important claims to one’s own critical scrutiny. This may have been why it was so important for Kant, and many Kantians, to reconcile morality and individual autonomy. For many Kantians it of central importance that morality be compatible with individual autonomy. Kant went so far as to attempt to ground morality in autonomy, and some Kantians follow him in this in their own distinctive way. But there are various problems with the attempt to reconcile morality and individual autonomy which means that we can only get a contingent connection between these. I argue that if we abandon a legalistic model of morality this contingency does not raise any significant problems, as what is most important to us is not acting as we believe we ought to act, but acting as we ought, though from the first person point of view these are indistinguishable.

10 November
Dr. Andrew Wells (Newby Trust Postdoctoral Fellow, IASH):
"Generating Race in Enlightenment Britain, 1660-1840"
The importance of embryological discourses to those on race has been often noticed but seldom examined in any depth. In this paper, I will explore two key strands of eighteenth-century racial debate and their embryological counterparts to describe their interaction. I hope to show that the seemingly ideal correspondence between each school of racial and embryological thought was disrupted by the involvement in debates of concerns quite exterior to the ideas themselves. Philosophy, religion, and politics each interposed to frustrate these correspondences, holding scientific investigation hostage to the concerns of the moment, and hopefully giving the lie to historical condescension about the 'pseudo-scientific' nature of racial or embryological thought in the period.

24 November
Dr. April Shelford (Department of History, American University,
Washington DC):
"A Caribbean Enlightenment?"
The proliferation of Enlightenments in recent years - Neapolitan, Dutch, radical, moderate, Atlantic and Catholic, to name a few - has prompted debates about whether The Enlightenment has, in the words of one scholar, any "coherent intellectual identity." Moreover, what might "Enlightenment" mean in a region that, on the one hand, enjoyed a reputation for intellectual philistinism during the eighteenth century, and, on the other, was so politically and culturally diverse and so territorially fragmented? This presentation proposes that "a Caribbean Enlightenment" is a useful tool for enhancing our understanding of developments in colonial societies and that reconstructing its contexts and content does illumine more general features and tensions of Enlightenment intellectual culture. It will consider both sources and approaches by discussing examples drawn from French and British contexts.

Spring Semester 2009
"Dialogues with Darwin: Darwin in Edinburgh"

As part of the celebrations to mark Charles Darwin's bicentenary, this series of seminars explored aspects of his work in Scottish contexts including circumnavigation, anatomy, theology, and evolution itself. Together, these talks and discussions led by a series of international and local experts offered new angles for understanding Darwin as both a catalyst in the broader Enlightenment project and a model for its subsequent impact. From Patrick Geddes to Charles Bell to James Crichton-Browne, the Edinburgh connection offers a rich kaleidoscope of historical and intellectual links.

These papers have been published as a series of IASH Occasional Papers. Copies can be ordered by emailing iash@ed.ac.uk (£1.50 each; £6.00 for the set of 5).

Programme

Monday 19 January at 4 p.m.
Seminar Room 1, Chrystal Macmillan Building, 15a George Square

Professor Ian Duncan (English, University of California, Berkeley)
Darwin, Circumnavigation, and the Aesthetics of World History

Darwin's Journal of Researches represents the culmination of a distinctive Enlightenment tradition of circumnavigation writing. It registers the breakup of the science of man and world history into controversial new forms: the natural history of man (Lamarck) and the history of the earth (Lyell). Basing his account on the work of circumnavigators, Darwin develops the travelogue's combination of personal memoir and record of scientific observation into a volatile synthesis of Romantic self-growth with an encyclopedic claim to total knowledge.

Tuesday 3 February at 4 p.m.
Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, 2 Hope Park Square

Professor David Fergusson (Divinity, University of Edinburgh)
Darwin in Scotland

The paper will reflect on the reception of Darwin's theory of evolution after 1859 in Victorian Scotland. Attention will be given to the ways in which philosophers and theologians quite quickly came to recognise that, despite tensions with earlier patterns of thought, evolutionary explanation could be held in conjunction with other forms of understanding. We shall explore what this entailed for those other forms of understanding.

Tuesday 17 February at 4 p.m.
Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, 2 Hope Park Square

Dr. Walter M. Stephen (former Chairman of the Sir Patrick Geddes Memorial Trust)
Charles Darwin: Some Scottish Connections

The seminar will address two questions: first, the effect of Darwin's student years at Edinburgh on his concept of 'deep time' and, secondly, his influence on Patrick Geddes (1854-1932), the Scottish visionary polymath, who in turn disseminated and interpreted Darwin's own ideas in Scotland and internationally.

Tuesday 3 March at 4 p.m.
Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, 2 Hope Park Square

Dr Gregory Radick (History and Philosophy of Science, University of Leeds) Edinburgh, Enlightenment and Darwin's Expression of the Emotions

The legacies of the Edinburgh Enlightenment are all over Darwin's 1872 book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. This talk will consider Darwin's dialogues there with two Edinburgh-born and -educated medical men and two Edinburgh-developed intellectual traditions. The men were the anatomist Charles Bell and the alienist James Crichton-Browne; the traditions were association psychology and the vera causa ideal of scientific explanation. What will emerge from these explorations is, first of all, the oddness of the Expression compared with what many people expect of a book by Darwin; and second, Edinburgh's role in the making of that oddness.

Tuesday 17 March at 4 p.m.
Martin Hall, New College, Mound Place

Revd. Dr. John Polkinghorne, KBE, FRS (Hon. Fellow, St. Edmunds College, Cambridge)
Evolving Creation

Evolutionary process involves a subtle interaction between 'Chance' (contingency) and 'Necessity' (lawful regularity). It takes place 'at the edge of chaos', and it is an insight as relevant to the history of the universe as Darwin showed it to be relevant to the history of terrestrial life. From a theological point of view, an evolving creation is one in which creatures are enabled 'to make themselves' (Charles Kingsley). Chance and Necessity are to be seen as the twin gifts of freedom and reliability, bestowed on creation by a Creator who is both loving and faithful.

Monday, 9 March at 4 p.m.
Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, 2 Hope Park Square

Dr. Eduardo Mendieta (Philosophy Department, Stony Brook University):
Kant in Königsberg: Imperial Cosmopolitanism

Abstract:
Immanuel Kant (1725-1804) is unquestionably one, if not the, most important philosophical figure of the 18th century, yet what remains relatively understudied is that Kant lectured more on Geography and Anthropology than on any of the disciplines associated with his name. Kant's lectures on anthropology were published shortly before his death, and he actually saw them through publication. His lectures on geography were published shortly after his death, and were not edited by him. The lectures on Anthropology began to receive scholarly attention in the last half a decade, in particular thanks to the philological and reconstructive work of Allen Wood and Robert Louden. The lectures on Geography, on the other hand, have received almost no attention (until very recently). In this paper, I will analyze Kant's relationship to Köningsberg, his birth city, and the city where he spent his entire life. Köningsberg is a port city on the Baltic Sea, which linked the North with Central and Southern Prussia via the Pregel River. It was a major cultural, commercial, educational and military capital of the Eastern Prussian Empire through the end of the 19th century. I will focus my analysis of Kant's relationship to the city, through a discussion of his relationships to three other key figures of Köningsberg: Hamann, Herder, and von Hippel, all members of Kant's Tischgesellschaft. The essay closes with a discussion of Kant's library, reading habits, and specifically with his use of travelogues in his Anthropology and Geography lectures.

Programme of Symposia: Autumn 2008

A series of fortnightly symposia on Tuesdays at 4 p.m.
in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, 2 Hope Park Square

30 September
Professor Knud Haakonssen (Professor of Intellectual History, University of Sussex) and Dr. Thomas Ahnert (History, University of Edinburgh):
Enlightenment and Religion - A Dialogue

The significance of a secular, even anti-religious 'radical Enlightenment' has been powerfully reasserted in two recent, magisterial works by Jonathan Israel. At the same time, however, there has been increasing interest in the continued importance of religious belief in the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. There has also been a growing emphasis on the complexities of the relationship between religion and enlightened culture. There was no uniform enlightened position concerning religion, and indeed no clear dividing line between religious concerns and Enlightenment intellectual culture. The two speakers at this workshop will discuss the interaction between Enlightenment and religion, focusing on two prominent cases, the dissenting academies that spread across the British Isles after 1660 and the 'Moderate' party within the Presbyterian church in Scotland.

14 October
Professor Caroline McCracken-Flesher (Department of English, University of Wyoming): Cause, Effect, and Literary Contagion: Leighton and Pae diagnose Doctor Knox

In 1828, the scandal of Burke and Hare proved untellable. By 1858, surely it could be detailed, understood, and set aside. Alexander Leighton promised to chronicle it; David Pae inscribed it as fiction. Both sought to explain the religious logic of earthly horror at the medical limits of enlightenment. But even now, no single story would work. The conversation between literature, religion and horror strains and collapses genres and terms. In this context, dialogue manifests itself as repetition and compulsion. It is a symptom of cultural contagion, and a trauma reaching epidemic proportions.

28 October
Dr. Viccy Coltman (History of Art, University of Edinburgh): Dialogues between art and history

In this session, IASH visiting fellow and art historian Viccy Coltman offers some preliminary thoughts on the dialogues between art and history as they pertain to a book project she is currently conceptualizing which looks at visual and material culture in Scotland from 1745 to 1832. Fundamental to her project are a series of related dialogues concerning centre and periphery, nation and empire and the global and the local. Viccy will talk through the issues and the proposed chapters in this illustrated seminar, which also considers the historiography of Scottish art and how it has shaped the subject area.

11 November
Dr. Tom Toremans (Faculty of Language and LIterature, Katholieke Universiteit Brussel): Romanticism as a Dialogue between Empiricism and Idealism

In the wake of M.H. Abrams’ seminal The Mirror and The Lamp (1953), the critical study of British Romanticism has mainly understood the latter in terms of an anti-empiricist appropriation of German Idealist principles. Accordingly, the literature of Romanticism has long been conceived, in the most general terms, as an anti-rationalistic reaction against the Enlightenment. Recent studies, however, have substantially complicated this view and have urged for a revaluation of the relation between Romanticism and 18th-century philosophical traditions. On the one hand, philosophical studies have emphasized the complex interchange between British empiricism and German Idealism, reassessing, for example, Kant’s relation to Hume and the Common Sense philosophy of Thomas Reid. At the same time, literary studies have foregrounded the predominant position occupied by the philosophy of Common Sense during the first half of the 19th-century. As several commentators have argued, the Common Sense tradition presented Romantic authors with a particular version of empiricism, critical of Humean scepticism and to a substantial degree mediating the Romantic reception of German Idealism.

This session aims to chart this recent complication of the opposition between empiricism and idealism with specific reference to the literature of Romanticism, so as to open up a space from which to re-interrogate the latter as a dialogue, rather than a straightforward clash, between both traditions. It will conclude by briefly turning to the writings of S.T. Coleridge and Thomas Carlyle as particularly challenging case studies.

25 November
Dr. Tibor Pintér (Art Theory and Media Studies, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest): Limitations of imitation in music and poetry

James Harris - as one of the most influential British essay writers on art – had orginal speculations on the evergreen problem: "the meaning of the the word: 'art'". As in the age of Enlightenment art was based on imitation, I would like to recontextualise this major aesthetical problem from Harris’s point of view, with particular reference to his Dialogue and Essay (1744) concerning imitation in music and poetry.