My primary research interests are the Scottish Enlightenment and eighteenth-century sentimentalism. I have published extensively on the philosopher Adam Smith and the novelist Henry Mackenzie, author of the sentimental classic The Man of Feeling. In most of my writings I attempted to approach eighteenth-century thinkers and imaginative writers as serious individuals wrestling with the transition from a traditional communal to a modern individualistic world. While I fully recognize that most so-called ‘enlightened’ writers belonged to a privileged elite and reflected patriarchal and colonial attitudes, I tend to be more interested in exploring the tensions that are explicit and implied in their writings. My publications tended to correct the misleading charicature of the eighteenth-century as a the age of reason by focusing on the moral and emotional dimension of the enlightenment project. Many of those issues are still with us, and not at all exploded by any postmodern critique. The Enlightenment still has something to say to us troubled moderns and postmoderns.
After a long hiatus from serious academic research (I got snared in the contract faculty trap that ruined so many promising young scholars’ journey and that has poisoned the academic environment) I found myself taken by surprise and fascinated by postmodern (or if you wish late modern) writers such as Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, Rella, Castoriadis and Luhman. I imagined a dialogue and dialectic between these writers and the seminal writers of modernity, including not only the Enlightenment but also later thinkers like Nietzsche. My later research, produced in the form of lectures, was aimed at illuminating these connections and potential collaborations. I had high hopes of working these exercises into a re-evaluation of the Enlightenment and its continuing significance, but alas time and tide wait for no one.
Like the great Adam Smith, on whom I wrote a fair bit, I’ve found myself tidying up past projects as I enter into my golden years. Chief among these is a long article entitled “Shakespeare’s Sentiments: Scottish Moral Philosophy and Literary Criticism”. The argument that I’ve long been developing is that Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments was the starting point for the new Shakespeare criticism of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. If I’m right, this insight would lead to a complete re-evaluation of how and why Shakespeare became the giant of British literature that we are now familiar with. It could also result in a re-appraisal of Adam Smith’s significance beyond his economic model or even his largely overlooked ethical breakthroughs. Since who knows when or if I’ll ever publish this piece (one of the blandishments of retirement is not having to suffer the ignominies of editorial boards and the peer review system), I’m providing a link to the draft of research so far ( Shakespeare’s Sentiments: Scottish Moral Philosophy and Literary Criticism).
