Описание: John Brown (17151766) was a clergyman who achieved great but transient fame as a writer and moralist. His attack on Shaftesbury and moral sense philosophy, against which he employed utilitarian arguments and also arguments deriving from Gods benevolent intentions toward his creation, was published in 1751 and was later praised by John Stuart Mill. The central text of this volume, An Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times (1757), is a vigorous attack on the vain, luxurious, and selfish effeminacy of Englands higher ranks, in the wake of the loss of Minorca to the French at the opening of the Seven Years War (17561763). Brown repeated the usual complaints of corruption that had been raised during the premiership of Walpole and argued that public virtue had been undermined by a preoccupation with luxury and commerce. Estimate was printed no fewer than seven times within the first year, earning the author the name Estimate Brown. Alongside Estimate, the volume includes four other works by Brown: his poem On Liberty (1749); his Essays on the Characteristicks (1751), which is an attack on Shaftesburys Characteristicks; his Explanatory Defence of the Estimate (1758), in which Brown engaged to defend the work, to some modest extent, against his critics; and finally, a late work, Thoughts on Civil Liberty (1765). Two appendixes complement the texts: a brief tribute to Brown by Thomas Hollis (an Englishman who devoted his life to the cause of liberty and for whom this series is named), in which Hollis depicts Brown as a weak man who nevertheless possessed a measure of virtue and talent, and who fell among thieves in the feral literary and political circles of Hanoverian England. The second appendix provides Holliss own annotations to his copy of Estimate. The introduction, by David Womersley, places Browns writings and career in the context of eighteenth-century moralism and, naturally, in the tradition of British writing on liberty. The annotations will gloss now-unfamiliar words and explain now-obscure references to contemporary events, circumstances, and personalities.
Philosopher David Hume was considered to one of the most important figures in the age of Scottish enlightenment. "A Treatise of Human Nature" broke new ground by attempting to base philosophy on human nature, making it one of the most important texts in Western Philosophy. Human passions and the ability to distinguish between virtue and vice are elucidated in the text. In "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" Hume discusses the weaknesses that humans have in their abilities to understand the world around them. This book is often a textbook for Philosophy Courses. "An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals" is an elegant enquiry into ethical theory, explained clearly and comprehensively. In Hume's "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion" he explores the very idea of God, the possibility of his existence, and his alleged nature as a good, perfect, omniscient, omnipotent Supreme Being.
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