Isabel Wences champions the “sentimental school” of the Scottish Enlightenment in the History of Ideas lecture series

The Enlightenment is generally associated with the primacy of reason as an essential force for progress and civilization, as opposed to the emotions, dogmas and prejudices that have traditionally blinded humankind. This, however, is a very incomplete view, in that members of the “sentimental school” of the Scottish Enlightenment set great store by the “passions” of human nature, which they saw as indispensable for the achievement of social wellbeing and prosperity. This is the main thesis that Professor Wences expounded in this instalment of the lecture series History of Ideas (II).

“We have inherited the idea that the Enlightenment only championed reason and rationality, because scholars have tended to play down the fact that many of its thinkers emphasized the role of feelings,” Professor Wences related. “In fact, the view of the Enlightenment as a movement wedded to pure reason is very far from the truth.”

Scotland, Wences relates, was home to a “flowering of ideas” in the 18th century, in which “Enlightenment values shone with a special light.” Despite being less widely known than the key figures of the French, German or English Enlightenment, the Scottish thinkers who emerged in the vibrant intellectual environment of an age when Edinburgh was known as “the Athens of the North” made vital contributions to the study of human nature, politics and economics. As Wences explained in her talk, these philosophers were among the first to lay an accent on the passions as “the drivers of human actions” and “the foundations of social cohesion.”

David Hume, for example, affirmed that “reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them”; and for other leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, the rise of trade and social intercourse in a “civilized” society could not be understood except by reference to sentiments like “sympathy,” a term favored by Adam Smith, or the “benevolence” analyzed by Adam Ferguson.

For these Enlightenment thinkers, as Wences explained, emotions were the means to “spur the will and drive the actions” of human beings. Like it or not, “the emotions are there, forming part of us,” and cannot be ignored or sidelined if what we pursue is an understanding of human nature. Moreover, the Scottish school did not see the passions as necessarily a negative force, impeding progress, but believed they could be classified as either “benign or harmful, good-natured or turbulent, gentle or violent.” The essential question, from their point of view, is: “What do we do with all these feelings? How can we manage them in social, moral and political life in a manner that contributes to society’s wellbeing and progress?”

The evolution of “civilized” emotions 

In her talk, Professor Wences explained how the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers developed a theory of social and economic change that they believed would lead to a “civilized” world, a transformation based precisely on the evolution of passions and sentiments throughout the history of humanity.

“In early societies, which they call ‘primitive’ or ‘savage’, passions are expressed in a more violent or ‘ungoverned’ fashion, but then gradually evolve to the point where we arrive at the commercial society they regard as civilized,” Wences explained. “Some violent passions are tempered or calmed, while others emerge that favor the development of modern commerce. Qualities like trust, honesty, punctuality or reliability.”

In sum, Professor Wences’ lecture underscored the vital contribution of the Scottish Enlightenment to the history of ideas that gives the series its title, as the first to turn the spotlight on “the role of the emotions and passions in our social, political and moral life.”

Nowadays, authors as influential as neuroscientist Antonio Damasio have explored the importance of emotions as a means to understand human nature, urging us to rethink the relationship between rationality and affectivity. But as Wences demonstrated in her lecture, the precursors of this line of research, as well as of the concept that psychologist Daniel Goleman defined as “emotional intelligence”, were the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers like Hume, Smith and Ferguson.

The perspective they offer may be useful today to analyze and understand the issues facing 21st century society. Because as Professor Wences noted, “all political phenomena have to do with the emotions. We often associate emotions to currents such as nationalism or identity politics, but in fact they run through every part of our social and political lives. The passions exist, what we have to do is learn to manage and live with them.”