THE CASE FOR THE ENLIGHTMENT: SCOTLAND AND NAPLES 1680-1760

A comparative study of the emergence of Enlightenment in Scotland and in Naples: two societies at the opposite ends of Europe shared common intellectual preoccupations. 

Before 1700, Scotland and Naples faced a bleak future as backward, provincial kingdoms in a Europe of aggressive commercial states. 

Yet by 1760, Scottish and Neapolitan thinkers (David Hume and Giambattista Vico) were in the van of those advocating the cause of Enlightenment by means of political economy.