This is the first biography to see William Robertson as both a man and an intellectual figure at the centre of the Scottish Enlightenment. William Robertson differed from his contemporaries, such as Voltaire, Hume and Gibbon, because he used the critical tools of the Enlightenment to strengthen religion, not to attack it. As an historian, he helped shape eighteenth-century historiography. As a minister of the Church of Scotland, he sought to make the church fit for a polite age. And, as principal of the University of Edinburgh, he presided over a flourishing of intellectual inquiry in the midst of the Enlightenment. But despite his European fame, he was a controversial figure.
- ISBN13 9780748646104
- Publish Date 30 November 2016
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Edinburgh University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 256
- Language English