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Professor M A Stewart

Professor M A Stewart email: m.a.stewart@abdn.ac.uk

Alexander Stewart studied at the Universities of St Andrews and Pennsylvania. After short-term engagements in American and Canadian universities, he has spent most of his teaching career at the University of Lancaster, where he rose through the ranks to become Professor of the History of Philosophy in 1993. He has held visiting fellowships at the University of Edinburgh and the Australian National University, and has given visiting lectures at institutions in Italy, the Netherlands, Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand. He delivered the Gifford Lectures at Aberdeen in 1995, and was appointed Senior Research Fellow at Harris Manchester College, Oxford, in 2000. He is general editor of the Clarendon Locke edition and joint general editor of the Clarendon Hume edition. He has been president of the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society and at Aberdeen is active in the department's research in the history of Scottish philosophy. His other research interests include classical philosophy, and the interrelation of philosophy and religion in Britain and Ireland in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with a particular interest in Locke and Berkeley and in philosophy in the Dissenting tradition.

Principal Publications

Edited works

(ed.) English philosophy in the age of Locke. Clarendon Press, 2000

(ed.) Studies in seventeenth-century European philosophy. Clarendon Press, 1997

(ed.) Hume and Hume’s connexions [with John P. Wright]. Edinburgh UP, 1994; Penn State UP, 1995

(ed.) Studies in the philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment. Clarendon Press, 1990

(ed.) Law, morality and rights. Reidel, 1983

(ed.) Selected philosophical papers of Robert Boyle. Manchester UP, 1979; Hackett, 1991

Other principal publications

‘Hume’s intellectual development 1711-1752’, in M. Frasca-Spada and P. J. E. Kail. Clarendon Press, 2005

‘The curriculum in Britain, Ireland, and the colonies’, ch. 5 in The Cambridge history of eighteenth-century philosophy, ed. K. Haakonssen. Cambridge UP, 2005

‘Revealed religion: The British debate’, ch. 23 in The Cambridge history of eighteenth-century philosophy, ed. K. Haakonssen. Cambridge UP, 2005

‘Arguments for the existence of God: The British debate’, ch. 24 in The Cambridge history of eighteenth-century philosophy, ed. K. Haakonssen. Cambridge UP, 2005

‘Hume’s reception in Ireland’, in The reception of Hume in Europe, ed. P. Jones. Thoemmes Continuum, 2005

‘The early British reception of Hume’s writings on religion’, in The reception of Hume in Europe, ed. P. Jones. Thoemmes Continuum, 2005

‘Reid and personal identity: A study in sources’, in Thomas Reid: Context, influence and significance, ed. J. Houston. Dunedin Academic Press, 2004

‘Rational religion and common sense’, in Thomas Reid: Context, influence and significance, ed. J. Houston. Dunedin Academic Press, 2004

‘Berkeley, George’ and 12 other contributions to The Oxford dictionary of national biography. Oxford UP, 2004

Contributions (14) to The dictionary of British classicists. Thoemmes Continuum, 2004

‘Religion and rational theology’, in The Cambridge companion to the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. A. Broadie. Cambridge UP, 2003

‘Hume, David’ and ‘Hutcheson, Francis’, in The encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, ed. A. Kors. Oxford UP, 2003

‘Two species of philosophy: The historical significance of the first Enquiry’, in Reading Hume on human understanding, ed. P. Millican. Clarendon Press, 2002

Contributions (16) to The dictionary of nineteenth-century British philosophers. Thoemmes, 2002

‘Principal Wishart (1692-1753) and the controversies of his day’, Records of the Scottish church history society 30, 2000. Italian version in Filosofia e cultura nel settecento britannico, a cura di A. Santucci. Il Mulino, 2000

‘Stillingfleet and the way of ideas’, in English philosophy in the age of Locke (above)

‘The dating of Hume’s manuscripts’, in The Scottish Enlightenment: Essays in reinterpretation, ed. P. Wood. U. of Rochester Press, 2000

Contributions (3) to The dictionary of seventeenth-century British philosophers. Thoemmes, 2000

Contributions (22) to The dictionary of eighteenth-century British philosophers. Thoemmes, 1999

‘Hume’s “Bellmen’s petition”: The original text’, Hume studies 23, 1997

‘Boyle, Robert’, in Encyclopedia of empiricism, ed. D. Garrett and E. Barbanell. Garland, 1997

‘Abstraction and representation in Locke, Berkeley and Hume’, in The philosophical canon in the 17th and 18th centuries, ed. G. A. J. Rogers and S. Tomaselli. U. of Rochester Press, 1996. Italian version in Dianoia [Bologna] 3, 1998

‘Rational dissent in early eighteenth-century Ireland’, in Enlightenment and religion: Rational dissent in eighteenth-century Britain, ed. K. Haakonssen. Cambridge UP, 1996

‘The Scottish Enlightenment’, in British philosophy and the age of Enlightenment, ed. S. C. Brown. Routledge, 1996

‘Recent work: Hume’s philosophy of religion’, 2 pts, Philosophical books 37, 1996

The kirk and the infidel . Lancaster University, 1995; corrected edn, 2001

‘Libertas philosophandi: From natural to speculative philosophy’, Australian journal of politics and history 40, 1994, Suppt.

‘An early fragment on evil’, in Hume and Hume’s connexions (above)

‘Hume’s historical view of miracles’, in Hume and Hume’s connexions (above)

‘William Smith (1698-1741) and the Dissenters’ book trade’ [with J. Moore], Bulletin of the Presbyterian Historical Society of Ireland 23, 1993

‘Locke’s “Observations” on Boyle’, Locke newsletter 24, 1993

‘Abating bigotry and hot zeal’, in Francis Hutcheson, ed. D. Smyth. Suppt. to Fortnight [Belfast] 308, 1992

‘Academic freedom: Origins of an idea’, Bulletin of the Australian society of legal philosophy 16:57, 1991/2

‘The Stoic legacy in the early Scottish Enlightenment’, in Atoms, pneuma, and tranquillity, ed. M. J. Osler. Cambridge UP, 1991

‘The origins of the Scottish Greek chairs’, in ‘Owls to Athens’: Essays on classical subjects presented to Sir Kenneth Dover, ed. E. M. Craik. Clarendon Press, 1990

‘Berkeley’s introduction draft’, Berkeley newsletter 11, 1989/90

‘John Ray’, in Friedrich Ueberwegs Grundrisse der Geschichte der Philosophie, Die Philosophie des 17. Jahrhunderts, Bd. 3/2 (England), hg. J.-P. Schöbinger. Schwabe, 1988

‘John Smith and the Molesworth circle’, Eighteenth-century Ireland 2, 1987

‘George Turnbull and educational reform’, in Aberdeen and the Enlightenment, ed. J. J. Carter and J. H. Pittock. Aberdeen UP, 1987

‘Add. MS. 39305’, Berkeley newsletter 9, 1986

‘Berkeley and the Rankenian club’, Hermathena 139, 1985. Reprinted in George Berkeley: Essays and replies, ed. D. Berman. Irish Academic Press, 1986

‘Hume and the “metaphysical argument a priori”’, in Philosophy, its history and historiography, ed. A. J. Holland. Reidel, 1985

‘William Robertson and David Hume: Three letters’ [with R. B. Sher], Hume studies 10th anniversary issue, 1985

‘William Wishart, an early critic of Alciphron’, Berkeley newsletter 6, 1982/3

‘The authenticity of Robert Boyle’s anonymous writings on reason’, Bodleian Library record 10, 1981

‘Locke’s professional contacts with Robert Boyle’, Locke newsletter 12, 1981

‘Locke’s mental atomism and the classification of ideas’, 2 pts, Locke newsletter 10-11, 1979-80. Reprinted in Locke: Epistemology and metaphysics, ed. U. Thiel. Ashgate, 2002

‘Locke, Steiner and understanding’, in Communication and understanding, ed. G. Vesey. Harvester, 1977

‘Plato’s sophistry’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian society, Suppl. 51, 1977

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