The Essays is commonly considered Kames’s most important philosophical work. In the first part, he sets forth the principles and foundations of morality and justice, attacking Hume’s moral skepticism and addressing the controversial issue of the freedom of human will. In the second part, Kames focuses on questions of metaphysics and epistemology to offer a natural theology in which the authority of the external senses is an important basis for belief in the Deity. Like Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Butler, Kames rejected the idea that morality is founded on self-interest and argued that human beings naturally possess a moral sense,” or conscience. At the same time, Kames believed our naturally benevolent inclinations could become law-like only through the principle of justice, which guards the persons, the property, and the reputation of individuals, and gives authority to promises and covenants.” He also sought to counter the epistemological skepticism of Berkeley and Hume, insisting that our sense perceptions must be trustworthy because they have been designed for us by a benevolent Deity. In its concern to vindicate the veracity of our common moral intuitions and sense perceptions that are rooted in our very nature,” Mary Catherine Moran writes, the Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion helped found the Scottish Common Sense school,” a philosophy that was given its classic formulation by Kames’s friend Thomas Reid. The text of this volume is based on the third edition of 1779, while the appendix presents substantial variant readings in the first and second editions.. 
Henry Home, Lord Kames (16961782), one of the leaders of the Scottish Enlightenment, was a judge in the supreme courts of Scotland and wrote extensively on morals, religion, education, aesthetics, history, political economy, and law, including natural law. His most distinctive contribution came through his works on the nature of law, where he sought to combine a philosophical approach with an empirical history of legal evolution. Mary Catherine Moran taught in the Department of History at Columbia University. Knud Haakonssen is Professor of Intellectual History and Director of the Centre for Intellectual History at the University of Sussex, England.

Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion (Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics)

History

Home Lord Kames, Henry

World

Liberty Fund

Elements of Criticism is Kames’s most influential work. When it first appeared, in 1762, it was the most comprehensive philosophical work on criticism” in English, and it was published in five editions during Kames’s lifetime and another forty editions over the next century. In America, Elements of Criticism served as a standard text for college students of English. In Elements, Kames sets out his argument that the science of criticism” is a rational science”; it is a subject of reasoning as well as of taste.” By examining human reactions to art and literature, Kames believed that we could enhance our understanding of the human mind, just as an understanding of the mind could enrich our responses to the arts. Volume one explores the nature and causes of the emotions and passions. Volume two delineates principles of rhetoric and literary appreciation, ending with a discussion of the formation of a standard of taste. Kames illustrated both volumes with a vast range of examples from classical literature and the arts of his own day. With this publication, Liberty Fund makes a modern version of this influential work available for a wide readership. The Liberty Fund edition is based on the text of the sixth edition of 1785, which was the last edition authorized by Kames himself.. Henry Home, Lord Kames (16961782), one of the leaders of the Scottish Enlightenment, was a judge in the supreme courts of Scotland and wrote extensively on morals, religion, education, aesthetics, history, political economy, and law, including natural law. His most distinctive contribution came through his works on the nature of law, where he sought to combine a philosophical approach with an empirical history of legal evolution. Peter Jones is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. Knud Haakonssen is Professor of Intellectual History and Director of the Centre for Intellectual History at the University of Sussex, England.

Elements of Criticism (2-vol set) (Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics)

Literature & Fiction

Henry Home, Lord Kames, was by nature an advocate for reform and improvement and stood at the heart of the modernizing and liberalizing movement now known as the Scottish Enlightenment. The reaction to his Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion was a defining moment in the establishment of the predominance of moderation in the Church of Scotland. Divided into three books, Kames’s Sketches of the History of Mandraws together the concerns of many of his earlier works. The first book considers man in the private sphere and presents Kames’s version of the four-stage theory of history”: the progress, that is, from hunting, through the shepherd state” to agriculture, and thence to commerce. It contains, in addition, sketches on progress in the arts, taste, manners, and appetite for luxury goods. The second book takes as its subject man in the public sphere and explores the implications of his natural appetite for society.” Kames develops the notion that political, legal, and financial institutions are best regulated when it is understood that they are outgrowths of aspects of human nature. In the final book, Kames turns to an account of progress in the sciences of logic, morals, and theology. He seeks to vindicate the claim that human understanding is in a progress towards maturity, however slow.” Throughout the entire work, Kames expounds on his fundamental hypothesis that at the beginning of the history of the human race, savagery was ubiquitous and that the human story is one of an emergence out of barbarism and toward maturity. Henry Home, Lord Kames (16961782), one of the leaders of the Scottish Enlightenment, was a judge in the supreme courts of Scotland and wrote extensively on morals, religion, education, aesthetics, history, political economy, and law, including natural law. His most distinctive contribution came through his works on the nature of law, where he sought to combine a philosophical approach with an empirical history of legal evolution. James Harris is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Knud Haakonssen is Professor of Intellectual History and Director of the Centre for Intellectual History at the University of Sussex, England.

Sketches of the History of Man (Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics) (3 book set)

Sketches of the History of Man (in 3 volumes) (Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics)

Henry Home, Lord Kames, was the complete Enlightenment man,” concerned with the full spectrum of human knowledge and its social use. However, as a lawyer and, after 1752, as a judge on the Court of Session in Edinburgh, he made many of his most distinctive contributions through his works on the nature of law and legal development. Principles of Equity, first published in 1760, is considered his most lasting contribution to jurisprudence and is still cited. In his jurisprudence, Kames specifically sought to explain the distinction between the nature of equity and common law and to address related questions, such as whether equity should be bound by rules and whether there should be separate courts of law and equity. Beginning with a general introduction on the rise and nature of equity, Principles of Equity is divided into three books. The first two, theoretical,” books examine the powers of a court of equity as derived from justice and from utility, the two great principles Kames felt governed equity. The third book aims to be more practical, showing the application of these powers to several subjects, such as bankrupts. Principles of Equity is significant as an example of the approach of an Enlightenment thinker to practical legal questions and as an early attempt to reduce law to principles. There is evidence that this book was well known in the formative years of the United States and that both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were familiar with Kames’s treatise. Henry Home, Lord Kames (16961782), one of the leaders of the Scottish Enlightenment, was a judge in the supreme courts of Scotland and wrote extensively on morals, religion, education, aesthetics, history, political economy, and law, including natural law. His most distinctive contribution came through his works on the nature of law, where he sought to combine a philosophical approach with an empirical history of legal evolution.
Michael Lobban is Professor of Legal History at Queen Mary, University of London. Knud Haakonssen is Professor of Intellectual History and Director of the Centre for Intellectual History at the University of Sussex, England.

Principles of Equity (Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics)

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Henry Home, Lord Kames, was the complete Enlightenment man,” concerned with the full spectrum of human knowledge and its social use. However, as a lawyer and, after 1752, as a judge on the Court of Session in Edinburgh, he made many of his most distinctive contributions through his works on the nature of law and legal development. Principles of Equity, first published in 1760, is considered his most lasting contribution to jurisprudence and is still cited. In his jurisprudence, Kames specifically sought to explain the distinction between the nature of equity and common law and to address related questions, such as whether equity should be bound by rules and whether there should be separate courts of law and equity. Beginning with a general introduction on the rise and nature of equity, Principles of Equity is divided into three books. The first two, theoretical,” books examine the powers of a court of equity as derived from justice and from utility, the two great principles Kames felt governed equity. The third book aims to be more practical, showing the application of these powers to several subjects, such as bankrupts. Principles of Equity is significant as an example of the approach of an Enlightenment thinker to practical legal questions and as an early attempt to reduce law to principles. There is evidence that this book was well known in the formative years of the United States and that both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were familiar with Kames’s treatise. Henry Home, Lord Kames (16961782), one of the leaders of the Scottish Enlightenment, was a judge in the supreme courts of Scotland and wrote extensively on morals, religion, education, aesthetics, history, political economy, and law, including natural law. His most distinctive contribution came through his works on the nature of law, where he sought to combine a philosophical approach with an empirical history of legal evolution.
Michael Lobban is Professor of Legal History at Queen Mary, University of London. Knud Haakonssen is Professor of Intellectual History and Director of the Centre for Intellectual History at the University of Sussex, England.

Historical Law-Tracts: The Fourth Edition with Additions and Corrections (Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics)

Kames presents a history of law as a history of the progress of humankind from savage to civil society.

Legal History

In his 1758 Historical Law-Tracts, Henry Home, Lord Kames, combines the natural law framework that underlies his Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion with the conjectural” or philosophical approach to history that would receive its fullest treatment in his Sketches of the History of Man. In so doing, Kames presents a history of law as a history of the progress of humankind from savage to civil society. This compilation comprises fourteen tracts and nine appendixes that cover criminal law, promises and covenants, property, courts, the laws of inheritance, and the laws governing creditors and debtors in a comparative and historical arrangement designed to illustrate the principles of human progress. As Kames explained in his preface, law becomes a rational study” only when it is traced historically, from its first rudiments among savages, through successive changes, to its highest improvements in a civilized society.” Henry Home, Lord Kames (16961782), one of the leaders of the Scottish Enlightenment, was a judge in the supreme courts of Scotland and wrote extensively on morals, religion, education, aesthetics, history, political economy, and law, including natural law. His most distinctive contribution came through his works on the nature of law, where he sought to combine a philosophical approach with an empirical history of legal evolution.
James A. Harris is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Knud Haakonssen is Professor of Intellectual History and Director of the Centre for Intellectual History at the University of Sussex, England.

Elements of Criticism

This work became a textbook in rhetoric and belles-lettres - nothing similar has supplanted it since its publication over two hundred years ago. This is a reprint of the eleventh edition, with the author's last corrections and additions. In the preface the author states that the work "treats of the fine arts, and attempts to form a standard of taste, by unfolding those principles that ought govern the taste of every individual." 
 Of this work, which went through at eleven English editions, several 19th century American editions, an abridgement, and translation into German, Samuel Johnson stated, "this book is a pretty Essay, and deserves to be held in some estimation." 
 Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696-1782), made his name, both in his own time and for posterity, in law, criticism, philosophical history and, to some extent, philosophy. Born in Scotland, he became an advocate (barrister) in 1723, and served as a judge in both the civil and criminal courts. Not only did he achieve the highest judicial offices, but he became a member of the main government boards managing the Scottish economy. Through his influence he obtained university professorships for Adam Smith, John Millar and Thomas Reid.

History & Criticism

University Press of the Pacific

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Books by Home Lord Kames, Henry

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Home Lord Kames, Henry. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion (Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics)

Elements of Criticism (2-vol set) (Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics)

Elements of Criticism (2-vol set) (Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics)

Sketches of the History of Man (Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics) (3 book set)

Sketches of the History of Man (in 3 volumes) (Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics)

Principles of Equity (Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics)

Principles of Equity (Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics)

Historical Law-Tracts: The Fourth Edition with Additions and Corrections (Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics)

Historical Law-Tracts: The Fourth Edition with Additions and Corrections (Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics)

Elements of Criticism