Henry Home – författare

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 scepticism 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". Editor Mary Catherine Moran writes, "In its concern to vindicate the veracity of our common moral intuitions and sense perceptions that are rooted in our very nature, 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.

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 scepticism 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". Editor Mary Catherine Moran writes, "In its concern to vindicate the veracity of our common moral intuitions and sense perceptions that are rooted in our very nature, 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.

This is the first modern edition of one of Kames's most influential works. When it first appeared, in 1762, it was the most comprehensive philosophical work on 'criticism' in English, and 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, not least because the work is richly illustrated with examples from classical literature and the arts of Kames's day. 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 the first time. The Liberty Fund edition is based on the text of the sixth edition of 1785, which was the last authorised by Kames himself.

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.

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