Observations upon Liberal Education (Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics) - Softcover

Turnbull, George

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0865974128 ISBN 13: 9780865974128

Publisher: Liberty Fund, 2003

Synopsis

Originally published in 1742 and presented here in its first modern edition, Observations upon Liberal Education is a significant contribution to the Scottish Enlightenment and the moral-sense school of Scottish philosophy. George Turnbull embodied these movements of ideas as much as his more famous contemporary Francis Hutcheson.

In Observations, Turnbull applied these ideas to the education of youth. He showed how a liberal education fosters true inward liberty” and moral strength and thus prepares for responsible and happy lives in a free society. He drew upon an impressive number of authors, both ancient and modern, including John Locke. Indeed, there is probably no richer treasure trove of sources for the educational debates of the eighteenth century.

Terrence Moore, who wrote the introduction, notes that Observations upon Liberal Education provides an extensive and illuminating treatment of education, sensitive to the means of inculcating the personal responsibility necessary for living in a free society.”

Turnbull was the mentor of Thomas Reid, but his influence was not confined to Scotland. Benjamin Franklin, in drafting his Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania, drew generously from Observations.

George Turnbull (1698 1748) belongs to the founding figures in the Scottish Enlightenment. Finding their native Calvinism repressive, they sought a rational religion closely associated with their new science of human nature, supportive of tolerance, and compatible with classical ideals.

Terrence O. Moore, Jr., is Principal of Ridgeview Classical Schools in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Knud Haakonssen is Professor of Intellectual History at the University of Sussex, England.

About this title

About the Author:

George Turnbull (1698-1748) furthered the Enlightenment in creating a plausible educational regime suited to human beings possessed of the moral faculties necessary to live as adults in an increasingly free and prosperous society. Terrence O Moore Jr is Principal of Ridgeview Classical Schools in Fort Collins, Colorado. Dr Moore was formerly Assistant Professor of History at Ashland University in Ohio.

Review:

"Moore (he earned a PhD in history at the U. of Edinburgh and is now the principal of a classical high school in Colorado) has written a lengthy introduction to the central work of the Scottish Enlightenment thinker George Turnbull (d.1748), who was an influence on the thought of Benjamin Franklin. The annotation is devoted mainly to explaining Turnbull's many classical allusions and quotations."

Reference & Research Book News
August 2003

"George Turnbull's Observations on Liberal Education was one of a handful of books that Benjamin Franklin identified as influential upon his own educational theory and practice. For that reason alone, the appearance of the first modern edition of Turnbull's Observations is welcome. And welcome, indeed, is this high quality and elegant edition in Liberty Fund's Natural Law and Enlightenment Series."

Eighteenth-Century Scotland

"An inexpensive and accessible edition of Turnbull's influential essay on the content and aims of a liberal education."

Journal of Scottish Philosophy

About this edition

• Publisher: Liberty Fund
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0865974128
• ISBN 13: 9780865974128
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 442
• Editor: Moore Jr. Terrence O.