The Essays on the Active Powers of Man (1788) was Thomas Reid's last major work. It was conceived as part of one large work, intended as a final synoptic statement of his philosophy. The first and larger part was published three years earlier as Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (edited as vol. 3 of the Edinburgh Edition of Thomas Reid). These two works are united by Reid's basic philosophy of common sense, which sets out native principles by which the mind operates in both its intellectual and active aspects. The Active Powers shows how these principles are involved in volition, action, and the ability to judge morally. Reid gives an original twist to a libertarian and realist tradition that was prominently represented in eighteenth-century British thought by such thinkers as Samuel Clarke and Richard Price.

Following the American War of Independence and the French Revolution, ideas of the 'Natural Rights of Man' (later distinguished into particular issues like rights of association, rights of women, slaves, children and animals) were publicly debated in England. Literary figures like Wollstonecraft, Godwin, Thelwall, Blake and Wordsworth reflected these struggles in their poetry and fiction. With the seminal influences of John Locke and Rousseau, these and many other writers laid for high Romantic Literature foundations that were not so much aesthetic as moral and political. This new study by R.S. White provides a reinterpretation of the Enlightenment as it is currently understood.

Gregory Claeys explores the reception of the French Revolution in Britain through the medium of its leading interpreters. Claeys argues that the major figures - Thomas Paine, Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin and John Thelwall - collectively laid the foundations for political debate for the following century, and longer.

This book investigates Thomas Paine's social and political thought in both its British and American moments. It examines the ways in which Paine's ideas were understood. The book restores him to the position his contemporaries accorded him, that of an important writer on politics and society.