Traditionally, notions of the Enlightenment have been associated with the French philosophes, but a number of studies highlighting the contributions of other nations and traditions of thought to eighteenth-century culture have challenged this commonplace. While the scholarly task of recovering the contours of these debates along the periphery of the Enlightenment has made great progress, there are still a number of glaring lacunas to be filled. This stance guided an important collection of essays on The Enlightenment in National Context, yet even this effort pointedly lacked an essay on Ireland. A tendency to minimize Ireland's contributions to the Enlightenment is common among scholars, who seem to ‘dread some kind of devaluation if they mention the homeland of … Berkeley, Toland, Swift, and Hutcheson’. Modern assessments of Ireland's contributions to the Enlightenment may reflect the opinion of David Hume, who wrote to his brother in 1765 that it ‘is like stepping out of light into darkness to exchange Paris for Dublin’, but in light of recent work on the idea of ‘sociability’ during this period, this position needs to be re-examined.

Drawing upon his work on the Scottish Enlightenment, John Robertson argues that as Scottish thinkers sought to fashion a new sense of identity in the commercial field, three related areas of inquiry emerged as central to Enlightenment thought.