Unsocial Sociability

Item No. 2.

István Hont

Unsocial Sociability: 18th Century Perspectives

Istvan Hont (1947-2013) originally studied Electronic Engineering at the Budapest Institute of Technology but went on to study ‘David Hume and Scotland’ for his PhD at the University of Budapest (ELTE), supervised by Professor Éva H. Balázs. On defecting to the West he was successively Junior Research Fellow in Intellectual History, Wolfson College, Oxford (1977-78) and Senior Research Fellow and Director of the research project ‘Political Economy and Society 1750-1850’ at King’s College, Cambridge (1978-84), before teaching at the universities of Manchester, Columbia and ultimately the University of Cambridge, where he replaced Duncan Forbes as University Lecturer in History (from 1989). Hont was famous for giving brilliant talks associated with major collaborative research projects he was forever developing. The manuscript below presents a talk entitled ‘Unsocial Sociability: 18th-Century Perspectives’, given at the Political Thought Conference at New College, Oxford on 4th January 1996. Explore more papers by István Hont in the Intellectual History Archive.