(1999). Hume, Smith and Ferguson: Friendship in commercial society. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy: Vol. 2, The Challenge to Friendship in Modernity, pp. 33-49.

It is a commonplace that the writers of eighteenth century Scotland played a key role in shaping the early practice of social science. This paper examines how this ‘Scottish’ contribution to the Enlightenment generation of social science was shaped by the fascination with unintended consequences. From Adam Smith's invisible hand to Hume's analysis of convention, through Ferguson's sociology, and Millar's discussion of rank, by way of Robertson's View of Progress, the concept of unintended consequences pervades the writing of the period. (...) The paper argues that the idea of unintended order shapes the understanding of the purpose of theoretical social science that emerges from the Scottish Enlightenment. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFor the Scottish Enlightenment thinker Adam Ferguson and many of his time, the history of the Roman Republic furnished the best case study for discussions of internal threats to a mixed system of government. These included factionalism, popular discontent, and the rise of demagogues seeking to concentrate power in their own hands. Ferguson has sometimes been interpreted as a ‘Machiavellian’ who celebrated the legacy of Rome and in particular the value of civic discord. By contrast, this article argues that he (...) is better understood as a disciple of Montesquieu, who viewed Rome as an anachronistic and dangerous ideal in the eighteenth century, the era of the civilized and commercial monarchy. The greatest fear of Ferguson was military despotism, which he believed was the likely outcome of democratic chaos produced by the levelling instincts of the ‘common’ people and demagogues prepared to harness their discontent. In such a scenario, a legitimate order in a mixed government would be turned into a faction putting the constitutional balance at risk, undermining intermediary powers, and ending liberty for all. (shrink)

Adam Ferguson, lecturer of moral philosophy at the University of Edinburgh , was one of the leading figures of the Scottish Enlightenment. His published works, however, have sometimes been dismissed as derivative and viewed as less important than some of his contemporaries, because of his reliance on ancient Stoic philosophy. An analysis of Ferguson's lecture notes, conversely, demonstrates Stoicism's pedagogical function. Rather than adopting Stoic principles, Ferguson used their terminology to teach philosophical concepts. Ferguson's nuanced discussion of ancient philosophy in (...) his lectures demonstrated his critiques of the ancient schools and his purpose for employing their language throughout his texts. (shrink)

Similar to Immanuel Kant, Adam Ferguson links freedom of the will, the existence of God, and immortality to the possibility of moral conduct. We explore these three dimensions of Ferguson's thought across several of his works. Ferguson's account of these postulates of morality not only anticipates Kant but incorporates a religious sensibility that manifests an appeal to nature rather than scripture.

Karl Marx misappropriated Ferguson's thought even though he championed the Scot's remarks on the division of labor. The argument is developed by examining Marx's specific quotations of Ferguson in literary context and by critiquing Marx's quotations in light of three ethical categories that are implicit in Ferguson's idea of progress. Marx not only presents a highly selective reading of Ferguson and espouses a view of history that is antithetical to Ferguson's idea of progress, but he fails to do justice to (...) the complexity of Ferguson's moral philosophy, even if he viewed the Scot as something of a maverick like himself. (shrink)

Although Adam Ferguson is regarded typically as a secular thinker, the larger frame of this thought may reflect his theism. After recounting, in summary fashion, elements of Ferguson's life, the paper sets forth his embrace of standard doctrines of eighteenth-century natural theology, including the metaphysical basis between mind, activity, and moral happiness, as well as Ferguson's treatment of an important theme of Christian belief – human sinfulness. Turning to Ferguson's moral theory, it is argued that energetic and moralized activity, vigour, (...) may be less an expression of ‘civic humanism’ than of Ferguson's practical experience within the Scottish Church. More important, the very idea of vigorous exertion manifests, in Ferguson's own view, the human reflection of the Divine. Even if Ferguson remains a secular thinker, there is reason to regard him as a man whose thought bears the marks of religious belief and institutional practice. (shrink)

Mandeville offers an evolutionary explanation of norms that pivots on the power of praise to affect individuals. Yet this sort of account is not mentioned by Hume or Ferguson, and only indirectly noted by Smith. Nonetheless, there are various similarities in the thought of Mandeville and these philosophers. After delineating some resemblances, the essay takes up the objection Hume poses to Mandeville: praise fails to motivate if individuals take no pride in moral conduct. To this challenge there is a Mandevillean (...) response that emphasizes how, in the evolutionary emergence of norms, the original praise need not be understood in moral terms. (shrink)

The Scottish Enlightenment is commonly identified as the birthplace of modern social science. But while Scottish and contemporary social science share a commitment to empiricism, contemporary insistence on the separation of empirical analysis from normative judgment invokes a distinction unintelligible to the Scots. In this respect the methods of modern social science seem an attenuation of those of Scottish social science. A similar attenuation can be found in the modern aspiration to judge the outcome of institutions or processes only with (...) regard to efficiency. While the tenet that efficiency is preferable to inefficiency is central to Scottish social thought, the Scots regarded maximization of quantifiable returns as only one among three ends that well-functioning institutions and processes promote. Scottish social science speaks also of virtue and liberty where ours speaks only of utility. This essay develops these differences in three sections. Its first section compares Scottish and contemporary understandings of social science methods. Its second section examines how these differing methodologies inform their differing conceptions of human flourishing and particularly led Scottish social science to focus on virtue and freedom in addition to wealth. The essay concludes by calling attention to three movements in social science today which might help us recover the best features of Scottish social science. (shrink)

Jacob Viner introduced the term ‘sub-rational’ to characterize the faculties – human instinct, sentiment and intuition – that fall between animal instinct and full-blown reason. The Scots considered sympathy both an affective and a physiological link between mind and body, and by natural history, they traced the most foundational societal institutions – language and law, money and property – to a sub-rational origin. Their ‘social evolutionism’ anticipated Darwin's ‘dangerous idea’ that humans differ from the lower animals only in degree, not (...) in kind. Darwin had the ability to ‘trade places in the imagination’, as Adam Smith would say, with plants and animals, and ‘think’ as they do. The trend today is to ‘positivize,’ ‘behaviorize’ and otherwise reduce the sub-rational to the purely biological. My suggestion is that we trade places in the imagination with the Scottish moral scientists and Darwin, and try thinking as they did. (shrink)

In the 19th century it was widely believed that scientific experiments on social issues were not, and never would be, feasible. Not only was social behaviour unpredictable in principle, but subjecting people to experimentation would be immoral. Although Comte, J. S. Mill, C. G. Lewis, and Herbert Spencer all argued to this conclusion, they also believed that natural innovations in society provided an adequate sub stitute for planned experiments. The question to be examined here is how such beliefs came to (...) be held and why they were never tested. (shrink)

This article undertakes a comparative study of the conjectural histories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Ferguson, focusing on the convergences in the moral and political ideals expressed and grounded in these histories. In comparison with Scots like Adam Smith and John Millar, the conjectural histories of Ferguson and Rousseau follow a similar historical trajectory as regards the development and progress of commercial, political and cultural arts. However, their assessment of the moral progress of humanity does not, or in a much (...) more limited way than in Smith and Millar, correlate with this trajectory. Rousseau and Ferguson see a candour and vigour in savage and barbarian societies that is much less easily supported by the complex socio-economic framework of modern, commercial societies. It is argued that the convergences in their conjectural histories arise from a similar fusion of these histories with Stoic and republican perspectives. While Rousseau and Ferguson do not see history as cyclical, they think that the forces that push towards moral decline are strong and can, on the political level, only be countered by firm republican policies. Furthermore, their shared Stoic ideal of the life lived according to nature informs their solutions for modern societies. (shrink)

Philosophy was at the core of the eighteenth century movement known as the Scottish Enlightenment. The movement included major figures, such as Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Reid and Adam Ferguson, and also many others who produced notable works, such as Gershom Carmichael, George Turnbull, George Campbell, James Beattie, Alexander Gerard, Henry Home (Lord Kames) and Dugald Stewart. I discuss some of the leading ideas of these thinkers, though paying less attention than I otherwise would to Hume, Smith (...) and Reid, who have separate Encyclopedia entries. Amongst the topics covered in this entry are aesthetics (particularly Hutcheson's), Moral philosophy (particularly Hutcheson's and Smith's), Turnbull's providential naturalism, Kames's doctrines on divine goodness and human freedom, Campbell's criticism of the Humean account of miracles, the philosophy of rhetoric, Ferguson's criticism of the idea of a state of nature, and finally the concept of conjectural history, a concept especially associated with Dugald Stewart. (shrink)