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11430613 Lprob 1.Pdf THE PASSIONATE SOCIETY ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D’HISTOIRE DES IDÉES INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS 191 THE PASSIONATE SOCIETY The Social, Political and Moral Thought of Adam Ferguson By Lisa Hill Founding Directors: P. Dibon† (Paris) and R.H. Popkin† (Washington University, St. Louis & UCLA) Director: Sarah Hutton (Middlesex University, United Kingdom) Associate-Directors: J.E. Force (Lexington); J.C. Laursen (Riverside) Editorial Board: M.J.B. Allen (Los Angeles); J.R. Armogathe (Paris); A. Gabbey (New York); T. Gregory (Rome); J. Henry (Edinburgh); J.D. North (Oxford); J. Popkin (Lexington); G.A.J. Rogers (Keele); Th. Verbeek (Utrecht) The Passionate Society The Social, Political and Moral Thought of Adam Ferguson By Lisa Hill University of Adelaide, Australia A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN-10 1-4020-3889-5 (HB) ISBN-13 978-1-4020-3889-1 (HB) ISBN-10 1-4020-3890-9 (e-book) ISBN-13 978-1-4020-3890-7 (e-book) Published by Springer, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. www.springer.com Printed on acid-free paper All Rights Reserved © 2006 Springer No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Printed in the Netherlands. CONTENTS Legend vii Acknowledgements ix Dedication xi 1. Introduction: The Passionate Society 1 2. Reading Ferguson 29 3. Ferguson’s Theology/Ontology 43 4. Method and Historiography 57 5. Ferguson’s Faculty and Moral Psychology 75 6. Ferguson’s “Invisible Hand” 101 7. Ferguson’s Early Conflict Theory 123 8. Habit 139 9. The Environment 149 10. Corruption and Problems of Modernity 161 11. Progress and Decline 193 12. Ferguson’s Conservatism 215 13. Conclusion 233 Bibliography 237 INDEX 271 LEGEND Essay: An Essay on the History of Civil Society. P.I. and P.II.: Principles of Moral and Political Science. Institutes: Institutes of Moral Philosophy. Analysis: Analysis of Pneumatics and Moral Philosophy. History: History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic. Correspondence: The Correspondence of Adam Ferguson. ‘Sermon Preached in the Ersh Language’: ‘A Sermon Preached in the Ersh Language to His Majesty’s Highland Regiment of Foot’. Stage Plays: The Morality of Stage Plays Seriously Considered. Reflections: Reflections Previous to the Establishment of a Militia. Remarks: Remarks on a Pamphlet lately Published by Dr. Price, intitled ‘Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty...’, in a Letter from a Gentleman in the Country to a Member of Parliament. ‘Biographical Sketch’: ‘Biographical Sketch or Memoir of Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Ferguson’. Sister Peg: History of the Proceedings in the Case of Margaret Commonly called Peg, only Lawful Sister to John Bull, Esq. ‘Joseph Black‘: ‘Minutes of the Life and Character of Joseph Black M.D’, Addressed to the Royal Society of Edinburgh. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the following people for their support in writing this book: The Australian Research Council for the generous funding that made its completion possible; Jonathan Louth, Luke Trenwith and Nicole Vincent for their able and untiring research assistance; Pauline Gerrans for carefully proofing an earlier draft; four anonymous readers commissioned by Springer for their learned and detailed recommendations; and my spouse, Philip Gerrans, for his loving friendship and support. I also thank the respective journals for their kind permission to reprint substantial portions of the following articles: ‘Anticipations of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Social Thought in the Work of Adam Ferguson’, European Journal of Sociology, 37 (1), 1996, pp. 203-228; ‘Adam Ferguson and the Paradox of Progress and Decline’, History of Political Thought, 18, (4), 1997, pp. 677-706; ‘Ferguson and Smith on ‘Human Nature’, ‘Interest’ and the Role of Beneficence in Market Society’, Journal of the History of Economic Ideas, 4 (1-2) 1996, pp. 353-399; ‘The Invisible Hand of Adam Ferguson’, The European Legacy, 3 (6), 1998 pp 42-65, http://www.tandf.co.uk and ‘Eighteenth Century Anticipations of a Sociology of Conflict’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 62 (2) April, 2001, pp. 281-299, The Johns Hopkins University Press. DEDICATION To my parents, Ben and Charmaine Hill. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: THE PASSIONATE SOCIETY The Social, Political and Moral Thought of Adam Ferguson Adam Ferguson (1723-1816) lived and wrote during the period of intense intellectual activity commonly referred to as the Scottish Enlightenment, a time that has been described as ‘one of the greatest…in the history of European culture’.1 A famous and highly esteemed figure in his day, Ferguson’s thought was original and distinctive. He held the prestigious and coveted Chair in Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh (1764-1785) and exerted considerable intellectual influence, not only in Britain and Europe,2 where his publications were translated into all the principal languages, but also in America. Nevertheless his reputation has long been overshadowed by those of his more luminous contemporaries, David Hume and Adam Smith.3 Further, despite his disagreements with both of them, it is common to encounter readings in which his ideas and orientations are automatically conflated with theirs as well as with those of other members of the Scottish Enlightenment.4 Ferguson’s virtual disappearance from view in the nineteenth century has been attributed to his sustained attack on the ‘selfish system’ just as it had achieved a kind of muted respectability. As Duncan Forbes suggests, Ferguson’s sin consisted in his oracular ‘unmasking’ of a ‘second-rate sort of society, full of second rate citizens, 1 Alexander Broadie, The Scottish Enlightenment, Edinburgh: Birlinn Ltd.; 2001, p. 5. 2 ‘Ferguson’s admirers in France included D’Holbach and Voltaire in his time, and later Comte; in Germany, Herder and such literary figures as Schiller and Jacobi, along with nineteenth century German social thought in general; and in his lifetime he was elected an honorary member of the Academy of Social Sciences in Berlin’. A.G. Smith, The Political Philosophy of Adam Ferguson Considered as a Response to Rousseau: Political Development and Progressive Development, Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, Yale University, p. 9. Along with the rest of the ‘Scottish School’ John Stuart Mill esteemed Ferguson highly, naming his father, James Mill, as the last in the line of succession of ‘this great school’ of Hume, Kames, Smith and Ferguson. Letter to A. Comte, January 28, 1843 in J.S. Mill, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, J. Robson, F. Mineka, N. Dwight, J. Stillinger, and A. Robson, (eds), Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963, Vol. 13, p. 566. 3 As was ‘the fate of most Scots’ after 1800. Fania Oz-Salzberger, Translating the Enlightenment: Scottish Civic Discourse in Eighteenth Century Germany, Oxford: University Press, 1995, p. 130. Even closer to his own time Ferguson’s ‘popular success was greatly overshadowed by that of his successor to the Edinburgh Moral Philosophy chair, Dugald Stewart‘. N. Phillipson, ‘The Scottish Enlightenment’, in Porter, R and Teich, M. (eds), The Enlightenment in National Context, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, p. 37. 4 John Robertson has recently urged a greater awareness of ‘potential fault lines within Scottish moral philosophy’, drawing special attention to the eccentricity of Ferguson’s work. ‘The Scottish Contribution to the Enlightenment’, in The Scottish Enlightenment, Essays in Reinterpretation, Paul Wood (ed), Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2000, pp. 47-8. 1 2 THE PASSIONATE SOCIETY pursuing comparatively worthless objects’.5 For Ferguson, civil society could not be reduced to market society. Worse than that, the market may itself contain the seeds of despotism.6 Whereas the Scottish Enlightenment has been characterised (principally in the figure of Smith) as an attempt ‘to legitimise bourgeois civilisation at an early stage of its growth’,7 Ferguson stood apart as a figure that frequently acted to subvert and de-legitimise it. He was rescued from obscurity in the first part of the twentieth century by those interested in the origins of sociology and early critiques of modernity. He continues to be rediscovered, more recently by scholars looking for early sources on the nature and preservation of civil society.8 Like other members of the Scottish Enlightenment (among them David Hume, Adam Smith, William Robertson, John Millar, Dugald Stewart and Lord Kames) Ferguson was motivated to apply himself to the study of society by the intense social and material changes he saw around him. The purpose of the exercise was not simply to describe and enumerate laws (to develop a kind of science of morals). His social science was inextricably linked to a normative critique of these changes, particularly in their effects upon virtue, community and the affective content of social life. It is sometimes suggested that Ferguson’s concern with political corruption led him to anticipate much of nineteenth-century sociology in disclosing the causal status of such social structural variables as mechanisation, the division of labour, bureaucratisation, commercialisation, apathy and over-extension. There is much truth to this claim though he finds his initial inspiration in the civic humanist concerns of citizenship and virtue.9 It should also be remembered that he did not work alone but developed his ideas alongside and together with other Scots like 5 Duncan Forbes, ‘Introduction’ to Ferguson, A, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Edited and With an Introduction by Duncan Forbes, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1967, p. xiii-iv. Here was a culture ‘in search of perfection, to place every branch of administration behind the counter, and come to employ, instead of the statesman and the warrior, the mere clerk and accountant’.
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