The Passionate Society: The Social, Political and Moral Thought of Adam Ferguson (International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées)

286 Pages·2006·2.07 MB·English

by  Lisa Hill

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
AC.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 AADordrecht, 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
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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: Analysisof 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.
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