Political Sociology of Freedom Spontaneous and not so Spontaneous OrdersHamowy's

Abstract

While David Hume and Adam Smith have tended to steal the Scottish Enlightenment limelight, Hamowy treats Ferguson as an equal player on this stage. One simple indicator that this attention to Ferguson is appropriate is the extraordinary popularity Ferguson enjoyed in Great Britain, on the continent, and, somewhat surprisingly, in North America during his own lifetime. Ferguson's An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) went through seven English editions in his own lifetime, as well as being translated into French, German, Italian and Russian. In the United States between 1777 and 1813, the Essay could be found in over one-fifth of catalogues and booklists. Ferguson's popularity in North America is surprising in that he opposed the American Revolution. In fact, he was paid by the British government to write in opposition to it. The Americans, he argued, did not have a good cause. They wished to escape paying for services, notably defense, that the British government was rendering to them. This is not to suggest that he was anything but sincere in his opposition. His position towards the colonists flowed naturally from his political principles. Ferguson rejected, for reasons similar to those of Smith and Hume, the standard theoretical doctrines of the radical Whigs from Locke onwards. There never was any such thing as an original “state of nature” as posited by Locke and many Americans. Mankind had always lived in groups. Nor did society and much less government arise out of a social contract based on consent. Government evolved over time in response to changing circumstances, chiefly economic circumstances. Laws evolved to curtail abuses of already existing social hierarchies. Ferguson did suggest that providing the Americans with better representation might be a good idea, but in his thinking there was no justification for an appeal to the “laws of nature” from the laws of Great Britain. The Americans mistook their mere interests for their rights. The French revolutionaries made even graver errors under the influence of an abstract doctrine of rights. Hamowy quotes Ferguson as describing the French Revolutionary forces as “the Antichrist himself in the form of Democracy & Atheism” (p. 176).

Citation

McNamara, P. (2007), " Political Sociology of Freedom Spontaneous and not so Spontaneous OrdersHamowy's", Samuels, W.J., Biddle, J.E. and Emmett, R.B. (Ed.) A Research Annual (Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Vol. 25 Part 1), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 81-88. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0743-4154(06)25010-7