Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ROUFER (Eighteenth-century republicanism and the critique of commercial society: the case of Rousseau and Ferguson)

Teaser

The project’s key assumption is that Rousseau and Ferguson offer a distinctive “partisan-republican” perspective.More strongly than fellow-republicans like Montesquieu, Hume and Smith, they focus on commercial society’scorrupting effects, concluding that the only...

Summary

The project’s key assumption is that Rousseau and Ferguson offer a distinctive “partisan-republican” perspective.
More strongly than fellow-republicans like Montesquieu, Hume and Smith, they focus on commercial society’s
corrupting effects, concluding that the only remedy is a recovery of traditional civic virtues.

Objectives:
1. The project fills a major lacuna in Enlightenment historiography: the strong kinship between Ferguson and Rousseau is evident,
but no sustained comparative study exists.
2. The project forms a significant contribution to the debate on the (dis)continuities in the republican tradition and its relation to the natural law tradition.
Given the regained prominence of the republican tradition in present-day political philosophy, the project provides an important historical background for current
republican debate. This debate concerns questions extremely relevant for a broader audience, such as: how to revive civic involvement in modern democracies,
and how to come closer to the ideal of a society of free equals?
3. A joint reading of Rousseau and Ferguson vis-à-vis the debate on virtue and commerce sharpens and modifies our insight in this debate. They
express most uncompromisingly the worries that also plague Smith, Montesquieu and Hume. Hence, the project
demonstrates that Rousseau and Ferguson are no outdated Romantics in a general discourse of optimism.


Conclusions:
- the execution of the project has corroborated that the views of Rousseau and Ferguson converge on crucial issues, even though the direct influence of the former
on the latter remains limited. The project\'s way of positioning Ferguson relatively close to Rousseau\'s socially critical view has provided an alternative to the general
tendency in recent Ferguson-interpretations to portray him as a typical representative of the Scottish Enlightenment who cautiously embraced commercial society.
- Stoicism, and Stoic natural law, have been shown to have a crucial, similar influence on the two thinkers. Like the Stoics, Rousseau and Ferguson both incorporate an ideal of
the life lived according to nature in their views of societal progress and decline. The project\'s investigation of the Stoic roots of Rousseau\'s and Ferguson\'s accounts of social alienation as the
antithesis of the life according to nature has amplified our insight in the nature of the early modern alienation critique of commercial society.
- the project has proposed a new account of Ferguson\'s view of religion in relation to moral progress.
- an investigation of debate on alienation and civic virtue among present-day republican thinkers has demonstrated how the concerns of Rousseau and Ferguson are still alive today,
and that the views of the two early moderns are thus very much worth revisiting.

Work performed

- In the first period (months 1-6) I have focused on the first research question, which involved the convergences in the critique of commercial society of Rousseau and Ferguson.
I presented a version of article 1 to my research group.

-During the second period (months 7-12), I worked on a revised version of article 1. I presented this at two international conferences. I submitted art. 1 to Philosophy & Social Criticism.
I started doing research for article 2, which combines research questions 2 and 3 (about the convergences in the moral psychologies and conjectural histories).
I wrote a blogs for Moralmarkets.org.

- Months 13-17. I mainly still worked on article 2 during this period, but also began research for article 3, on the role of the histories of Rome, Geneva, and the Scottish Highlands in the republican theories of
Rousseau and Ferguson. In the end, I have not yet started to write article 3, but Roman history plays an important role too in the long final version of article 2.
I presented the first version of article 2 at a workshop on early modern philosophy, in Halifax, Canada. Two workshops that I (co-)organized were held at UNIL (28-30 June). The first on
Rousseau and contemporary political philosophy, the second on \'republican virtue in an age of doux commerce\'. I presented a paper at the Rousseau-workshop in which I paid significant attention to the contemporary
relevance of Rousseau and Ferguson (a preparation for the research on questions 5 and 6). I wrote revisions of article 1, resubmitted then to Southern Journal of Philosophy.

- Months 18-24- I rewrote a short preliminary version of article 4 which I presented at a conference on political theory at Manchester University. I continued afterwards doing research for art. 4.
I did not manage to write and submit a fully developed version of this article yet. This is to be done in the near future. Before doing so,
however, I intend to finish and submit a co-written article (with Dr. Michele Bee) on Ferguson and Smith. I co-taught a master seminar on republicanism, and presented a version of it at a large
philosophical conference in the Netherlands. Writing of second blog for Moralmarkets.org. I rewrote article 1, after a
request to revise and resubmit.

Overview results, dissemination:
- The researcher has completed and submitted 2 peer-reviewed articles, and carried out most research for 3 other articles. Article 1 is conditionally accepted.
- Organization 2 workshops.
- He has completed 2 blogs for moralmarkets.org.
- Presentation work in progress at 6 international conferences.
- He has co-taught an MA seminar on republicanism.

Final results

- The project has undertaken a comparative analysis of the republican critiques of commercial society of Rousseau and Ferguson. Thus far, only two proper comparative articles existed,
but these did not involve detailed analysis of convergences in the primary texts. Given the many Rousseau-Smith studies published recently, my research forms an important alternative study of Rousseau\'s impact
on the Scottish Enlightenment.
- The project has contributed considerably to the modest yet flourishing field of Ferguson-studies. The value of the offered interpretation is that it takes into account recent scholarship on Ferguson that
has stressed his \'conservative liberalism\' over his republicanism, but vindicates a (moderately) republican reading of Ferguson. The project offers the first detailed study of the concept of alienation in
Ferguson - which is essential for a proper understanding of his thought. The project has proposed a new account of Ferguson\'s view of religion in relation to moral progress.
- The project has contributed to the historiography of the republican tradition. By analyzing the kindred republican outlooks of Rousseau and Ferguson - to which a concept of positive liberty
as non-alienation is key - it has brought to the limelight a distinctive \'Rousseauian\' strand of 18th-century republicanism. Given the importance present-day republican political philosophy
attaches to its past, my research also provides a valuable resource for current debate.

For an overview of results, see above under \'work performed\'.

Republican political philosophy addresses extremely pressing questions about the ways in which modern democracies can do better in making their citizens live in freedom. More than the liberal
tradition, it takes into account the positive liberty of citizens and questions about the need for civic virtue and participation. The popularizing blogs have made a concrete contribution to public debate.