ROUFER · Eighteenth-century republicanism and the critique of commercial society: the case of Rousseau and Ferguson

Eighteenth-century republicanism and the critique of commercial society: the case of Rousseau and Ferguson

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 Hence, the project demonstrates that Rousseau and Ferguson are no outdated Romantics in a general discourse of optimism.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.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз