THEIR IDEA OF HAPPINESS PREVENTS EASY CATEGORIZATION OF SCOTTISH ENLIGHTENMENT PHILOSOPHERS
Megan Hills
What happiness entailed was a central concern in the Scottish Enlightenment. During the Enlightenment, people debated the meaning and cause of happiness. The deliberation continues to the present day. The controversy centers on the distinction between liberal notions of individual self-interest versus republican ideas of responsibility to the collective. The influence of happiness as a philosophical construct is profound. As a principle, the pursuit of happiness forms the bedrock of America’s cultural development and identity. The right is enshrined in the tenets of our founding document, the Declaration of Independence; yet, defining what is meant by “the pursuit of happiness,” as influenced by eighteenth-century Scottish thought, continues to be contentious. This chapter examines how three philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment balanced self-interested materialism with morality in response to the portrait of happiness presented to them by theorists claimed by liberalism. This analysis complicates a one-dimensional view of happiness and the designation of these Scottish authors as supporting one particular ideology. The aim is to show that a more careful explanation is required both of what happiness entails and the doctrines espoused by these Scottish philosophers.
In this study, happiness is first introduced by a review of three authors who emphasized individual rights and personal pursuits, basic concepts of liberalism: Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), John Locke (1632–1704) and Bernard de Mandeville (1670–1733). An account of works by three philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment then follows: Francis Hutchinson (1694–1747), Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696–1782) and Adam Ferguson (1723–1816). Scottish writers disagreed with egoist views of happiness, believing that achieving happiness included more than self-interest. They also rejected the idea that human nature lacked inherent morality. With citation to these Scottish works, the aim is to show how their views of happiness were multifaceted and not limited to prioritizing the community over the individual or vice versa. By looking at how these Scottish philosophers incorporated both sides of happiness, it will be shown that the binary interpretation of the emotion—either self-indulgent gratification or nullification of the individual—is untenable. This review of their thoughts on happiness reveals that limiting these Scottish philosophers either to liberal/individual or republican/communitarian tenets is inappropriate. The goal is to persuade that the need for a more nuanced understanding of the meaning of happiness mirrors the necessity to reassess the categorization of these Scottish scholars.
Hobbes, Locke, Mandeville
Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan was published in 1651. In Leviathan, Hobbes focuses on legitimate government and the role of the state. Hobbes portrays life as an endless struggle for power, the striving and winning of which is the only thing that brings human happiness (Rogers 1997; Mintz 1962). Leviathan sets forth the ultimate egoist theory, and in its championing of private rights, historians claim Hobbes as a member of liberalism’s pantheon (Okin 1989; Barber 1989; Elazar 1992, 7).
In Leviathan, Hobbes asserts that “the Felicity of this life, consisteth not in the repose of a mind satisfied. For there is no such Finis Ultimus, (utmost ayme,) nor Summum Bonum, (greatest good,) as is spoken of in the Books of the old Morall Philosophers […]. Felicity is a continuall progresse of the desire, from one object to another; the attaining of the former, being still but the way to the latter” (XI:138). “[A] perpetuall and restlesse desire of Power after power, that ceaseth onely in Death […]. [B]ecause [man] cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more” (XI:141). Moreover, only “[d]esire of Praise, disposeth to laudable actions, such as please them whose judgement they value” (XI:141). Contentment is never reached and happiness involves a never-ending fight for more and more power. The work makes no effort to encourage people to act beneficently and there is no obligation to anyone or anything outside of oneself.
The described father of liberalism (George 2010, 92), John Locke, continued the attack on humans having an inherent ethical drive in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689): “Virtue generally approved, not because innate, but because profitable […]. Men’s actions convince us that the rule of virtue is not their internal principle” (42–43). Describing the mind as a “white paper,” Locke writes that sensations provide humanity’s motivation—seeking gratification and avoiding suffering—“Things then are good or evil, only in reference to pleasure or pain […]. [W]e name that evil which is apt to produce or increase any pain, or diminish any pleasure in us” (73, 180). “Pleasure and pain and that which causes them,—good and evil, are the hinges on which our passions turn” (180). Locke’s argument makes people into little more than animals, moved only by instinctual drives.
Bernard de Mandeville’s (1723) allegory, The Fable of the Bees, completes the transformation of people into beasts. Mandeville defends commercial society, arguing that virtue leads to its destruction while love of wealth, personal enrichment and luxury create its success. Mandeville proclaims, “they that examine into the Nature of Man […] observe, that what renders him a Sociable Animal, consists not in his desire of Company, good Nature, Pity, Affability, and other Graces of a fair Outside; but that his vilest and most hateful Qualities are the most necessary Accomplishments to fit him for […] the happiest and most flourishing Societies” (A3).
Briefly summarized, Mandeville’s poem describes a hive of politically and economically powerful bees who hypocritically ask their god, Jove, to make them virtuous. As punishment, Jove grants their request and the bees instantly become moral, happy in simple pleasures, good works and virtuous enterprises (3–10). This results in the collapse of their economy, forcing many bees to emigrate as they lose their jobs (13, 16–22). While the few bees that remain struggle to live in simple honesty, the absence of vice destroys the kingdom’s power, its trade and its former existence (17–22). Mandeville succinctly writes:
The main Design of the Fable […] is to shew the Impossibility of enjoying all the most elegant Comforts of Life that are to be met with in an industrious, wealthy and powerful Nation, and at the same time be bless’d with all the Virtue and Innocence that can be wish’d for in a Golden Age; from thence to expose the Unreasonableness and Folly of those, that desirous of being an opulent and flourishing People, and wonderfully greedy after all the Benefits they can receive as such, are yet always murmuring at and exclaiming against those Vices and Inconveniences […] inseparable from all Kingdoms and States that ever were fam’d for Strength, Riches, and Politeness, at the same time. (A4)
Per Mandeville, “the Moment Evil ceases, the Society must be spoiled, if not totally dissolved” (428). Thus, as far back as 1723, Mandeville set out Max Weber’s premise that modernity was incompatible with morality.
These portrayals of happiness emphasize personal rights, but the picture is limited to individual striving for power, accumulation of material goods and seeking false praise. These arguments presented Scotland with a dilemma in her aim to encourage basic probity. Hobbes, Locke and Mandeville challenged Scottish philosophers to show that their conception of happiness with its belief in mankind’s fundamental decency was not “unreasonable” or “folly” and able to be incorporated into modern life.
Background
As the eighteenth century opened in Scotland, the formerly dominant religious view that happiness was reserved for the afterlife gave way to the thought that happiness might be achieved on earth. An ecclesiastical dispute resulted in the Scottish National Church to incorporate “polite, enlightened values,” “genteel manners, religious moderation […] tolerance, [and] high esteem for scientific and literary accomplishments” (Sher 1985, 8, 13–14). Where previously Scotland’s Established Church was dominated by fanatically evangelical, narrow-minded men, rigidly committed to the Calvinist creed where atonement was life’s only proper concern, a more progressive clerical faction took control over the Church, deemphasizing traditional dogma (Sher 1985; Brekke 2010).
Along with the loosening of religious control over the populace, the 1707 union with England brought Scotland rapid affluence, challenging people’s ability to be moral with its avaricious temptations. Significant developments were made in Scotland’s agriculture, commerce and trade (Sher 2005). Even with regional differences, contemporaries noted that over the course of the eighteenth century, wages rose for virtually all workers (Boot 1991; Morgan 1971). How to convince people that happiness consisted of more than the personal accumulation of wealth presented a problem.
The works of eighteenth-century writers perceptibly shifted from the previously held belief that happiness could only be attained at salvation after death to the best means possible to attain happiness on earth. “The Enlightenment […] translated the ultimate question ‘How can I be saved’ into the pragmatic ‘How can I be happy?’” (Porter 2000, 22). Some historians attribute the change to increased prosperity and the relative relaxation in the struggle for existence while others credit the new religious outlook in which the earth was supposed to reflect God’s happy design (McMahon 2006, 204–6).
Thus, what happiness entailed was a paramount issue for eighteenth-century Scotland. Writing to challenge theories grounded on humanity’s inherent selfishness, philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment rejected the idea that self-interest was the only motivation behind people’s actions. However, they did not completely dismiss the belief that happiness involved selfish conduct. Rather, a closer look at these Scottish writers reveals that they incorporated inherent morality, personal endeavors and natural law such that both the meaning of happiness adopted and the philosophical school to which these thinkers are assigned should be qualified.
Francis Hutcheson
Troubled by theories that saw society as founded only on humans’ most hateful qualities, Francis Hutcheson, the proclaimed “father of the Scottish Enlightenment,” took on egoist theories and set out a program for happiness that was not limited to self-denial (Broadie 2003, 3). In 1725, Hutcheson published An Inquiry into Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, subtitled “In which the Principles of the late Earl of Shaftesbury are Explain’d and Defended against the Author of the Fable of the Bees” (1726).1 Not only is Hutcheson said to have made a career out of rebutting Mandeville’s Fable (Welchman 2007, 57–58) but his work—misleadingly—earned him the moniker as the proponent of the moral sense school, obfuscating his amalgamation of egotism and natural law into his plan (Welchman; Sprague 1954).
Hutcheson’s Inquiry sets out a universal canon, governing both the morality and happiness achieved by every action: Where B = Benevolence, A = Ability, S = Self-Love, I = Interest and M = Moment of Good: M = (B + S) × A = BA + SA; therefore, BA = M – SA = M – I and B = M – I, both over (divided by) A. Factoring the equation out, in the latter case, M = (B – S) × A = BA – SA; thus, BA = M + SA = M + I and B = M + I over (divided by) A (1726, 128–29). Though one wonders how numbers could ever be assigned to the variables, Hutcheson’s equation clearly tries to balance self-interest with the public good and the temptations of modernity with morality in his calculation on how to achieve happiness. He believed his equation provided the crucial social factors for a successful, happy society:
We are led by our moral Sense of Virtue to judge thus; that in equal Degrees of Happiness expected to proceed from the Action, the Virtue, is in proportion to the Number of Persons to whom the Happiness shall extend […] and in equal Numbers, the Virtue is as the Quantity of Happiness […] or that Virtue in a compound Ratio of the Quantity of Good, and the Number of Enjoyers. (125)
Hutcheson’s argument parallels Locke’s insofar as Hutcheson states that a person’s motivation to action arises in response to pain and pleasure, with one being driven to avoid the former and seek the latter (8–10, 16–18). Locke, however, contends that humans have no innate ideas, other than simple instinct to maximize personal happiness and minimize misery (1689, 41–42, 93–94, 180–81). Of the two parts of happiness, Locke’s theory is restricted to one. “[V]irtuous behavior is only a side effect of seeking pleasurable flattery” (43).
In contrast, Hutcheson incorporates both aspects of happiness, embedding an ethical drive into his theory of sensation. He believes that just as the individual is endowed with external abilities like sight and hearing, he also has a “moral sense” akin to the other faculties that make immediate judgments on the ethical “value” of an event (1726, 19–23). A person’s exposure to behavior leads to spontaneous “gut” reactions, where principled actions give pleasure (as immoral acts cause pain) because probity is integral to one’s makeup (83–85, 93–94, 112–14). Hutcheson further argues that pleasure obtained from exercising this moral sense provides far greater happiness than that obtained from sensual delights (114–15). While solely self-interested pursuits deliver momentary gratification, joy arising from benevolent acts toward others lasts longer and offers greater satisfaction to the individual (89–90, 104–7).***
Hutcheson injects morality into individual ambition. He observes that there are several counteracting forces to selfishness. First, since people are naturally benevolent, there are instances where self-interest is uninvolved with the approval of morality (tragic plays, accounts of heroes, events in far-off lands or times) (1726*, 86, 142–43, 153). Second, “as all Men have Self-Love, as well as Benevolence, these two Principles may jointly excite a Man to the same Action” (1726*, 97). Even if self-interest is involved in the decision to act ethically, benevolence “shall be assisted even by Self-love” (1726*, 156). Since “[b]eneficent Actions tend to the publick Good; it is therefore good and kind to give all possible additional Motives to them; and to excite Men, who have some weak Degrees of good Affection, to promote the publick Good more vigorously by Motives of Self-Interest; or even to excite those who have no Virtue at all to external Acts” (1726*, 267). In finding that an individual may promote community well-being through personal pursuits, even absent any feeling for one’s fellow, Hutcheson allows for egoism.
Classical republicanism ranks the needs of the community over those of the individual (Powell 1988). Under Hutcheson’s scheme, the goals are equipoised. Humans are drawn to live together through self-interest in being happy: “Happiness of human Life cannot be promoted without Society and mutual Aid […]” (1726, 45–46, italics in original). The goal of maintaining the health of the community follows. “[P]ublick Affections must […] be strengthened as well as the private” (46)—“as well as,” not to the exclusion of the latter. Particularly with Scotland’s increased commercialism, Hutcheson recognized that without self-interest, a society would not prosper. “It is well known, that general Benevolence alone, is not a Motive strong enough to Industry […]. Self-love is really as necessary to the Good of the Whole, as Benevolence” (1726, 187).
The main thrust is not that one must replace one’s own ambitions with society’s goals or to adopt ascetic self-denial; rather, a “ballance” [sic] should be maintained (1726, 45–46). While aspects of Hutcheson’s thought support the importance of public interest, historians (Wills 1978) who designate him only as an advocate for republicanism overlook aspects of his work. A state has dual interests—to the person and to the community—as happiness springs from both.
The use of natural law to protect the individual is a hallmark of liberalism (Elazar 1992; Ryan 2012). Hutcheson’s amalgamation of natural law into his theory further removes him from being classified as a pure republican. He does not rely only on one’s philanthropic impulses to order society because he uses natural law in combination with the moral sense (1728, 99). He argues that people’s proclivity to recognize moral goodness allows them to establish societies founded on laws based on “perfect” inalienable rights belonging to the individual, violation of which prevents the happiness of society and its members (1726, 164, 183–84).
We have a Power of Reason and Reflection, by which we may see what Course of Action will naturally tend to procure us the most valuable Gratifications of all our Desires […]. We have Wisdom sufficient to form Ideas of Rights, Laws, Constitutions; so as to preserve large Societies in Peace and Prosperity, and promote a general Good amidst all the private Interests. (1726, 119–20, italics in original)2
Hutcheson’s prefaces to his Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy (1753) and A System of Moral Philosophy (1755), compilations of his lectures at Glasgow University, both published posthumously, further muddy labeling Hutcheson a republican as they mix self-interest, altruism and natural law. Hutcheson believes moral philosophy contains both natural law and sentiment with the aim of showing people how to be happy.3
Moral Philosophy […] is the art of regulating the whole of life, must have in view the noblest end […] to lead us into that course of life which is most according to the intention of nature […] “Happiness either consists in virtue and virtuous offices, or is to be obtained and secured by them:” The chief points to be enquired into in Morals must be, what course of life is according to the intention of nature? wherein consists happiness? (1753, I:1–2)
and
The Intention of Moral Philosophy is to direct men to that course of action which tends most effectually to promote their greater happiness and perfection […] these maxims, or rules of conduct are therefore reputed as laws of nature, and the system […] is called the Law of Nature. (1755, 1–2)
Hutcheson’s exegesis on happiness intertwines natural law liberalism and civic humanism, applying them both to the individual and the community. His aim is not to replace liberalism’s right of the individual to enrich himself, but to show that the individual need not sacrifice his separate endeavors, which activities natural law protects, to prioritize work for the whole.
Henry Home, Lord Kames
Henry Home, Lord Kames took Hutcheson’s ideas and further refined them. Kames brought Hutcheson’s philosophical insights about humans’ inherent drives into the law (Ross 1972, 36). Though enjoying a productive career as a lawyer, receiving the honorary, nonhereditary title when he assumed the bench of Scotland’s highest civil court in 1752, he waded into the philosophical controversy because other authors had either “exalt[ed] man to the angelic nature” or “assign[ed] them laws more suitable to brutes than to rational beings” (Kames 1751, 23).
Kames’s 1751 philosophical book, Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion, caused “shock waves” through Edinburgh’s intellectual society, later serving as a “cornerstone” for the Scottish Common Sense philosophy (Ross 1972, 99). While adhering to Hutcheson’s idea that there is an internal moral sense, Kames adds complexity to the argument, some of which disqualify him from being deemed either a “liberal” or a “civic republican” (McGuiness 1970, 36, 39, 45). Though Kames agrees with Hutcheson that one’s motivation to action is based on feeling, Kames argues that locating a person’s motivation on just one passion, benevolence, or its converse, self-interest or even reason, is too simplistic. “Man is a being composed of many parts […]. He has passions that move him; some to advance his own interest, some to advance the interest of others” (Kames, 73).
Kames’s primary focus is the proper foundation of society, not happiness per se. But, because he finds that an individual’s “happiness consists chiefly in social intercourse,” society is the context where people are happy and where their moral sense, “rooted in the nature of man” improves, allowing their full potential for happiness to flourish (64). Kames feels that prior schemes’ basis for governing humans’ interactions in society is too weak (16, 30–33). Because “[m]an is evidently intended to live in society [for man to be happy]; and because there can be no society among creatures who prey upon one another, it was necessary […] to provide against mutual injuries” (36). Kames argues that moral philosophy’s primary concern should be to explain people’s capabilities and inclinations in terms of how they live, not in extolling piety for the promise of heaven. “[T]he nature of man is the foundation of the laws that govern his actions” (26). In creating a system that balances protections with obligations, Kames combines communal and individual impulses.
Kames outlines a scheme with “primary” and “secondary” virtues, in which “primary” virtues are exacted from people as “duties,” while “secondary” ones are not (94). Natural law dictates primary virtues. While Kames agrees with Hutcheson’s position that benevolence cannot be demanded from individuals, Kames also feels that though natural law gives “authority to morality, by putting self-affections in a due subordination to the social,” acts that violate both moral and inalienable rights require stronger condemnation than “approbation” or “disapprobation” (Hutcheson 1726, 184–85; Kames, 32–33, 36, 93). In making justice a primary virtue and benevolence secondary, Kames explains the relation between the moral sense and the law. Though human’s nature prompts benevolence, natural law demands restraint of those vices that violate the individual endeavors of others.
In Principles of Equity (1760), Kames more expansively explains why he prioritizes justice:
[Justice] is effectually done by this law. Its necessity with respect to personal security is self-evident; and its necessity with respect to matters of property will be evident. […]. This security is afforded by the moral sense; which dictates to all men, that goods stored up by individuals are their property, and that property ought to be inviolable. Thus, by the great law of restraint, men have a protection for their goods, as well as for their persons or reputation; and have not less security in society than if they were separated from each other by impregnable fortresses. (lxx-lxxi, italics in original)
While justice is crucial to society’s survival, benevolence “and generosity are more beautiful, and more attractive to love and esteem” than law and justice for “nature […] has linked [men] together in an intimate manner, by the sympathetic principle […]. [M]utual sympathy must greatly promote the security and happiness of mankind. That the prosperity and preservation of each individual should be the care of many, tends more to happiness in general” (1751, 16–17). Sympathy for others, benevolence and virtue form the “cement” of society (16, 19). Kames’s conception of society combines natural law liberalism of individual rights with community-directed moral sense to create happiness:
If we be fitted by our nature for society; if pity, benevolence, friendship, love, dislike of solitude and desire of company, be natural affections, all of them conducive to society, it would be strange if there should be no natural affection, no preparation of faculties, to direct us to do justice, which is so essential to society. But nature has not failed us here […]. We have a sense of property; we have a sense of obligation to perform our engagements; and we have a sense of wrong in incroaching [sic] upon property, and in being untrue to our engagements. Society could not subsist without these affections, more than it could subsist without the social affections […] We have reason, a priori, to conclude equally in favour of both. (54, italics in original)
“[E]qually in favour of both”—Kames’s philosophy of human’s innate makeup balances community values stemming from benevolence and an inner moral sense with natural law’s minimalist restraint on individual pursuits and the protection of individual property, allowing beings to live in society where their happiness will blossom fully. Justice, law and inherent morality not only make society’s existence possible, but they make people happy (35, 64).
Adam Ferguson
Like Kames’s Essays, Ferguson’s work, Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), focuses on the development of different types of government, not an individual’s makeup or happiness. Governments, however, are made up of people whose character Ferguson explores in order to examine the appropriateness of various forms of political organization. Echoing Hutcheson and Kames, Ferguson believes one’s happiness is experienced in society (59). “[W]e have reason to consider his union with his species as the noblest part of his fortune. From this source are derived […] the very existence of his happiest emotions” (23). Insofar as it is in a community where a person’s happiness is found, Ferguson’s treatise contains valuable insights on human happiness, while simultaneously complicating superficial characterization of his theories as espousing strident republicanism.
Historians (Hill 2009; Turner 2012) recognize the quandary that labeling Ferguson a “civic humanist/republican” or a “liberal” causes. Ferguson’s supposed sole commitment to self-sacrifice and republican values, his admitted lifelong advocacy for a Scottish militia, his biography of having served in the army and passages in his Essay on the History of Civil Society that extol martial abilities mislead scholars to emphasize Ferguson’s espousal of happiness only in terms of personal abnegation and military prowess (Buchan 2003; Reinert 2008; McDaniel 2013). His writings, however, reveal a softer side. He observes that benevolent acts bring happiness to the giver, far more than to the recipient (Ferguson 1767, 56). Determining that there is another aspect to Ferguson’s thought prevents him from being labeled simply as a civic republican, committed only to the sacrifice of individual pursuits in favor of the well-being of the whole.
Ferguson shares Hutcheson and Kames’s belief in human’s inherent benevolence, writing that egoist theories, founded upon “supposed selfish maxims” exclude “many of the happier and more respectable qualities of human nature,” leading people “to forget, that their happiest affections […] are in reality parts of themselves” (19). Ferguson justifies his view by arguing that “[i]f men be not allowed to have disinterested benevolence, they will not be denied to have disinterested passions of another kind. Hatred, indignation, and rage, frequently urge them to act in opposition to their known interest […] without any hopes of compensation” (20–21). Against the representation of a brutal world consisting of seeking wealth, power and flattery depicted in the works by Hobbes, Locke and Mandeville, Ferguson argues that “human felicity does not consist in the indulgences of animal appetite, but in those of a benevolent heart; not in fortune or interest” (1767, 39 fn. 9).
Throughout his career, Ferguson champions the idea of intrinsic decency. In his 1792 Principles of Moral and Political Science, predominantly a compilation of his lectures as a University of Edinburgh professor, Ferguson spells out that compassion toward others—benevolence—is an inherent part of human nature. “Benevolence […] is a principal excellence of human nature” (II:41). However, Ferguson’s conclusions regarding society are not limited to the admonition that humans should put the community above their individual desires.
To Hutcheson’s moral sense, Ferguson adds a psychological aspect to the concept of happiness. He emphasizes that happiness arises from the mind (1767, 63). “[T]he happiness of men, in all cases alike, consists in the blessings of a candid, an active, and strenuous mind” (60). Ferguson’s revelation is that the artificial division between benevolence and self-interest (and, one could argue between individual pursuits and communitarianism) has created confusion as to how to achieve happiness.
The division of our appetites into benevolent and selfish, has probably, in some degree, helped, to mislead our apprehension on the subject of personal enjoyment and private good; and our zeal to prove that virtue is disinterested, has not greatly promoted its cause […]. While the gratifications of benevolence, therefore, are as much our own as those of any other desire whatever, the mere exercises of this disposition are, on many accounts, to be considered as the first and the principal constituent of human happiness. (55)
Although he does not acknowledge it (and, in fact, denies that benevolence stems from it), one of Ferguson’s justification for urging benevolence is that it is “the principal constituent of human happiness” (55), which could be seen as springing entirely from self-interest: in being good to others, in being benevolent, we are made happier than the recipient of the good deed.
We commonly apprehend, that it is our duty to do kindnesses, and our happiness to receive them, but if, in reality, courage, and a heart devoted to the good of mankind, are the constituents of human felicity, the kindness which is done infers a happiness in the person from whom it proceeds, not in him on whom it is bestowed. (56–57)
In short, “the interests of society […] and of its members, are easily reconciled. If the individual owe every degree of consideration to the public, he receives, in paying that very consideration, the greatest happiness of which, his nature is capable” (59). “If this be the good of the individual, it is likewise that of mankind; and virtue no longer imposes a task by which we are obliged to bestow upon others that good from which we ourselves refrain; but supposes, in the highest degree, as possessed by ourselves, that state of felicity which we are required to promote in the world” (56). No selection needs to be made as to which interest—community or individual—is selected for they are the same.
Ferguson’s Essay should not be read as presenting a stark choice between segregated, self-interested pursuits and renunciation of personal desires for the greater good. Like Hutcheson and Kames, Ferguson simply wants a balance to be struck (141). Human society has obligations to both. He agrees with Hutcheson that benevolence is innate (16). He concurs with Kames that civil authority should not enforce benevolence or morality (87). With his adherence to the natural law of restraint and his conclusion that self-interest and commercialism are not naturally opposed to benevolence and the public good, Ferguson is not easily pigeonholed simply as a civic humanist/republican.
Discussion
Torn from an uncompromising, but uncomplicated, Calvinist view that a person’s happiness occurred only if God’s grace granted him salvation, the eighteenth century forced Scotland to confront the “modern” problem of how to attain happiness on earth without abandoning ethical behavior. Scotland’s 1707 Union with England brought her increased economic prosperity, but added material temptations, greater exposure to intellectual ideas but less certainty about morality, a more tolerant clergy but one that held less orthodox and, thus, less predictable and more confusing positions. Hutcheson, Kames and Ferguson sought to show that ethical conduct and materialistic pursuits of the modern world were not irrationally inconsistent.
Hobbes, Locke and Mandeville’s portrayals of happiness show people as soullessly driven by individual selfish desires. They limit people’s concern to themselves. They imply that happiness springs from fooling or taking advantage of another. They laud character traits—pride, power, vanity—that were formerly seen as defects. In describing human’s happiness as the prioritization of individual goals at odds with the community’s welfare, they alienate the individual from society.
Historians (Humphrey 1955; Allen and Reagan 1998) proclaim that liberalism stands for personal freedom grounded in natural law, which includes “the pursuit by each of his own self-interest” (Humphrey, 423). Others describe liberalism as embodying a concept of liberty that involves freedom from the violation of natural rights—a defense against governmental intrusion—leaving each person free to seek happiness anyway he sees fit within those parameters (McMahon 2006, 324). Thus, Hobbes, Locke and Mandeville’s hedonistic theories squarely fall within liberalism’s definition. Perhaps because Hutcheson, Kames and Ferguson opposed these earlier writers, some historians (Hill 2009; Goldsmith 1988) have reflexively put them in the republican camp.
Yet, when Hutcheson, Kames and Ferguson opposed the egoistic conclusions, they did not reject private undertakings for communal goals (Hutcheson 1725, title page; Kames 1751, 23; Ferguson 1767, 20–21, 39, fn. 9). Rather, these Scottish philosophers proposed an alternate view—one that balanced the seemingly contradictory aims, making them complementary to each other. Their outlook refuses to accept Max Weber’s premise that there is no relationship between religious beliefs and conduct and people being “dominated by the making of money” (Weber 1905, 18, 32). As recognized in Steven Pinker’s recent book on the Enlightenment, happiness seems to stem from two different impulses—“many of the things that make people happy also make their lives meaningful”; yet, “other things can make lives happier while leaving them no more meaningful or even less so” (Pinker 2018, 267). The gist of Hutcheson, Kames and Ferguson’s philosophy is that innate benevolence and self-interest reinforce each other (Hutcheson 1726*, 267; Kames 1751, 16–17; Ferguson 1767, 55).
Happiness is commonly treated either as a solitary predilection for obtaining material gain or a communitarian ideal where one sacrifices personal interest to civic virtue. “Happiness has sometimes been made synonymous with the public welfare, and sometimes with the right of the individual to be protected against the public” (Jones 1953, 62). The idea of pursuing happiness is fundamental; yet, defining what was meant by “the pursuit of happiness,” as influenced by eighteenth-century Scottish thought, continues to be debated (Jones 1963; Wills 1978; Jayne 1998; Schlesinger 1964).
Historians have used “Scottish moralism” to argue against a Locke-based, amoral reading of the Declaration of Independence (Will 1978; Pocock 1975). Others contend that classical republicanism was the inspiration for the founding of America where “the common good would be the only objective of government” to ensure people’s “fullest satisfaction” (Wood 1969, 63–64, 68–69). Historian Gary Wills goes so far as to conclude that Jefferson’s use of the word “happiness” in the Declaration was far more influenced by Scottish moral philosophy than by Locke (Wills 1978). However, the concerns of these Scottish philosophers were not limited to the good of the community. These Scottish scholars sought to solve the problem of motivating moral behavior in the context of a person’s happiness by characterizing work for the whole as improving one’s own lot.
The binary division setting civic republicanism against liberalism creates problems not only by limiting personal happiness to one philosophical school and deeming it incompatible with the other, but also in terms of assigning Scottish philosophers to one camp or the other, thereby ignoring any subtleties of their thoughts that fail to fit the categorization. The three Scottish philosophers recognize that both elements—public and private—are required for happiness. Hutchinson argues that “while we are intending the Good of others, we undesignedly promote our own greatest private Good” (1726, 99). For Kames, self-love is not antithetical to benevolence: “[M]an will justly prefer his own interest above the others, but he may also serve others without prejudicing himself: so, self-interest does not prejudice benevolence” (Rahmatian 2015, 56). Similarly, Ferguson recognizes that while some will think of nothing but attaining wealth, others dwell only on national virtue. In truth, “[h]uman society has great obligations to both. They are opposed to one another only by mistake” (Ferguson 1767, 141).
Considering the similarities among Hutcheson, Ferguson and Kames’s investigations of happiness, the inappropriateness of interpreting them as limiting their advocacy to one school—whether inherent sense ethics or natural law liberalism or individual negation in favor of the whole—is apparent. Given the affinity of their positions, the different categorization of them as proponents of “liberalism” or “republicanism” is nonsensical. Though all three authors reach the same conclusion—that mankind’s greatest happiness is found in communal living—and base their studies on a consistent position—that happiness combines the drive for self-preservation (as expressed in personal endeavors) and an inherent morality (as expressed in benevolent acts for others)—each philosopher has been contradictorily labeled (Hill 2009, 108; Goldsmith 1988; Rahmatian 2015, 91).
Hutcheson’s contentions are geared both to the individual and to the community; yet, historian Gary Wills sees him entrenched in moral sense republicanism (1978). Hutchinson’s “happiness” is not limited to principles of civic humanism, but includes natural law. Although the emphasis is different, Kames too combines natural law and benevolence by sandwiching a moral sense between layers of natural law. Natural law endows people with a moral sense. This moral sense acts as a conscience to regulate one’s behavior, reinforced by statutes based on the natural law of restraint (1751, 64). Kames comingles elements from both liberal and republican ideology into his theory. Ferguson, whom historians have called an ardent republican (Pocock 1975), fails to fit the definition of classical republicanism where the individual is “willing to sacrifice [his] private interests in favour of the public good” (Michaud 2009, 37). On the contrary, Ferguson writes that civic virtue’s communal demands benefit the individual (1757, 56, 59). All three authors proffer a conception of happiness that embraces equally both liberalism’s protection of the individual and self-interested pursuits with republicanism’s concern for society.
Designating philosophers as “civic republicans/humanists” or proponents of “natural law/liberalism” leads to confusing results. Both traditions have claimed Hutcheson as a member (Goldsmith 1988). Similar conflicting results occur when Ferguson is slotted as a republican (Hill 2009) because he also wrote that self-interest promotes benevolence, which increases happiness in general (Ferguson 1767, 54–55). While Kames’s juridical writings focus on natural rights (liberalism), Kames also subscribes to Hutcheson’s moral sense theory (Ross 1972, 100). Even Hutcheson, the “originator” of the Scottish moral sense doctrine, sees self-interest as necessary to the happiness of society (Hutchinson 1726, 164, 183–84; 1728, 45–46). All three authors recognize the natural law of restraint, which allows every individual freedom to pursue whatever he desires, only being “restrained” when the endeavor fundamentally harms another. A close review of their theories shows that neither happiness nor these three writers should be limited to expressing only one dimension.
Conclusion
Hutcheson, Kames and Ferguson proposed a theory of happiness that situated eudaemonism in the modern world. Their rejection of an either/or definition of happiness is key to their methods. Moreover, their recognition of human’s motivations as encompassing both self-interest and benevolence seeks to solve the quandary posed by opposing options of an empty happiness of pure self-indulgence or an ascetic existence of self-sacrifice.
The need to classify Scottish thinkers as espousing only one set of ideals leads to an oversimplification of their views, particularly as to their thoughts on happiness. Opinions as to the meaning of happiness have ranged from hedonism to self-effacement for the common good. This tendency to stamp a too rigid definition on happiness and a too fixed political classification on philosophers distorts meaning, such that strands of significance are lost.
The eighteenth century opened with Hobbes, Locke and Mandeville’s theories, presenting humans as lacking inherent morality, acting solely for self-aggrandizement. Though Hutcheson, Kames and Ferguson disputed this view, they did not completely discard it. They acknowledge that baser motivations motivate people, but that their fundamental decency mitigates that impulse. Moreover, they think that an individual’s aims contribute to the good of the whole. Francis Hutcheson’s theories influenced subsequent thoughts on the interplay of individual human endeavors and the creation of a societal collective. Lord Kames takes Hutcheson’s argument, refining it to include motivations other than benevolence, combining natural law with commonsense morality and positing a way for both the individual and the community to be happy. Ferguson also uses Hutcheson’s reasoning to combine individual self-interest as a means to forward the happiness of both the person and the community.
It is clear that these writers’ respective views on various aspects of arguments promoting community well-being over the individual or vice versa, like the espousal of personal sacrifice, acceptance of natural law or singular pursuits, should be qualified. Discrepancies contained within their philosophical works belie their endorsement of a one-dimensional view of happiness or complete adherence to a particular political schema. Deeper understanding of these Scottish philosophers in relation to liberalism and republicanism creates a new dimension to the notion of happiness, which brings the “individual versus communitarian” interpretations closer. A more rigorous consideration of these works demonstrates that the divide between notions of happiness as either self-interested indulgence or sacrifice to the community is artificial. In eighteenth-century Scotland, for these three—neither liberal nor republican, but “hybrid”—philosophers, happiness contains both.
1In 1725, the Inquiry was first published anonymously. Subsequent editions were published in 1726 under Hutcheson’s name with various alterations made in different versions. Where necessary, citation to the online edition that incorporates alterations is indicated with an asterisk (*) attached to the date.
2“The Rights call’d perfect, are of such necessity to the publick Good, that the universal Violation of them would make human Life intolerable; and it actually makes those miserable, whose Rights are thus violated. On the contrary, to fulfil these Rights in every Instance, tends to the publick Good” (1726, 183).
3But Cf. Thomas P. Miller who argues that Hutcheson’s incorporation of natural law theory into the prefaces of these two books carries less persuasive power as to Hutcheson’s views on natural law as these were intended as pedagogical texts for young students and contain what was deemed appropriate for them, not serious statements of Hutcheson’s beliefs (1995, 46–49). This objection seems unconvincing, given that Hutcheson’s Inquiry and Essay also incorporate natural law individualism into their precepts.
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