Adam Ferguson and ethnocentrism in the science of man

Introduction

The Scottish moral philosopher Adam Ferguson (1723–1816) has been hailed as one of the founding fathers of sociology and a consideration of his views on the methodology of the nascent social sciences reveals a startlingly modern appreciation of the difficulties of social research. ¹ This is nowhere more apparent than in his consideration of what has come to be known as the problem of ethnocentrism in social science. The term ‘ethnocentrism’ was coined by W. G. Sumner in his ground-breaking book Folkways (1940[1906]) and refers to the danger that social science can easily be infected by prejudice. The prejudice in question is an adoption of concepts and standards developed in one social group and their application in understanding and, worse still, in judging other groups. The positivistic and ‘value-free’ sociology that developed in the 19th and 20th centuries sought to avoid this problem by adopting a rigorous and scientistic approach to its methodology. In the second part of the 20th century, however, interest in the sociology of knowledge led many practitioners and philosophers of social science to become disillusioned with this approach, viewing claims that classical sociology was an objective scientific endeavour as mistaken and instead seeing sociologists and anthropologists as deeply implicated in importing assumptions and cultural biases into the purportedly neutral modes of inquiry that prevailed in the discipline. The ramifications of this methodological debate were perhaps more wide-ranging than might have been expected for they quickly fed into the debate in political theory (and indeed real world politics) about multiculturalism and cultural imperialism. ²

Duncan Forbes cautioned those interested in the history of sociology against reading too much into Ferguson’s thought on the grounds that ‘the social science is subordinate to Ferguson’s main concern, which is morals’ (Forbes, 1966: xxv). My claim here is that the tensions in the methodology of social science that led to the 20th-century ethnocentrism debate were discernible from the very beginning and that Ferguson, despite his tendency to blend normative and empirical arguments, was aware of the danger posed by interpreting one culture in terms developed in another and the threat that it posed to his own project. Drawing on passages from across his published works this article will reconstruct Ferguson’s consideration of the problem of ethnocentrism as part of his formulation of what he called moral science. While I do not wish to argue that Ferguson was unique in his appreciation of the difficulty – his 18th-century Scottish contemporaries Gilbert Stuart and James Dunbar ³ both note the issue – or that he provides a satisfactory answer to this problem, I do want to claim that his awareness of the problem contributed to his understanding of the proper task and methodology of moral science. Put another way: there is something puzzling and interesting about a thinker so prone to blending normative and empirical arguments, and so quick to pass judgement, devoting such careful attention to the problem of ethnocentrism. Moreover, I will argue that Ferguson’s concerns about the problem of ethnocentrism in the methodology of moral science are a result of his desire to preserve the possibility of the moral judgement of cultural practices. Understanding Ferguson in this way will challenge the view that he was a crude moralist of a stoic or republican bent, ⁴ rather than a sophisticated social thinker intent on preserving the possibility of moral judgement.

Contract theory and states of nature

Ferguson’s consideration of ethnocentrism begins as a part of his rejection of the social contract theory that had proved so influential in the generations immediately preceding his own. He rejects state of nature theories as ‘fruitless’ and ‘imaginary’ (Ferguson, 1995: 8) on the grounds that their abstraction presents a meaningless and often biased account of natural ‘man’ based on the arbitrary selection of favoured principles that are then ascribed to a natural condition. His criticism is based on a rejection of the possibility or the usefulness of imagining pre-social man. If the ‘earliest and the latest accounts collected from every quarter of the earth represent mankind as assembled in troops and companies’ then ‘these facts must be admitted as the foundation of all our reasoning relative to man’ (ibid.: 9).

Ferguson develops two important methodological observations. First, is the view that the study of humankind must be pursued through the study of ‘entire societies’ (1995: 10) rather than individuals. This is most clearly apparent in his detailed criticism of ‘great man’ theories of historical explanation that attribute social phenomena to the deliberate design of great ‘legislators’ (ibid.: 120). Instead Ferguson seeks to trace the development of social level phenomena from the unintended consequences of the interactions of individual humans living together in communities, or, as he famously put it, to explain establishments that were ‘the results of human action, but not the execution of any human design’ (ibid.: 119). Ferguson’s work is therefore an attempt to develop a genuinely social science. And second, Ferguson’s rejection of state of nature thought experiments includes the assertion that all conditions in which ‘mankind’ are found are to be considered equally ‘natural’ (ibid.: 13) to the species. If ‘all the actions of man are equally the result of their nature’ (ibid.: 15) then diversity in human behaviour is to be understood as the reaction of a universal human nature to particular circumstances. ⁵ In this Ferguson has discovered the subject matter of his moral science: the development of humankind’s natural social existence through the study of ‘social’ level phenomena.

However, one thing Ferguson did take on board from Rousseau was the criticism of the contract theories of Hobbes and Locke as having ‘transferred to the state of nature ideas which were acquired in society’ (Rousseau, 1913[1755]: 161). ⁶ Partiality for current modes of behaviour is a feature of all human groups in all ages. When asked what constitutes human happiness men ‘pronounce in favour of their own condition, and look upon situations, very different from their own, with dislike or contempt’ (Ferguson, 1973[1792]: I, 248). This partiality for the standards of our own nation not only is apparent in our casual judgement of the practices of other cultures, but also extends into the realms of incomprehension. Not only do we prefer our own age, but we cannot comprehend how people manage or managed to live in societies very different from our own. According to Ferguson this is the viewpoint of the ‘vulgar’ (Ferguson, 1994[1769]: 184), able only to understand the manners of their own country and incapable of adapting to strange customs. Such is the force of this tendency that it often overcomes rational argument and evidence to the contrary.

Such national prejudice is a core principle of how Ferguson understands social life. His An Essay on the History of Civil Society is based on the observation that humans are naturally sociable and that this shapes almost everything of interest about us as a species. Perhaps most significantly, humanity’s social nature means that our moral belief systems are the product of social life. For Ferguson moral distinctions are ‘formed on the social disposition’ (Ferguson, 1973: I, 35; see also Ferguson, 1994: 238) and our experience of belief formation is embedded in social interaction. His deep-rooted interest in sociability and socialization is displayed in his conception of ‘national spirit’. ⁷ The national spirit is the shared culture or dispositions of a particular national group. It can be viewed both as national characteristics and as the tendency of members of a national group to identify with that group and its interests (through patriotism). This national prejudice can reach hysterical levels among the ‘vulgar’. ⁸ Ferguson notes the example of a Spanish peasant who declares that his father would rise from the grave to fight the French, and wonders what interest his father’s corpse has in the quarrels of princes (Ferguson, 1995: 27–8). Habit and socialization make this sort of national prejudice particularly difficult to shift and invidious in our attempts at moral judgement. As Ferguson would have it:

… the longer a notion has remained unquestioned, the more firm its possession of the mind. For this reason national prejudices are, of all others, the most firmly retained; they are early inculcated, and remain unquestioned under the authority of numbers, or of prevailing opinion, which individuals can seldom resist. (Ferguson, 1973: I, 216)

This presents a particular problem for the social scientist as it leads to an unconscious tendency to assess different cultures by way of criteria extracted from one’s own culture. So strong is our disposition to identify with the manners of our own nation that we find our judgement of other nations fatally inclined to rely upon the universalization of our own practices. However, Ferguson believes that ‘the opinion of one country is not the rule or standard by which to judge the manners of another’ (Ferguson, 1994: 184–5), and that there remains the possibility of a universalized viewpoint that would allow the construction of a viable social science. It is this project that Ferguson himself pursues as he seeks underlying universalities of human social life that will allow him to construct cross-cultural notions appropriate to an objective moral science. Ferguson’s inspiration in this project is clearly Montesquieu and at several points he cites The Spirit of the Laws and reacts to the Frenchman’s methodological considerations. ⁹

Avoiding ‘vulgar’ judgement

It is important to be clear about Ferguson’s intentions here. He wants to purge the practice of empirical research of national prejudice or partiality, but he does not, in so doing, wish to remove the option of passing normative judgement upon the practices of particular nations. He is not saying that one cannot judge other nations and their practices, but rather that for such judgements to be valid they must not be based on evidence drawn from culturally biased understandings of their practices. Moral science, if it is to provide a secure ground for moral judgements, must be more than the lazy extension of one set of cultural norms to the level of universal principles. Annette Meyer (2008: 139) has described Ferguson’s project here in terms of an attempt to identify two kinds of laws of nature that map onto his distinct, but related, empirical and normative concerns: laws of nature of how human beings ‘are’ and of how they ‘should be’. My argument is that Ferguson’s consideration of ethnocentrism is applied to the former of these senses of natural law and that once he has dismissed ‘vulgar’ prejudice he then seeks to banish more conceptual ethnocentric assumptions from moral science. This, in turn, provides a more solid basis for the philosophical identification of the latter, normative, principles which will then facilitate moral judgement.

Ferguson’s first point is to counsel against idle judgement or moralizing. In particular he is concerned not just with cultural distance but also with temporal distance – about how we tend to judge the practice of past ages by the standards of our own. This amounts to the admission that most previous writing that attempted to compare different cultures was dangerously flawed. As he would have it:

The casuist, for the most part, considers the practice of his own age and condition, as a standard for mankind. If in one age or condition, he condemn the use of a coach, in another he would have no less censured the wearing of shoes; and the very person who exclaims against the first, would probably not have spared the second, if it had not been already familiar in ages before his own. (Ferguson, 1995: 232) ¹⁰

Empirical evidence

Moral science must be grounded on secure evidence. Ferguson begins the search for this evidence by cautioning against possible bias in the source material of history. This demand bears a clear connection to his demand elsewhere that corroborative evidence is sought before social theorizing is engaged upon (see Ferguson, 1995: 8–9). He then returns to the point that certain aspects of a culture are not essential to the proper understanding of its operation. Thus such matters as fashion and clothing, ‘immaterial forms and observances’ (Ferguson, 1973: II, 151), can vary from place to place or time to time, but their particular forms are not the proper subject matter of social science as they represent the ephemeral and non-essential aspects of culture. For Ferguson the social phenomenon of fashion may be the subject of social-scientific inquiry, but the fad for a particular item of clothing is largely irrelevant to understanding the broader social category. Ferguson believes that such matters can be understood as ‘physically indifferent or of small moment’ (ibid.: II, 150).

On a practical level Ferguson’s rule on these inessential matters, such as ‘common civility’ (1973: II, 150) is to adopt the view that ‘when in Rome do as the Romans’. He observes:

… men are to observe the rules established in their own country or in their own condition; as they speak its language and wear its dress: That, in judging of behaviour, in other countries, or in other situations, they are not to estimate proprieties of conduct by the standard of their own manners or customs; but, to allow every nation the free and distinctive use of its own. (1973: II, 150)

Whatever detached reflection allows us to claim for moral science it does not excuse us from conforming to the everyday standards of expected conduct in our own societies, though as we will see below there are limits to such tolerance in practice.

Language and interpretation

Returning to moral science, even if we put aside the superficial differences that set nations and ages apart, Ferguson is still left with the problem of the great ‘diversities of manners’ (Ferguson, 1994: 184). There are two problems which he specifically addresses here. The first is the general concern that, even after we have denuded ourselves of national prejudice, our observation may find that: ‘Even of two men placed in the same or like circumstances, one acquiesces, or is pleased; the other complains’ (ibid.: 25–6). This problem of individual taste does not much concern Ferguson as he has already restricted his attention to the study of whole societies and the shared characteristics that are embodied in their practices. His moral science is conducted on the level of social explanations and so he does not allow this point to detain him.

More important in Ferguson’s view, is the problem of ‘Difference of Interpretation’ (1994: 183) between social groups. This points us towards another strand in Ferguson’s consideration of the dangers of ethnocentric judgement for moral science. As Ferguson notes:

To the ignorant or to the proud, who consider their own customs as a standard for mankind, every deviation from that standard is considered, not as the use of a different language and form of expression, but as a defect of reason, and a deviation from propriety and correctness of manners. (Ferguson, 1973: II, 142)

In the Institutes Ferguson gives us an example of the kind of approach that he has in mind.

There is no external effect of which men may not entertain contradictory opinions, even of life and death. The father among the Esquimaux requires, at a certain age, that his own children should put him to death. The widow in Europe desires to have a good settlement made by her deceased husband: in India, she desires to be burnt on his funeral pile. In every case, actions are required as the effects or expressions of kindness and regard. (Ferguson, 1994: 182)

As we have seen, Ferguson rejects the idea that the standards of one culture can be used to judge another. In ordinary life we are inclined to ‘trespass’ on this principle, but in moral science we must maintain a strict adherence to the identification of universalized principles. However, Ferguson is clear that this tolerance in the pursuit of explanation in the case of moral science, what he calls ‘latitude of judgement’, has a limit beyond which it ‘cannot be safely carried’ (Ferguson, 1973: II, 152). This limit, according to Ferguson, lies at the point where customs reject ‘what is evidently salutary’ or prefer what is ‘pernicious’ (ibid.). In other words the generalized evidence of moral science can provide us with the material to judge a cultural practice by a universal standard of science freed from the possible accusation of crude ethnocentrism. Similarly it is the ‘better informed’ (ibid.: II, 153) man who is in a position to criticize the practice of his own age or country. In other words the rejection of vulgar prejudice and the development of a universalizable moral science grounded in empirical generalizations that are carefully purged of assumptions, will allow us a secure basis for normative judgement of our own and other cultures.

Moral science

Ferguson refers to this practice as ‘moral science’ (Ferguson, 1973: I, 1) and regards it as the basis of sound moral judgement. If moral philosophy is to provide us with knowledge of ‘what ought to be’ (Ferguson, 1994: 9) then it must be grounded in secure knowledge of human nature. As Ferguson would have it: ‘Before we can ascertain rules of morality for mankind, the history of man’s nature, his dispositions, his specific enjoyments and sufferings, his condition and future prospects, should be known’ (ibid.: 9–10). It should be clear by now that Ferguson both believes in an objective moral order and rejects the notion that such an order is easily identified with existing belief systems. He observes that we often fail to separate what we blame in practice from what we ‘ought’ to blame, and that as a result ‘The subject of morality has been greatly perplexed by the blending of these questions together’ (ibid.: 109). Good normative moral philosophy requires secure knowledge of human nature and human experience and this requires careful scientific observation and generalization from experience. For this process to work we must be careful that the knowledge of moral science is not infected by national prejudice or bias.

Moral scientists must ‘divest themselves of prejudice’ (Ferguson, 1973: I, 248) and seek ‘fixed principles to which we may recur’ (ibid.: I, 249) for judgement and comparison. These principles are the underlying universalities of human nature: those aspects of human behaviour that can be traced throughout history and across nations. For Ferguson it is possible to compare cultures and their institutions in a meaningful manner. Moreover it is possible to make simple judgements of preference between them based on the universal aspects of human nature. As he notes: ‘When, under one species of establishment, we observe the persons and possessions of men to be secure, and their genius to prosper; under another, prevalent disorder, insult, wrong, with a continual degradation or suppression of all the talents of men, we cannot be at a loss on which to bestow preference’ (Ferguson, 1973: II, 499). From this we can conclude that the knowledge produced by moral science can provide meaningful universally applicable generalizations that will help guide our moral and political action.

Ferguson’s approach to moral science is to seek the underlying universalities of human experience, what Meyer called the natural laws of how we ‘are’, by generalizations drawn from the diverse evidence of human practices. The idea is that we can ‘abstract what is common and uniform in many operations, from what is singular, and serves to diversify particular instances’ (Ferguson, 1973: I, 112). In one sense this is simply the clear application of Ferguson’s understanding of the nature of science. Science ‘consists in the knowledge of general principles and their application’ (ibid.: I, 272). Generalization into genera and species is a core part of the scientific method and this sort of systematic thinking is the basis of Ferguson’s approach. These generalizations must be drawn from observation of ‘particulars’ (ibid.: II, 279). In the case of social science this demands that we examine the record of history and observe the societies around us, and seek the underlying general principles in operation behind the diversity of practices and beliefs. Ferguson is clear that this process is one of theory building from analysis. ¹¹

Human nature

Ferguson’s methodological considerations on the basis of moral science depend on the notion that there is a universal human nature, and that diversity between the human societies that he wishes to study and generalize from is not the result of racial or physiological difference between different ‘types’ of human. Responding to Montesquieu, Ferguson takes the influence of climate seriously and comes to the conclusion that its influence is moderated through moral causes rather than having a direct physical effect. ¹² Ferguson also identifies six distinct racial groups, but he does not extend this observation into his account of the diversity of social practices (see Ferguson, 1994: 18). Indeed if he were to do so this would create serious methodological problems for his comparative approach by raising doubts about the notion of a universal human nature upon which his moral science is premised.

Faced with the challenge of cultural diversity the moral scientist must cleave to his or her method of generalization from empirical evidence to provide abstractions that account for the operation of social institutions. It might appear at first glance that: ‘In the contemplation of these, and such varieties affecting the manners of nations, we are apt to enquire, whether any thing be so fixt in the nature of man, as habit or custom cannot change or remove it’ (Ferguson, 1973: I, 223). Ferguson’s answer to this doubt is to urge the application of the comparative method as the basis of moral science. What he believes will be demonstrated by this is that there are certain universal features of human nature that result in the generation of similar forms of behaviour that exist in all societies. Whatever the apparent superficial differences of form of expression or interpretation, these principles can be identified by careful examination of the evidence.

We can see Ferguson’s attempt to practise the methodology of moral science in his most famous book. An Essay on the History of Civil Society was particularly influential in its analyses of the operation of the division of labour and of the role of conflict in the dynamics that hold human societies together and in his deployment of a stadial analysis of social diversity. In this last respect Ferguson develops his own take on the Scottish Enlightenment’s famous four stage theory of social development. Ferguson’s theory differs from that of Adam Smith, John Millar and William Robertson in that he makes use of a three stage model dividing societies into savage, barbarian, and polished or civilized. ¹³ His analysis depends upon the existence of certain universals of human nature that can then be assessed through their adaptation to the particular circumstances that face different types or ages of society. Diversity is accounted for by plotting the similarities between nations as they find themselves in similar stages of development. In order for such generalizations to be possible Ferguson is committed to the view that there are sufficient universalities in human experience to make meaningful comparisons. Again he draws on empirical and comparative evidence to ground this claim. Examination of history and current descriptions of social practice will, when carefully corroborated to ensure the accuracy of the source evidence, allow the moral scientist to identify recurring features of human experience along which social diversity can be plotted.

This provides Ferguson with a schema of human social development from savage to civilized social orders. However, it would be a mistake to view this analysis as naïve progressivism. Ferguson was keen to note some of the appealing features of savage and barbarian societies (most notably the ‘virtues’ of warriors and active citizens) and he was equally aware that there is nothing inevitable in the developmental story as he tells it. Indeed Parts V and VI of An Essay on the History of Civil Society deal explicitly with decline and corruption in all three types of society. Different nations proceed at different paces and in subtly different manners and he was careful not to confuse his theoretical models for factual descriptions – to mistake theoretical history for actual history.

Making moral judgements based on moral science

So far we have seen how Ferguson seeks to purge moral science’s empirical element of any potential traces of ethnocentric bias. What we must now examine is the relationship between this empirical science and moral judgement more generally. Ferguson clearly believed that the proper identification of the principles of human nature and the laws of nature that govern the operation of social life were necessary for the accurate practice of moral judgement. His view then was that, once suitably purged of cultural bias and supported by the evidence of science, we would be able to adopt an approach to moral philosophy that would provide us with a more satisfactory normative account of how humans ought to live.

One obvious objection to this approach would be to accuse Ferguson of falling prey to a naturalistic fallacy of the sort identified by Hume in the Treatise (Hume, 1978[1740]: 469). Hume’s observation of the tendency to move from ‘is’ arguments to ‘ought’ arguments without a recognition of the difference between the two has since become a major staple of debates about the relationship between empirical findings and normative moral philosophy. ¹⁴ Ferguson certainly seems to be convinced that empirical analysis of human nature and social life are important for an accurate moral philosophy, but his separation of the empirical study purged of ethnocentrism from the subsequent act of judgement suggests a concern to identify two related, but conceptually distinct, modes of human intellectual experience. From the interpretation offered here we see Ferguson as suggesting that good moral philosophy must be moral philosophy for the sorts of beings that humankind actually contains. What we ‘ought’ to do can only be understood if we understand what we are. One consequence of this is that our standards of moral judgement must be ‘realistic’ given what we have learned about humans and their social lives. So what we have in Ferguson is not the unthinking move from ‘is’ to ‘ought’ that Hume noted, but rather a deliberate and careful attempt to relate the empirical and the normative.

Lisa Hill has observed that Ferguson’s approach was to adopt ‘an early structural-functionalism’ that sought to pierce through apparent diversity to trace the underlying and unifying aspects of social life. However, as she notes: ‘he was unable to escape completely from his own unconscious Western ethnocentrism. Convinced of the underlying unity of humanity he was interested in the detection and analysis of cultural universals including the natural tendency for all cultures to develop in roughly the same manner’ (Hill, 2006: 59). Hill’s argument is that Ferguson’s attempts at generalized theoretical explanations are themselves the product of assumptions that are drawn from his own culture and which privilege it in any subsequent judgement. The distinction between savage, barbarian and polished nations reflects this residual ethnocentrism in Hill’s view as it carries with it assumptions about the movement from one stage of development to another. However, as we have seen above, the analysis of corruption and decline in the Essay militates against reading it as a straightforwardly progressivist analysis. Ferguson does offer a developmental analysis, but in doing so he does not privilege later stages of development, indeed the latter parts of the Essay offer a penetrating analysis of how the sources of corruption and decline are magnified in polished societies. One example of these concerns, which is also a clear example of the approach to moral science that has been suggested here, is that Ferguson’s famous worries about the decline in martial virtue in polished societies are based on a moral-scientific analysis of behaviour in polished societies compared with that in other types of society. This phenomenon is then subject to a normative judgement based on the moral-scientific identification of a universal human attribute of self and national defence.

Hill believes that Ferguson’s problematic ethnocentrism is compounded by his alliance between functionalism and providentialism (Hill, 2006: 102). For Hill, Ferguson’s belief in an objective moral order implanted in the world by God closely binds his moralizing to his moral science as part of the same project. While I agree that Ferguson saw himself as pursuing a unified project I think that it is worth noting that he is concerned about casual exercise of moral judgement without an attempt to screen out particularistic bias. In the reading offered here Ferguson’s concern with ethnocentrism occurs in relation to the empirical element of moral science and is designed to facilitate normative judgement. For Ferguson there was an objective moral order in the universe and this was, in principle, identifiable by humankind. His chosen means of pursuing the identification of this order is through the identification of principles of human behaviour that can be observed in all human societies.

Ferguson was not unique in this approach. As Christopher Berry (1997: 31–2) has observed this was a widespread view in the Scottish Enlightenment. They were not cultural relativists, and the whole project of moral science as identifying universal aspects of human behaviour is combined with a belief in universals of normative value in all of the writers of the period (even the sceptical Hume). The question is what status these moral principles have and what their relationship is to the evidence of moral science. The answer to this question in Ferguson’s case is to be found in the existence of certain universal principles of mind and character that can be observed in all cultures. Ferguson’s contemporary Thomas Reid and his followers referred to these principles of ‘common sense’ (Reid, 1997) and it is upon the universal features of human nature that Ferguson builds his normative arguments. The process begins by the empirical identification of these principles.

For example, Ferguson argues that ‘The belief of God [sic] being universal, cannot depend on circumstances peculiar to any age or nation, but must be the result of human nature, or the suggestion of circumstances that occur in every place and age’ (Ferguson, 1994: 123). In the Institutes Ferguson gives the universal principles the name ‘Laws of Nature’. Here he argues that ‘some predicaments’ have ‘generic names’ in all languages and are ‘universally admitted’ by all humans. They are, in Ferguson’s view ‘coeval with human thought’ (ibid.: 89). Among these concepts he provides a list that looks very similar to that developed by Thomas Reid: ‘substance, quality, quantity, number, perfection, deficit, good, evil, time, place’ (ibid.). Although different languages have different ways of expressing these notions they are, according to Ferguson, universally present. Moreover the existence of linguistic diversity points us to yet another human universal that is ‘coeval with the species of man’ – language (Ferguson, 1973: I, 43). ¹⁵ The identification of these universals provides him with a set of universally experienced human concepts that can act as the basis of his moral philosophy.

Throughout his work Ferguson provides us with a list of these universal features of social life that arise from the principles of human nature. Among these natural human propensities are ‘qualities of mind’ such as ‘Benevolence’ and ‘devotion to God’ (Ferguson, 1973: I, 223); ‘self-defence’ (ibid.: II, 192) and ‘desire for what is useful and desire for the welfare of our fellow creatures’ (Ferguson, 1994: 90–1). Moreover there are ‘certain relations essential to every society’ (Ferguson, 1973: II, 271) such as the distinction of political authority between magistrate and subject. Identifying the sorts of issues and relationships that will face all human social groups allows Ferguson to develop his model of moral science on the basis that ‘there are certain objects that claim the attention of every government’ (Ferguson, 1995: 131) namely defence, justice and prosperity. But perhaps most significant for Ferguson is the evidence provided, in every language and all history, of the existence of moral distinctions and the belief that these distinctions are real. That this is ‘universally acknowledged’ (Ferguson, 1994: 108) allows Ferguson to treat them as underlying universalities of human experience susceptible to identification through moral science. We are then in a position to identify the principles that govern this aspect of human social life in a way that conforms to Thomas Reid’s principles of common sense. Ferguson believes that, on the basis of this moral science, he is in a more secure position to construct normative arguments about the particular manifestations of these universals. The universal belief in the reality of good and evil provides Ferguson, as it provides Reid, with the common grounding upon which arguments about what good and evil entail can be grounded.

David Kettler (2005: 114–15) has noted Ferguson’s distaste for the idea of leaving moral science as a purely explanatory project. Ferguson was primarily a moralist who wanted his system to be useful for practical judgement. But in the pursuit of this goal he provides us with an early attempt to deal with the danger of mistaking crude ethnocentric judgements for sound moral judgements. Kettler shares the view of Forbes and Hill when he observes: ‘Sociology and political science, considered as empirical and descriptive disciplines, became relevant for Ferguson only as aids to a task which was primarily evaluative in character’ (ibid.: 224). What we have added to this is that Ferguson wanted the empirical aspect of this evaluative project to be ‘objective’ and freed from prejudice. Moreover he sought this goal precisely because he wanted to strengthen the basis of his normative moral philosophy.

Conclusion

As Lisa Hill has observed, Ferguson provides us with a ‘procedure simultaneously empirical and normative’ (Hill, 2006: 57). But my claim here has been that Ferguson made a deliberate attempt to prevent the act of moral judgement from clouding empirical analyses. That is to say that Ferguson wants clear-headed, unbiased empirical evidence to provide the material upon which to exercise moral judgements. Far from his moralism intruding upon his moral science we actually see a quite sophisticated attempt to detach moralism from moral science so that the two may be brought together again in a more fruitful fashion. Even after Ferguson has presented us with the case for a normative moral judgement grounded on the findings of an empirical moral science we still see traces of his unease about the problems of what we might view as ethnocentrism. These worries are perhaps most apparent in historical judgements. Ferguson continues to argue that we must attempt to appreciate the viewpoint of those shaped by very different circumstances from our own:

The trial of what those ages contained, is not even fairly made, when men of genius and distinguished abilities, with the accomplishments of a learned and a polished age, collect the materials they have found, and, with the greatest success, connect the story of illiterate ages with the transactions of a later date: it is difficult even for them, under the names which are applied in a new state of society, to convey a just apprehension of what mankind were in situations so different, and in times so remote from their own. (Ferguson, 1995: 79)

Adam Ferguson was well aware of a methodological problem that would come back to haunt the discipline of which he was a founding figure. He appears to have wrestled with it himself before adopting what he regarded as a satisfactory conclusion that would allow him to advance a moral science upon which moral philosophy might safely rest. Ferguson’s moral science is put to normative uses, but his concern about ethnocentrism shows that he regarded it as important that descriptive social science be as ‘objective’ as possible if it were to serve as a solid basis for normative judgement.