Adam Ferguson's Discourse on ‘Rude Nations’ in the Essay and the Critique of Despotic Empire

Abstract

This chapter seeks to advance Ferguson scholarship in two respects. First, it strives to recover and reconstruct ethical motifs which are implicit in Ferguson's discourse on rude nations. Second, it seeks to illustrate the interpretive power of these motifs by showing how they can be correlated with and enhance Ferguson's trenchant critique of despotic empire. In the process, it becomes possible to appreciate how Ferguson's own distinctively modern way of seeing the world incorporated moral understandings of peoples of rude nations. Ferguson integrates particular moral aspects of a diverse range of rude nations into a ‘multi-cultural’ critique of despotic tendencies in the Essay. This critique can be elucidated by contextualizing Ferguson's discourse on rude nations within his larger dialectical argument about the nature of civil society and moral life in the Essay, including his use of the terms ‘empire’ and ‘despotism’. Then, Ferguson's fears about despotic trends in empires can be illuminated by viewing them in relation to three ethical motifs derived from rude nations: acting from the heart in opposition and concert, playing one's part in the stations of life, and fashioning freedom with creativity and ingenuity.