Szkoła szkockich moralistów:

Adam Ferguson:
Social thought

Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) drew on classical authors and
contemporary travel literature, to analyze modern commercial society with a critique
of its abandonment of civic and communal virtues. Central themes in Ferguson's
theory of citizenship are conflict, play, political participation and military valor. He
emphasized the ability to put oneself in another's shores, saying "fellow-feeling" was
so much an "appurtenance of human nature" as to be a "characteristic of the
species." Like his friends Adam Smith and David Hume as well as other Scottish
intellectuals, he stressed the importance of the spontaneous order; that is, that
coherent and even effective outcomes might result from the uncoordinated actions of
many individuals. Smith called it "the invisible hand."

Ferguson saw history as a two-tiered synthesis of natural history and social history,
to which all humans belong. Natural history is created by God; so are humans, who
are progressive. Social history is, in accordance with this natural progress, made by
humans, and because of that factor it experiences occasional setbacks. But in
general, humans are empowered by God to pursue progress in social history.
Humans live not for themselves but for God's providential plan. He emphasized
aspects of medieval chivalry as ideal masculine characteristics. British gentleman
and young men were advised to dispense with aspects of politeness considered too
feminine, such as the constant desire to please, and to adopt less superficial qualities
that suggested inner virtue and courtesy toward the 'fairer sex.'[2]

Ferguson was a leading advocate of the Idea of Progress. He believed that the growth
of a commercial society through the pursuit of individual self-interest could promote
a self-sustaining progress. Yet paradoxically Ferguson also believed that such
commercial growth could foster a decline in virtue and thus ultimately lead to a
collapse similar to Rome's. Ferguson, a devout Presbyterian, resolved the apparent
paradox by placing both developments in the context of a divinely ordained plan that
mandated both progress and human free will. For Ferguson, the knowledge that
humanity gains through its actions, even those actions resulting in temporary
retrogression, form an intrinsic part of its progressive, asymptotic movement toward
an ultimately unobtainable perfectibility.[3]

Ferguson was influenced by classical humanism and such writers as Tacitus, Niccolò
Machiavelli, and Thomas Hobbes. In turn he foreshadows many of the themes of Adam Smith's
Wealth of Nations (1776). In contrast to Smith, who emphasizes capital accumulation as the
driver of growth, Ferguson emphasizes innovation and technical advance, and is therefore in
some ways more in line with modern thinking. Ferguson also influenced Hegel.[4]

Ferguson believed that civilization is largely about laws that restrict our independence as
individuals but provide liberty in the sense of security and justice. He warned that social chaos
usually leads to despotism. The members of civil society give up their liberty-as-autonomy, which
savages possess, in exchange for liberty-as-security, or civil liberty. Montesquieu used a similar
argument.[5]

Francis Hutcheson

But though Hutcheson usually describes the moral faculty as acting instinctively and
immediately, he does not, like Butler, confound the moral faculty with the moral
standard. The test or criterion of right action is with Hutcheson, as with Shaftesbury,
its tendency to promote the general welfare of mankind. He thus anticipates the
utilitarianism of Bentham--and not only in principle, but even in the use of the phrase
"the greatest happiness for the greatest number" (Inquiry concerning Moral Good and
Evil, sect. 3). Hutcheson does not seem to have seen an inconsistency between this
external criterion with his fundamental ethical principle. Intuition has no possible
connection with an empirical calculation of results, and Hutcheson in adopting such a
criterion practically denies his fundamental assumption. Connected with Hutcheson's
virtual adoption of the utilitarian standard is a kind of moral algebra, proposed for the
purpose of "computing the morality of actions." This calculus occurs in the Inquiry
concerning Moral Good and Evil, sect. 3.

Hutcheson's other distinctive ethical doctrine is what has been called the "benevolent
theory" of morals. Hobbes had maintained that all other actions, however disguised
under apparent sympathy, have their roots in self-love. Hutcheson not only maintains
that benevolence is the sole and direct source of many of our actions, but, by a not
unnatural recoil, that it is the only source of those actions of which, on reflection, we
approve. Consistently with this position, actions that flow from self-love only are
morally indifferent. But surely, by the common consent of civilized men, prudence,
temperance, cleanliness, industry, self-respect and, in general, the personal virtues,"
are regarded, and rightly regarded, as fitting objects of moral approbation.

This consideration could hardly escape any author, however wedded to his own
system, and Hutcheson attempts to extricate himself from the difficulty by laying
down the position that a man may justly regard himself as a part of the rational
system, and may thus be, in part, an object of his own benevolence (Ibid),--a curious
abuse of terms, which really concedes the question at issue. Moreover, he
acknowledges that, though self-love does not merit approbation, neither, except in its
extreme forms, did it merit condemnation, indeed the satisfaction of the dictates of
self love is one of the very conditions of the preservation of society. To press home
the inconsistencies involved in these various statement would be a superfluous task.

The vexed question of liberty and necessity appears to be carefully avoided in

Hutcheson's professedly ethical works. But, in the Synopsis metaphysicae, he
touches on it in three places, briefly stating both sides of the question, but evidently
inclining to what he designates as the opinion of the Stoics, in opposition to what he
designates as the opinion of the Peripatetics. This is substantially the same as the
doctrine propounded by Hobbes and Locke (to the latter of whom Hutcheson refers in
a note), namely that our will is determined by motives in conjunction with our general
character and habit of mind, and that the only true liberty is the liberty of acting as
we will, not the liberty of willing as we will. Though, however, his leaning is clear, he
carefully avoids dogmatising, and deprecates the angry controversies to which the
speculation on this subject had given rise.

It is easy to trace the influence of Hutcheson's ethical theories on the systems of

Hume and Adam Smith. The prominence given by these writers to the analysis of
moral action and moral approbation with the attempt to discriminate the respective
provinces of the reason and the emotions in these processes, is undoubtedly due to
the influence of Hutcheson. To a study of the writings of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson
we might, probably, in large measure, attribute the unequivocal adoption of the
utilitarian standard by Hume, and, if this be the case, the name of Hutcheson
connects itself, through Hume, with the names of Priestley, Paley and Bentham.
Butler's Sermons appeared in 1726, the year after the publication of Hutcheson's two
first essays, and the parallelism between the "conscience" of the one writer and the
"moral sense" of the other is, at least, worthy of remark.

John Millar
In his Origin of the Distinction of Ranks, published in 1778, he advanced the view that
all social relations, even relations between the genders, are determined by the
economic system. Such a view later became known as economic determinism. His
Historical View of the English Government from 1787 was one of the most important
contemporary histories of England, representing a milestone in the development of
historiography. Millar drew comparisons with the works of other historians, and
emphasised the social and economic bases of political developments and institutions,
which strongly differentiated his work from those of many of his precursors whose
work was more speculative than scientific.