Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T20:46:04.479Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Classical Republicanism and the History of Ethics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

J. B. Schneewind
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The ‘modern’ natural law philosophers of the seventeenth century believed that conflict was an unavoidable concomitant of human intercourse, rooted in our nature. They understood the normative laws of nature as serving the purpose of setting the limits within which conflict is compatible with lasting social cooperation, thus showing, in effect, how warfare can be turned into competition. The natural lawyers were interested primarily in legal and political problems, not in ethics. But in order to provide reasoned approaches to immediate practical issues, they had to move to a level of abstract theorizing at which philosophical claims about morality were unavoidable. Natural law theory with its understanding of the central underlying problem of human sociability dominated seventeenth-century practical philosophy, and the solutions its various proponents offered generated many of the central concerns of what we know as moral philosophy.

Type
Research Article
Information
Utilitas , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , November 1993 , pp. 185 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 I argue for this understanding of modern natural law theory in ‘Modern Moral Philosophy: From Beginning to End?’, Philosophical Imagination and Cultural Memory, ed. Cross, Patricia, Durham, N.C., 1993.Google Scholar For further elaboration of the position I here work from, see ‘The Misfortunes of Virtue’, Ethics, ci (1990), 42–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Among the major investigations are those by Baron, Hans, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance, Princeton, 1966Google Scholar, and by Pocock, J. G. A., The Machiavellian Moment, Princeton, 1975.Google Scholar For the importance for American history, see Robbins, Caroline, The Eighteenth Century Commonwealthmen, Cambridge, Mass., 1959CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bailyn, Bernard, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Cambridge, Mass., 1967Google Scholar; Wood, Gordon S., The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787, Chapel Hill, N.C., 1969.Google Scholar For the importance of classical republicanism in the Scottish Enlightenment, see Hont, Istvan and Ignatieff, Michael, eds., Wealth and Virtue, Cambridge, 1983, especially the essays by Pocock and Ignatieff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 The central work is his Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius, 1522. The best introduction is Skinner, Quentin, Machiavelli, New York, 1981.Google Scholar Chapter 3 concerns the Discourses, and there is an excellent short bibliography.

4 Discourses, Book I, Discourse 47; Book I, Discourse 58.

5 Discourses, Book I, Discourse 37; Book II, Preface.

6 Of course this is partly due to the style in which they wrote: scrupulous annotation was not part of it. There are a few passing references to Machiavelli, Harrington, and Moyle in the second volume of Hutcheson's System of Moral Philosophy, 2 vols., Glasgow and London, 1755, pp. 74, 187, 256, 264, 334, but many more to Grotius and Pufendorf.

7 I know of two exceptions: Wolfgang Leidhold, Ethik und Politik bei Francis Hutcheson, Miinchen, 1985, and Moore, James, ‘Hume's Political Science and the Classical Republican Tradition’, Canadian Journal of Political Science, x (1988), 809–39.Google Scholar

8 See especially Pocock, , Machiavellian Moment.Google Scholar

9 Harrington, James, Oceana, in The Political Works of James Harrington, ed. Pocock, J. G. A., Cambridge, 1977, p. 322.Google Scholar Future references to Oceana are to this edition.

10 Oceana, p. 172.Google Scholar

11 Oceana, pp. 172–4Google Scholar; and cf. The Prerogative of Popular Government, 1658Google Scholar, in Works, p. 416.Google Scholar There will also need to be a magistrate to see to it that accepted advice is executed: thus elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy are combined in a republic.

12 See Pocock, , Machiavellian Moment, pp. 389–90.Google Scholar

13 Oceana, p. 169.Google Scholar

14 Oceana, pp. 298–304.Google Scholar

15 Oceana, p. 205Google Scholar; see also p. 303: ‘the vices of the people are from their governors; those of their governors from their laws or orders; and those of their laws or orders from their legislators.’ And p. 838: ‘Good orders make evil men good, and bad orders make good men evil.’

16 Cf. Oceana, pp. 230–1.Google Scholar

17 Oceana, , pp. 274–5.Google Scholar Pocock points out that ‘internal’ causes are those arising among the landed class. Servants and their discontents are listed as among ‘external’ causes. Pocock, , Machiavellian Moment, p. 390.Google Scholar

18 Oceana, p. 202.Google Scholar Harrington is arguing that not all change is corruption: some changes are improvements. But behind the argument there is the belief that ‘manners’ change when and because structure changes.

19 Whether or not Hobbes supported the king or Cromwell is not to the point here. Pocock, , Machiavellian Moment, pp. 397 ff.Google Scholar has pointed out various points, especially their anti-clericalism, on which Harrington and Hobbes were agreed or nearly so.

20 Oceana, p. 178.Google Scholar

21 e.g. Oceana, p. 202–3.Google Scholar

22 In de Cive the state of nature is described in Part I, entitled ‘Liberty’, and civil society in Part II, ‘Dominion’.

23 Neville discusses the need for law enforcement and has altogether a more ‘realistic’ picture of the daily problems of the state. But then he is analysing contemporary England, not portraying an ideal. See ‘Plato Redivivus’, Two English Republican Tracts, ed. Robbins, C., London, 1969, p. 125.Google Scholar

24 Pocock, J. G. A., Virtue, Commerce, and History, Cambridge, 1985, p. 41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 Pocock, , Machiavellian Moment, p. 417.Google Scholar

26 See Pocock's ‘Introduction’ to Harrington, 's Works, pp. 129, 132–3.Google Scholar

27 Voitle, Robert, The Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Baton Rouge, La., 1984, p. 119Google Scholar, shows that Shaftesbury eventually took a strong stand against Locke's views on morality. Voitle cites a letter of 1709 from Shaftesbury to a younger friend: ‘'twas Mr. Lock that struck the home Blow (for Mr. Hobb's character and base slavish principles in Government took off the poison of his Philosophy). 'Twas Mr. Lock that struck at all Fundamentals, threw all Order and Virtue out of the world, and made the very ideas of these… unnatural and without foundation in our minds.’ There seems to be no hard evidence showing exactly when this break with Locke became definite in Shaftesbury's mind; but it must have at least begun to take shape during the period when he was writing the Inquiry concerning Virtue or Merit, i.e. in the later years of the 1690s.

28 See Robbins, , The Eighteenth Century Commonwealthman, ch. 4, esp. pp. 125 ff.Google Scholar See also Voitle, , pp. 70–1Google Scholar, who says that Shaftesbury associated with the Old or Country Whigs, especially those who admired Harrington and Neville, and that when young he probably knew Walter Moyle and Charles Davenant; ‘his closest friends among the group were… Molesworth… and Toland…’. For more details, see Ludlow, Edmund, ‘A Voyce from the Watch Tower’Google Scholar ed. Worden, A. B., Camden Society 4th Series, xxi (1978)Google Scholar, [hereafter Worden] 28–9, 40 ff. My attention was drawn to Worden by Sullivan, Robert E., John Toland and the Deist Controversy, Cambridge, Mass., 1982.Google Scholar See also Champion, J. A. I., The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken, Cambridge, 1992, ch. 7Google Scholar, for a somewhat different view which however also associates Shaftesbury and classical republicanism.

29 See the Introduction to Worden, , 40Google Scholar; and Voitle, , pp. 118–21.Google Scholar

30 Voitle, , pp. 206, 236.Google Scholar

31 Worden, , 44 & n. 192.Google Scholar

32 I cite from the Toland edition of 1699 as this is reprinted in the Standard Edition of Shaftesbury's Works, edited by Gerd Hemmerich, Wolfram Benda, and Ulrich Schödlbauer, frommann-holzboog, n.d., Vol. II.2.

33 I.II.iii, pp. 68–70.

34 I.II.iii, p. 70.

35 On this point there is a tension between the Stoic tendency in Shaftesbury, making the agent self-sufficient in his virtue, and the aesthetic tendency, for which the leisure to cultivate the moral sensibilities—and the wealth this implicitly supposes—is important for the achievement of complete virtue. Hutcheson modifies Shaftesbury's position to remove any thought that material well-being is a condition of virtue.

36 See particularly the Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humor, and the Soliloquy or Advice to an Author.

37 For what follows in this paragraph I am indebted to Goldsmith, M. M., Private Vices, Public Benefits, Cambridge, 1985, esp. ch. 1.Google Scholar See also Burtt, Shelley, Virtue Transformed, Cambridge, 1992, esp. chs. 3 and 7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Pocock, , Machiavellian Moment, (pp. 417f)Google Scholar presents his Plato Redivivus (1681) as the ‘culmination of the first attempt to restate Harringtonian doctrine in a form appropriate to the realities of the restoration’.

39 See Scott, W. R., Francis Hutcheson, Cambridge, 1990Google Scholar; Leidhold, , p. 35–6.Google Scholar Caroline Robbins, in her Introduction to Two English Republican Tracts, London, 1969, p. 49Google Scholar, refers to Hutcheson as a disciple of the commonwealthmen along with Walter Moyle. She also discusses Hutcheson in her earlier important study, The Eighteenth Century Commonwealthman, esp. pp. 185–96.Google Scholar

40 Leidhold has done more than previous commentators to stress (rightly, in my opinion) the Christian bearing of Hutcheson's idea of benevolence.

41 Hutcheson, F., ‘Concerning Moral Good and Evil’, An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, 4th ed., London, 1738, p. 198 (§3, ad fin).Google Scholar

42 Inquiry, p. 251.Google Scholar

43 Self-interest is more than that: it is a necessary spur to industry, which benevolence alone does not provide. And industry, even if egoistically motivated, produces goods which benefit others. Hence ‘self-love is really as necessary to the good of the whole, as benevolence…’. Inquiry, p. 285.Google Scholar

44 As W. R. Scott noted in his 1900 study, Hutcheson's much admired teacher was Gershom Carmichael, who produced an annotated edition of Pufendorf's de Offici. Hutcheson admired this book even more than the unannotated original, and frequently taught from it. Carmichael was in touch with the Molesworth group when Hutcheson was a student. See also Leidhold p. 36.

45 Inquiry, , p. 275.Google Scholar

46 Hutcheson says that the term ‘obligation’ has three senses. He explains them by giving three ways in which we can be ‘obligated’ to pursue benevolent actions: (i) by a ‘determination’ to approve and perform actions, regardless of our own interest; (ii) by a motive from self interest to pursue our enlightened private advantage; (iii) by a law backed by sanctions, needful when our moral sense is ‘exceedingly weakened’ or our selfish passions have become excessive. (Inquiry, pp. 267–70).Google Scholar

47 The philosopher—might we add, the clergyman?—is to teach this to everyone.

48 As Robbins points out in her Introduction to Neville, , pp. 42, 49.Google Scholar

49 Inquiry, p. 198Google Scholar; end of § 3.

50 See esp. the ‘Dissertation on Virtue’, § 8, Butler, J., Three Sermons upon Human Nature with a Dissertation on the Nature of Virtue, Cambridge, 1834.Google Scholar

51 Hume, David, Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A., revised P. H. Nidditch, Oxford, 1978, III.II.ii, pp. 486ffGoogle Scholar on conditions of justice, and on the importance of justice; on pride see II.I, pp. 275–328.

52 There is another point about Hume's view of the virtues which is important, and which has implications for his relations to the classical republican tradition. He offers an account of the possible genesis of a large society in which justice and the other artificial virtues are practised. And this account makes no appeal either to a social contract—the favourite device of the natural lawyers—or to a divine or semi-divine legislator, of the sort to which the classical republicans appeal. Hume shows how what he calls a convention can arise, in which agents coordinate their actions to bring about goods both or all want and none can achieve alone, and outlines a plausible psychology for this. The origin of civil society is not a major theme in the works I have discussed by Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, so the point did not arise with them. But while Hume's criticisms of contract theory are well known, it is important for us to note that on his view there is no more need for the highly implausible classical republican legislator than for what Hume took to be the equally implausible social contract.

53 Rousseau, J. J., First and Second Discourses and Essay on the Origin of Languages, trans. Gourevitch, V., New York, 1986, p. 12Google Scholar; Oeuvres complètes de J. J. Rousseau, ed. Gagnebin, B. and Raymond, M., Paris, 1959–, iii. 14–15Google Scholar (hereafter OC).

54 On the Social Contract, ed. and trans. Masters, R. D. and Masters, J. R., New York, 1978, II.vi, p. 67 (hereafter Masters)Google Scholar; OC, iii. 379–80.Google Scholar

55 Discourse on Political Economy, Masters, p. 219Google Scholar; OC, iii. 255.Google Scholar

56 Discourse, Masters p. 220; OC iii. 256.Google Scholar

57 Social Contract I.viii, Masters, p. 55Google Scholar; OC, iii. 364.Google Scholar And see the important notes to this passage OC, iii. 1449–50Google Scholar, in which the editor stresses Rousseau's belief that in the state of nature people possess no moral attributes, and that ‘morality, justice, and virtue appear with social life’.

58 Emile, trans. Bloom, A., New York, 1979, Bk. IV, p. 290Google Scholar; OC, iv. 599–600.Google Scholar

59 Social Contract, I vi, Masters, p. 52Google Scholar; OC, iii. 360.Google Scholar

60 Social Contract, II, vii, Masters, p. 68Google Scholar; OC, iii. 381–2.Google Scholar

61 Emile, Bloom p. 235Google Scholar; OC iv. 524.Google Scholar

62 Kant may well have arrived at the belief that morality is constructed by the will before reading Rousseau. The view is propounded very clearly by Pufendorf, and earlier, in very brief form, by Descartes. Its origins are to be found in Scotus, Ockham, and their voluntarist successors.

63 Social Contract, I.viii, Masters, p. 56Google Scholar; OC, iii. 365.Google Scholar

64 See my ‘Kant and Natural Law Ethics’, forthcoming in Ethics, 1993.Google Scholar

65 See my ‘Natural Law, Skepticism, and Methods of Ethics’, Journal of the History of Ideas, lii (1991), 289–308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

66 The present version of this paper developed out of one I presented at a Gauss Seminar at Princeton University in February, 1991. I am grateful to Christopher Lasch, who enabled me to present the first version to the History Colloquium at the University of Rochester. Stephen Darwall read a revised version of that talk and made some very helpful comments. I have also benefited from conversations with John Pocock on Hume and classical republicanism.