Adam Ferguson: Philosophy, Politics and Society

Editors: Eugene Heath and Vincenzo Merolle


The Enlightenment World
Hb: 256pp: 2008
978 1 85196 865 7: 234x156mm: £60.00/$99.00
E ISBN   978 1 85196 563 2

In these essays, scholars analyse Ferguson’s philosophical, political and sociological writings and the discourse which they prompted between Ferguson and other important figures such as David Hume and Adam Smith.

Much secondary literature on Ferguson is discussed, which highlights how Ferguson can be best understood as a social theorist who employed elements of many strains of thought to reconcile tensions of modernity. Crucially, Ferguson’s thoughts on these far-reaching topics are difficult to classify so have often been misrepresented elsewhere. This book addresses these misconceptions.

Sample pages

Readership

Scottish Enlightenment, Eighteenth-Century Studies, History of European Thought

Contents

Introduction

Part I: Life and Works
1 Ferguson the Highlander – Michael Fry
2 Adam Ferguson, the 43rd, and the Fictions of Fontenoy – Bruce Buchan

Part II: Philosophy
3 Why did David Hume Dislike Adam Ferguson’s An Essay on the History of Civil Society? – David Raynor
4 Hume as Critic of Ferguson’s Essay – Vincenzo Merolle
5 The Two Adams: Ferguson and Smith on Sympathy and Sentiment – Jack Russell Weinstein

Part III: Politics
6 A Complicated Vision: The Good Polity in Adam Ferguson’s Thought – Lisa Hill
7 Adam Ferguson and Enlightened Provincial Ideology in Scotland – Michael Kugler

Part IV: Society
8 ‘But art itself is natural to man’: Ferguson and the Principle of Simultaneity – Christopher J Berry
9 Ferguson and the Unintended Emergence of Social Order – Eugene Heath

Reviews

'The editors, Eugene Heath and Vincenzo Merolle, have done an admirable job in providing Scottish Enlightenment scholars with much valuable material on Ferguson's life and work.'
– Ronald Hamowy, Eighteenth-Century Scotland

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