Overview

Adam Ferguson, a friend of David Hume and Adam Smith, was among the leading Scottish Enlightenment figures who worked to develop a science of man. He created a methodology for moral science that combined empirically based social theory with normative moralising. He was among the first in the English-speaking world to make use of the terms civilization, civil society and political science. Craig Smith explores Ferguson's thought, and examines his attempt to develop a genuine moral science and its place in providing a secure basis for the virtuous education of the new elite of Hanoverian Britain. The Ferguson that emerges is far from the stereotyped image of a republican sceptical about commercial society and much closer to the mainstream of the Scottish Enlightenment and its defence of the new British commercial order.

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9781474413275

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Indeed, Adam Ferguson and the Idea of Civil Society is the best introduction to Ferguson's work published to date, for it covers the full range of his published and unpublished writings and functions as a helpful guide to the secondary literature.--Paul Wood Scottish Historical Review

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Craig Smith is Adam Smith Senior Lecturer in the Scottish Enlightenment in the School of Social and Political Sciences at The University of Glasgow.

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