Description:
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.
Brief description: Craig Smith is Professor of the History of Political Thought in the School of Social and Political Sciences at The University of Glasgow.
Review Quotes: A penetrating analysis of Ferguson's moral thought (including science, philosophy, and education), building on a mastery of the primary and secondary literature and a commitment to treat Ferguson's body of writing comprehensively and on its own highly eclectic terms.-- "Richard B. Sher, New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University"