Adam Ferguson

Adam Ferguson , 1723-1816, Scottish philosopher and historian. He was professor of philosophy at the Univ. of Edinburgh (1759-85). His Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) criticized earlier theories of a state of nature; it was an important contribution to intellectual history and influenced Hegel. In his Principles of Moral and Political Science (1792), Ferguson advanced the principle of perfection and attempted to reconcile self-interest and universal benevolence.

Bibliography: See D. Kettler, The Social and Political Thought of Adam Ferguson (1965); M. Jack, Corruption and Progress: The 18th-Century Debate (1989).

Ferguson, Adam (1724–1816) Though less revered as a philosopher than his fellow luminary of the Scottish Enlightenment, David Hume, Ferguson has a better claim to be considered among the founders of modern sociology. His critique of the ‘self-interest’ view of human nature followed Hume's lead, but Ferguson took his view of humans as inescapably social in nature forward into a critical analysis of the new commercial civilization then displacing the older clan-based society of the Scottish Highlands. His views on the effects of the division of labour were significant precursors of later work on this topic by Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim, and the concepts of self-estrangement and alienation are also prefigured in Ferguson's writings. See also INTERESTS.

Ferguson, Adam (1723–1816), was professor in turn of natural philosophy, moral philosophy, and mathematics at Edinburgh after 1764, and was a member of the Select Society and co-founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His writings include The Morality of Stage-Plays Seriously Considered (1757), written in defence of J. Home's Douglas; An Essay on the History of the Civil Society (1767), a pioneer work in political sociology; The History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic (3 vols, 1783); and Principles of Moral and Political Science (2 vols, 1792). In the Essay he has a discussion ‘Of the History of Literature’, in which he argues that poetry is a more original and natural form of literary expression than prose, and that all literature develops better in periods and contexts of great social activity than in leisure and solitude.