Adam Ferguson and the Idea of Civil Society

Moral Science in the Scottish Enlightenment

Craig Smith author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Edinburgh University Press

Published:31st Dec '18

Should be back in stock very soon

Adam Ferguson and the Idea of Civil Society cover

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.

ISBN: 9781474413275

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

256 pages