Adam Ferguson And The Idea Of Civil Society: Moral Science In The Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh Studies In Scottish Philosophy)

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.

• | Author: Craig Smith
• | Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• | Publication Date: Nov 27, 2018
• | Number of Pages: 264 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Hardcover/History
• | ISBN-10: 1474413277
• | ISBN-13: 9781474413275