Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-5r2nc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-08T08:02:18.161Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Adam Ferguson as a Moral Philosopher

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 August 2013

Gordon Graham
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Adam Ferguson has received little of the renewed attention that contemporary philosophers have given to the philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment, most notably David Hume, Thomas Reid and Adam Smith. There are good reasons for this difference. Yet, the conception of moral philosophy at work in Ferguson's writings can nevertheless be called upon to throw important critical light on the current enthusiasm for philosophical ethics and applied philosophy. Eighteenth century ‘moral science’ took its significance from a context that modern philosophers who seek to be practically ‘relevant’ need, but lack.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 88 , Issue 4 , October 2013 , pp. 511 - 525
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Notable among a good many examples are Nicholas Wolterstorff Thomas Reid and the Story of Epistemology (2001), Phillip de Bary Thomas Reid and Skepticism (2002), William C Davis, Thomas Reid's Ethics, (2006) Ryan Nichols Thomas Reid's Theory of Perception (2007), James R Otteson Adam Smith's Market Place of Life (2002), Samuel Fleischacker, On Reading Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations: A Philosophical Companion (2004), Ryan Patrick Hanley, Adam Smith and the Character of Virtue (2009), Fonna Forman-Barzilai, Adam Smith and the Circles of Sympathy (2010).

2 Ferguson, Adam, An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) (ed.) Oz-Salzberger, Fania, (Cambridge University Press, 1995)Google Scholar, hereafter Essay.

3 Bryson, Gladys, Man and Society: The Scottish Inquiry of the Eighteenth Century, (Princeton University Press, 1945)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Ibid., 51–2.

5 Ibid., 41.

6 Essay, 80.

7 Stewart, Dugald, Selected Philosophical Writings (ed.) Mortera, Emanuele Levi, (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2007)Google Scholar.

8 Essay, 14.

9 Ferguson, Adam, Institutes of Moral Philosophy (1769), (London: Routledge/Thoemmes, 1994), 239–40Google Scholar.

10 Essay, 10.

11 Essay, 22.

12 Essay, 23.

13 Essay, 119.

14 Essay, 225.

15 Ferguson, Adam, Selected Philosophical Writings (ed.) Heath, Eugene, (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2007), 99–101Google Scholar.

16 Ibid., 101.

17 Ibid., 100.

18 Ibid., 102.

19 Essay, 119.

20 Essay, 168.

21 Essay, 169.

22 Essay, 33.

23 Allan, David, Adam Ferguson, (AHRC, Aberdeen, Centre for Irish Scottish Studies, 2006), 42Google Scholar.

24 Hume, David, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (1748), (ed.) Beauchamp, Tom L, (Oxford University Press, 1999)Google Scholar, Chapter 1.

25 See ‘Public Opinion and the Public Sphere’, in Emden, C.J. and Midgley, D., Beyond Habermas: democracy, knowledge and the public sphere, (New York: Berghan Books, 2013).Google Scholar