Adam Ferguson

1723-1816

Notes : Adam Ferguson was born in the village of Logierait, Perthshire, on the border between the Scottish lowlands and highlands. Like other members of the Scottish Enlightenment, Ferguson’s thought was shaped by his Presbyterian background (his father was a Presbyterian minister) and classical education; but what made him an unusual Enlightenment thinker was his acquaintance with the Gaelic-speaking society of the highlands. The first-hand and early encounter with both ‘raw’ clansmen and ‘polished’, anglicised lowlanders was a formative experience in his life. He was educated at Perth Grammar School and then at St Andrews University from where he graduated in 1742. After a period of studying divinity at Edinburgh he was appointed in 1745 chaplain to the Highland Black Watch regiment, with whom he saw active service at the Battle of Fontenoy. He followed David Hume as librarian of the Advocates’ Library, and then held successively two chairs at Edinburgh University, the chair of natural philosophy (1759-1764) and the chair of ‘pneumatics and moral philosophy’ which he gave up in 1785, to be succeeded by Dugald Stewart. Ferguson is also the author of the “Essay on the History of the Civil Society” (1767), which was translated into French in 1783 and of the “Principles of Moral and Political Science” (1792). The cumulative and gradual process of the development of «civil society » which Ferguson undertakes to describe in the “Essay on the History of the Civil Society” (an important source for philosophies of history elaborated in the 19th century) paradoxically does not prevent him from evincing a certain nostalgia for the values of ancient civic virtue. This nostalgia, which one must search for in the underlying analogies which sustain the thought of Ferguson between the warrior and civic virtues of the Highlanders and those of the Ancients, is also present in the “Roman History”. It is with a display of modesty that Ferguson presents his history in his dedication to King George III: “The History of the Romans, collected from the remains of the antient Authors, has been often written in the different languages of Europe. But a relation worthy of the subject, simple and unambitious of ornament, containing in the parts an useful detail, and in the whole a just representation, of the military conduct an political experience of that people, appeared to me to be still wanting. Having earnestly endeavoured to supply this defect, at least in what relates to the later times of the Republic, the intention, I hope, joined to the importance of the matter, will justify my humble desire to inscribe this Performance to your MAJESTY”.

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