An essay on the history of civil society
Contributions
- Adam Ferguson
- author
- Andrew Millar
- publisher
- Thomas Cadell
- publisher
Related resources
- has translation
- Essai sur l'Histoire de la Société Civile: par M. Adam Ferguson, Professeur de Philosophie Morale à l'Université d'Edinbourg translation has paratext
- has translation
- Saggio sulla storia della Società civile del sig. Adamo Ferguson, professore di filosofia morale nell’Università di Edimburgo: opera tradotta dall’inglese in francese dal sig. Bergier translation
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Notes
URL is from the 1768 edition. A sixth edition (the last of the author’s lifetime), with textual changes, appeared in 1814.
Ferguson's work of “philosophical history” is considered a pioneering work from the Scottish Enlightenment in the nascent field of sociology. Dealing with the social, political, economic, intellectual, and legal changes that accompany the transition to a modern commercial and manufacturing society, it is a bold attempt to apply the tradition of active citizenship to the modern state.
"Drawing on such diverse sources as classical authors and contemporary travel literature, Ferguson offers a complex model of historical advance which challenges both Hume's and Smith's embrace of modernity and the primitivism of Rousseau. Ferguson combines a subtle analysis of the emergence of modern commercial society with a critique of its abandonment of civic and communal virtues. Central to Ferguson's theory of citizenship are the themes of conflict, play, political participation and military valour."
See Adam Ferguson, ed. Fania Oz-Salzberger, 'An Essay on the History of Civil Society' (1992, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought).