Adam Ferguson

Adam Ferguson was born in the village of Logierait, county of Perth, in the Scottish Highlands. His father was a clergyman.[1] He began his education at the University of St. Andrews where his father had studied. Since this school was considered somewhat provincial at that time, he moved on to Edinburgh to continue his education for the ministry. There he met the group of recently graduated former students that would become his lifelong friends in the Edinburgh cultural circle.[2]

After only two years of the required six years of study, he accepted an opportunity to be appointed deputy chaplain of an army regiment then leaving for a campaign in Flanders. He received a special dispensation from the Church of Scotland for this purpose, and he was ordained in 1745. He remained with the regiment until 1754, when he left the active ministry to pursue a literary career.[3]

Academic Life and Travels

After several tutoring and clerical assignments, he was appointed professor on natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh in 1759 and then transferred to moral philosophy beginning in 1764, a position he held until 1785. In addition to his teaching, Ferguson became part of a cultural circle centered on the group he had met while a student at the University of Edinburgh. A biographer relates his participation in the circle:

His tall, handsome person, his air of high-breeding and easy grace, his vivacious talk, were a charm to his friends. They knew he was choleric and would fire up on the smallest provocation in an instant, for he was explosive at a very low flash-point. But then his heart was as warm as his temper... To this fraternity Ferguson brought humour, dignity, a graceful presence, and the manners of a man of the world.[4]

In 1767, Ferguson published his first book, Essay on the History of Civil Society, which was well received, and in 1772 he followed with his Institutes of Moral Philosophy, based on his lectures. When he took a break from lecturing in 1773 to accompany a young nobleman in his travels, he found that his reputation had spread as a result of his books, and he was well received at the Paris cultural salons. On another break in 1778, Ferguson served on an unsuccessful commission sent to Philadelphia to attempt to negotiate a peace agreement with the rebelling colonies. In 1783 he attained success as a historian with his History of the Roman Republic.[5]

After retiring from teaching he devoted himself to composing a more complete version of his lectures, which he published (1792) under the title of Principles of Moral and Political Science in 1792, and he also continued to participate in the Edinburgh cultural circles. Having outlived all of his Edinburgh close friends, Ferguson moved back to St. Andrews, where he found some companionship among the faculty members, and he died there in 1816.[6]

Legacy

Ferguson had the most complex legacy of all the scholars discussed in this website. All of these scholars subscribed to the principles of scientific evidence, and they tried to base their thinking on their experiences, but Ferguson did more analysis on his observations on human behavior and on historical records. In this process, he made some foundational contributions to the science of sociology. 

Ferguson's textbooks on moral philosophy take advantage of Hutcheson's but they are more complete. On economics, he is not considered a major economist like Adam Smith, but while depending on Smith's principles, he gives his treatment of economics a more social orientation, emphasizing human progress and civilization.  It is on the subject of human progress that his legacy has been most significant. :

The lights of science are communicated, from the parts in which they sprang up, to the remotest corners of the inhabitable world. The works of singular genius are a common benefit to mankind; and the whole species, on every quarter, in every nation, and in every age, cooperates together for one common end of information, invention, science, and art.

[7]

[1] Henry Grey Graham, Men of Letters of the Eighteenth Century (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1901), 107.

[2] David Kettler The Social and Political Thought of Adam Ferguson (Ohio State University Press, 1965), 44.

[3] Henry Grey Graham, Men of Letters of the Eighteenth Century, 107-108.

[4] Ibid., 109-110.

[5] Ibid., 115-116.

[6] Ibid., 118-121.

[7] Adam Ferguson, Principles of Moral and Political Science (Edinburgh: W. Creech, 1792),Vol. I, 36 .