Ferguson, Adam (1723–1816)

A professor of philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, and one of the leading lights of the Scottish Enlightenment, Adam Ferguson was a distinct voice in the eighteenth-century debate on the effects of civilization on the social and political virtues. His call to restore the classical spirit of patriotism, while cautiously embracing progress, paved a middle course between the modern outlook of David Hume and Adam Smith, and the romantic primitivism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Long admired by sociologists, Ferguson's writings have recently been rediscovered by intellectual historians and political theorists, who have been fascinated by the timeliness of his critical observations on the emerging liberal order.