Selected Bibliography:
Adam Ferguson (1723-1816)

By Richard B. Sher,
New Jersey Institute of Technology

Last revised 13 March 2004

Bibliographies

• Jane B. Fagg, "Biographical Introduction," in The Correspondence of Adam Ferguson (cited under Editions, below), cxviii-cxxxvi.

Editions

• An Essay on the History of Civil Society, ed. Duncan Forbes (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1966). A reliable reprint of the first edition (1767) of Ferguson's most famous work, with a list of textual variants that appeared in the sixth edition of 1814 (the last of the author's lifetime) and a brilliant introduction from a civic humanist perspective. Forbes's text and list of variants is also used (without so indicating) in the edition published by Transaction Books of New Brunswick, NJ, in 1980, although that edition replaces Forbes's introduction with a more sociological one by Louis Schneider.
• An Essay on the History of Civil Society, ed. Fania Oz-Salzberger (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995). Widely available in the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought series, this edition contains a new introduction, a chronology of Ferguson's life, a bibliographical guide, the text of the first edition of 1767, and a comprehensive list of variants in all six lifetime editions.
• Collection of Essays, ed. Yasuo Amoh (Kyoto: Rinsen Book Co. [Imadegawa, Kawabata, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606, Japan], 1996). An edition of Ferguson's manuscript essays in Edinburgh University Library, edited by a Japanese scholar who has done his best with a manuscript that is difficult to decipher. To the list of the essays that appears in Kettler, The Social and Political Thought of Adam Ferguson, 79-80 (cited below), Amoh adds a few others, including Ferguson's Memorial on the American Colonies. This edition supersedes a generally inaccessible one put together by Winifred M. Philip in 1986, under the title The Unpublished Essays of Adam Ferguson.
• The Correspondence of Adam Ferguson, ed. Vincenzo Merolle, with an introduction by Jane B. Fagg, 2 vols. (London: William Pickering, 1995). Despite some editorial shortcomings, this is an extremely valuable collection of more than four hundred letters, with a fine biographical introduction by Jane Fagg that is keyed to the correspondence.
• Grundsaetze der Moralphilosophie (Institutes of Moral Philosophy), trans. Christian Garve, Introduction by Heiner Klemme (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2003; available separately and as volume 6 in Klemme's 7-volume series, Reception of the Scottish Enlightenment in Germany: Six Significant Translations, 1755-1782).  Garve's 1772 translation of the first edition of Ferguson's Institutes (1769) was notable in its own right, but it became a particularly important work for understanding the German appropriation of the Scottish Enlightenment as a result of Garve's extensive documentation (pp. 285-420 in this edition).

Biographies

• Jane B. Fagg, "Biographical Introduction," in The Correspondence of Adam Ferguson (cited under Correspondence, above), ix-cxvii. The new standard biography, superseding Small and the author's 1968 Ph.D. dissertation at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, "Adam Ferguson: Scottish Cato."
• John Small, "Biographical Sketch of Adam Ferguson, LL.D., F.R.S.E., Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh," Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 23 (1864): 599-665. The standard biographical account, now completely superseded by Fagg.

Criticism

• Social and Political Thought

  • Sergio Bartolommei, "Forza del 'progetto,' potere delle 'circostanze' e teoria del 'progresso' in An Essay on the History of Civil Society di Adam Ferguson," Il Pensiero Politico 12 (1979): 344-60.
  • Sergio Bartolommei, "Adam Ferguson critico delle 'notions of vulgar minds,'" Il Pensiero Politico 18 (1985): 164-81.
  • Ted Benton, "Adam Ferguson's Critique of the 'Enterprise' Culture," in The Values of the Enterprise Culture: The Moral Debate, ed. Paul Heelas and Paul Morris (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 100-119. Nearly identical to Benton's article in The Enlightenment and Its Shadows, ed. Peter Hulme and Ludmilla Jordanova (London: Routledge, 1990), 101-20.
  • John Andrew Bernstein, "Adam Ferguson and the Idea of Progress," Studies in Burke and His Time (now The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation) 19 (1978): 99-118. Argues that "Ferguson's demand for perpetual striving" is the heart of his doctrine of progress and "the key to his entire thought."
  • Christopher J. Berry, Social Theory of the Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1997). Treats Ferguson among other social theorists of the "Scottish school," updating Bryson's classic account (see below); contains a good bibliography of recent studies in this field, many of which discuss Ferguson.
  • Bertrand Binoche, Les trois sources des philosophies de l'histoire (1764-1798) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994). See especially chapter 5: "L'histoire naturelle de l'humanité (I): Ferguson."
  • Daniel Brühlmeier et al., eds., Schottische Aufklärung: "A Hotbed of Genius" (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1996). Contains relevant articles by Nicholas Phillipson on the Scottish Enlightenment, Fania Oz-Salzberger on the Scottish Enlightenment in Germany, and Norbert Waszek on Ferguson's translator Christian Garve, among others.
  • Gladys Bryson, Man and Society: The Scottish Inquiry of the Eighteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1945). Still useful in general, but chapter 2 -- "Adam Ferguson's System of Moral Philosophy" -- is particularly valuable as a summary of Ferguson's approach to moral philosophy.
  • Duncan Forbes, "Adam Ferguson and the Idea of Community," in Edinburgh in the Age of Reason, ed. Douglas Young et al. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1967), pp. 40-47.
  • Claude Gautier, L'invention de la société civile: lectures Anglo-écossaises: Mandeville, Smith, Ferguson (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1993).
  • Ernest Gellner, "Adam Ferguson and the Surprising Robustness of Civil Society," in Liberalism in Modern Times: Essays in Honour of José G. Merquior, ed. Ernest Gellner and César Cansino (Budapest: Central European Univ. Press, 1996), 119-31.
  • Margo Geuna, "Il linguaggio del repubblicanesimo in Adam Ferguson," Il Pensiero politico 16 (19992): 143-59. A paper delivered at a 1990 conference on political language at Lecce, edited by Eluggero Pii.
  • Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals (London: The Penguin Press, 1994). See chapter 8: "Adam Ferguson."
  • Ronald Hamowy, The Scottish Enlightenment and the Theory of Spontaneous Order (Carbondale and Edwardsville, Ill.: Univ. of Southern Illinois Press, 1987). Stresses the unplanned nature of social development for Ferguson and fellow Scots, within the conservative tradition of analysis associated with van Hayek.
  • Ronald Hamowy, "Progress and Commerce in Anglo-American Thought: The Social Philosophy of Adam Ferguson," Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy 14 (1986): 61-87. Argues that Ferguson was an "unambiguous" supporter of modern, commercial progress.
  • Lisa Hill, "Anticipations of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Social Thought in the Work of Adam Ferguson," Archives européens de sociologie 37 (1996): 203-28. Situates Ferguson's "liberal-Stoicism" between classical civic humanism and "modern" ideas of liberalism.
  • Lisa Hill, "Adam Ferguson on the Paradox of Progress and Decline," History of Political Thought 18 (1997): 677-706. Identifies a Stoic, theological resolution to the conflict between progress and declinei n Ferguson's thought.
  • Malcolm Jack, Corruption & Progress: The Eighteenth-Century Debate (New York: AMS Press, 1989). Includes a chapter on Ferguson.
  • David Kettler, The Social and Political Thought of Adam Ferguson (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1965). Still a good read.
  • David Kettler, "History and Theory in Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society: A Reconsideration," Political Theory 5 (1977): 437-60.
  • David Kettler, "The Political Vision of Adam Ferguson," Studies on Burke and His Time (now The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation) 9 (1967): 763-78.
  • David Kettler, "Ferguson's Principles: Constitution in Permanence," Studies on Burke and His Time 19 (1978): 208-22.
  • Gary L. McDowell, "Commerce, Virtue, and Politics: Adam Ferguson's Constitutionalism," Review of Politics 45 (1983): 536-52.
  • Hiroshi Mizuta, "Two Adams in the Scottish Enlightenment: Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson on Progress," Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 191 (1981): 812-19.
  • Francesco D. Perillo, "Adam Ferguson e la storia della società civile," Studium 71 (1975): 405-20.
  • J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republic Tradition (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1975). Stresses the tension between the ideologies of virtue and commerce in Ferguson's thought.
  • J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999). The second volume of this important study of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, subtitled "Narratives of Civil Government," deals extensively with the Scottish Enlightenment, and Section VI is entitled "Adam Ferguson: The Moderate as Machiavellian."
  • Pasquale Salvucci, Adam Ferguson: Sociologia e Philosophia Politica (Urbino: Argalia, 1972). Highly regarded by readers of Italian.
  • David Spadafora, The Idea of Progress in Eighteenth-Century Britain (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1990). Valuable study, with much on Ferguson and the Scots.
  • Norbert Waszek, Man's Social Nature: A Topic of the Scottish Enlightenment in its Historical Setting (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1986). Chapter 5 is on Ferguson.
  • Norbert Waszek, L'Écosse des lumières: Hume, Smith, Ferguson (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2003). A brief survey, with an introduction and chapters on contexts, science of man, history, political economy, and the impact of the Scottish philosophical tradition.
  
  

• The Division of Labor, Political Economy, and the Origins of Social Science

  • Anthony Brewer, "Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith, and the Concept of Economic Growth," History of Political Economy 31 (Summer 1999): 237-54.
  • John D. Brewer, "Conjectural History, Sociology and Social Change in Eighteenth-Century Scotland: Adam Ferguson and the Division of Labour," in The Making of Scotland: Nation, Culture and Social Change, ed. David McCrone et al. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1989), 13-30.
  • John D. Brewer, "Adam Ferguson and the Theme of Exploitation," British Journal of Sociology 37 (1986): 461-78. Sees Ferguson as a bridge between civic humanism and modern sociology.
  • Marco Geuna, "Adam Ferguson ed il problema della divisione del lavoro: l'analisi delle 'nazioni commerciali' nell'Essay on the History of Civil Society," Annali della Fondazione Luigi Einaudi 18 (1984): 243-71.
  • Ronald Hamowy, "Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson and the Division of Labour," Economica 35 (1968): 249-59.
  • Lisa Hill, "Ferguson and Smith on 'Human Nature,' 'Interest' and the Role of Beneficence in Market Society," History of Economic Ideas ("Adam Smith Special Edition") 4, nos. 1-2 (1996): 353-399.
  • Lisa Hill, "The Invisible Hand of Adam Ferguson," The European Legacy (formerly History of European Ideas) 3, no. 6 (1998): 42-64.
  • Lisa Hill, "Homo Economicus, Difference Voices and the Liberal Psyche," International Journal of Applied Philosophy 13, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 21-46.
  • Lisa Hill, "Eighteenth-Century Anticipations of the Sociology of Conflict: The Case of Adam Ferguson," Journal of the History of Ideas 62 (April 2001): 281-99.
  • Lisa Hill and Peter McCarthy, "Hume, Smith and Ferguson: Friendship in Commercial Society," Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 2, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 33-49.
  • Herta Helena Jogland, Ursprünge und Grundlagen der Soziologie bei Adam Ferguson (Berlin: Dunker & Humbolt, 1959). Part of a long-standing German tradition of scholarship on Ferguson.
  • William C. Lehmann, Adam Ferguson and the Beginnings of Modern Sociology (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1930). The first sustained argument in English for Ferguson as a founder of the discipline.
  • Ronald L. Meek, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1979). The savage as a social scientific problem, for Ferguson among many others.
  • Jean-Pierre Séris, Qu'est-ce que la division du travail?: Ferguson (Paris: J. Vrin, 1994).
  • Alan Swingewood, "Origins of Sociology: The Case of the Scottish Enlightenment," British Journal of Sociology 21 (1970): 164-80.
  • John Varty, "Civil or Commercial?: Adam Ferguson's Concept of Civil Society," Democratization 4 (1997): 29-48 (in a volume entitled Civil Society: Democratic Perspectives, edited by Robert Fine and Shirin Rai). Emphasizes the role of economic factors in Ferguson's thinking about civil society.
  • Norbert Waszek, "The Division of Labour: From the Scottish Enlightenment to Hegel," The Owl of Minerva 15 (1983): 51-75.
  
  

• The Militia and National Defense

  • David Raynor, ed., Sister Peg: A Pamphlet Hitherto Unknown by David Hume (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982). Although Raynor's introduction makes a spirited case for David Hume as the author of this satirical militia pamphlet of 1760, entitled The History of the Proceedings in the Case of Margaret, commonly called Peg, only lawful Sister to John Bull, Esq., most scholars are inclined to think that Ferguson was the true author. See the reviews by Roger L. Emerson in Hume Studies 10 (1983): 74-81, by John Robertson in English Historical Review 100 (1985): 191-92, and by Richard B. Sher in Philosophical Books 24 (1983): 85-91.
  • John Robertson, The Scottish Enlightenment and the Militia Issue (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1985). Concludes that Ferguson and his coterie were guilty of "the most wilful parochialism" in fighting for a Scots militia.
  • Richard B. Sher, "Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith, and the Problem of National Defense," Journal of Modern History 61 (1989): 240-68. Uses Ferguson's unpublished lecture notes to develop the comparison between the two Adams.
  
  

• Connections with European Thought

  • Sheila Mason, "Ferguson and Montesquieu: Tacit Reproaches?," British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 11 (1988): 193-203.
  • Fania Oz-Salzberger, Translating the Enlightenment: Scottish Civic Discourse in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1995). Despite the general title, this book is almost entirely on the problems associated with translating Ferguson into German.
  • Fania Oz-Salzburger, "Adam Ferguson's Histories in Germany: English Liberty, Scottish Vigour, and German Rigour," in British and German Historiography, 1750-1950: Traditions, Perceptions and Transfers, ed. Benedikt Stuchtey and Peter Wende (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2000), pp. 49-66.
  • Richard B. Sher, "From Troglodytes to Americans: Montesquieu and the Scottish Enlightenment on Liberty, Virtue, and Commerce," in Republicanism, Liberty and Commercial Society 1649-1776, ed. David Wootton (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1994), 368-402. Largely concerned with Ferguson in relation to Montesquieu.
  • Norbert Waszek, The Scottish Enlightenment and Hegel's Account of "Civil Society" (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988). Much on Ferguson.
  • Norbert Waszek, "Aux sources de la 'Querelle' dans les Lettres sur l'Éducation esthétique de l'Homme de Schiller: Ferguson and Garve," in Crise et conscience du temps, ed. J.-M. Paul (Nancy, 1998), pp. 111-29.
  • Norbert Waszek, "La 'tendance à la sociabilité (Trieb der Geselligkeit) chez Christian Garve," Revue germanique internationale 18 (2002): 71-85.  Much attention is paid to Ferguson, whom Garve translated into German.  
  • Norbert Waszek, "Bibliography of the Scottish Enlightenment in Germany," Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 230 (1985): 283-303.
  
  

• Ossian and Literature

  • Dafydd Moore, "James Macpherson and Adam Ferguson: An Enlightenment Encounter," Scottish Literary Journal 24 (1997): 5-23.
  • Richard B. Sher, "Percy, Shaw, and the Ferguson 'Cheat': National Prejudice in the Ossian Wars," in Ossian Revisited, ed. Howard Gaskill (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1991), pp. 204-45. How the ugliness of Anglo-Scottish hostility transformed a seemingly minor incident into a major cultural confrontation.
  • Norbert Waszek, "Adam Ferguson on the Dilemma of the Modern Poet," Chapman 9 (1987): 55-60.
  
  

• Biographical, Institutional, and Miscellaneous

  • Charles Camic, Experience and Enlightenment: Socialization for Cultural Change in Eighteenth-Century Scotland (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1983). A strained sociological interpretation of the achieving characters of Ferguson and some of his friends.
  • Roger L. Emerson, "The Social Composition of Enlightened Scotland: The Select Society of Edinburgh, 1754-1764," Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 114 (1973): 291-329. Helpful account of one of the major clubs to which Ferguson belonged, though his date of admission should read 3 August 1756.
  • Jane B. Fagg, "'Complaints and Clamours': The Ministry of Adam Fergusson, 1700-1754," Records of the Scottish Church History Society 25, pt. 2 (1994): 288-308. An account of Ferguson's father that is biographically significant for the son.
  • Jane B. Fagg, "An 'Ingenious Literary Production': Adam Ferguson and the Carlisle Commission Manifesto," Scotia 24 (2000): 1-14.
  • Michael Kugler, "Provincial Intellectuals: Identity, Patriotism, and Enlightened Peripheries," The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 37 (1996): 156-73. Ferguson's provincial identity.
  • Ernest Campbell Mossner, The Life of David Hume, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980). Contains much information on Ferguson's ties with Hume.
  • Ernest Campbell Mossner, "Adam Ferguson's 'Dialogue on a Highland Jaunt' with Robert Adam, William Cleghorn, David Hume, and William Wilkie," in Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Literature, ed. Carroll Camden (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1963), pp. 297-308.
  • D. D. Raphael, "The Professor's Pension," The Times Higher Education Supplement, 22 March 1985, p. 15. Introduces the Lord Chesterfield tutor affair, discussed more fully in the two articles that follow.
  • D. D. Raphael, D. R. Raynor, and I. S. Ross, "'This Very Awkward Affair': An Entanglement of Scottish Professors with English Lords," Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 278 (1990): 419-63. New correspondence relating to Ferguson's difficulties in getting paid for his work as tutor to the Earl of Chesterfield.
  • D. D. Raphael, "Adam Ferguson's Tutorship of Lord Chesterfield," Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 323 (1994): 209-23. More correspondence relating to the Chesterfield affair.
  • Richard B. Sher, Church and University in the Scottish Enlightenment: The Moderate Literati of Edinburgh (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, and Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1985). Treats Ferguson within the cultural and institutional world of the William Robertson circle of Moderate clergymen of letters in Edinburgh.
  • Richard B. Sher, "Professors of Virtue: The Social History of the Edinburgh Moral Philosophy Chair in the Eighteenth Century," Studies in the Philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. M. A. Stewart (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 87-126. Emphasizes ideological and financial themes in regard to the moral philosophy chair that Ferguson held.

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