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An Essay on the History of Civil Society #1-2
An Essay on the History of Civil Society
This is a copy of the original book. In this series, we are bringing old books back into print using our own state-of-the-art techniques. Generally, these books are created from careful scans of the original. This allows us to preserve the book accurately and present it in the way that the author intended. However, as we are working with old material, so occasionally there may be certain imperfections within the text. We are so pleased to ensure these classics are available again for generations to come.
535 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1767
About the author
Adam Ferguson
114 books18 followersAdam Ferguson, FRSE (Scottish Gaelic: Adhamh MacFhearghais), also known as Ferguson of Raith (1723 – 1816), was a Scottish philosopher and historian of the Scottish Enlightenment.
Ferguson was sympathetic to traditional societies, such as the Highlands, for producing courage and loyalty. He criticized commercial society as making men weak, dishonourable and unconcerned for their community. Ferguson has been called "the father of modern sociology" for his contributions to the early development of the discipline. His most well known work is his Essay on the History of Civil Society.
Ferguson was sympathetic to traditional societies, such as the Highlands, for producing courage and loyalty. He criticized commercial society as making men weak, dishonourable and unconcerned for their community. Ferguson has been called "the father of modern sociology" for his contributions to the early development of the discipline. His most well known work is his Essay on the History of Civil Society.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
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August 16, 2016الكتاب من أعمدة الفكر الإنساني
ولكن تبا لمترجمه البائس ثم تباً
إياك وهذه الترجمة التعيسة
ولكن تبا لمترجمه البائس ثم تباً
إياك وهذه الترجمة التعيسة
December 26, 2019
The lesser-known third-wheel of the Scottish enlightenment power trio, Ferguson is often overshadowed by his two close friends and contemporaries: David Hume and Adam Smith. In the company of such giants, it’s little surprise that his writings have fallen out of favour. In many ways Ferguson stands as a foil to Smith; both bore witness to the rapid transformation of Scotland with the spread of the industrial revolution, but drew contrasting conclusions from it. Smith saw the rapidly expanding commercial society as a largely positive change, imagining a society of where cool heads prevailed and peace within and between nations could be possible through the mutually beneficial exchange of goods. The coming ‘great society’ was one united by benevolent self-interest and the division of labour, where there is little need for conflict. To Ferguson, these kinds of cold and rational relations were an afront to what might he considered natural for men: people are naturally passionate and tribal, and their relations to each other ought to one’s or friendship or animosity, not merely interest and exchange. Hailing from the Scottish Highlands and a serving as a member of a highlander regiment clearly influenced Ferguson’s adoration of the classical military virtues of the great republics gone by, namely, Sparta and Rome. But this love for classical virtues is combined with a very liberal view of the importance of rational exploration, education, and sensibilities. This leads Ferguson to praise both a passionate heart and a rational and curious mind as essential aspects of human flourishing.
The book begins with Ferguson’s account of Human Nature, in what is a direct challenge to both Hobbes and Rousseau (though this makes little sense, as neither of these thinkers were making anthropological accounts). Ferguson argues that ‘man in the state of nature’ is neither solitary or brutish. Rather, he has always been a highly sociable and communal creature, who takes great pleasure in being with friends and hating his enemies. Further than this, Ferguson presents an account of man as Homo Faber; that is, as restlessly creative and pioneering, who applies his ‘art’ to the world and shapes it in his image. It is from this foundation that Ferguson embarks on the titular task of writing a history of civil society. Tracking society through three stages: savage, barbarous, and polished, he highlights the forces which motivate and bind each society together. But Ferguson is most interesting when addressing the present rather than the past. As already mentioned, Ferguson did not think the emerging ‘Great Society’ was all that great. In a series of critiques which bear great similarity of marx’s theory of alienation, he accounts how an inordinate focus on wealth and self-interest rend asunder the bonds of society: the concept of friendship and communal sensibilities with a polity are reduced to commercial relations between individuals (commodity fetishism); the paradoxical relation between the great flourishing of human ‘arts’ in the creation of industrial factories and corporations, and the numbing of the mind and soul caused by the stultifying labour of the production line; how the great creativity and progress that mankind naturally pursue and find themselves most happy in is directed only towards commercial ends which retard their functions and embitter the heart. As the book progresses, Ferguson gets more and more heated in his critique of commercial society, suggesting that the focus of a polity should not be in hoarding as much wealth and luxury as possible, but in ensuring the education, virtue, and development of arts among its members, as it is this which underlies all other forms of success in society.
Though at times tedious, it is still well worth a read.
The book begins with Ferguson’s account of Human Nature, in what is a direct challenge to both Hobbes and Rousseau (though this makes little sense, as neither of these thinkers were making anthropological accounts). Ferguson argues that ‘man in the state of nature’ is neither solitary or brutish. Rather, he has always been a highly sociable and communal creature, who takes great pleasure in being with friends and hating his enemies. Further than this, Ferguson presents an account of man as Homo Faber; that is, as restlessly creative and pioneering, who applies his ‘art’ to the world and shapes it in his image. It is from this foundation that Ferguson embarks on the titular task of writing a history of civil society. Tracking society through three stages: savage, barbarous, and polished, he highlights the forces which motivate and bind each society together. But Ferguson is most interesting when addressing the present rather than the past. As already mentioned, Ferguson did not think the emerging ‘Great Society’ was all that great. In a series of critiques which bear great similarity of marx’s theory of alienation, he accounts how an inordinate focus on wealth and self-interest rend asunder the bonds of society: the concept of friendship and communal sensibilities with a polity are reduced to commercial relations between individuals (commodity fetishism); the paradoxical relation between the great flourishing of human ‘arts’ in the creation of industrial factories and corporations, and the numbing of the mind and soul caused by the stultifying labour of the production line; how the great creativity and progress that mankind naturally pursue and find themselves most happy in is directed only towards commercial ends which retard their functions and embitter the heart. As the book progresses, Ferguson gets more and more heated in his critique of commercial society, suggesting that the focus of a polity should not be in hoarding as much wealth and luxury as possible, but in ensuring the education, virtue, and development of arts among its members, as it is this which underlies all other forms of success in society.
Though at times tedious, it is still well worth a read.
April 14, 2015
كتاب شامل مقسم على ست فصول وكل فصل يقسم إلى عدد من الأجزاء
تناول بشكل تصاعدي ثم تنازلي تشكل المجتمعات الخاصة منذ بدء الحضارة بداية نسج القوانين وتباين الحقوق ثم انحدار بعض المجتمعات وأفولها لتفسخها على عدد من الأصعدة الاجتماعية والاقتصادية والسياسية وغيرها.. إنه لا يشرح الأمر من مفهوم نظري فقط ولكنه يطرح نماذج مهمة قد تسمع ببعضها للمرة الأولى.
بالنسبة لي فإن الفصلين الثاني " تاريخ الأمم البدائية " والثالث "تاريخ السياسة والفنون "
هما الأكثر رسوخا معرفيا.. لأنه
يقدم في الثالث تحديدا تشريحا دقيقا للفنون باعتبارها أصل أكثر من كونها رافد مكتسب
في الكيان الإنساني ودورها في رسم أهم اسس
المجتمعات المدنية الحقيقية.
جزء الهدر القومي أيضا جزء مهم ويستحق التمعن فيه أظنه يقع في الفصل الرابع من العمل.
ملاحظة هامشية : الترجمة ثقيلة بعض الشيء
August 27, 2017
Take my five stars with a pinch of salt—I give way too many five-star reviews.
What I liked about this book was its sensible and stirring account of human nature. Ferguson cuts across many of the old debates—nature vs. nurture; progress vs. decline—by arguing that human nature is a potential. Roused to assert themselves, human beings are capable of valour, grandeur, struggle and success. Doused in the cold water of slavery, human beings are capable of pettiness, weakness, resentment and servility. He considers human beings in all kinds of settings, from what he chooses to call "savage" (or we might call "nomadic") society to what he calls "polished" or "commercial" society. In all these settings, he tries to consider how different forms of government, economics or culture might affect our innate individual power of freedom and glory. He is faithful that even in the most corrupt, slavish or destitute nations, the fire of human passion can never be finally extinguished.
Ferguson is a fine writer, and I mean it when I say the book is stirring:
Readers of Hannah Arendt will find much that is familiar in this book—as one other Goodreads reviewer has noted. Here Ferguson asks us to live towards birth, as Arendt would put it, to look into ourselves and find a potential, a possibility for something new.
Ferguson's assessments of the various threats to our individual freedom remain insightful today. The division of labour, he claims, compartmentalises people, reducing them to a task. Economic inequality endangers a democratic order, by erecting differences between people and destroying their solidarity. Rulers who desire to hang on to power cling to it at the expense of their subjects, reducing them to a slavish condition. The pursuit of peace and prosperity creates deathly bureaucracies, turning the struggle for life into forms and files. Imperialism degrades both the conquered and the conquerer, turning the losers into slaves and the victors into slavedrivers. Mankind flourishes in adversity. We face adversity best as a free league of fellow citizens.
There are of course limitations to Ferguson, but they are quaint and adorable. He was himself a soldier—so he sees martial valour as the paradigm of all valour. He was classically learned—so he sees Roman citizenship as the paradigm of all citizenship. He was a manly man—so humans are always "he." He was writing in the 1760s—so his knowledge of the cultures of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas is often faulty (though it is far better than you might expect, and he factors his own ignorance humbly and cleverly into his arguments). None of these things really detract from his arguments, however, because he was in no way a bigot, and his ideas are easily extensible to any liberation movement.
What I liked about this book was its sensible and stirring account of human nature. Ferguson cuts across many of the old debates—nature vs. nurture; progress vs. decline—by arguing that human nature is a potential. Roused to assert themselves, human beings are capable of valour, grandeur, struggle and success. Doused in the cold water of slavery, human beings are capable of pettiness, weakness, resentment and servility. He considers human beings in all kinds of settings, from what he chooses to call "savage" (or we might call "nomadic") society to what he calls "polished" or "commercial" society. In all these settings, he tries to consider how different forms of government, economics or culture might affect our innate individual power of freedom and glory. He is faithful that even in the most corrupt, slavish or destitute nations, the fire of human passion can never be finally extinguished.
Ferguson is a fine writer, and I mean it when I say the book is stirring:
Man may mistake the objects of his pursuit; he may misapply his industry, and misplace his improvements. If under a sense of such possible errors, he would find a standard by which to judge of his own proceedings, and arrive at the best state of his nature, he cannot find it perhaps in the practice of any individual, or of any nation whatever; not even in the sense of the majority, or the prevailing opinion of his kind. He must look for it in the best conceptions of his understanding, in the best movements of his heart; he must thence discover what is the perfection and happiness of which he is capable. He will find, on the scrutiny, that the proper state of his nature, taken in this sense, is not a condition from which mankind are for ever removed, but one to which they may now attain; not prior to the exercise of their faculties, but procured by their just application.
Readers of Hannah Arendt will find much that is familiar in this book—as one other Goodreads reviewer has noted. Here Ferguson asks us to live towards birth, as Arendt would put it, to look into ourselves and find a potential, a possibility for something new.
Ferguson's assessments of the various threats to our individual freedom remain insightful today. The division of labour, he claims, compartmentalises people, reducing them to a task. Economic inequality endangers a democratic order, by erecting differences between people and destroying their solidarity. Rulers who desire to hang on to power cling to it at the expense of their subjects, reducing them to a slavish condition. The pursuit of peace and prosperity creates deathly bureaucracies, turning the struggle for life into forms and files. Imperialism degrades both the conquered and the conquerer, turning the losers into slaves and the victors into slavedrivers. Mankind flourishes in adversity. We face adversity best as a free league of fellow citizens.
There are of course limitations to Ferguson, but they are quaint and adorable. He was himself a soldier—so he sees martial valour as the paradigm of all valour. He was classically learned—so he sees Roman citizenship as the paradigm of all citizenship. He was a manly man—so humans are always "he." He was writing in the 1760s—so his knowledge of the cultures of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas is often faulty (though it is far better than you might expect, and he factors his own ignorance humbly and cleverly into his arguments). None of these things really detract from his arguments, however, because he was in no way a bigot, and his ideas are easily extensible to any liberation movement.
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September 23, 2010Ferguson: An Essay on the History of Civil Society (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought) by Adam Ferguson (1996)
May 15, 2024
Man is not suited for repose, and society is not doomed to fail. Also, fuck you Rousseau, that’s not conjectural history, you can’t just make shit up! (Much more boring to read than Rousseau though…you can’t win them all)
January 1, 2025
Ferguson is slow and thoughtful here and, as a consequence, produces a slew of memorable quotations and meditations on civilization and nation but is not especially revelatory throughout. Still, especially given its age and circumstances, it holds more than a few enduring lessons.
May 28, 2007
love it, love it. precursor to arendt.
to-keep-reference
July 10, 2017Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), traducida en Alemania al año siguiente y conocida por Hegel, donde por otra parte la expresión "civil society" (traducida en alemán como biirgerliche Gesellschaft) tiende a denotar más bien la antítesis de sociedad primitiva antes que la de sociedad política (corno en Hegel) o la de sociedad natural (como en los filósofos del derecho natural), y será sustituida de hecho por Adam Smith en análogo context0 por "civilized society".
Bobbio. Pág.73
Filosofía Política e Historia de las ideas políticas. TP2.
Bobbio. Pág.73
Filosofía Política e Historia de las ideas políticas. TP2.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews