آدم فيرغسون

الأعمال

• 1767بحث في تاريخ المجتمع المدني (An Essay on the History of Civil Society)

  يجب دراسة البشر في جماعات؛ والأمم تنتقل من حال «فظة» إلى حال «مهذبة» عبر مؤسسات هي «نتيجة فعل الإنسان، لكنها ليست تنفيذًا لأي تصميم إنساني»، غير أن التهذيب التجاري وتقسيم العمل قد يأكلان الروح العامة.

• 1769مبادئ الفلسفة الأخلاقية (Institutes of Moral Philosophy)

  كتاب مدرسي لمحاضراته في إدنبرة عن الطبيعة البشرية والعقل والقانون الأخلاقي والسياسي؛ وترجمة كريستيان غارفه الألمانية عام 1772 («Grundsätze der Moralphilosophie») عرّفت فيرغسون إلى القراء الألمان، ومنهم هيغل.

الموقف

Ferguson is on the map as a founder of social theory within the Scottish Enlightenment and a key figure in the prehistory of sociology. In “An Essay on the History of Civil Society” (1767) he insisted that human beings must be studied as they have always been found – in groups; there never was a solitary state of nature, and “if we are asked where the state of nature is to be found, we may answer: it is here”. Societies develop from “rude” to “polished” states through institutions that are “the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design” – a formula later central to theories of spontaneous order. Conflict between groups, he argued, strengthens cohesion within them. At the same time he warned of the costs of commercial progress: the division of labour makes workers skilled but narrow, and when citizens leave public affairs to specialists and their defence to standing armies, civic virtue decays and despotism threatens. Hume, his friend, judged the manuscript of the Essay harshly and advised against its publication; with Smith he had a long priority dispute over the division of labour, and he criticised Smith’s theory of sympathy. Marx quoted him on the crippling effects of the division of labour, and Hegel, who read his “Institutes” in Christian Garve’s German translation, drew on him for his concept of civil society. Some later writers have called him a “father of sociology”.

الحياة والسياق

Adam Ferguson was born on 20 June 1723 at Logierait in Perthshire, the son of a Presbyterian minister, in a region where Gaelic was spoken. He studied at St Andrews and Edinburgh and from 1745 to 1754 served as chaplain to the Black Watch, a Highland regiment. In 1757 he succeeded David Hume as keeper of the Advocates’ Library in Edinburgh. He became professor of natural philosophy at the University of Edinburgh in 1759 and of pneumatics and moral philosophy in 1764, a chair he held until 1785. He belonged to the circle of Hume, Adam Smith, William Robertson and Hugh Blair, and in 1778–79 he was secretary to the Carlisle Commission sent to negotiate with the American colonies. He died in St Andrews on 22 February 1816, at the age of 92.

أعمال رئيسة أخرى

• The History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic (1783)
• Principles of Moral and Political Science (1792)

يرد في

• رحلة «كيف خرج علم الاجتماع من الفلسفة» · المحطة 4 من 12