亚当·弗格森

作品

• 1767文明社会史论

  人必须在群体中研究；各民族通过“人类行动的结果，而非任何人类设计的实施”的制度，从“粗野”走向“文雅”，但商业的精致化和劳动分工可能侵蚀公共精神。

• 1769道德哲学原理

  他在爱丁堡讲授人性、心灵以及道德和政治法则的教科书；克里斯蒂安·加尔弗1772年的德译本使弗格森为德国读者所知，其中包括黑格尔。

立场

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”.

生平与背景

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.

其他主要作品

• An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767)
• Institutes of Moral Philosophy (1769)
• The History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic (1783)
• Principles of Moral and Political Science (1792)

出现在

• 旅程 ‘社会学如何从哲学中产生’ · 第 4 站，共 12 站