Adam Ferguson
British Empire
Category=NHD
Category=NHTB
Category=QD
Category=QDHM
East India Company
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
French Revolution
Moral Philosophy
Napoleonic Wars
Patriotism
political economy
Scottish Enlightenment
Scottish philosophy
Product details
- ISBN 9781474480222
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 31 Aug 2025
- Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
This volume will publish for the first time thirty-six, until now, unpublished letters, as well as a new essay on the French Revolution, by the moral philosopher, historian and man-of-letters Adam Ferguson (1723-1816). A major figure in the Scottish Enlightenment, Ferguson has been one of the principal beneficiaries of the refocus of scholarly attention beyond the towering figures of David Hume (1711-1776) and Adam Smith (1723-1790) and toward their larger intellectual network. Penned during the last decades of his life, these letters were all addressed to his close friend Sir John Macpherson. They concern major topics of the day such as Enlightenment, Empire, and the French Revolution, as well as various illuminating details about Ferguson's final decades. They add considerably to our knowledge of the late Scottish Enlightenment.
Located in a recent acquisition at the British Library, these previously unnoticed letters add considerably to our knowledge of Ferguson, his ideas - philosophical, historical, and political - and his intellectual milieu from 1784 to 1815. A substantial introductory essay presents the main findings, while critical apparatus will assist specialists and students alike in understanding this key Enlightenment thinker.
Ian Stewart is Research Fellow at the Institute for Advances Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh. He is an historian of European ideas. He researches theories of race and civilization as they were developed at the University of Edinburgh in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He is co-editor of Adam Ferguson's Later Writings (EUP, 2023). Max Skjönsberg is an Assistant Professor of Humanities in the Hamilton Center at the University of Florida.
