Craig Smith, <i>Adam Ferguson and the Idea of Civil Society: Moral Science in the Scottish Enlightenment</i>

Mills, R. J. W.

doi:10.3366/jsp.2019.0248

Cited by 2 publications

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“…22 That Ferguson sometimes utilizes the vocabulary of civic republicanism does not render him a civic republican (see C. Smith 2019Smith , pp. 134-141, 176-179, 213-217).…”

Section: The Fundamental Adam Fergusonmentioning

confidence: 99%

What’s Not to See? Foucault on Invisible Political Economy in Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson

Heath¹

2023

Preprint

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In his lectures of 1978-1979, published posthumously as The Birth of Biopolitics, Michel Foucault addressed versions of liberalism in which an invisible market appears immune to government intervention. Among the thinkers discussed were Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson. This essay offers critical reflections on Foucault’s description of Smith as emphasizing the invisibility of the economy, as well as on Foucault’s interpretation of the “invisible hand” and his ascription of egoism to Smith’s economic agents. Foucault also appeals to Ferguson’s notion of civil society to resolve incompatibilities between economic agents and the sovereign. However, Ferguson’s theory of society does not provide the assistance that Foucault thinks it does. Moreover, like Smith, Ferguson holds no egoistic view of economic motivation. Nonetheless, and surprisingly, Foucault would have found enticing Ferguson’s use of conjectural history, with its appeal to the unintended, contingent, and conflictual basis of social change.

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“…22 That Ferguson sometimes utilizes the vocabulary of civic republicanism does not render him a civic republican (see C. Smith 2019Smith , pp. 134-141, 176-179, 213-217).…”

Section: The Fundamental Adam Fergusonmentioning

confidence: 99%

What’s Not to See? Foucault on Invisible Political Economy in Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson

Heath¹

2023

Preprint

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“…Although "[U]nlike Hume or Smith he has not isolated one specific feature of human psychology that would serve to aggregate or coordinate disparate phenomena" (Heat, 2009, p. 168), the Scottish scholar has shown how "[O]ut of a series of contingencies and lawlike processes, an objective set of moral standards emerges" (Heat, 2009, p. 168) offering, beyond any teleological view, an historical record of the social processes driving individuals and shaping values. He interprets the history of civil society as a succession of social stages in which the diversity of social ties and emotions is decisive for the progress and stabilization of the social order (Smith, 2018).…”

Section: Emotions and Social Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

The relationship between social life and emotions. Adam Ferguson and sociology

Bevilacqua

2023

Front. Sociol.

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Adam Ferguson has a leading position among those who have developed a sociological interpretation of modernity that dismiss metaphysics without following the echoes of rationalism. Ferguson outlines a vision of social life that correlates the analysis of individual behavior to the study of social context and institutions. Consistently with this approach, the Scottish scholar emphasizes the multidimensionality of human beings without forgetting the non-rational features of social behavior. This essay aims to discuss Ferguson's thought with a special attention to the importance of the emotions in social life, so as to enhance the contribution of classical sociology to the analysis of the emotionality. Ferguson, in fact, argues that emotions have a leading role in shaping the behaviors and values of individuals. Developed in the context of Scottish Enlightenment, Ferguson's sociology shows how the study of modern society can be reconciled with a reasonable as well as emotional approach to social life.

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Craig Smith, Adam Ferguson and the Idea of Civil Society: Moral Science in the Scottish Enlightenment

Cited by 2 publications

References 0 publications

What’s Not to See? Foucault on Invisible Political Economy in Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson

What’s Not to See? Foucault on Invisible Political Economy in Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson

The relationship between social life and emotions. Adam Ferguson and sociology

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