This major study by David Kettler is an ideal introduction to Fergusons life and thought. The new preface to this first paperback edition discusses Fergusons work in relation to his better-known contemporaries David Hume and Adam Smith, while the afterword offers an in-depth reconsideration of Fergusons most renowned work, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, with emphasis on present-day disputes about the concept of civil society.

Introduction; I: Adam Ferguson's Situation; I: The Transformation of Scotland; II: The Emerging Intelligentsia; III: Adam Ferguson: Biography; IV: Adam Ferguson: Political Opinion aud Political Practice; II: Adam Ferguson's Moral Philosophy; V: The Possibility of Knowledge; VI: The Virtuous Man; 7: Virtue and Society; Afterword