On The Political Thought Of The Scottish Enlightenment Thinker Adam Ferguson

The text is an attempt to explain away political thought of the Scottish Enlightenment thinker Ferguson in the view of history of political thought. Ferguson's political thought rooted deeply in the special Scottish history background and his experiences. Ferguson's thought assumes one kind of the relation interweaving mutually , affecting to such an extent even restricting in his background. Ferguson's conception of history is the main logical premise of his political thought. In addition, Ferguson's improvement to the theory of Social Contract and the tradition of Natural Law theory also have made an important impact on the formation of his political thought. Judging from entirety, Ferguson 's political thought is mainly composed of three aspects, polity theory, relation of individual and the country and liberty concept. His political thought is extremely complicated, which has been full of strained inherent relation between whose identical and different thought plate. So it is difficult to use the unitary label which could fix his political thought to a position to understand his political thought. But, it is no doubt that the " Law of unintended consequences " to which Ferguson contributed and that the Scottish enlightenment thinkers made commonly composed an important basis of the present liberalism thought. This thought has embodied accomplishment by which Ferguson political thought achieved all together, it has produced important effect to the future west politics thought.The Scottish Enlightenment campaign is an important component of the 18th century European enlightenment campaign, and Ferguson is a very important thinker in the thought-cultural campaign. The peculiar course of history of Scotland, religion background , the legal system ,the high standard higher education system and the particular pattern of the Scottish Enlightenment have composed the history premise of Ferguson's thought development. Besides, the peculiar family background of Ferguson as well as his experiencing background were also composed of the important premises of his entire thought especially his political thought. As we will see that exactly, in a lifetime of Ferguson, his life background and his experiencing background have produced important effects to his thought, yet his thought got the effect on the direction conversely in the field of his public activities. In fact, his thought has been the guided principle of his public activities too. This shows very obviously to some extent in the field of his society- politics thought. A notable characteristic of Ferguson political thought is that, history thought especially history evolution conception, constituted the main basis of his political thought. It is consistent with his historian's dignity. In fact, Ferguson unfolded his politics thinking from his history thought , history thought is the most important logic premise of Ferguson's political thought. We could make the conclusion that without his history thought, Ferguson would not expound his political thought in such high level. Setting off from this premise, Ferguson applied with the concept of civil society to carry out a fierce critique on the Social Contract thought which was popular in that time. We should point out that, Ferguson was one of the thinkers who firstly applied the concept of "civil society " to comb the development of entire human civilization in western history. Development of the western thought history has been benefited so mach by the concept to which he gave a new meaning. His creative using of the significant concept affected much in the western world. But, Ferguson's critical comments on the Social Contract do not mean that he had completely given up the Nature Law tradition that combined with the thought of Social Contract. On the contrary, he has reformed the long history thought tradition into a rich of characteristic form , thus it has become the very important logical premise of his politics thought.Ferguson's discussions in the field of political thought are comparatively complicated. If we go ahead from the entirety, his political thought relates to three aspects of content mainly, polity theory, individual and the state ,liberty concept. In Ferguson's political thought, polity thought, which has already developed comparatively completely in the western political thought history before Ferguson, is a relatively poor originality aspect, in which Ferguson had drawn from Montesquieu's relative thought in quantity. In the field of individual and country's relation, Ferguson's elaborating on the field of economy is totally different from that in non-economic field. In the former, he advocated the economy liberalism, but in the latter, he put his head into communitarianism totally ,and put forward some propositions which maybe lead to totalitarianism thought which completely contrary to liberalism thought. In the field of freedom concept , Ferguson basically held one kind of liberty concept much like that of republicanism tradition ,the republicanism liberty concept is to regard participation in political affairs as the most important approach of individual's nature realization and keeping person's freedom from external especially political power.Different understanding of human's reason is one of the most important differences between the Scottish enlightenment campaign and the French enlightenment campaign. Scottish thinkers, by emphasizing the tradition of limitation of individual reason, constituted the thought " Law of unintended consequences " which caused a far-reaching influence to the trend of thought of liberalism in current time. Ferguson set a middle category meant the result of human's activities but not the result of human's design between the two social phenomenon "natural " and "artificial ", this has produced important effects to the west society- politics thought. The thought " Law of unintended consequences " has embodied accomplishment by which Ferguson politics thought achieved all together, it has also composed the most significant theory source of Hayek's thought of social theory of spontaneous order. Owing to this upper thought relevance, Hayek looks upon Ferguson as a person like the standard-bearer of classical liberalism from his own thought position. Yet, as we will see that exactly, this ideological fixation will be not able to contain Ferguson's political thought at all. There is a evident peculiarity in Ferguson's political thought ,which is several thought trend being in it, so it is very hard for us to fix his political thought into one single thought trend. In fact ,he is a thinker who had multifarious thought trend and lived in the times before the modern political ideologies had been constituted. There are six parts in this text. The part one is the preface, it mainly concerns and reviews the studies on Ferguson's political thought. From chapter 1 to chapter 4, is the main of the thesis, which mainly introduces the history premise , the logical premise of Ferguson's political thought, the main contents of Ferguson's political thought, its affects and some estimations. The final part is the conclusion, it mainly introduces the important significance of Ferguson's thought after the 19th century.