We Have Mingled Politeness with the Use of the Sword
Nature and Civilisation in Adam Ferguson's Philosophy of War
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5017428 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Charles R Smith (0000-0002-3976-0889, Adam Smith Institute, corresponding author), Craig Smith (0000-0002-6707-5977) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 19 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-15 |
| Publication date | 2014-01-02 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The European Legacy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1084-8770 • E-ISSN: 1470-1316 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/10848770.2013.859800 |
| OpenAlex | W2063517673 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
Adam Ferguson’s twin reputations as the most republican of the thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment and as one of the founding fathers of sociology make him one of the most interesting figures in eighteenth-century political thought. I argue that in his Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) and elsewhere, Ferguson develops a novel understanding of the place of warfare in human social experience. By deploying a proto-sociological account of the naturalness of warfare between nations he proposes a normative criterion for the assessment of civilisation. This argument sets Ferguson apart from contemporaries like Kant who argued for perpetual peace as a criterion of civilisation
Civilization · Enlightenment · Epistemology · Normative · Politeness · Political science · Politics · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Philosophy · Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,27 |
| Citation span | 2015 - 2025 (11) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |