The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Goldie ◽  
Robert Wokler
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
History Of

3. The history of political thought and Marxism

2021 ◽  
pp. 31-50
Author(s):  
Richard Whatmore
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
History Of Political Thought ◽  
Scientific Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Friedrich Engels

‘The history of political thought and Marxism’ focuses on Marxism, which became the most global and scientific philosophy in the twentieth century. An important figure here is Karl Marx, the outcast from Prussian Trier that famously contributed to the science of historical materialism. Marx’s The Condition of the Working Class in England justified revolution through a philosophy that emerged from reading European history. Marx, along with Friedrich Engels, accepted that the progress of commerce by the end of the eighteenth century made European states more powerful than others in history. Marx’s contemporaries believed that the study of societies in every stage of history is vital in understanding the future.

PHILOSOPHICAL HISTORY AND THE SCIENCE OF MAN IN SCOTLAND: ADAM FERGUSON'S RESPONSE TO ROUSSEAU

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 543-568 ◽  
Author(s):  
IAIN MCDANIEL
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Roman Republic ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
The State ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Art And Culture ◽  
History Of

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality is now recognized to have played a fundamental role in the shaping of Scottish Enlightenment political thought. Yet despite some excellent studies of Rousseau's influence on Adam Smith, his impact on Smith's contemporary, Adam Ferguson, has not been examined in detail. This article reassesses Rousseau's legacy in eighteenth-century Scotland by focusing on Ferguson's critique of Rousseau in his Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), his History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic (1783), and his lectures and published writings in moral philosophy. Ferguson's differences from Rousseau were more pronounced than is sometimes assumed. Not only did Ferguson offer one of the most substantial eighteenth-century refutations of the Genevan's thinking on sociability, nature, art, and culture, he also provided an alternative to the theoretical history of the state set out in the Discourse on Inequality.

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