'The essays in this new collection are of a uniformly high quality, written by some of the very best contemporary students of Ferguson.' Journal of Scottish Philosophy 'The editors have done an admirable job in providing Scottish Enlightenment scholars with much valuable material on Ferguson's life and work.' Eighteenth-Century Scotland 'supplies us with a number of fresh insights into the complex mind of the Edinburgh-based Scottish thinker' The European Legacy

• Introduction, Eugene Heath, Vincenzo Merolle; Part I Life and Works; Chapter 1 Ferguson’s Epistolary Self, John D. Brewer; Chapter 2 Ferguson and Scottish History: Past and Present in an Essay on the History of Civil Society, David Allan; Chapter 3 Ferguson’S Use of the Edinburgh University Library: 1764–1806, Jane B. Fagg; Part II In History; Chapter 4 Ferguson’s Reflections Previous to the Establishment of a Militia, David Raynor; Chapter 5 Ferguson’s Views on the American and French Revolutions, Yasuo Amoh; Chapter 6 Political Education for Empire and Revolution, David Kettler; Part III On History; Chapter 7 Ferguson, Roman History and the Threat of Military Government in Modern Europe, Iain McDaniel; Chapter 8 Ferguson’s ‘Appropriate Stile’ in Combining History and Science: The History of Historiography Revisited, Annette Meyer; Part IV Human Nature, Action and Progress; Chapter 9 Ferguson’s Politics of Action, Fania Oz-Salzberger; Chapter 10 Ferguson and the Active Genius of Mankind, Craig Smith; Chapter 11 Providence and Progress: The Religious Dimension in Ferguson’s Discussion of Civil Society, Jeng-Guo S. Chen;