Adam Ferguson

Adam Ferguson was among the most original and important thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment. He, together with Adam Smith and David Hume, contributed to shaping the philosophical underpinnings of British liberalism ... It was during his tenure as professor of moral philosophy that three of his four most important works were published: the Essay on the History of Civil Society in 1767; the Institutes of Moral Philosophy, a synopsis of his lectures on moral philosophy, in 1769; and the History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic in 1783.

As David A.J. Richards ... has noted, Adam Ferguson, in An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767),

observed that "to the ancient Greek, or the Roman, the individual was nothing, and the public everything," an attitude expressed by disdain for commerce and by devotion to classical republican civic virtue and to war as the main, business of public life; in contrast to such "rude" societies, "civilized" or "polished" societies were marked by commerce and the division of labor and the inequalities that arose from differential rewards for different talents and occupations.