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Adam Ferguson on the Dismemberment of the Human Character in the Age of Separations

Adam Ferguson’s claim to fame legitimately rests on his 1767 Essay on the History of civil society, in which he proved to be a worried observer of the effects of the still nascent commercial society on the human character. While recognizing on the one hand the huge gains in efficiency and productivity entailed by what he called “the age of separations”, he was no less keenly aware that it inevitably brought about in its wake the degradation of a sizeable part of mankind, reduced to menial, repetitive tasks. He also contended that the overall effect of the new society was to isolate individuals from each other, paradoxically leading to a situation that is not unlike the state of nature. The most disturbing feature of Ferguson’s thought, however, is that according to him, the deleterious effects of commercial society on the human character could only be undone by war, an extreme situation in which men could at last be led to recover their native spirit.