Modernity As Tragedy. Adam Ferguson on the Decline of Community

Modernity as Tragedy. Adam Ferguson on the Decline of Community

Adam Ferguson was one of the major figures of the Scottish Enlightenment. And he has been
rightly credited as a precursor of modern sociology. For instance, Ferdinand Tönnies famous distinction
between “Gemeinschaft” and “Gesellschaft” strongly resembles passages from Fergusons
seminal “Essay on the History of Civil Society”.
The difference between a German and an Anglosaxon semantic of community in mind, it seems
paradoxical that especially the romantic German idea of community has been heavily influenced by
Ferguson. His conception of an authentic civic life had a high impact in the German tradition of
social thought and social criticism, and it is only a slight exaggeration to say that he was one of the
inventors of an emphatic idea of political community. Ferguson also anticipated central features of
the critique of modernity known by Karl Marx and Max Weber. In contrast to his contemporary
friends, most notably David Hume and Adam Smith, he emphasized the political perils and the
dangerous dynamics of modern market society. Modern society rests, according to Ferguson, on an
increasingly powerful state, the expansion of the division of labor and a weakening of the public
spirit in favor of self-interested behaviour. Consequently the public sphere and the sense of political
community dissolves.
The paper will examine Fergusons concept of community, his conjoined critique of modern society
and its semantic of alienation. The tragedy of modern society lies in its dialectical process of liberation.
This process leads to individualization and it has an alienating tendency: in the name of individual
freedom, people become “gear wheels in the machine”.