Examines Adam Ferguson's philosophy, political theory and social thought in the context of the Scottish Enlightenment. Explores Ferguson's examines attempt to develop a genuine moral science that combined empirically based social theory with normative moralising. Presents a new, revisionary account of Ferguson: far from the stereotyped image of a republican sceptical about commercial society and much closer to the mainstream of the Scottish Enlightenment and its defence of the new British commercial order.