Political Vanity: Adam Ferguson on the Moral Tensions of Early Capitalism

Political Vanity aims to illuminate the central debates over the historical, moral, and political legitimacy of market capitalism as though still profoundly theological in character. This theological sensitivity is achieved by keeping conversation with central theorists of the Scottish Enlightenment, in particular the philosopher and sociologist Adam Ferguson. Ferguson was a contemporary of Hume and Smith, and actively questioned many of the pillars of early capitalism on theological grounds. Namely: Conjectural histories used to justify economic liberalization; Reduction of human action to production and consumption; The inevitable tendency of capitalist power to undermine political institutions.

Ferguson argued that far from equalizing and liberating, the unfettered market left to its own devices takes the form of despot, enslaving civil society in bonds of its own making.