Adam Ferguson (1723-1816)

The philosopher and historian Adam Ferguson was born at

   Logierait, Perthshire, on 20 June 1723. He was educated at
   home, locally in Logierait, and in Perth. When he was sixteen
   he began studies at St. Andrews University, taking his M.A.
   in July 1742. Studies in divinity followed, first at St.
   Andrews, then at Edinburgh University. In 1745, Ferguson was
   appointed as Deputy-Chaplain then Chaplain to the (42nd)
   Black Watch and he was present at the Battle of Fontenoy (11
   May 1745) a major confrontation of the War of the Austrian
   Succession. He left the army the same year to embark on a
   literary career. For a brief period in 1757, Ferguson held
   the post of Librarian at the Advocates' Library in succession 
   to David Hume (1711-1776). In 1759 he was appointed as
   Professor of Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh University, and
   in 1764 to the Chair of the now obsolete Pneumatics and Moral
   Philosophy. A syllabus of his lectures appeared as the
   Analysis of pneumatics and moral philosophy for the use
   of students in the College of Edinburgh (1761). In 1773
   became tutor to Charles, the 3rd Earl of Chesterfield,
   accompanying him on a tour of Europe. In 1778, Ferguson was
   appointed as Secretary to the Commissioners to the American
   Colonies, accompanying them to Philadelphia for the
   negotiation of a settlement. In addition to the publications
   mentioned above, others include a history or Essay on
   civil society (1766) which influenced Schiller and
   Hegel, and was also known later to Karl Marx, Institutes
   of moral philosophy (1772), History of the Roman
   republic (1783), Principles of moral and political
   science (1792), and the posthumous Biographical
   sketch or memoir of Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Ferguson
   (1817). Ferguson retired from the Chair of Moral Philosophy
   in 1785, but so that he could still draw a salary he was
   appointed to the Chair of Mathematics. Professor Adam
   Ferguson died at St. Andrews on 22 February 1816 and he was
   buried in the grounds of the ruined Cathedral of St. Andrews.