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Although the eighteenth century is generally conceived as the age of progress and optimism, many eighteenth-century thinkers believed the world was in its senility. Such fears focused on a concern for the dissipation of virtue and this became one of the most urgent problems of political philosophy in the eighteenth century (Pocock, 1975, p. 462). Like many of their contemporaries in the Scottish Enlightenment, Adam Ferguson (1723–1816) and Adam Smith (1723–90) were intensely interested in the development of commercialism and the accompanying social, political and material changes that were taking place in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Their resulting observations generated, arguably, the two most sophisticated early sociologies to date. But their approaches differed considerably. Although they both perceived in commercialism the potential for corruption, their aetiologies were vastly different. Ferguson, who is well recognised as a thinker absorbed with the problem of corruption, classically understood, was deeply ambivalent about progress. Though he welcomed many of its aspects as both natural and inevitable, he also expressed alarm at some of its effects on virtue and social intimacy. Drawing inspiration from classical sources, he was concerned with how much was lost in the seemingly inexorable march towards progress. By his account, community, social intimacy, intensely emotional friendships and alliances, martial vigour and civil vitality were all casualties of the commercial age.

Ideas of Corruption in the Eighteenth Century: The competing conceptions of Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith