Becoming a Moral Pedagogue, 1772−1792

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines Dugald Stewart’s transition from student to professor of moral philosophy. As a pupil of Adam Ferguson’s moral science and Thomas Reid’s philosophy of common sense, Stewart adopted the Scottish school of philosophy. His career progression at Edinburgh University from student to professor of mathematics, to professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh University owed a significant debt to the Scottish tradition of academic patronage. The foundations of demonstrating the general laws of human belief in his educational doctrine derived from his experience as a joint professor of mathematics between 1772 and 1785. His unwavering commitment to abolitionism emerged whilst substituting for Ferguson’s course of lectures on moral philosophy during the winter of 1778−9 at Edinburgh University. But he had not conceived of a moral philosophy of his own between succeeding Ferguson as professor of moral philosophy in 1785 and witnessing the early stages of the French Revolution during the summer of 1789. Robert Burns’s example of exercising the imagination in poetry helped shape the objectives of Stewart’s educational doctrine. Having revised key elements of the way in which he taught moral philosophy during the winter of 1789−90, Stewart became a moral pedagogue as a reaction to formidable currents of credulity in the Age of Revolution.