Witherspoon, Scottish Philosophy and the American Founding

Abstract

Studies of Witherspoon's influence as an educator and as a pivotal figure in the American founding tend to neglect his earlier part in controversies among the Scottish Moderates and Evangelicals. By the time he answered the summons from the College of New Jersey, his position on church-state relations was thoroughly developed as was his understanding of the nature and the sources of rights, both alienable and unalienable. Nor were there ‘two Witherspoons’, the earlier one in Scotland opposed to the academic world of intellectuals (including Francis Hutcheson) and a later American version suddenly committed to the progressive ethos of the Enlightenment. There was but one Witherspoon, clear on the several missions required by the times.