The Scottish Enlightenment and Its Influence on the American Enlightenment

Abstract

It is often said that Witherspoon brought Scottish Enlightenment to America, and diffused Reid’s Common Sense Philosophy in the continent. At the time he arrived in the former British colony, however, the Americans had already read Scottish books, such as those written by Hutcheson, Hume, Kames, Montesquieu, Locke, Cato, and others. Hutcheson’s Introduction had been used as a text book in Harvard and elsewhere. America’s struggle for independence had appealed to the right of resistance against the mother country, as suggested by Locke or Hutcheson. Communication, trades, and travels flourished in the eighteenth century. Benjamin Franklin was acquainted with Scottish philosophers—Kames, Hume, Smith, etc—and helped the next generation of Americans study in Britain. Many Scottish intellectuals, governors, clergymen, doctors, merchants, and laborers migrated to America. Similarly, many American medical students went to Edinburgh. Madison wrote the plan for a Federal Republic upon the suggestion of Hume. Smith’s The Wealth of Nations introduced the thesis of “commerce and liberty.” The Scottish Enlightenment supported its American counterpart, American independence (1776), the making of the US Constitution (1787), and the forging of the American Nation. This paper examines the correspondence between the two enlightenments.