William Cleghorn (1718-1754)

IN PROCESS

William Cleghorn (1718-1754) was Professor of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh University from 1745 to 1754.

Early life

Cleghorn was the son of a brewer and burgess of Edinburgh. He graduated MA from Edinburgh University in 1739 and must also have attended Divinity classes. He was licensed to preach but never held a church appointment. In 1739-1740, Cleghorn was employed as a private tutor to Sir Henry Nisbet of Dean.

Cleghorn and Edinburgh University

In 1742, Sir John Pringle (1707-1782), Professor of Moral Philosophy, was absent on war service, working as a military surgeon in Flanders. The Senatus of the the University appointed several deputies to conduct his classes including Cleghorn. Pringle was finally induced to resign his post in 1745, and Cleghorn was controversially appointed to the Chair , after the Edinburgh clergy blocked the candidature of his main rival, David Hume (1711-1776). Hume, now widely regarded as Scotland's greatest philosopher, was suspected of being an atheist and of being sympathetic to Jacobitism. A committed Whig and staunch Presbyterian, Cleghorn, proved a more acceptable appointee.

Cleghorn was appointed on 5 June 1745 and provided ample evidence of his political and religious zeal even before delivering his first lecture. As Charles Edward Stuart's Jacobite army approached Edinburgh in September 1745, a College Company of Volunteers was formed to help defend the city. Along with his friends William Robertson (1721-1793) (future Principal of the University), Alexander Carlyle (1722-1805), and John Home (1722-1808), was one of its most ardent members. When it became apparent that Edinburgh would capitulate, he urged the volunteers to join the British army which had landed at Dunbar. With Carlyle and Robertson, he made his way to Dunbar to offer his services to General Sir John Cope. The student volunteers were employed as scouts in the build-up to the Battle of Prestonpans, which ended in an ignominious defeat for the government forces. Cleghorn was also a member of the Revolution Club, dedicated to protecting the Protestant and anti-Absolutist principles of 'Glorious Revolution' of 1688.

Cleghorn held the moral philosophy chair for the remainder of his short life. He seems to have spent all his time in Edinburgh, apart from a brief visit to Huntingdon in 1750 and a possible tour of the highlands with Adam Ferguson. He never made any published contribution to moral philosophy, but a large collection of student lecture notes is preserved in Edinburgh University Library. Examination of these notes by modern scholars suggests that his political opinions inclined to classical republicanism and the views of Machiavelli, Harrington, and Algernon Sidney. He was a confirmed opponent of monarchical absolutism and despotism, and may have preferred republicanism to monarchy as a form of government (Nobbs, 584, 586). His general view of moral philosophy also appears to have been heavily influenced by the thought of Cicero, particularly as expressed in De officiis (Stewart-Robertson, 33–4). Although not a major figure in eighteenth-century Scottish political and philosophical thought, Cleghorn apparently influenced no less a figure than Ferguson, who was commended by Cleghorn on his deathbed and who later held the moral philosophy chair. In 1754 Cleghorn's declining health led him to visit Lisbon, but he was soon back in Scotland. His condition led him to resign his chair on 21 August 1754, and he died at Edinburgh, apparently unmarried, two days later, at the age of thirty-six.

While abroad, Pringle's classes had been taken by William Cleghorn. However, wishing to raise the vacant Chair of Moral Philosophy, Edinburgh's Town Council offered the professorship to Dr. Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746), Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University and founder of the Scottish school of philosophy, rather than offer it to Cleghorn. Hutcheson declined, and David Hume (1711-1776) offered himself for the vacancy. Rather than give the Chair to Hume who was 'deemed a Jacobite' and whose 'philosophical opinions were a bar to his appointment', Cleghorn was elected to the Chair of Pneumatics and Moral Philosophy on 5 June 1745 (Pneumatics - 'the being and perfections of the one true God, the nature of the Angels and the soul of man, and the duties of natural religion').

Professor William Cleghorn died in 1754.