William Cleghorn (1718-1754)

Born in 1718, the son of Hugh Cleghorn a merchant burgess of Edinburgh, William Cleghorn was appointed to the Chair of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh University on the resignation of physician Sir John Pringle (1707-1782).

Pringle had no particular taste for philosophy and had accepted an appointment by Lord Stair, Commander of the British army, as his physician and later physician to the military hospital in Flanders. When the Duke of Cumberland appointed him Physician-General to the King's forces in the Low Countries in 1744, Pringle resigned his Chair in Edinburgh.

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.