From 1750 to 1850, ethics and education in North America was powerfully influenced by the Scottish philosophical tradition. A major channel of this influence was John Witherspoon, President of the College of New Jersey and signatory of the Declaration of Independence, whose Lectures on Moral Philosophy to the students at Princeton provided a model for the colleges across the emerging United States to emulate. Drawing on Francis Hutcheson and the Protestant natural law tradition, Witherspoon and his successor Samuel Stanhope Smith established Scottish philosophy, and especially Thomas Reid's philosophy of Common Sense, as a major influence on the development of American intellectual life.

Princeton Theological Seminary celebrated the 200th anniversary of its foundation in 2012. The inclusion of a conference in its bicentennial program on 'Scottish Common Sense and the Natural Law Tradition in America' signaled a desire to investigate, and at the same time celebrate, a key element of the intellectual and religious context in which the Seminary was founded. Its further purpose was to explore the continuing relevance and future role of a philosophical tradition.

Keynote lectures by leading scholars in the field were supplemented by concurrent sessions with talks from Faculty and Graduate students from institutions across the world. A further feature of the program was a combination of lectures and panel discussion open to members of the public, on the contemporary relevance of the conference theme.

This website is a record of the conference. It has links to video and audio recordings of the keynote sessions, audio recordings of the concurrent sessions, and downloadable texts of all the papers delivered. To access these, please go to the Conference Proceedings page.

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