After graduating from the University of St. Andrews, he spent two years in Edinburgh and Glasgow studying Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, including Francis Hutcheson, David Hume and Adam Smith.
He was born at Crook near Kendal, and educated at Stand grammar school and Glasgow University, where he studied under Francis Hutcheson and Robert Simson.
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Witherspoon's common sense approach to morality was more influenced by the Enlightenment ethics of Scottish philosophers Francis Hutcheson and Thomas Reid than the Christian virtue of Jonathan Edwards.