The argument of this paper is that the indigenous histories of education in early modern Scotland, and their expression in the distinctive public institutions of schools and universities, created conditions in the Scottish Enlightenment for the rise across the nation of several diverse influential philosophical movements at the centre of which was a shared concern for the educated person and the educated polity. This civic impulse, operative across otherwise often strongly contrasting styles of philosophical reasoning and political outlook, placed a defining emphasis on the promotion of a deliberative public ethics: one that was to be fostered by the extension of popular, moral education and the embrace by universities and schools of their accompanying social and cultural responsibilities. The paper charts these important historic trends and their living legacies. It starts from their shared origins in the Scottish Enlightenment moral systematics of Francis Hutcheson, the Common Sense School of Thomas Reid, Adam Ferguson and Dugald Stewart, and the qualified educational populism associated with Adam Smith and William Hamilton. It then attends to the ‘democratic intellect’ radicalisation of this heritage in the 20th century thought of George Elder Davie, John Macmurray and Stanley Nisbet, who in their various revisions sought to renew and extend from its own deep sources the Scottish tradition of educational critique and ethical exchange. The paper concludes that the moral educational purposes of education in Scotland retain to this day the imprint of these philosophical values and civic expectations.

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