The Professor Who Taught Prime Ministers and Kept Adam Smith Alive

Walk through Edinburgh’s Calton Hill today and you will see a curious little monument, a circular temple that would not look out of place in Athens. It is not for a general or a king. It is for a professor.

Dugald Stewart (1753–1828) did not command armies or draft constitutions, but he shaped the minds of the people who did. As Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh from 1785 to 1810, Stewart stood at the podium in a crowded lecture hall, holding the attention of a generation destined to lead Britain into the 19th century.

He inherited a Scotland that had been transformed by the intellectual fireworks of Adam Smith, David Hume, and Adam Ferguson. The Enlightenment’s core ideas of reason, progress, and the importance of education were in the air, but the original firebrands were gone or fading. Stewart became the keeper of that flame.

His style was different from the blunt, argumentative prose of his predecessors. Stewart was eloquent, even poetic. He wove together philosophy, mathematics, natural science, politics, economics, and moral instruction into something that was as much inspiration as analysis. He was not just telling students what was true, he was showing them what kind of citizens they ought to become.

That mattered because his students were not just any undergraduates. They included future prime ministers like Lord Palmerston, literary giants like Sir Walter Scott, and political reformers like Henry Brougham. Stewart’s classroom was a launchpad.

And while he was first and foremost a moral philosopher, he was also one of Adam Smith’s great evangelists. Smith’s Wealth of Nations was still a relatively new book when Stewart took the lectern, and he made sure the next generation of lawyers, merchants, and politicians understood its economic principles. Stewart helped carry Smith’s ideas across the turn of the century, embedding them in Britain’s intellectual bloodstream.

He published widely, including Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind and Philosophical Essays, but his legacy was as much about tone as content. He believed that philosophy was not just for ivory towers. It should guide practical life, public virtue, and economic policy.

His Missteps

Even a skilled thinker like Stewart was not immune to misjudgment. In the early 1790s, he welcomed the French Revolution as an extension of Enlightenment ideals. Like many liberal intellectuals of his time, he saw it as a victory for liberty, equality, and the dismantling of entrenched privilege. His optimism put him closer to Thomas Paine’s hopeful vision than to Edmund Burke’s caution.

But the Revolution’s descent into the Reign of Terror, followed by Napoleon’s rise, revealed that Burke’s fears about rapid upheaval destroying social order were far closer to reality. Stewart was never a radical agitator, but his early support for the Revolution drew suspicion from British authorities and forced him to temper his public tone. It was a humbling reminder that brilliant ideas can buckle under the weight of political chaos, and that the pace of reform matters as much as its principles.

Why He Matters Today

In an era when economic illiteracy is still a political handicap, Stewart’s mission feels urgent again. He understood that philosophy and economics were not just academic exercises, they were tools for building a more capable, thoughtful citizenry. His lectures did not just transfer information, they shaped judgment.

That is a model worth revisiting. The ability to think critically about markets, ethics, and public policy is just as valuable in 2025 as it was in 1805. Whether we are training institutional investors, teaching high school students about compounding, or helping people understand the trade-offs in economic policy, the challenge is the same: make the best ideas accessible without stripping them of their depth. Stewart did that two centuries ago.

In many ways, the work I do at TIFF has a similar arc. Stewarding capital across decades means not just finding the best ideas, but preserving the disciplines and principles that allow those ideas to compound over time. Like Stewart, our job is not always to invent the next big theory or source an unconventional idea. Sometimes it is to keep the intellectual capital intact so it can serve the next generation. The monument on Calton Hill is not just a tribute to a man. It is a reminder that the most enduring influence often comes from keeping the flame alive.