He was born in Gorbals parish, Glasgow, Scotland, on 25 February 1847, the son of John Watson, a printer from Lanarkshire, and his wife Elizabeth Robertson from Northumberland.

On completion of his studies in 1872, he was appointed on the basis of the recommendation of his mentor Edward Caird to the Chair of Logic, Metaphysics, and Ethics at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.

[6][7][8] Watson's philosophy, which he called speculative or constructive idealism, continued the Hegelian critique of Immanuel Kant as pursued by Thomas Hill Green, Francis Herbert Bradley, and especially by his teacher at the University of Glasgow, Edward Caird.

absolute is the identity of subject and object, the repository of universal reason itself, the very rationality that is manifest in the world and increasingly revealed to conscious, reflective human beings.

[14] Watson's social thought is pervaded with a communitarianism deriving from his doctrine of the in-principle identity in reason of individual and common goods.

Thus he summarizes his position on the State as existing "for the purpose of providing the external conditions under which all the citizens may have an opportunity of developing the best that is in them, and the success with which this aim is achieved is a test of the perfection of a community.