Francis Hutcheson (; 8 August 1694 – 8 August 1746) was an Irish philosopher widely regarded as one of the key figures of the early Scottish Enlightenment. He served as Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow and was a major advocate of moral sense theory, which holds that humans possess an innate sense that guides moral judgments. Hutcheson is best known for his ethical writings, in which he defends benevolence as the primary source of moral virtue and anticipates later utilitarian theories with his formulation of "the greatest happiness for the greatest number".
Beyond ethics, Hutcheson made significant contributions to aesthetics, epistemology, logic, and metaphysics. He was among the first modern thinkers to explore beauty as a product of an internal sense, helping to establish aesthetics as a distinct branch of philosophy. In epistemology, he engaged critically with John Locke's empiricism while defending the role of innate dispositions. In logic and metaphysics, he proposed early versions of common-sense realism and contributed to the development of the Scottish school of common sense.
Hutcheson also developed an early argument for animal rights, contending that sentient creatures deserve moral consideration based on their capacity to experience pleasure and pain. His influence extended to later Enlightenment thinkers such as David Hume, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, and Thomas Reid, and his writings were widely read in both Britain and colonial America.
Biography Early life Hutcheson is thought to have been born at Drumalig in the parish of Saintfield, County Down, in modern-day Northern Ireland. He was the "son of a Presbyterian minister of Ulster-Scottish stock, who was born in Ireland" but whose roots were in Ayrshire in Scotland.Rothbard, Murray (24 February 2011) Francis Hutcheson: Teacher of Adam Smith, Mises Institute (excerpted from An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought) Hutcheson was educated at Killyleagh, and went on to Scotland to study at the University of Glasgow, where he spent 1710 to 1718 in the study of philosophy, classics and general literature, and afterwards in the study of theology, receiving his degree in 1712. While a student, he worked as tutor to the Earl of Kilmarnock.
Return to Ireland Facing suspicions about his "Irish" roots and his association with New Licht theologian John Simson (then under investigation by Scottish ecclesiastical courts), a ministry for him in Scotland was unlikely to be a success, so he returned to Ireland and received a licence to preach. When, however, he was about to enter upon the pastorate of a small dissenting congregation he changed his plans in order to pursue a career in academia. He established a private academy in Dublin, where, assisted by Thomas Drennan, he taught for 11 years until 1730.
In Dublin his literary attainments gained him the friendship of many prominent inhabitants. Among these was The Rt. Hon. and Most Rev. Dr William King, the Church of Ireland Lord Archbishop of Dublin, who refused to prosecute Hutcheson in the Archbishop's Court for keeping a school without the episcopal licence. Hutcheson's relations with the clergy of the established church, especially with Archbishop King and with The Rt. Hon. and Most Rev. Dr Hugh Boulter, Lord Archbishop of Armagh, seem to have been cordial, and his biographer, speaking of "the inclination of his friends to serve him, the schemes proposed to him for obtaining promotion", etc., probably refers to some offers of preferment, on condition of his accepting episcopal ordination.
In 1725 Hutcheson married his cousin Mary, daughter of Francis Wilson of Longford. Her dowry included extensive property holdings including the townlands of Drumnacross, Garrinch, and Knockeagh, in County Longford. They had seven children of whom only one survived, also called Francis.Oxford Dictionary of Biography, "Francis Hutcheson" by James Moore, retrieved 9 August 2013
While living in Dublin, Hutcheson published anonymously the four essays for which he is best known: in 1725 Inquiry concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony and Design, and Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil, which together comprise his Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue;Ulster History Circle Retrieved 2012-05-17An Inquiry Into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue: In Two Treatises 1.Concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design 2.Concerning Moral Good and Evil J. and J. Knapton, 1729. Retrieved 2012-05-17The Oxford Companion to Philosophy Oxford University Press, 1995 Retrieved 2012-05-17 and in 1728, the Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections and Illustrations upon the Moral Sense. The alterations and additions made in the second edition of these essays were published in a separate form in 1726. To the period of his Dublin residence are also to be referred the Thoughts on Laughter (1725) (a criticism of Thomas Hobbes) and the Observations on the Fable of the Bees, being in all six letters contributed to Hibernicus' Letters, a periodical that appeared in Dublin (1725–1727, 2nd ed. 1734). At the end of the same period occurred the controversy in the London Journal with Gilbert Burnet (probably the second son of The Rt. Rev. Dr Gilbert Burnet, Lord Bishop of Salisbury) on the "True Foundation of Virtue or Moral Goodness". All these letters were collected in one volume (Glasgow, 1772).
Chair of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow In 1729, Hutcheson succeeded his old master, Gershom Carmichael, in the Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, being the first professor there to lecture in English instead of Latin. It is curious that up to this time all his essays and letters had been published anonymously, but their authorship appears to have been well known. In 1730, he entered on the duties of his office, delivering an inaugural lecture (afterwards published), De naturali hominum socialitate (About the natural fellowship of mankind). He appreciated having leisure for his favourite studies; "non-levi igitur laetitia commovebar cum almam matrem Academiam me, suum olim alumnum, in libertatem asseruisse audiveram." (I was, therefore, moved by no mean frivolous pleasure when I had heard that my alma mater had delivered me, its one time alumnus, into freedom.) Yet the works on which Hutcheson's reputation rests had already been published. During his time as a lecturer in Glasgow College he taught and influenced Adam Smith, the economist and philosopher. "[T]he order of topics discussed in the economic portion of Hutcheson's System [of Moral Philosophy, 1755] is repeated by Smith in his Glasgow Lectures and again in the Wealth of Nations."
However, it was likely something other than Hutcheson's written work that had such a great influence on Smith. Hutcheson was well regarded as one of the most prominent lecturers at the University of Glasgow in his day and earned the approbation of students, colleagues, and even ordinary residents of Glasgow with the fervour and earnestness of his orations. His roots as a minister indeed shone through in his lectures, which endeavoured not merely to teach philosophy but also to make his students embody that philosophy in their lives (appropriately acquiring the epithet, preacher of philosophy). Unlike Smith, Hutcheson was not a system builder; rather, it was his magnetic personality and method of lecturing that so influenced his students and caused the greatest of those to reverentially refer to him as "the never to be forgotten Hutcheson", a title that Smith in all his correspondence used to describe only two people, his good friend David Hume and influential mentor, Hutcheson.
Death Francis Hutcheson spent time in Dublin, and died while on a visit to that city in 1746. He is buried in the churchyard of Saint Mary's, which is also the final resting place of his cousin, the architect Sir William Bruce. Today Saint Mary's is a public park located in what is now Wolfe Tone Street. Many United Irishmen would have revered the memory of Francis Hutcheson. Some of the leaders of the Dublin United Irishmen are remembered in the street and place-names of the city. Most Dubliners can direct a visitor to Wolfe Tone Street, Oliver Bond Street, Russell Street, Lord Edward Street and Emmet Road. "Never to be forgotten Hutcheson" lies in what is now an unmarked grave in the Dublin he loved and "where his best work was done".
Ethics According to Hutcheson, man has a variety of senses, internal as well as external, reflex as well as direct, the general definition of a sense being "any determination of our minds to receive ideas independently on our will, and to have perceptions of pleasure and pain" (Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions, sect. 1). He does not attempt to give an exhaustive enumeration of these "senses", but, in various parts of his works, he specifies, besides the five external senses commonly recognized (which he hints might be added to): consciousness, by which each man has a perception of himself and of all that is going on in his own mind (Metaph. Syn. pars i. cap. 2) the sense of beauty (sometimes called specifically "an internal sense") a public sense, or sensus communis, "a determination to be pleased with the happiness of others and to be uneasy at their misery" the moral sense, or "moral sense of beauty in actions and affections, by which we perceive virtue or vice, in ourselves or others" a sense of honour, or praise and blame, "which makes the approbation or gratitude of others the necessary occasion of pleasure, and their dislike, condemnation or resentment of injuries done by us the occasion of that uneasy sensation called shame" a sense of the ridiculous. It is plain, as the author confesses, that there may be "other perceptions, distinct from all these classes," and, in fact, there seems to be no limit to the number of "senses" in which a psychological division of this kind might result.
Of these "senses," the "moral sense" plays the most important part in Hutcheson's ethical system. It pronounces immediately on the character of actions and affections, approving those that are virtuous, and disapproving those that are vicious. "His principal design," he says in the preface to the two first treatises, "is to show that human nature was not left quite indifferent in the affair of virtue, to form to itself observations concerning the advantage or disadvantage of actions, and accordingly to regulate its conduct. The weakness of our reason, and the avocations arising from the infirmity and necessities of our nature, are so great that very few men could ever have formed those long deductions of reasons that show some actions to be in the whole advantageous to the agent, and their contraries pernicious. The Author of nature has much better furnished us for a virtuous conduct than our moralists seem to imagine, by almost as quick and powerful instructions as we have for the preservation of our bodies. He has made virtue a lovely form, to excite our pursuit of it, and has given us strong affections to be the springs of each virtuous action."