HUTCHESON, FRANCIS English philoso pher, was born on Aug. 8, 1694, at Drumalig in Co. Down, the son of a Presbyterian minister. From 1710 to 1716, he studied philosophy, classics and theology at Glasgow university, and then opened a private academy in Dublin where he made many friends among the clergy of the Established Church. While in Dublin, Hutcheson published the four essays upon which his reputation rests, namely, the Inquiry concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony and Design, the Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil, in 1725, the Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections and Illustrations upon the Moral Sense, in 1728. In 1729, he returned to Glasgow as professor of moral philosophy. In spite of being accused in 1738 before the Glasgow presbytery for holding that the standard of moral goodness was the pro motion of the happiness of others and that we could have a knowledge of good and evil without and prior to a knowledge of God, Hutcheson enjoyed a well-deserved popularity. He died at Glasgow in 1746.
Although Hutcheson dealt with metaphysics, logic and ethics, his importance is due almost entirely to his ethical writings. Opposing Hobbes and Bernard de Mandeville, he closely followed the 3rd earl of Shaftesbury, especially as regards the analogy between beauty and virtue, the functions assigned to the moral sense, the position that the benevolent feelings form an original and irreducible part of our nature, and the unhesitating adoption of the principle that the test of virtuous action is its tendency to promote the general welfare. According to Hutcheson, man has a variety of senses, internal as well as external, reflex as well as direct, the 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, §I ) . Without exhaustively enumerating these "senses," he specifies, besides the five external senses (1) consciousness, by which each man has a perception of his own mind; (2) the sense of beauty; (3) a public sense, or sensus communis, "a determination to be pleased with the happiness of others and to be uneasy at their misery"; (4) the moral sense, or "moral sense of beauty in actions and affections, by which we perceive virtue or vice, in ourselves or others" ; (S) a sense of honour or praise and blame ; (6) a sense of the ridiculous. Of these "senses" the "moral sense" is the most important. It is implanted in man, and pronounces immediately on the character of actions and affections, approving those which are virtuous, and disapprov ing those which are vicious, because the Author of Nature "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." Hutcheson's use of the term "moral sense" and his failure to couple it invariably with the term "moral judgment" tends to obscure the part played by deliberation.
But though Hutcheson usually describes the moral faculty as acting instinctively and immediately, he does not, like Butler, con found the moral faculty with the moral standard. The criterion of right action is for him, as for Shaftesbury, its tendency to promote the general welfare of mankind. He thus anticipates the utilitarianism of Bentham even in the use of the phrase "the greatest happiness for the greatest number" (Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil, § 3). But since intuition has no possible connection with an empirical calculation of results, Hutcheson in adopting such a criterion practically denies his fundamental as sumption. His most distinctive ethical doctrine is the "benevolent theory" of morals by which he opposes Hobbes. He not only maintains that benevolence is the direct source of many of our actions, but that it is the only source of those actions of which, on reflection, we approve. Actions which flow from self-love only are morally indifferent, though in so far as a man may justly regard himself as a part of the rational system, and may thus "be, in part, an object of his own benevolence," the "personal virtues" may be regarded as fitting objects of moral approbation. Hutcheson inconsistently declares that while self-love merits neither approbation nor condemnation, the satisfaction of the dictates of self-love is one of the very conditions of the preserva tion of society. In the Synopsis metaphysicae, he holds that will is determined by motives in conjunction with our character and habit of mind, and that the only true liberty is the liberty of acting as we will, not the liberty of willing as we will.
The prominence given by Hume and Adam Smith to the analysis of moral action and moral approbation, with the attempt to discriminate the respective provinces of the reason and the emotions in these processes, is undoubtedly due to the influence of Hutcheson. To a study of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson we might probably attribute the unequivocal adoption of the util itarian standard by Hume, and, if this be the case, Hutcheson is linked through Hume with Priestley, Paley and Bentham.
Hutcheson diverges from Locke in his account of the idea of personal identity, which he appears to have regarded as made known to us directly by consciousness. Generally, he speaks as if we had a direct consciousness of mind as distinct from body (see, for instance, Syn. Metaph. pars ii. cap. 3), though, in the posthumous Moral Philosophy, he expressly states that we know mind as we know body "by qualities immediately perceived though the substance of both be unknown" (bk. i. ch. 1). Other points in which he supplemented or departed from Locke are:— the distinction between perception proper and sensation proper, which is not explicitly worked out, the imperfection of the or dinary division of the external senses into five, the limitation of consciousness to a special mental faculty (severely criticized in Hamilton's Lectures on Metaphysics, 12), and the disposition to refer on disputed questions of philosophy not so much to for mal arguments as to the testimony of consciousness and our natural instincts. The last point suggests the "common-sense philosophy" of Reid.
The short Compendium of Logic contains a large proportion of psychological matter. The author distinguishes between the mental result and its verbal expression (idea—term; judgment— proposition), constantly employs the word "idea," and defines logical truth as "convenientia signorum cum rebus significatis" thus implicitly repudiating a merely formal view of logic.
Hutcheson is one of the earliest modern writers on aesthetics. He maintains that the special sense by which we perceive beauty, harmony and proportion, is a reflex sense, pre-supposing sight and hearing. Beauty is also perceived in universal truths, in the operations of general causes and in moral principles and actions. Thus, the analogy between beauty and virtue, a favourite topic with Shaftesbury, is prominent in Hutcheson also.
Hutcheson's writings naturally gave rise to much controversy. He found opponents in John Balguy (1686-1748), author of two tracts on "The Foundation of Moral Goodness," and John Taylor (1694-1761) of Norwich, author of An Examination of the Scheme of Morality advanced by Dr. Hutcheson and the essays appear to have suggested Butler's Dissertation on the Nature of Virtue, and Richard Price's Treatise of Moral Good and Evil (1757). (See ETHICS.) BIBLIOGRAPHY.-Besides the above named works, Hutcheson's chief Bibliography.-Besides the above named works, Hutcheson's chief writings are: Philosophiae moralis institutio compendiario, ethices et jurisprudentiae naturalis elementa continens, lib. iii. (Glasgow, 1742) ; Metaphysicae synopsis ontologiam et pneumatologiam complectens (Glasgow, 1742) , A System of Moral Philosophy, 2 vols. (1755) containing a life by Dr. William Leechman (d. 1785), a treatise on Logic (1756) .
See Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments pt. 7; Mackintosh, Progress of Ethical Philosophy; Cousin, Cours d'histoire de la philosophie morale du X VIIIe siecle; `v'bewell, Lectures on the Hist. of Moral Philosophy in England; A. Bain, Mental and Moral Science; Sir L. Stephen's Hist. of English Thought in the 18th Cent.; Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory (19o2) ; W. R. Scott, Francis Hutcheson (1900) ; Albee, Hist. of English Utilitarianism (1902) ; T. Fowler, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson (188a) ; J. McCosh, Scottish Philosophy (New York, 1874) .