An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue. Francis Hutcheson

moral philosophy has a political perspective.¹⁸ This becomes clear in phrases like the “common good” or “public interest” that he uses throughout the Inquiry. Especially in its final chapter he treats the basic questions of political order. His main subjects are the corruption of human nature, prudence, rights, and the form of government. The political problem emerges right from the center of Hutcheson’s moral philosophy. Since virtue is the highest form of happiness, and virtue is based on benevolence and benevolence in turn on the will, then only people who can exert their will autonomously (in other words, who are free in a political sense) can be happy.¹⁹ Liberty therefore becomes a central political idea. At the same time, liberty can provide difficulties: it may happen that people do not follow the path of virtue.

      What shall we do if the moral foundation is weak and if the moral ideas are insufficient? The argument is based on the insight that not all citizens may be virtuous all the time. Although the moral sense and all good reasons may point toward a virtuous life, human nature is open to corruption because men are free. Man is moved by two opposing principles, love and self-love, and is free to follow either. Therefore liberty and happiness sometimes counteract each other. It is difficult to determine the prevailing motive, benevolence or self-love, particularly in public life (II. III. § XII). The polity therefore can be based not on good intentions but on good results. Government can rest only on prudence, not on moral perceptions. The importance of prudence as opposed to moral reflections is typical for both the republican tradition of James Harrington and the Whig tradition, and Hutcheson was close to both.²⁰ Accordingly, the moral sense must be supplemented by an external motive to “beneficent Actions . . . for the publick Good . . . to counter-ballance those apparent Motives of Interest.” This external motive is “a Law with Sanctions” (II. VII. § I). For Hutcheson the transfer and restriction of liberty therefore is the central question of political order and of the limits of government:

      Men have [the Right] to constitute Civil Government, and to subject their alienable Rights to the Disposal of their Governours, under such Limitations as their Prudence suggests. And as far as the People have subjected their Rights, so far their Governours have an external Right at least, to dispose of them, as their Prudence shall direct, for attaining the Ends of their Institution; and no further. (II. VII. § VIII)

      To be acceptable, liberty and its restriction must be in balance with happiness. If a government assumes all rights from its people and neglects the “publick Good of the State” altogether, it is called despotism. For Hutcheson a “Despotick Government” is directly inconsistent with his idea of a civil government (II. VII. § X). With despotism, liberty and happiness are at stake. In such cases, Hutcheson advocates a right of resistance (II. VII. § X). And later on he argued that this is “When it is that colonies may turn independent.”²¹

      Wolfgang Leidhold

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

      Arregni, J. V., and P. Arnau. “Shaftesbury: Father and Critic of Modern Aesthetics.” British Journal of Aesthetics 34 (1994): 350–62.

      Blackstone, William T. Francis Hutcheson and Contemporary Ethical Theory. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1965.

      Bredvold, Louis J. “The Invention of the Ethical Calculus.” In The Seventeenth Century: Studies in the History of English Thought and Literature from Bacon to Pope, by Richard Foster Jones and Others, Writing in His Honour, 165–80. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1951.

      Campbell, Roy H., and Andrew S. Skinner, eds. The Origins and Nature of the Scottish Enlightenment. Edinburgh: J. Donald, 1982.

      Carey, Daniel. Locke, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson: Contesting Diversity in the Enlightenment and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

      Crescenzo, Giovanni de. Francis Hutcheson e il suo tempo. Turin: Taylor, 1968.

      Cumberland, Richard. A Treatise of the Law of Nature. Ed. Jon Parkin. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005.

      Frankena, William K. “Hutcheson’s Moral Sense Theory.” Journal of the History of Ideas 16 (1955): 356–75.

      Grean, Stanley. Shaftesbury’s Philosophy of Religion and Ethics: A Study of Enthusiasm. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1967.

      Haakonssen, Knud. Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

      Hruschka, Joachim. “The Greatest Happiness Principle and Other Early German Anticipations of Utilitarian Theory.” Utilitas 3 (1991): 165–77.

      Jensen, Henning. Motivation and the Moral Sense in Francis Hutcheson’s Ethical Theory. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1971.

      Jessop, T. E. Bibliography of David Hume and of Scottish Philosophy. London: A. Brown and Sons, 1938.

      Kail, P. J. E. “Hutcheson’s Moral Sense: Realism, Scepticism and Secondary Qualities.” History of Philosophy Quarterly 18 (2001): 57–77.

      Kivy, Peter. The Seventh Sense: A Study of Francis Hutcheson’s Aesthetics and Its Influence in Eighteenth-Century Britain. 2nd rev. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

      Korsmeyer, Carolyn Wilker. “The Two Beauties: A Perspective on Hutcheson’s Aesthetics.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 38 (1979/80): 145–51.

      Leidhold, Wolfgang. Ethik und Politik bei Francis Hutcheson. Freiburg, Munich: Alber, 1985.

      McCosh, James. The Scottish Philosophy, Biographical, Expository, Critical, from Hutcheson to Hamilton. London: Macmillan, 1875. Reprint, Hildesheim: Olm, 1966.

      Michael, E. “Francis Hutcheson on Aesthetic Perception and Aesthetic Pleasure.” British Journal of Aesthetics 24 (1984): 241–55.

      Moore, James. “The Two Systems of Francis Hutcheson: On the Origins of the Scottish Enlightenment.” In Studies in the Philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment, edited by M. A. Stewart, 39–59. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.

      ——. “Utility and Humanity: The Quest for the Honestum in Cicero, Hutcheson and Hume.” Utilitas 14 (2002): 365–86.

      Norton, David Fate. “Francis Hutcheson in America.” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 154 (1976): 1547–68.

      ——. “Hutcheson on Perception and Moral Perception.” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 59, no. 2 (1977): 181–97.

      Raphael, David Daiches. The Moral Sense. London: Oxford University Press, 1947.

      Rendall, Jane, ed. The Origins of the Scottish Enlightenment 1706–76. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1978.

      Rivers, Isabel. Reason, Grace, and Sentiment: A Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England 1660–1780. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, 2000.

      Robbins, Caroline. The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman. Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Fund, 2004.

      ——. “ ‘When It Is That Colonies May Turn Independent’: An Analysis of the Environment and Politics of Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746).” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 11 (1954): 214–51.

      Roberts, T. A. The Concept of Benevolence. London, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1973.

      Scott, William Robert. Francis Hutcheson, His Life, Teaching and Position in the History of Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900. Reprint, New York: A. M. Kelley, 1966.

      Sloan, Douglas. The Scottish Enlightenment and the American College Ideal. New York: Teachers College Press, 1971.

      Stephen, Leslie. History of English

Скачать книгу