Hutcheson, Francis (1694–1746)

1. Life and works

Francis Hutcheson was born on 8 August 1694 near Saintfield, County Down, Ireland. Although often taken to be the founder of the Scottish Enlightenment, he always considered himself an Irishman. Hutcheson studied first at a classical school in Saintfield, then at an academy in Killyleagh, and finally, for two years, at Glasgow College. Ordained as a minister in the Presbyterian Church of Ireland, Hutcheson followed instead an academic career. In the early 1720s he established a dissenting academy in Dublin, where he remained until called to Glasgow as Professor of Moral Philosophy in 1729. This position he held until his death, having in 1745 declined an offer of a similar position at Edinburgh.

In Dublin, Hutcheson came under the influence of Robert Molesworth, himself a philosophical disciple of the Third Earl of Shaftesbury. In the mid 1720s Hutcheson published papers outlining some of his own views, and others criticizing Thomas Hobbes and Bernard Mandeville, as well as his first book, An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725a). This work he initially described as a defence of Shaftesbury against an attack by Mandeville. His Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections: with Illustrations on the Moral Sense appeared in 1728. His next work was probably A System of Moral Philosophy, written by 1738 but published only posthumously in 1755. His last major work was his Philosophiae moralis institutio compendiaria (1742a), a translation (Hutcheson himself was probably the translator) of which, A Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy, appeared in 1747, the year of his death.

Hutcheson corresponded with, and probably met, David Hume, and gave Hume advice, some of which he took, regarding the third volume of his Treatise of Human Nature. Notwithstanding these connections, Hutcheson apparently opposed Hume’s efforts to be appointed (in 1745) to the chair of moral philosophy in Edinburgh. Hutcheson’s students at Glasgow included Adam Smith, author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and The Wealth of Nations (1776).