Life
1694-1746 [occas. err. Hutchinson] b. 8 Aug., at the manse in Drumalig, nr. Saintfield [parish & townland], Co. Down; son & grandson of presbyterian minister; ed. Killeagh Academy, and Glasgow, matric. 1710-15 [var. 1711], reading philosophy, literature and theology; influenced
by James Harrington (1611-77); licensed to preach in Scotland, 1716; encountered trouble regarding ministry to a small congregation; moved to Dublin to open school; licensed by Presbytery
of Armagh, 1719; opened academy 1721-30; protegé of Robert Molesworth and exponent of humanist civic principles in higher education, based on Shaftesbury’s conception of moral sense; became acquainted with Lord
Carteret [Viceroy], Archbishop William King - who disdained to prosecute him for keeping a school - and Bishop Edward Synge; issued An Enquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725), much revised by Hutcheson through five editions, establishing the claims of a ‘civic, humanist tradition’; professed that ‘[Nothing can] change a rational creature into a piece of goods void of all rights’; upheld common-sense school and ethical principles of Shaftesbury against Hobbes and Mandeville; influenced David Hume and others; Adam Smith - who refers to him in Theory of Moral Sentiments - was a former pupil; subscribed to the Dublin reprint of his Oceana, ed. John Toland (1737); contrib. six letters to Hibernicus' Letters (i.e., Arbuckle’s Dublin
Journal (1725-27 [err. Dublin Weekly Magazine]), incl. “Thoughts on Laughter”, an answer to Hobbes, and “Remarks on the Fable of the Bees” (rep. 1750 and ded. James Arbuckle); appt. to chair Moral Theology,
Glasgow, 1729, in succession to Gershom Carmichael; remained sixteen years in Glasgow and d. during a late visit to Dublin, 1746; his system of Moral Philosophy, substantially completed and circulated among friends, was published posthumously by in 1755 by his son Francis, known as ‘Francis Ireland’, who made a reputation
as a song-writer; a commemorative plaque was unveiled at the First Saintfield Presbyterian Church, Saintfield, on 21 August 2003. DIB DNB RR OCEL SD FOST ODQ OCIL FDA
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Works
Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (London:
J. Darby 1725); An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, with Illustrations of the Moral Sense (1728); Philosophiae Moralis Institutio Compendiaria (1743); Synopsis Metaphysicae, Ontologiam et Phneumatologiam Complectens (1744); Reflections upon Laughter and Remarks Upon the Fable of the Bees (1750); A System of Moral Philosophy, 2 vols. (1755) [ed. by his son; as infra].
A System of Moral Philosophy, in Three Bbooks [...] Published from the Original Manuscript, by Francis Hutcheson, MD. To which is prefixed, Some account of the life, and writings, and character of the author, by the Reverend William Leechman, DD, 2 vols. (Glasgow 1755), 4o.; also A System of Moral Philosophy, introduced by Daniel Carey [rep. of 1755 Edn.] (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2000), pp. v-vii
See also Remarks upon the Fable of the Bees (1750), ded. “To Hibernicus” [infra].
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Criticism
Richard Ryan, Biographia Hibernica: Irish Worthies (1821), Vol.
II, p.325.
W. R. Scott, Francis Hutcheson (Cambridge 1900).
T. E. Jessop, A Bibliography of David Hume and of Scottish Philosophy from Francis Hutcheson to Lord Balfour (London 1938; rep. 1966).
W. R. Scott, Francis Hutcheson, His Life, Teaching and Position in the History of Philosophy (CUP 1900).
T. Fowler, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson (London 1882).
H. Jensen, Motivation and the Moral Sense in Hutcheson’s Ethical Theory (Hague 1971).
D[avid] Berman, ‘Francis Hutcheson on Berkeley and the Molyneux Problem’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy Vol. 74 (1974), pp.259-65.
P. Kivy, The Seventh Sense, A Study of Frances Hutcheson’s Aesthetic Influence in Eighteenth Century Britain (NY 1976).
P. Kivy, The Seventh Sense, A Study of Francis Hutcheson’s Aesthetic Influence in Eighteenth Century Britain (1978).
‘Francis Hutcheson - Special Symposium’, a Supplement to Fortnight 308 (July 1992), 23pp. [includes by D. D. Raphael, M. A. Stewart, V. M. Hope, G. P. Brooks, R. F. Stalley, James Moore, David Fate Norton, W. I. P. Hazlett, Tom Paulin and David Berman].
Ian McBride [essay on Hutcheson’s roots in Northern Presbyterian Thought], in George D. Boyce, Robert Eccleshall & Vincent Geoghegan, eds., Political thought in Ireland Since the Seventeenth Century (London: Routledge 1993).
Michael Brown, Francis Hutcheson in Dublin 1719-1730: The Crucible of his Thought (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2001), 240pp.
See also a section on Francis Hutcheson in Terry Eagleton, Healthcliff and the Great Hunger (Verso 1995).
J. W. Foster, ‘Topographical Tradition in Anglo-Irish Poetry’ [1974], in Colonial Consequences (Dublin: Lilliput Press 1991),
pp.16-19.
D. D. Raphael, ‘A New Light’, in ‘Francis Hutcheson Special Number’, Fortnight Educational Supplement (Belfast: July 1992).
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Notes
R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland (1988), p.214: b. Co. Down,
ed. Glasgow; Inquiries into Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725),
won friendship of Archb. King and Visc. Molesworth; Chair of Moral Phil.,
Glasgow, without solicitation, 1729; taught Adam Smith; he coined the
phrase, ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’. Note
alsoL: ‘Hutcheson’s idea of armed militias to protect civil
rights may have been returned to Ulster with interest.’ (Ibid., p.266).
W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (1984), Francis Hutcheson, son and grandson of Presbyterian ministers and himself a minister; ed. locally in Co. Down, and in Glasgow Univ.; accepted invitation to open a Presbyterian academy in Dublin. Published first, An Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725; and 5 eds.); trans. in French and German; influenced Burke - who in contrast took up a position against traditional aesthetics; partly a defence of Lord Shaftesbury’s Hellenic views on aesthetics and morality and partly a refutation of Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees, it was characterised by the author’s respect for beauty and its enlightened hedonism, in reaction to severe puritanism. Elected Prof. of Moral Theology at Glasgow in 1729, and there co-operated with Alexander Dunlop in promoting a Greek revival; his annotated ed. of Marcus Aurelius Meditations (1742), with Dunlop’s successor James Moor[e], and printed by Robert Foulis whom he supported to the post of University printer [196]
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 1, pp.xxii, xxv, 659, 761, 762, Letter to William Mace, 786-88; An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, 889-93; BIOG, 805, protegé of Molesworth and the inspiring teacher of Adam Smith, d. in Ireland; see also Field Day Anthology, Vol. 2; leading exponent of the ‘moral sense’ school; editorial reference to his place in Moore Pim’s A History of Celtic Philosophy (1920), overlooked in Richard Kearney, ed., The Irish Mind, Exploring Intellectual Traditions (Wolfhound 1985).
Trouble at presbytery: In 1738 Hutcheson was accused before the Glasgow Presbytery for ‘following two false and dangerous doctrines: first, that the standard of moral goodness was the promotion of the happiness of others; and second, that we could have a knowledge of good and evil without and prior to a knowledge of God.’ (See Rae, Life of Adam Smith, 1895; quoted in WWW.Answers web page [link] - itself based on the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica).
Belfast sojourn?: Note one sources relates that Hutcheson returned to Ulster and taught in the Presbyterian College, Belfast, 1729, in company with Thomas Drennan - presumably immediately prior to his appointment to the chair of Moral Theology in Glasgow.
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)