Francis Hutcheson Quotes on Virtue
Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) — the Scottish-Irish moral philosopher whose long Glasgow professorship made him the principal early figure of the Scottish Enlightenment — gave eighteenth-century moral philosophy its founding statement of the moral-sense theory of virtue. The Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725) and the Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions (1728) develop the central thesis that moral approbation is the response of an innate moral sense to characters and actions whose tendency is the production of public happiness — the famous formula “the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers” enters European moral philosophy through Hutcheson’s pages — and the corresponding analysis of benevolence as the central virtue grounds Hutcheson’s broader rejection of the egoistic moral psychology of Hobbes and Mandeville. The framework shaped his pupil Adam Smith, the later sentimentalism of Hume, and the early development of utilitarianism through Bentham.
Quotes
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“That action is best which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers.”
An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725) Treatise II, Section 3 -
“Wisdom is the pursuit of the best ends by the best means.”
An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725), Treatise I, Sect. V -
Attributed to Francis Hutcheson:
“Benevolence is natural to us, as much as is self-love.”
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Attributed to Francis Hutcheson:
“The moral sense is the gift of nature, not the construction of reflection.”
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“An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725), Treatise I, Sect. V”
Wisdom denotes the pursuing of the best Ends by the best Means. -
“An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725), Treatise II: An Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil, Sect. I”
Whence this secret Chain between each Person and Mankind? How is my Interest connected with the most distant Parts of it? -
“An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725) Treatise II, Section 3”
That Action is best, which procures the greatest Happiness for the greatest Numbers ; and that worst, which, in like manner, occasions Misery. -
“An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections (1728), Treatise II: Illustrations upon the Moral Sense, Sect. I”
All our Ideas, or the materials of our reasoning or judging, are received by some immediate Powers of Perception internal or external, which we may call Senses … Reasoning or Intellect seems to raise no new Species of Ideas, but to discover or discern the Relations of those received. -
“A good man deliberating which of several actions proposed he shall choose, regards and compares the material goodness of them, and then is determined by his moral sense invariably preferring that which appears most conducive to the happiness and virtue of mankind.”
Book II, Ch. III, § I