FRANCIS HUTCHESON. - English philosopher, born at Drumalig (Ireland) on 18 Aug. 1694, died at Glasgow in 1747. From 1729 he was professor of moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow.
He wrote: *An enquiry concerning the original of our ideas of beauty and virtue* (London 1725); *Essay on the nature and conduct of the passions and affections* (ibid. 1728); *A system of moral philosophy*, his principal work, published posthumously (Glasgow 1755) with a biography of H. by W. Leechman.
H. is one of the secondary figures of the English Enlightenment and may be counted among the moralists of the eighteenth century and among the so-called philosophers of the «moral sense». An optimist (everything in the world bears witness to the goodness of God), like Shaftesbury, whose influence he felt, he admitted in man specific faculties given by God at creation, namely the sense of beauty, that of sympathy, and others, including the moral sense—a faculty independent that cannot be reduced either to sympathy, to pleasure, or to utility, etc. As the eyes perceive light and darkness, so the moral sense perceives virtue and vice. It is entirely disinterested, both for the one who acts and for the one who approves, even though H. in the end identifies it with the utilitarian tendency to act in such a way as to procure «the greatest happiness of the greatest number». It is precisely in considering the good of others that we promote our own particular greatest good.
