Bad Conscience

"But as things are, the war of the sword and the war of the pens is perpetual" – Thomas Hobbes, De Cive

A Context and Structure for Francis Hutcheson’s Early Moral Philosophy

A Context and Structure for Francis Hutcheson’s Early Moral Philosophy

 

Introduction

The following essay offers an overview of the structure and nature of Francis Hutcheson’s (1694-1746) earliest sustained work of moral philosophy, An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725).[1] It does so by appealing to one vitally important context for Hutcheson’s writing: the existence of, and challenged posed by, the writings of Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733).

I focus on this particular text for several complementary reasons. Firstly, because understanding Hutcheson’s entire philosophical corpus – including the tensions and harmonies with this work and his Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, with Illustrations on the Moral Sense (1728),  let alone his posthumously published System of Moral Philosophy (1755) and text-book Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy (1747) – is a daunting challenge. Getting a firmer grip on a subset of his thought should (hopefully) make this larger task more manageable. Secondly, because the relatively slim literature on this particular work of Hutcheson’s has largely been preoccupied with examining specific issues within his philosophy, rather than attempting to appraise what Hutcheson took himself to be doing in penning this early tract. Most contemporary discussions focus on issues like Hutcheson’s concept of moral motivation,[2] or (what has attracted much attention thanks to the work of David Fate Norton) the extent to which his moral sense theory is a species of “moral realism”[3] as oppose to ethical “emotivism”.[4] Although I will have something to say about some of these contemporary positions, this essay is essentially orthogonal to the majority of existing scholarship, insofar as I take the question of where Hutcheson can be fitted onto a modern schema of meta-ethical classification to be relatively uninteresting, and to some extent actively unhelpful. It is more informative to take Hutcheson on his own terms, not least because the Inquiry is an extremely complicated work in its own right and deserves sustained critical attention as a composite whole, not simply a depository of supposedly independent units of theory.  Thirdly, because the structure and content of Hutcheson’s early moral philosophy has important bearings upon scholarly debates regarding David Hume’s formative philosophical influences. The more clearly we understand those philosophical works of Hutcheson that Hume likely read when composing his Treatise of Human Nature (and later philosophical works), the better we can appraise the philosophical debt to which Hume did or did not owe the Glasgow professor. [5] (The same, of course, can be said of later thinkers such as Adam Smith.)

The following interpretation is guided by two highly interconnected features which do not receive adequate attention in the majority of scholarly treatments. Firstly, the place of God: Hutcheson’s early thought cannot be properly understood without an intelligent and benevolent creator operating at the centre of the philosophical system. Secondly, that the Inquiry in particular is a systematic – and in some ways, fiercely polemical – attempt to refute the vision of God, man and society put forward in the first volume of Bernard Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees (published in 1714, but re-issued to much public outrage in 1723). It is not unusual for scholars to note that “Mandeville’s work forms an important background to Hutcheson’s philosophy”, but the extent to which the spectre of Mandeville haunts and directs Hutcheson’s project is generally severely under-acknowledged.[6] I suggest (and the following seeks to show) that the original subtitle of the first edition of the Inquiry – In which the principles of the late Earl of Shaftesbury are Explain’d and Defended, Against the Author of the Fable of the Bees: and the Ideas of Moral Good and Evil are establish’d, according to the Sentiments of the Antient Moralists. With an Attempt to introduce a Mathematical Calculation in Subjects of Morality – provides an accurate appraisal of the content of Hutcheson’s first work.[7]

Accordingly, and to lay the ground for an analysis of Hutcheson’s early moral philosophy, it will be helpful to recapitulate the basic argumentative tenets put forward by Mandeville in the first Fable, against which Hutcheson was reacting. Any adequate summary would require book-length treatment, so the following is simply a schema for reference and not a comprehensive overview:[8]

1. Mandeville operates with a starkly Augustinian view of humanity as “mere fallen man”.[9] Ours is a postlapsarian world, ordered not for the temporal benefit of the sinful but as a vale of tears salvation from which is possible only by the grace of God.[10]
2. Fallen man is “solicitous of pleasing only himself”; all human action is ultimately traceable to self interest and self-gratifying pleasure seeking.[11]
3. Fallen man is a creature of pride, who is pained by the relative success of others and yet who craves estimation in the mind of his peers; this mutual provocation of pride makes man naturally unsociable and he can be made sociable only by the artful manipulation of far-sighted politicians.[12]
4. True virtue consists in self-denial, and the suppression – but not sublimation, nor overcoming – of desire. To be truly virtuous is to feel the pull of desire as a thirsty man craves fluid, and yet to resist as far as possible despite the fact that to continue existing one must nonetheless indulge to some extent.[13] (The connection to points 1-3 is deliberate and integral).
5. Any action that can be traced back to self-interest forfeits any claim to true virtue; if an action is revealed as in some way motivated by self-interest it cannot be truly virtuous.[14]
6. Complex systems of social virtue have, however, been developed by artful politicians in efforts to manipulate unsocial man into conditions of tolerable society. The social virtues are “the offspring that flattery begot upon pride”, and rest upon the manipulation of shame and honour to coax mutually odious men into tolerable conditions of society by engaging in substitute non-violent forms of status competition and dominance-seeking.[15] These social virtues are, however, incompatible with true virtue because the social virtues can all be traced back to the operations of pride and self-interest.
7. Modern society, characterised by luxury and the increasing economic prosperity the pursuit and production of luxury entails, is riven a by central paradox: that private vices (i.e. self-interested pride and reflective glory-seeking in the minds of others by attaining social status, wealth and the ostentatious possession of luxury goods) generate public benefits (i.e. the prosperity of a great, polished, economically flourishing society erected upon the demand for, and supply of, luxury).[16]
8. Modern man thus faces an irreducible trade-off between (true) virtue and utility. Either we can be (truly) virtuous by living frugal, self-denying lives, abandoning the opulence, greatness and comfort of modern society, or we embrace the latter and recognise it as bought at the price of vice and the erection of morally compromised forms of disingenuous social virtue founded on the manipulation of pride (i.e. politeness and manners and systems of honour and shame, which in turn generate deep mental hypocrisy in modern social agents).[17]
   (N.B. Mandeville himself claimed to be unperturbed by this stark trade-off, presenting it as simply an honest assessment of the condition of modern fallen man. Many of his readers took it as an exhortation to pursue vice in order to promote commercial success, partly explaining the enormous outrage his work generated and its subsequent succès de scandale.[18])

 

Hutcheson’s early moral philosophy, as we shall see, is overwhelmingly characterised by an ongoing attempt to refute each and every proposition contained in points 1-8. However, Hutcheson’s early work is also characterised by a certain lack of control, focus, and careful philosophical execution. The effect of the second treatise of the Inquiry, in particular, is to offer a barrage of counter-veiling positions and insights variously trained on any one or combination of the above, but sometimes lacking a final standard of internal consistency. As John D. Bishop has noted, “Hutcheson was not consistent about the moral sense even within any one book, let alone over the span of his writings”. [19] Yet this lack of consistency might perhaps be explained by what I try to show here: that Hutcheson was preoccupied with refuting everything Mandeville had put forward, and that this ambitious goal led to a lack of stability in his moral theory as presented first in the Inquiry, the failings of which critics quickly attacked (not least on grounds of religious heterodoxy) and a defence of which was proffered in the later Essay.[20] But in both cases Hutcheson remained very much the same author who penned the six letters ‘to Hibernicus’ in the 1726 Dublin Weekly Journal, rejecting Mandeville’s account of virtue and luxury (and finally descending into splenetic ad hominem abuse). He now simply wrote as philosopher rather than journalist.

I do not present the following interpretation as final or exclusive. There is much more to be said about Hutcheson’s intellectual project and development than can be managed here. The major influence of Shaftesbury is the obvious outstanding issue, as well as the question of the extent of Locke’s influence in epistemology and moral subjects, and the apparent rejection of the natural jurisprudence championed by Gershom Carmichael in the Glasgow of Hutcheson’s youth.[21] Furthermore, we know that Hutcheson from an early age moved in circles associated with reform of, and challenges to, the Presbyterian Church in both Ireland and Scotland (his own father’s position as a Presbyterian minister notwithstanding). An active and ongoing rejection of Calvinist Augustinianism in Hutcheson’s personal and religious life was surely deeply intertwined with his early philosophical rejections of the “selfish systems” of morality, and his attendant exhortations to Christian virtue – a background which, I suggest, when more fully explored is very likely to further support the reading offered here.[22] And of course Mandeville’s Fable did not appear ex nihilo either; the Dutch émigré doctor was bequeathed the legacy of 17^th century thinkers such as Pierre Nicole, la Rochefoucauld, and especially Pierre Bayle, who had effected an important synthesis between Augustinian thought and Epicurean philosophy, in particular as reworked for a Christian world by Pierre Gassendi.[23] Nonetheless, we get much further in understanding Hutcheson’s moral philosophy by acknowledging the overbearing spectre of Mandeville – who had, as Robertson reminds us, just produced “the most provocative work of moral theorising since Hobbes’s Leviathan” – than we do by ignoring it.[24]

 

Beauty, God, and the Sense of Beauty
The first Treatise of Hutcheson’s Inquiry seeks to establish that we possess a particular “internal” sense of beauty akin to the five “external” senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, and which is able to perceive and discern beauty in the external world.[25] However, a careful reading shows that Hutcheson’s purpose extends far beyond claims about the philosophical grounds for aesthetic judgement. Not only is “the connection between morality and beauty…central to both Hutcheson’s theory of beauty and to his conception of morality”,[26] but the first Treatise seeks to establish an essential component of Hutcheson’s moral philosophy: that there is an intelligent designer-creator who has ordered both the world and our human constitution for the purpose of giving us the possibility of attaining the highest good and satisfaction within this life. Establishing the existence of an intelligent creator-designer is the conceptual backbone of Hutcheson’s attempted refutation of Mandeville, and operates (as we shall see) on a number of levels. Indeed in the first Treatise Hutcheson is at his most focused, coherent and philosophically compelling, and the argument he offers runs as follows.

We possess an internal “sense of beauty” which relays to us the “idea” of beauty: “in the following Papers, the Word Beauty is taken for the Idea rais’d in us, and a Sense of Beauty for our Power of receiving this Idea”.[27] Hutcheson claims that this is a species of perception, though it differs from the five “external” senses in crucial ways, not least because the sense of beauty is not the function of some physical and specially-adapted biological organ, and is able to perceive beauty in non-physical things like mathematical theorems.[28] Keen to emphasise that the “sense of beauty” is not an “innate Idea”, Hutcheson also makes the philosophically significant manoeuvre of denying that our sense of beauty perceives a wholly mind-independent property of the external world. Rather, Hutcheson holds beauty to be more akin to what is usually referred to as a “secondary quality” (e.g. colour), which does not exist independently of a perceiver’s actually perceiving it.[29] That is, a world devoid of human beings equipped with a sense of beauty would be a world devoid of the sort of beauty that human beings perceive – but insofar as such human beings do exist, then there is external beauty and it is indeed perceived. (It is worth noting that for Hutcheson it is therefore possible for animals to perceive different kinds of beauty than that discerned by humans, depending on how God chooses to constitute them).[30] Thus, to employ some modern lexicon, Hutcheson denies that beauty is part of the “fabric of the world”,[31] whilst also denying that beauty is a projection of internal sensibility (it is, after all, precisely a perception).[32] His position lies somewhere between these two alternatives, and is made to work ultimately by an appeal to a particular conception of God (as we shall see below).

Amongst human beings, a regular foundation of beauty can be discerned in all instances of our “idea” of beauty: this is the presence of “uniformity amidst variety”.[33] Hutcheson claims to be able to trace all instances of human-perceived beauty (even that of mathematical theorems)[34] to this basic foundation, though variations in the interaction of uniformity and variety will generate different kinds of beauty (leading Hutcheson to affirm “the peculiar Beauty of Fowls”, in a passage itself somewhat peculiar).[35] Hutcheson does not deny, however, that great disagreement and variation is found in men’s estimations of beauty. He seeks to explain this apparent non-uniformity in aesthetic judgement firstly by claiming that whilst all men share the basic capacities for discerning moral beauty as uniformity amidst variety, more complex forms of beauty require higher levels of sophistication in discernment.[36] (We might fill-out Hutcheson’s argument here by suggesting an analogy with sight: just because some are myopic or colour-blind, it does not follow that the far-away red thing is really green, or really not there.)[37] Secondly, Hutcheson suggests that our sense of beauty is often corrupted, or over-powered, by a countervailing association of negative ideas. Thus although the Roman arcade exhibits uniformity amidst variety and is properly beautiful to human perceivers, Visigoths and Vandals associate Roman architecture with Rome-the-enemy, and mistakenly despise what is in truth a beautiful building, falsely holding it to be ugly (before tearing it down).[38]

Accordingly, Hutcheson does not shy away from claiming that men can make mistakes about beauty.[39] As the foundation of beauty is uniformity amidst variety, it follows that a properly-sophisticated perceiver not afflicted by distorting ideas can correctly perceive instantiations of objective beauty.[40] How is this possible, if beauty is at least in part a mind-dependent property not tracking an external reality “out there” independent of human preference or taste? The answer is that for Hutcheson God ensures a standard of beauty and deformity, against which it is possible to assess aesthetic judgements as correct or false: “there seems to be no necessary Connection of our pleasing Ideas of Beauty with the Uniformity or Regularity of the Objects, from the Nature of things, antecedent to some Constitution of the Author of our Nature, which has made such Forms pleasant to us”.[41] In short, God has given us a sense of beauty that is geared to discerning uniformity amidst variety, and harmonised this with a world in which varying degrees of uniformity amidst variety are to be perceived.[42] Hutcheson’s vision is of a voluntarist deity, however, and accordingly He was not compelled, or bound by the structure of reality, to do this: he did it deliberately so as to provide us with a harmonised mental system which discerns beauty instantaneously and which also experiences pleasure in the perceiving of beauty.[43] We are made the way we are not just because God willed it, but because God willed that we be happy and well-equipped for life in this temporal realm.[44]

As well as making this intelligent designer argument about the underpinning truth-value of mind-dependent aesthetic judgement, Hutcheson in Section V of the fist Treatise also attempts the more ambitious task of actually showing that there is a God, and that this God is benevolent.  It is not necessary to examine or assess Hutcheson’s argument in detail, but in essence it is a species of what we might call “probabilistic argument from design”.[45] Hutcheson claims that beauty (i.e. uniformity amidst variety) of even the most basic geometrical shapes is so improbable to have come into existence by chance that it strongly implies intelligent design. In turn, as we consider more and more complex forms of beauty, the probability of intelligent design grows ever greater until it becomes irrational to posit anything else (especially mere chance) as an explanation. Furthermore, given this immense and lasting beauty in the breadth of creation, it is reasonable to suppose that God made it so deliberately, and to our express advantage (a supposition aided by Hutcheson’s evident voluntarist theology).[46] Hutcheson thus notes:
Now from the whole we conclude, “That supposing the Deity so kind as to connect sensible Pleasure with certain Actions or Contemplations, beside the rational Advantage perceivable in them; there is a great moral Necessity, from his Goodness, that the internal Sense of Men should be constituted as it is at present, so as to make Uniformity amidst Variety the Occasion of Pleasure.”

 

(Whether Hutcheson’s are good arguments is beside the point. It is worth noting however that he has a tendency to slip between arguing for a position to prove one claim, before tacitly moving to assume that position when arguing for the very claim he in fact needs to get the first part of his argument off the ground. So in Section V the premise that beauty is uniformity amidst variety is employed to establish that there is an intelligent benevolent creator, which in turn is taken as underpinning the claim that beauty is constituted by uniformity amidst variety. A generous interpreter might call this “holistic” reasoning – the more critical reader is likely to see it as begging the question.)

To recap: we possess a sense of beauty given to us by God, which perceives the “idea” of beauty, which is instantiated in the world by the same God, who ordered creation so as to be to our best advantage, bringing us pleasure in aesthetic appreciation. Yet Hutcheson has another very important point to make: that our sense of beauty cannot be reduced to self-interest.[47] In part Hutcheson takes this to be an obvious truth flowing from proper appreciation of the role of God and the existence of a sense of beauty he believes himself to have established. But in addition Hutcheson is at pains to provide a barrage of examples aiming to demonstrate that aesthetic beauty cannot be reduced to self-interest, and these largely stand independent of his own particular sense of beauty theory.[48]

With this schematic overview of Hutcheson’s Treatise I in place, we are able to see its argumentative payout as an intervention in significant part aimed squarely at Mandeville. Firstly, Hutcheson wants to establish that the pleasure we gain from aesthetic appreciation is instantaneous, unreflective, and original. With a foundation in our very constitution as ordered by a benevolent God – who as Hutcheson noted in his preface was “not left quite indifferent in the affair of Virtue”[49] – the appreciation of beauty can be traced back to neither custom nor education, which at most have the power to refine or extend the sense of beauty, but which must always presuppose it.[50] Pleasure in value-judgement, therefore, cannot be reduced to the artful manipulation of politicians: our aesthetic sense of beauty prefigures any socialisation. Secondly, because our sense of beauty is God-given, and the pleasure we receive in perceiving beauty is God-sanctioned , in both cases by a voluntarist God who is benevolent, it cannot be the case that our pleasure in beauty is the product of self-interest which finds expression in status-seeking and domination, nor that our standards of aesthetic value are artifices manufactured to establish social stability. Our psychological make-up with regards to even the most basic aesthetic judgements cannot be accounted for on Mandeville’s theory of competitive self-interest seeking and pride. Thirdly, because our sense of beauty is itself not just the product of, but the evidence for, a benevolent God who orders the world to our advantage and happiness, Mandeville’s Augustinian view of a God who has abandoned mere fallen man to a vale of tears comprehensively and systematically misconstrues the nature of God, the nature of man, and the relationship between the two.

To refer to the 8-point summary of Mandeville supplied above, Hutcheson’s argument for the sense of beauty can be read as a direct assault upon, and rejection of, points 1 and 2, and an oblique attack upon points 3 and 6. This is significant, especially as regards Hutcheson’s rejection of Mandeville’s Augustinian foundations. Hutcheson will not again purport to establish what he takes himself to have proved in Treatise I: that God is benevolent and orders things to our best advantage. In Treatise II this is taken as given, and underpins Hutcheson’s effort at a thoroughgoing refutation of Mandeville, this time with interventions against each and every one of points 1-8. The discussion of beauty, therefore, is not simply an independent investigation into some separate realm of philosophy called “aesthetics”. No doubt Hutcheson took himself to be saying something philosophically innovative and important about both aesthetic judgements and the nature of God. And Mandeville is certainly not the only target: Locke is singled out,[51] as are philosophies positing innate ideas.[52] But nonetheless Treatise I remains in large measure both the springboard for a philosophical intervention into moral subjects haunted by the spectre of Mandeville, and an initial attempt to dispel that same spectre.

 

Moral Sense, Benevolence and the Foundations of Morals

Unfortunately Hutcheson’s intervention into moral subjects as presented in Treatise II of the Inquiry is less controlled and well-organised than the previous treatise on beauty. Nonetheless, he clearly deploys successive sections of argument variously trained on aspects of the Mandevillean thesis sketched above. I here first focus on the bulk of argument provided in Sections I-IV, before considering the further – and important – modifications and developments Hutcheson makes to his moral theory in V-VII by introducing explicitly Stoic considerations to complete his repudiation of Mandeville.

Treatise II begins with Hutcheson proposing to lay down basic definitions. “Moral Goodness” is defined as “our Idea of some Quality apprehended in Actions, which produces Approbation, and Love toward the Actor, from those who receive no Advantage by the Action”, whilst “Moral Evil denotes our Idea of a contrary Quality, which excites Aversion, and Dislike toward the Actor, even from Persons unconcern’d in its natural Tendency”.[53] As well as “Moral Goodness” Hutcheson identifies a category called “natural Good”, which is simply “the Pleasure in our sensible Perceptions of any kind” and “all Objects which are apt to excite this Pleasure are call’d immediately Good”, which can in turn be pursued directly or indirectly.[54] Hutcheson then appeals to a phenomenological difference of internal sentiment when we consider those individuals possessed of moral goodness, as oppose to those who have splendid possessions or even admirable natural abilities.[55] This difference in our reflective emotive estimation of different kinds of goods he takes as proof of a fundamental difference between moral and other forms of goodness. Furthermore, Hutcheson claims that our sense of pleasure is antecedent to “Advantage or Interest” and is indeed the foundation of it: “We do not perceive Pleasure in Objects, because it is our Interest to do so; but Objects or Actions are Advantageous, and are pursu’d or undertaken from Interest, because we receive Pleasure from them. Our Perception of Pleasure is necessary, and nothing is Advantageous or naturally Good to us, but what is apt to raise Pleasure mediately, or immediately”.[56]

Hutcheson then considers two alternative approaches to moral theory. Firstly, those which claim “That all moral Qualitys have necessarily some Relation to the Law of a Superior, of sufficient Power to make us Happy or Miserable” and which “determine us to Obedience by Motives of Self-Interest”.[57] Although this general description certainly covers Mandeville, it is likely to have been intended to encompass several other thinkers too, notably Thomas Hobbes, as well as John Locke and John Calvin.[58] Secondly, “some Other Moralists” (almost certainly Shaftesbury) suppose an “immediate natural Good in the Actions call’d Virtuous”, whereby we perceive beauty in the actions of others without any regard to self interest or personal advantage, but nonetheless affirm that we are excited to certain actions by self-interest, which seeks the pleasure concomitant with performing morally good actions.[59] Hutcheson proposes to investigate such matters, hoping to prove two general propositions:

I. “That some Actions have to Men an immediate Goodness; or, that by a superior Sense, which I call a Moral one, we perceive Pleasure in the Contemplation of such Actions in others, and are determin’d to love the Agent, (and much more do we perceive Pleasure in being conscious of having done such Actions our selves) without any View of further natural Advantage from them.”

II. It may perhaps also appear, “That what excites us to these Actions which we call Virtuous, is not an Intention to obtain even this sensible Pleasure; much less the future Rewards from Sanctions of Laws, or any other natural Good, which may be the Consequence of the virtuous Action; but an entirely different Principle of Action from Interest or Self-Love.”

This auto-summary of Hutcheson’s intentions is worth quoting at length because it encapsulates the framework within which he begins his fully-fledged intervention in moral subjects. At this stage, Hutcheson can be understood as broadly endorsing the essential proposition about the nature of moral subjects contained in point 5 of our schematic summary of Mandeville: that virtue is incompatible with self-interest, and that any action motivated by self-interest accordingly forfeits any claim to authentic virtue. Hutcheson at this stage is certainly at pains to distance himself from Mandeville, however, who had sought to show that because human beings were always motivated by self-interest, so “virtue” was always fraudulent (excepting those truly exceptional cases of self-denial assisted by the grace of God). Rather, Hutcheson endeavours in the first half of Treatise II to resist the Mandevillean force of this thesis – but not, at least at this stage, the thesis itself. Hence Hutcheson does not initially reject Mandeville’s claim that self-interest negates true virtue, but instead accepts this general proposition about moral subjects and tries to show that it is empirically false to claim that human beings always act from self-interest. As we shall see, Hutcheson does later move beyond this shared self-interest contra virtue framework, but first it is best to concentrate on how he establishes his preferred moral sense theory whilst remaining broadly within it.

Hutcheson begins Section I of Treatise II by repeating his claim that when we examine our own internal sentiments we clearly experience a different emotive response to actions which we deem “morally” good, as oppose to those that simply bring us some pleasure, or promote our self-interest.[60] In doing so he also takes himself to be simultaneously providing the argumentative grounds for his “moral sense” theory, broadly analogous to the “sense of beauty” introduced in Treatise I: that by a “Determination of our Minds” we “receive amiable or disagreeable Ideas of Actions, when they occur to our Observation, antecedent to any Opinions of Advantage or loss to rebound to our selves from them”.[61] Hutcheson points out that we have a distinct feeling of emotive approval for morally good acts (and the reverse for evil ones) which is not explainable by reference to self interest, and he concludes that the reason for this “must be…That we have a distinct Perception of Beauty, or Excellence, in the kind Affections of rational Agents; whence we are determin’d to admire and love such Characters and Persons”.[62] Clearly this is not a particularly sound philosophical inference, but again that need not detain us: the point is that Hutcheson takes it as essentially obvious that upon careful reflection we see that we have a moral sense which perceives moral beauty or deformity, and that this occurs to us independent of our will or any deduction of self-interest.

In putting forward this theory of the moral sense, however, Hutcheson is presented with a problem not encountered when considering aesthetic subjects: whether it is the beauty of actions (or more precisely, the consequences of actions) that we morally approve or disapprove of via our moral sense, or the intentions of the agents performing those actions. Whereas Hume would later firmly identify moral approbation or disapprobation with the underlying motivation of an agent (actions being mere signs used by spectators to infer intent), Hutcheson does not consistently specify what does the evaluative spadework in his theory.[63] Instead, he tends to oscillate between an emphasis on consequence, motivation, or a combination of the two, leading to a lack of clarity and consistency in his account.[64] Yet this oscillation can be explained (if not necessarily forgiven), when we understand that Hutcheson variously focuses on consequence of actions or motivation (or both) as best suits any particular instance of his general purpose of showing that our emotive moral responses cannot be reduced to self-interest. That is, Hutcheson wishes to emphasise that we often approve of the good actions of others without any regard to our own self-interest, and that equally when we perceive that the motivation to some act (regardless of any unfortunate unintended consequences) is the good of others we can disinterestedly approve of this, too.[65]

Connectedly, the moral sense raises another outstanding problem for Hutcheson which he never adequately resolves. Namely, that if the moral sense is a perceptive faculty discerning moral beauty and deformity in the actions or intentions of others, how can it simultaneously serve as the ground for any individual’s motivation to moral action? Hutcheson never makes satisfactorily clear within the pages of the Inquiry how the moral sense can fulfil this dual purpose.[66] But regardless, we can understand the genesis and structure of his theory better if we see that Hutcheson took the moral sense as offering the grounds for a disinterested basis of both moral action and approval, in each individual as both agent and spectator, within his wider project of denying the Mandevillean claim that all human action is rooted ultimately in self-interest.

Taking himself to have established that we possess a moral sense which approves of “moral good”, as distinct from mere natural good and our own advantage, Hutcheson provides a barrage of examples intended to show that our moral approbation is not grounded in ideas of our own interest but in fact always presupposes a moral sense.[67] As with his arguments in Treatise I Hutcheson has a tendency to slide into using his arguments against self-interest as further evidence for his moral sense theory without providing independent grounds for that theory’s existence, whilst simultaneously taking the moral sense as the established independent ground for refutation of the self-interest approach itself.[68] But regardless, the overall argumentative strategy can clearly be identified as a denial of the Mandevillean upshots of point 5: Hutcheson accepts the general proposition that self-interest negates virtue, but seeks to show that self-interest is not the universal foundation of human action, precisely because we possess a disinterested moral sense given us by a benevolent creator.

Hutcheson proceeds to deploy his theory of the moral sense against various aspects of the Mandevillean ethical picture. A “late witty Author” (expressly identified in a footnote as Mandeville) is chastised for suggesting that moral virtue as observed in regular life is simply the manipulation of common men by “the Leaders of Mankind” for “the Defence of any State”.[69] Hutcheson dismisses this claim by recourse to an appeal to our internal sentiment of approbation and approval for actions which do not benefit ourselves, and by arguing that even when a long chain of consequences is revealed by reason to yield personal advantage all this shows is that our moral sense approves of actions to the public good more quickly and efficiently than any self-interested calculation. Accordingly, “the Perception of moral Good is not deriv’d from Custom, Education, Example, or Study” – an oblique rejection of point 3, and a direct rejection of point 6 in our Mandevillean schema.[70]

In closing Section I Hutcheson re-states his position that a benevolent creator-designer has ordered our constitutions to our best advantage, but extends the claim in an important way. In the same manner that God gave us a sense of beauty, “he has given us a Moral Sense, to direct our Actions, and to give us still nobler Pleasures; so that while we are only intending the Good of others, we undesignedly promote our own greatest private Good”.[71] This is significant. In part it is a redeployment of the double manoeuvre deployed against Mandeville in Treatise I: not only is the stark Augustinian view of God wrong, it is also mistaken about the divinely-constituted nature of man, and therefore mistaken regarding the relationship between man and God (points 1 and 2 are accordingly impugned). But we should also notice that Hutcheson adds that in intending only the good of others we “undesignedly” promote our own greatest private good. This addition is clearly under-explained (though Hutcheson will have more to say about it later), but the implication is important: if we promote our own private good when acting morally, as well as promoting the good of others, and yet do so without deliberately seeking to further our own self-interest, then not only can the force of points 4 and 5 in the Mandevillean schema be resisted, but the stark trade-off between virtue and utility that Mandeville proposed for modern man and society starts to lose its bite; a path of resistance to point 8 is opened, if not at this stage walked.

Hutcheson proceeds to build on the basic account as laid down in Section I in Sections II and III in particular (Section IV is occupied with to showing that the moral sense provides a universal foundation of moral judgement despite ostensible divergence in ethical practices and valuations). The most salient aspects of Sections II and III are as follows.

In Section II, whilst oscillating between an emphasis on actions or motivations, Hutcheson nonetheless identifies “love” and “hatred” as the most important moral affections, and proceeds to explore their relation to self-interest. Of particular importance is Hutcheson’s claim that love is always and by necessity disinterested, and he here moves (somewhat confusingly) to largely equate love with benevolence, both of which are inherently affections which presuppose disinterest. On the other hand, Hutcheson observes that malice (which, again confusingly, appears at least partially equated to hatred) is never disinterested: it is only aroused by the threat some other agent poses to our own interests, and as soon as that threat dissipates so must our malice.[72] Although it is possible for self-interest to overpower motivations to love and benevolence, the point is that conceptually the latter cannot be reduced to the former. This is significant: Hutcheson thereby claims that disinterested action is perfectly possible, whilst claiming that malice and hatred are merely temporary dispositions dependent on contingent circumstances of threat to individual interest. As a result human psychology is not as Mandeville had depicted it (i.e. points 2 and 3 above are exposed as empirically false), and Mandeville was mistaken in thinking that all actions of putative virtue could be traced back to (hidden) self-interest (an oblique rejection of 6, and the Mandevillean upshots of 5): “Benevolence supposes a Being capable of Virtue. We judge of other rational Agents by our selves. The human Nature is a lovely Form; we are all conscious of some morally good Qualitys and Inclinations in our selves, how partial and imperfect soever they may be: we presume the same of every thing in human Form, nay almost every living Creature”.[73]

Hutcheson proceeds to consider various arguments that moral approbation is nonetheless founded in self-interest – not least the claim that we act out of self-interested fear that God will punish our transgressions – and rejects each by either showing them to be implausible, refuted by experience, or claiming they presuppose an antecedent moral sense, whilst repeating an emphasis on the role of a benevolent creator-designer.[74] Hutcheson then considers the argument that we do good actions to achieve the concomitant pleasure we experience from virtuous behaviour (i.e. the second ethical position – probably that of Shaftesbury – identified at the outset of Treatise II). This is judged implausible on the grounds that our motivation to, or approval of, moral goodness is instantaneous and undertaken without calculation, whilst a desire to pursue the morally good and take pleasure in it presupposes an ability to first discern that which is morally good. From all this Hutcheson concludes that we have supplementary evidence for the moral sense.[75] Explicitly disputing Mandeville’s theory of the gradual development of a mother’s love for her offspring, Hutcheson further concludes that just as benevolence can be felt from a parent towards a child, similar – though less intense – feelings are possible between human beings of more distant relation.[76]

In Section III Hutcheson seeks to unify his reflections on disinterested benevolence in Section II with the theory of the moral sense as presented in Section I. He begins by claiming that all actions counted “amiable” are in fact founded upon benevolence, at least in the opinion of the person approving them. Furthermore, he thinks that we shall never find anything amiable in any “Action whatsoever, where there is no Benevolence”. Even actions which are exceedingly useful shall appear void of moral beauty if we know they proceeded from “no kind Intentions towards others; and yet an unsuccessful Attempt of Kindness, or of promoting publick Good, shall appear as amiable as the most successful, if it flow’d from as strong Benevolence”.[77] As well as again oscillating between an emphasis on action and motivation, Hutcheson here moves to make a stronger claim than he has so far explicitly stated: that some benevolence in an action (or intention) must always be discerned in order for moral approbation to be aroused. Again, God’s benevolence is appealed to in support of this general position; a divine benevolence which is itself taken to be further evinced by our possessing dispositions to benevolence. (We also learn that God has made it so that we automatically experience gratitude at the benevolence of others, and this gratitude is pleasing to the benefactor in a mutually complementary process of encouragement to benevolence and virtue.)[78]

The above allows Hutcheson to make an important identification in his theory: the conjoining of disinterested benevolence and his theory of the moral sense. In turn, Hutcheson concludes that the foundation of morality lies in the promotion of the public good, itself identified with disinterested benevolence:

Again, that we may see how Love, or Benevolence, is the Foundation of all apprehended Excellence in social Virtues, let us only observe, That amidst the diversity of Sentiments on this Head among various Sects, this is still allow’d to be the way of deciding the Controversy about any disputed Practice, viz. to enquire whether this Conduct, or the contrary, will most effectually promote the publick Good. The Morality is immediately adjusted, when the natural Tendency, or Influence of the Action upon the universal natural Good of Mankind is agreed upon. That which produces more Good than Evil in the Whole, is acknowledg’d Good; and what does not, is counted Evil. In this Case, we no other way regard the good of the Actor, or that of those who are thus enquiring, than as they make a Part of the great System.

 

Whether Hutcheson’s is a just piece of philosophical reasoning is again beside the point: what matters is his purported conclusion that not only do we possess a moral sense not founded upon self-interest, but that the moral sense perceives (and in some manner, motivates) actions geared towards general public benefit. By making this identification, Hutcheson not only reinforces his rejection of the Mandevillean points 2-6, he also rejects Mandeville’s provocative suggestion of a necessary trade-off between virtue and utility, and the undergirding claim that modern society is riven by the paradox of private vices/public benefits (i.e. points 7 and 8). If the foundation of morality lies in a moral sense discerning benevolence as identified with public good, then there can be no virtue/utility trade-off. Certainly, Hutcheson does not at this stage engage explicitly with the Mandevillean economic-cum-ethical thesis about the role of luxury in modern society. But this is precisely because he instead undercuts that entire thesis by denying the very possibility of an over-arching utility/virtue trade-off of the sort Mandeville envisaged.

The bulk of the rest of Section III is given over to refining Hutcheson’s position, whilst admitting that there is some role for self-interest to play, as indeed our benevolent creator gave this to us in order to ensure our competence for basic survival. But although self-interest can overpower disinterested benevolence, it nonetheless remains that the moral sense (or benevolence – the growing complexity of Hutcheson’s account makes his theory ever more difficult to get a firm grip on) is primary and antecedent to self-interest in forming moral judgements and undertaking moral actions.[79] Similarly God has deliberately equipped us with greater dispositions of benevolence towards our children and close relations than strangers, as this operates to the maximal advantage of social relations between all, particularly with regards to generating gratitude.[80] In Section III Hutcheson also offers a discussion of what can not unreasonably be described as proto-utilitarianism, including something like a distinction between act and rule utilitarianism and even a statement of the principle of the greatest happiness of the greatest number.[81] Hutcheson here also introduces his attempt at a moral calculation promised in his original subtitle, and based on the proceeding reasoning. Though this somewhat esoteric excursus need not detain us long, two things are worth noting. Firstly, we see that at this stage Hutcheson still largely accepts the opposition of virtue and self-interest. As Pierre Force notes: “For Hutcheson, the moral worth of an action can be computed precisely by looking at the quantity of self-interest and benevolence that goes into it, and by assessing whether there is a conflict between the selfish motive and the benevolent motive”; “If self-interest and benevolence converge, the moral worth of the action is diminished by the quantity of self-interest that goes into it”.[82] Secondly, by suggesting such a calculation Hutcheson is positing an immutability of moral subjects which puts them on a par with mathematical truth, thereby denying the ethical relativism implicit in much of Mandeville’s thought (particularly that centring on point 6).

Hutcheson closes Section III with, once more, an appeal to a benevolent creator-designer, noting that “I see no harm in supposing, that Men are naturally dispos’d to Virtue, and not left merely indifferent, to be ingag’d in Actions only as they appear to their own private Good”.[83] He also adds that insofar as there is a role for reason or self-interest in moral subjects, it is specifically granted by God to promote benevolence as “our greatest Happiness”. Hutcheson thereby denies both the Mandevillean claim that virtue requires self-denial, and the larger claim of a fundamental virtue/utility trade-off. But he is nonetheless at this stage still broadly committed to the basic Mandevillean tenet that self-interest is incompatible with virtue:

Not that we can be truly Virtuous, if we intend only to obtain the Pleasure which accompanies Beneficence, without the Love of others: Nay, this very Pleasure is founded on our being conscious of disinterested Love to others, as the Spring of our Actions. But Self-Interest may be our Motive, in chusing to continue in this agreeable State, tho it cannot be the sole, or principal Motive of any Action, which to our moral Sense appears Virtuous.[84]

 

At this stage of Treatise II, Hutcheson simply takes himself to have effectively defused point 5, insofar as he has shown it to be empirically false that humans only act from self-interest in lieu of divine grace. What I now wish to show is that in the latter parts of the Inquiry Hutcheson attempts (somewhat problematically) to move beyond this self-interest contra virtue paradigm.

 

Virtue and the Highest Pleasure

Section V of Treatise II constitutes an explicit engagement with what I have designated point 6 in the Mandevillean schema, specifically with Mandeville’s suggestion that social virtue consists in the manipulation of fallen man’s pride via artificial mechanisms of honour and shame. Hutcheson’s argues that both honour and shame presuppose the operation of a moral sense responsive to benevolent actions promoting the public good.[85] In doing so, he is forced to make complicated and not entirely convincing recourse to the operation of the moral sense in picking out intentions to promote public good, so as to counter arguments that honour is built on a self-interested approval of any actions (even eminently selfish ones) that per chance promote general utility.[86] Regardless, by arguing that honour and shame presuppose a moral sense, not only does Hutcheson counter point 6, he also moves to counter point 3, insofar as man on his understanding is not propelled solely by the operations of pride. Furthermore, pride is explicitly identified as being a potential virtue (whereas for Mandeville it was the surest indication of hidden or explicit vice), as Hutcheson now begins to move beyond the virtue contra self-interest framework.

Specifically, Hutcheson notes that “Wealth and Power” are the “great Engines of Virtue, when intended for benevolent Purposes” and indeed “procure Honour from others and are apt to beget Pride in the Possessor; which, as it is a general Passion which may be either good or evil, according as it is grounded, we may describe to be the Joy which arises from the real or imagin’d Possession of Honour, or Claim to it”.[87] By making this statement Hutcheson also affects an important move against point 7: wealth and power (i.e. luxury) need not necessitate a trade-off with virtue. Yet Hutcheson develops this point, albeit hesitatingly, in order to begin to stake out a position whereby it is acceptable to pursue wealth and power from the self-interested pleasure that these bring, without necessarily forfeiting any claim to virtue. Although Hutcheson maintains that if self-interest is revealed as the only motive to an action then the moral sense withdraws approbation – and thus remains consistent with the closing remarks of section III above – he begins to move in a subtly new direction. First, he notes that we “are not asham’d of any of the Methods of Grandeur, or high-Living”, and proceeds to justify this. Observing that “high living” involves a mixture of benevolence towards others, “Abilitys kindly emply’d”, the supporting of dependents, entertaining and assisting of friends and so on, he justifies our tendency even to boast of our own greatness: “Were it not for this Conjunction of moral Ideas, no Mortal could bear the Drudgery of State, or abstain from laughing at those who did”.[88] That is, taking self-interested pleasure in ostentatious actions of greatness is explained and justified because without such self-interested pleasure no such concomitant actions promoting wider public utility would be performed; “The Shame we suffer from the Meanness of Dress, Table, Equipage, is entirely owing to the same reason”.[89]

Opposing those “reculse Philosophers…who pique themselves upon despising these external Shews [of greatness]”, Hutcheson suggests that there is nothing wrong with taking self-interested pleasure in displays of status and opulence.[90] Gratifying our “superior Senses of Beauty and Harmony, or the Enjoyment of the Pleasure of Knowledge, never occasions any Shame or Confusion, though our Enjoyment were known to all the World”, because the objects which give us these pleasures are available to all to share in. “So that altho we pursue these Enjoyments from Self-love, yet since our Enjoyment cannot be prejudicial to others, no Man is imagin’d any way inhumanly selfish, from the fullest Enjoyment of them which is possible”.[91]On the other hand, men are uneasy about being praised in their own presence because they are aware that the pleasure they take in this cannot be shared by others, and this selfish enjoyment of pleasure will be ill-perceived by their neighbours insofar as it affronts their moral sense. Hutcheson is admittedly not wholly clear in his reasoning here, but it is important to note that a subtle development has been made in his position. As well as denying the Mandevillean claim that we hide our pleasures from being praise because of complex processes of socialisation designed to avoid piquing the violent pride of others, Hutcheson has also (at least in part) shifted his stance on the relation between self-interest and virtue. Whereas earlier Hutcheson was committed to saying that although some measure of self-interest might accompany actions (or intentions) that were approved virtuous by the moral sense so long as self-interest was not the sole motivation to action and benevolence was present, he has now openly acknowledged the possibility that even actions done wholly from self-interest need not therefore be esteemed vicious “since our Enjoyment cannot be prejudicial to others”. Hutcheson’s evaluative position has thus broadened: self-interest does not necessitate vice, provided that self-interest has no harmful effects upon others. Accordingly, the possibility is opened that if such self-interest has positively beneficial consequences, it can actually be welcomed as promoting not just the greatness of the individual but the benefits of his peers too – without falling into the private vice/public benefits trap Mandeville had laid. Thus, in effecting to counter points 6, 7 and 8, Hutcheson subtly develops his system’s conceptual relationship to point 5. And whilst this development is, at this stage of Treatise II, not wholly unambiguous or entirely under control, it is more clearly developed in sections VI and VII.

After noting that self-interest and partial views of the public good can overcome the influence of the moral sense, Hutcheson in Section VI sets out to “consider the moral Pleasures, not only separately, but as they are the most delightful Ingredient in the ordinary Pleasure of Life”.[92] Indeed, he now puts forward an especially bold thesis: that “All Men seem persuaded of some Excellency in the Possession of good moral Qualitys, which is superior to all other Enjoyments; and on the contrary, look upon a State of moral Evil, as worse and more wretched than any other whatsoever”.[93]

Hutcheson sets out to substantiate this claim by a variety of appeals. Firstly, he notes that the pleasures derived from the external senses are transient and fleeting, concluding that “This Frame of our Nature, so incapable of long Enjoyments of the external Senses” demonstrated that “there must be some other more durable Pleasure, without such tedious interruptions, and nauseous Reflections”.[94] Secondly, Hutcheson believes that reflection upon our internal sentiment reveals that we are repulsed by those who have many external goods but lack moral goodness.[95] Thirdly, if we look at the depictions of the ancient heroes we see that they are all made to suffer the thirst, hunger, poverty, pain and danger of external deprivation, but are nonetheless brought to the “highest Pitch of Happiness” through their endurance and eventual attainment of a higher pleasure: indeed “Where there is no Virtue, there is nothing worth Desire or Contemplation; the Romance or Epos must end”, and “where Virtue ceases, there remains nothing worth wishing to our Favourite, or which we can be delighted to view his Possession of, when we are most studious of his Happiness”.[96] Hutcheson claims that we wish virtue to our heroes more than we do external comfort and satisfaction, indicating that we “prefer the Possession of Virtue to all other Enjoyments, and how we look upon Vice as worse than any other Misery”, whereby Hutcheson apparently draws the inference that virtue is therefore the highest happiness, and vice the worst misery.[97]

Following these examples, Hutcheson then makes an important claim about the relation between virtue, happiness and human sociability (the naturalness of which Mandeville had so provocatively denied). Firstly, were there no moral sense, and were we to act only from self-interest, “there is no Pleasure of the external Senses which we could not enjoy alone, with less trouble and expence than in Society”. But it is the pleasure of benevolence and society with others that we prize above selfish sensual gratification:

But to convince us further wherein the Happiness of Wealth, and external Pleasure lies; let us but suppose Malice, Wrath, Revenge; or only Solitude, Absence of Friendship, of Love, of Society, of Esteem, join’d with the Possession of them; and all the Happiness vanishes like a Dream. And yet Love, Friendship, Society, Humanity, tho accompany’d with Poverty and Toil, nay even with smaller degrees of Pain, such as do not wholly occupy the Mind, are not only the Object of Love from others, but even of a sort of Emulation: which plainly shews, “That Virtue is the chief Happiness in the Judgment of all Mankind”.[98]

 

The anti-Mandevillean implications contained in Hutcheson’s position should be clear: the virtue/utility trade-off is denied, insofar as the “chief happiness” of the virtuous agent and that agent’s virtue coincide. Accordingly, not only is Mandeville wrong about man’s natural unsociability (i.e. point 3), but furthermore Hutcheson is now able to move beyond the framework underwriting point 5, whereby a motivation of self-interest renders virtue necessarily fraudulent. This is demonstrated most clearly when Hutcheson turns in his final section VII to summarise his position before closing his treatise with an enumeration of political principles he takes to be deduced from the moral sense.[99]

After briefly reflecting upon the nature of moral obligation both independently and in relation to the will of a divine being, Hutcheson proposes to summarise “the principal Business of the moral Philosopher”. This, he tells us, is to demonstrate that “universal Benevolence tends to the Happiness of the Benevolent, either from the Pleasures of Reflection, Honour, natural Tendency to engage the good Offices of Men, upon whose Aid we must depend for our Happiness in this World; or from the Sanctions of divine Laws discover’d to us by the Constitution of the Universe”.[100] Hutcheson continues to maintain that self-interest cannot itself ground benevolence, and therefore true moral virtue is not reducible to self-interest. But he now moves to admit a role for a form of self-interest acting harmoniously with truly virtuous conduct:

Let the Obstacles from Self-love be only remov’d, and Nature it self will incline us to Benevolence. Let the Misery of excessive Selfishness, and all its Passions, be but once explain’d, that so Self-love may cease to counteract our natural Propensity to Benevolence, and when this noble Disposition gets loose from these Bonds of Ignorance, and false Views of Interest, it shall be assisted even by Self-love, and grow strong enough to make a noble virtuous Character.[101]

 

That is, because acting virtuously – i.e. being benevolent – is also our own highest good, when we get clear about our own highest form of self-interest this dovetails with acting benevolently, which is itself the true ground of virtue. And indeed, is this not precisely what we should expect from a benevolent God who has ordered things in our best interests? “Virtue it self, or good Dispositions of Mind, are not directly taught, or produc’d by Instruction; they must be originally implanted in our Nature, by its great Author; and afterwards strengthen’d and confirm’d by our own Cultivation”.[102] Although our more immediate selfishness, that is our “ignorant” and “false Views of Interest”, is incompatible with true virtue, in the final – what we might call, higher –instance, self-interest and virtue coincide harmoniously.

Thus by the end of the Inquiry Hutcheson moves some way beyond Mandeville’s framework of self-interest contra virtue, completing his repudiation of the concomitant aspects of the entire Mandevillean thesis as sketched at the outset. Certainly, this development is not entirely neat, and there are shades of Hutcheson’s final position in the earlier sections of the Inquiry, meaning a certain level of internal tension is present throughout. (It seems to me likely that Hutcheson was not entirely conscious, or fully in control, of the structure of his conceptual apparatus or of its developmental shift vis-à-vis the role of self-interest, and this is reflected in the untidiness of some of his exposition.) It also remains an open question whether Hutcheson’s concluding position that virtue and (higher) self-interest dovetail is entirely consistent with his stated expression at the outset to show that morality is founded in “an entirely different Principle of Action from Interest or Self-Love”. But I submit that this move towards a final identification of (higher) self-interest and virtue is integral to understanding the overall nature of Hutcheson’s attempted repudiation of Mandeville’s philosophical system and worldview.

And this discovery should not be surprising. The Inquiry, after all, was originally introduced not just with a promise to defend the principles of Shaftesbury from the attacks of Mandeville, but to establish the ideas of moral good and evil “according to the Sentiments of the Antient Moralists”. A persistent theme of ancient moral philosophy – found famously in Plato and Aristotle, but for present purposes far more importantly in the Stoic philosophers so admired by Hutcheson[103] – being precisely that in the last instance virtue itself constitutes the highest good of the virtuous agent.[104]

Indeed we can now bring into focus something which has been latent in the above: that Mandeville’s Fable rests upon a dual foundation of not just Augustinianism, but of the modernised Epicureanism of Gassendi.[105] In Mandeville, Augustinian and Epicurean elements are fused together to constitute a worldview in which man is driven by his seeking of pleasure, and whereby moral virtue in its everyday socialised form is a function of man’s more primary motivation to seek and attain pleasure, particularly via reflective status in the estimation of others as a form of successfully-achieved competitive domination.[106] By contrast, when Hutcheson moves to equate virtue with man’s highest good, he identifies his final position as a form of neo-Stoicism. This is coupled with a rejection of Augustinian theology to constitute not just an attempted refutation of Mandeville’s arguments, but the construction of an entirely different and opposed philosophical worldview. In short, and to summarise the findings of the above, Hutcheson’s Inquiry can be usefully analysed into two complementary (though not wholly or clearly distinct) core parts. First, Hutcheson accepts Mandeville’s conceptual opposition of virtue and self-interest, and seeks to show that thanks to the providence of a benevolent God human beings are capable of benevolence, hence disinterested – and thereby virtuous – action is possible for ordinary men, falsifying Mandeville’s claim that truly moral action in lieu of God’s grace is impossible. Second, after working within Mandeville’s framework and attempting to show its failings by rejecting its underpinning Augustinianism, Hutcheson moves beyond the framework and appeals to Stoic principles of the final identification of virtue and the highest happiness of the virtuous agent. He thereby resists the fusion of Christianised Epicurean and Augustinian principles which led Mandeville to claim that mere fallen man solicitous of pleasing only himself faces an unavoidable trade-off between true virtue and utility. Instead Hutcheson enacts an anti-Augustinian Christian and Stoic Weltanschauung of God, man and society, and in turn a very different understanding of the possibilities for morality as it is found at the intersection between all three.[107]

 

Conclusion

This essay has hopefully established two things in particular. Firstly, the extent to which Hutcheson’s Inquiry is a prolonged and sustained engagement with the entire philosophical worldview of God, man and society put forward by Mandeville. Secondly, the extraordinary complexity which this engenders in Hutcheson’s relatively slim volume, the shortness of which belies the density of multi-layered argument. No doubt there is much else to say besides what has been sketched above – but I hope to have demonstrated that Hutcheson cannot be understood without recognising the Inquiry as a highly contextually-conditioned intervention, something which must become ever plainer when further influxes of influence are identified and explored.

I stated at the outset that I would have something to say about those scholarly treatments that purport to fit Hutcheson’s moral theory along a contemporary schema of metaethical classification. The most prominent proponent of this is David Fate Norton, who has repeatedly urged that we read Hutcheson as a “moral realist”. Unsurprisingly, much turns on what is meant by “moral realist”. For Norton, in Hutcheson’s writings it means a combination of at least two elements: i) a commitment to the “reality” of a distinction between vice and virtue, and ii) a connected rejection of the “egoism” of Hobbes and Mandeville (who are normally treated as holding synonymous positions).[108] Thus in a typical phrase, Norton asserts that our “ideas of virtue and vice…are representative of external or objective moral reality. When we experience these kinds of ideas together…we have an idea of moral objects, or moral knowledge”.[109]

At a certain level Norton is not mistaken. As I have been at pains to demonstrate above, Hutcheson’s system is undergirded by recourse to a benevolent designer-creator who guarantees the binding, objective status of not just moral, but also aesthetic, values. But as a result, the status of Hutcheson’s alleged “cognitivism” is dependent upon Hutcheson’s views of a benevolent deity: if Hutcheson is a “moral realist”, it is because he is a very specific sort of theist. Having said that, however, Peter Kail has demonstrated that even if we grant to Norton that Hutcheson’s moral theory maintains a “reality” of distinction between vice and virtue whilst denying the “egoism” of Hobbes and Mandeville (i.e. the claim that morality can in all instances be traced back to self-interest), it does not follow that Hutcheson is therefore in any straightforward or helpful sense best labelled a “moral realist” in the modern sense. As Kail shows, that term is extremely ambiguous and must be carefully specified to track varying philosophical positions if it is to do any useful conceptual work. But when this is done, Hutcheson’s complex theory of moral sense is such that “we can secure an ‘is good/seems good’ distinction in both aesthetics and morality in Hutcheson’s thought without imputing to him a recognisably realist theory”.[110] In essence, describing Hutcheson as a “moral realist” simply does not tell us anything useful.

There is no one component of Hutcheson’s system that can be usefully or faithfully separated and put to work autonomously. Even in this first work taken alone, Hutcheson is offering a philosophical system constructed in large measure as a response to a highly sophisticated and provocative rival worldview. Whether Hutcheson’s philosophy is an example of what contemporary moral theorists call “moral realism”, or “emotivism”, or whatever, is both a relatively uninteresting, and in some ways actively unhelpful, question. The more interesting question is: what was the nature and purpose of the system Hutcheson put forward, and to what extent did this system succeed or fail as part of a complex multi-layered engagement with an entire rival view of the world? Once that larger question has begun to be addressed we can usefully examine constitutive components of theory to assess their standing within a wider conceptual framework. But to proceed by first presuming to pick-out supposedly self-sustaining units of theory in vacuo seems guaranteed to lead, if not to outright misunderstanding, then at least to a stunted and limited appreciation of the sheer intellectual complexity that must accompany any serious and sustained philosophical intervention.[111] Clearly, the above has only scratched the surface of this more interesting wider question – but it is, I hope, a scratch worth making.

This is not to say, however, that Hutcheson’s writing has no value for those interested in questions of morality today. Those readers who hope that “Hutcheson may be more important at the present time if he is not merely an emotivist, but is additionally an intuitionist or naturalist – a philosopher…who attempted to find a valid answer to the challenge of moral cynicism and cultural relativism” can certainly learn something from Hutcheson – though the results may be rather more dispiriting than initially hoped.[112] For it should be clear that the Mandevillean thesis sketched above in many ways represents the fundamental challenge for the possibility of a morality impervious to debilitating scepticism in conditions of secular commercial modernity. After all, if one replaces “mere fallen man” with “economic man”, then the challenges of accounting for the possibility of genuine moral virtue not founded upon competitive self-interest, and in turn the possibility of great and flourishing societies not bought at the expense of the normalization of greed, status-competition and private self-seeking, quite clearly remain.[113] Hutcheson offered one way to escape the Mandevillean vision. But as should now be clear that way can be taken only by those willing to embrace his deep theological commitments, his connected and complex theory of moral sense (which appears inherently unstable and epistemologically suspect), and in the last instance an appeal to the harmonious identity of virtue and self-interest about which there are good reasons to be dubious.[114] Hutcheson’s successors in the Scottish Enlightenment – most notably Hume and Smith with their theories of sentiment and sympathy – offered alternative attempts to escape the Mandevillean picture. It perhaps remains to be seen whether any of them finally succeeded in providing a satisfactory answer. And where, indeed, that leaves us today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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1 Comment »

1. 

   On Writing, and Myself. « Bad Conscience said,

   June 12, 2011 at 11:16 pm

   [...] wrote that piece at nobody’s behest and for nobody’s benefit (though what the hell, here’s an upload). The thing is, I still enjoyed writing it. It allowed me to work out a few conceptual moves, and [...]

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