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Profile Author:
Knud Haakonssen
Last Update:
2026-06-19
Status:
Reviewed
Hutcheson, Francis (* 1694.08.08 † 1746.08.08)
Basic Overview Data
Born
1694.08.08, Saintfield [Drumalig is near Saintfield, County Down, Ireland]
Died
1746.08.08, Dublin [Hutcheson died during a visit to Dublin]
Confession
Calvinist, moderate Presbyterian
Institutional Affiliation
University of Glasgow
Normdata
VIAF: 51735420
Important Family Relations
Father, John Hutcheson (? - 1729), Presbyterian minister
Son, Francis Hutcheson (1721.08.13 - 1780), Physician (Francis Hutcheson was the nominal editor of his father's posthumous A System of Moral Philosophy. He composed songs under the pseudonym Francis Ireland)
Biographical and Intellectual Profile
Biography
Francis Hutcheson was born into a family of Presbyterian clergy in Drumalig, co. Down, Northern Ireland and was himself destined for the Dissenting ministry. Schooled locally at Saintfield and at a Dissenting academy run by the Rev. James McAlpine in Killyleagh, he went to the University of Glasgow in 1710 or 11. As was common, the academy had prepared him so that he could skip the first years at the University, and he followed only the final year (logic). After a year of studying classical literature, he proceeded to divinity. Hutcheson left Glasgow in 1718 and returned to Ulster to become a probationer at a Presbyterian congregation but never entered the ministry. Instead he set up his own academy in Dublin for Presbyterian and other non-conformist students from the circles in Ireland that objected to the obligation of ministers to subscribe to the Westminster Confession of Faith. In Dublin he cultivated several connections with clergymen in the Church of Ireland, and his association with the aestheticising moral ideas of Shaftesbury and neo-republican ideas was reinforced by acquaintance with Robert, Viscount Molesworth. In this situation Hutcheson published the works in moral philosophy that made him famous, An Inquiry into our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725) and An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, with Illustrations on the Moral Sense (1728). In 1730 he took up the chair of moral philosophy at Glasgow in succession to Gershom Carmichael. In this position he attracted a significant body of students, some of whom in turn became very influential, not least Adam Smith. In Glasgow Hutcheson became controversial because his liberal theology offended orthodox Calvinists in the community and in the student body. He was also caught up in the in-fighting of his colleagues in the faculty. A dab hand at handling such controversies, he engaged in them to support what he considered the cause of moral decency and public good. This included not least the promotion of the careers of his associates. In addition, he was instrumental in the creation of a university press by two of his former students and allies, the brothers Foulis.
Comment on main natural law works
Hutcheson formulated the idea that morality is perceived by a distinct sense that at the same time enables us to cultivate disinterested passions and thus to become virtuous. On this basis he rejected a wide variety of self-interest theories of morals, including what he saw as the leading natural law theories of Pufendorf and Cumberland. Nevertheless, he sought ways of combining moral sense theory with natural law and this became a dominant concern in his academic textbook, Philosophiae moralis institutio compendiaria, and especially in the posthumously published major synthesis of his ideas, the System of Moral Philosophy. The connecting link was that natural law functioned as a guide to the moral sense to avoid distortions away from the common good of humanity and thus towards the moral perfection that was the realisation of our moral potential as evidenced by the happiness arising from this effort. It has been suggested that Hutcheson in the early Inquiry saw natural rights as based purely on the indications by the moral sense of what could rightfully be done. This is controversial but if this was the intention in the Inquiry, the later two works offered a significant revision, for there the prima facieperceptions of the moral sense are subject to validation by the law of nature.
Comment on profile’s conception of natural law
Hutcheson attempted to combine two different modes of moral philosophy, on the one hand a theory of virtue as perceived by a special moral sense, and on the other hand the idea of morals as a matter of duties and rights governed by a law and subject to sanctions. The former became fundamental to the concern with moral psychology that is characteristic of eighteenth-century moral theory and the best remembered aspect of it. The juridical mode has been far less studied, even though it was the combination of the two modes that was the basis for the practical social and political moralising of the period. What is more, it was the virtue theory that enabled Hutcheson and others to combine a third practical language with natural law, namely neo-republican political ideas.
Biographical Data
Education
1707 - ../1711.03.03, Philosophy, Dissenting Academy Killyleagh [James McAlpine]
1711.03.03 - 1712, Philosophy, University of Glasgow [John Louden] (The date on which a student was registered was not necessarily at the beginning of his studies. This was probably the case with Hutcheson.)
1712 - 1718, Theology, University of Glasgow [John Simson]
Degrees
1712.11.14, Magister artium, University of Glasgow
1746, Doctor of law, University of St. Andrews
Teaching
1720\.., "General arts", Dissenting Academy
1730-1746, "Moral philosophy", lectures, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Glasgow
Career
172x - 1730, Leader of the academy, Dissenting Academy (Very little is known about the academy that Hutcheson ran in Dublin. These institutions were generally small and quite informal compared with universities)
1730 - 1746, Professor of moral philosophy, University of Glasgow, Faculty of Philosophy
Titles, Memberships and Other Relevant Roles
1720\.., Founder, Dissenting Academy, Dublin
Bibliographical Data
Printed Sources
Books
An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue in Two Treatises (Dublin: William and John Smith, 1725).
- 1726, 2nd edition (London: J. Darby et al.).
- 1729, 3rd edition (London: J. and J. Knapton et al.).
- 1738, 4th edition (London: D. Midwinter et al.).
- 2008 [Re-edition by Wolfgang Leidhold, 2nd ed.] (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund). The several variant versions of both the 1st and 4th editions are recorded in this re-edition.
An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, with Illustrations on the Moral Sense (Dublin: John Smith and William Bruce, 1728).
- 1730, 2nd edition (London: James and John Knapton et al.).
- 1742, 3rd edition with Additions (London: A. Ward et al.).
- 2002 [Re-edition by Aaron Garrett] (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund).
De naturali hominum socialitate oratio inauguralis (Glasgow [printed for the University], 1730).
- 1756, Re-issue.
- English trans. in Logic, Metaphysics and the Natural Sociability of Man, p. 189-216.
Considerations on Patronages. Addressed to the Gentlemen of Scotland (London: J. Roberts, 1735).
Metaphysicae synopsis: ontologiam, et pneumatologiam complectens (Glasgow: Robert Foulis, 1742).
- 1744, 2nd edition (Glasgow).
- 1749, Re-issue.
- 1756, Re-issue.
- 1762, Re-issue.
- 1774, Re-issue.
- 1780, Re-issue.
- English trans. in Logic, Metaphysics and the Natural Sociability of Man, p. 57-187.
Philosophiae moralis institutio compendiaria. Ethices et jurisprudentiae naturalis elementa continens (Glasgow: Robert Foulis, 1742).
- 1745, 2nd edition (Glasgow).
- 1755, Re-issue
- English translation as, A Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy, in three Books; Containing the Elements of Ethicks and the Law of Nature, trans. anon. (Glasgow: Robert Foulis, 1747).
- 1753, Re-issue.
- 1764, Re-issue.
- 1772, Re-issue.
- 2007 [Re-edition of the Latin and English text together by Luigi Turco] (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund).
[with James Moor], The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus new translated from the Greek with Notes; and and Account of His Life (Glasgow: Robert Foulis, 1742).
- 1749, 2nd edition.
- 1752, Re-issue.
- 1752, Re-issue.
- 1764, Re-issue.
Re-edition by James Moore and Michael Silverthorne, Indianapolis, in Liberty Fund, 2008.
A System of Moral Philosophy, in three Books, Glasgow: Robert Foulis, 1755.
- 2025 [Re-edition by Knud Haakonssen and Christian Maurer] (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund).
Logicae compendium. Praefixa est dissertatio de philosophiae origine, ejusque inventoribus aut excultoribus praecipuis (Glasgow: Robert and Andrew Foulis, 1756).
- 1759, Re-issue.
- 1764, Re-issue.
- 1772, Re-issue.
- 1778, Re-issue.
- 1787, Re-issue.
- English trans., in Logic, Metaphysics and the Natural Sociability of Man, p. 1-56.
Collected Works, facsimile editions prepared by Bernhard Fabian, 7 vols. (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1969-71).
Logic, Metaphysics and the Natural Sociability of Mankind, ed. James Moore and Michael Silverthorne (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2006).
Correspondence and Occasional Writings, ed. James Moore and M. A. Stewart (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2022).
Periodica and Other Works
Letters between the Late Mr. Gilbert Burnet, and Mr. Hutchinson, concerning the True Foundation of Virtue or Moral Goodness (London: P. Wilkins, 1735), containing correspondence in the London Journal in 1725-26.
- 2022, Re-edition in Correspondence and Occasional Writings, ed. James Moore and M. A. Stewart (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund).
Reflections upon Laughter, Dublin Weekly Journal, June 1725.
- 2022, Re-edition in Correspondence and Occasional Writings, ed. James Moore and M. A. Stewart (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund).
Remarks on the Fable of the Bees, Dublin Weekly Journal, February 1725/26.
- 2022, Re-edition in Correspondence and Occasional Writings, ed. James Moore and M. A. Stewart (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund).
Ego-Documents and Biographical Materials
Private Correspondence, in Correspondence and Occasional Writings, ed. James Moore and M. A. Stewart (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2022).
Manuscript Sources
Manuscripts
The manuscript of A System of Moral Philosophy: Glasgow University Library, GB 247 MS Gen. 110
Correspondence
For Hutcheson's private correspondence, see Correspondence and Occasional Writings, ed. James Moore and M. A. Stewart (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2022).
Natural Law Network
Personal Connections
Gershom Carmichael [Carmichael was Hutcheson's predecessor as professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow. There is no record of direct contact between the two while Hutcheson was a student in Glasgow]
Adam Smith, Glasgow [Student of Hutcheson, 1737-1740]
References and Acknowledgement
Profile References
Literature
Leechman, William: Preface, in Hutcheson, A System of Moral Philosophy, in three Books (Glasgow: Foulis, 1755).
Scott, William Robert: Francis Hutcheson: His Life, Teaching and Position in the History of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900).
Gaskell, Philip: A Bibliography of the Foulis Press, 2nd ed. (Winchester, Hamps.: St. Paul’s Bibliographies, 1986).
McBride, Ian: “The School of Virtue. Francis Hutcheson, Irish Presbyterians and the Scottish Enlightenment” in (ed.) D. George Boyce, Robert Eccleshall, Robert Eccleshall and Vincent Geoghegan, Political Thought in Ireland Since the Seventeenth Century (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 73-99.
Moore, James and Michael Silverthorne, “Hutcheson’s LL.D.” in Eighteenth-Century Scotland, 20 (2006): 10-12
Haakonssen, Knud & Christian Maurer: “Introduction” in Hutcheson, A System of Moral Philosophy (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2025).
Sources
Addison, W. Innes: The Matriculation Albums of the University of Glasgow. From 1728 to 1858 (Glasgow: James Maclehose and Sons, 1913).
Acknowledgement
Profile Author:
Knud Haakonssen
How to Cite This Profile
Haakonssen, Knud (2022), "Francis Hutcheson" in Natural Law 1625-1850: Database, ed. Mikkel Munthe Jensen (Erfurt, Gotha, Jena: ThULB, 2019-), URL: https://naturallawdatabase.thulb.uni-jena.de/item/natlaw_94