Hutcheson, Francis (1694–1746)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Maurer
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Moral Sense ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
Marcus Aurelius ◽  
Religious Dimensions ◽  
Good And Evil

Francis Hutcheson was an Irish–Scottish moral philosopher. He is best known for his epistemological claim that a disinterested moral sense is the source of our ideas of moral good and evil, and for his psychological claim that human beings are naturally motivated by disinterested benevolence, and not by self-love alone. At the dawn of the Scottish Enlightenment, these claims carried considerable philosophical and theological weight – Hutcheson’s optimism regarding the moral capacities of human nature is particularly noteworthy. Hutcheson’s arguments in moral epistemology for the reality of a disinterested moral sense are developed in opposition to different versions of ethical rationalism and ethical egoism, and they further oppose Calvinist ideas about the incapacity of corrupt postlapsarian human beings to know moral good and evil. Hutcheson’s arguments in moral psychology for the reality of disinterested benevolence are developed in opposition to different egoistic psychologies which resolve all desires into self-love. For Hutcheson, such debates are intrinsically connected to those on the moral status of human nature: both his defence of the reality of benevolence and his defence of the disinterestedness of the moral sense are directed against conceptions of human nature as morally corrupt. Hutcheson’s ideas about aesthetics and politics, his approach to natural law theories, and the religious dimensions of his philosophy have also attracted scholarly attention. Hutcheson had an affectionate interest in classical thinkers like Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, and in early modern figures like the Cambridge Platonists and, especially, Shaftesbury. He was inspired by John Locke’s theory of ideas and Samuel Pufendorf’s natural law theory, albeit dealing with those at some critical distance. Like so many of his contemporaries, he attacked Thomas Hobbes and Bernard Mandeville. The development of his writings makes manifest his critical engagement with contemporary ethical rationalists like Samuel Clarke, Gilbert Burnet, and John Balguy, and with psychological egoists like John Clarke of Hull and Archibald Campbell. Joseph Butler was a source of inspiration for Hutcheson. Hutcheson himself exerted a considerable influence on the Scottish Enlightenment and beyond: he had a complex relationship with David Hume, he was the teacher of Adam Smith; and various famous thinkers like Richard Price, Thomas Reid, Immanuel Kant, and Jeremy Bentham reacted to Hutcheson’s moral philosophy.

Conclusion: The Ends of Romanticism

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zoe Beenstock ◽  
Zoe Beenstock
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Thomas Carlyle ◽  
Internal Conflict ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Modern Culture ◽  
Romantic Era ◽  
Social Totality ◽  
Modern Self

This conclusion proposes understanding Romanticism through a model of internal conflict instead of discrete distinctions of genre and political orientation, which have traditionally served as Romanticism’s defining categories. In replacing Aristotle with Rousseau modern culture moves to a socially contingent model of polity in which a newly-minted individualism contends with its own contingent social grounding. In Sartor Resartus Thomas Carlyle suggests that the Romantic era has come to an end. Sartor Resartus repeats the imagery of Frankenstein, relating monstrosity to empiricism and accusing the Scottish Enlightenment of excessive materialism. Carlyle reclaims Rousseau as an anti-empiricist who recognizes socialization as a fundamentally unhappy development that can barely contain the inherently violent forces of human nature. The post-Romantic modern self as articulated by Carlyle is defined by its exile from social totality, and by an account of human beings as inherently antisocial.

Epilogue and Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 268-272
Author(s):  
Sarah Mortimer
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
The Church

This chapter draws together the themes of the book and looks forward to the later-seventeenth century. It argues that for much of the sixteenth century politics was subordinate to religion; temporal authorities needed the additional sanctions provided by religious belief if they were to exert any power over the consciences of individuals. The effect was to entangle temporal power in the deepening conflicts over religious truth, and thus to reveal the brittleness of any conception of political authority which relied on the support of the Church. At the same time, older traditions of political thought did not go away and often became stronger. The circulation of classical ideas, the discovery of new peoples, the growing interest in historical change and development all suggested alternative ways of legitimizing political power, often using natural law and avoiding any reliance on specifically Christian commitments. What happened in the early-seventeenth century, and most obviously in the writing of Hugo Grotius, was a move not only to ground political society in a particular conception of human nature (conceived of juridically, as a source of rights and obligations) but also to detach Christianity from that view of human nature. It was this understanding of human beings which enabled the development of a social contract tradition through the seventeenth century and beyond, and became an important source for modern liberalism. The questions it raised would help to shape the thought of the next century.

Hutcheson, Francis (1694–1746)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Fate Norton
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Colonial America ◽  
Special Kind ◽  
Moral Sense ◽  
Francis Hutcheson ◽  
Five Senses ◽  
The Mind

Francis Hutcheson is best known for his contributions to moral theory, but he also contributed to the development of aesthetics. Although his philosophy owes much to John Locke’s empiricist approach to ideas and knowledge, Hutcheson was sharply critical of Locke’s account of two important normative ideas, those of beauty and virtue. He rejected Locke’s claim that these ideas are mere constructs of the mind that neither copy nor make reference to anything objective. He also complained that Locke’s account of human pleasure and pain was too narrowly focused. There are pleasures and pains other than those that arise in conjunction with ordinary sensations; there are, in fact, more than five senses. Two additional senses, the sense of beauty and the moral sense, give rise to distinctive pleasures and pains that enable us to make aesthetic and moral distinctions and evaluations. Hutcheson’s theory of the moral sense emphasizes two fundamental features of human nature. First, in contrast to Thomas Hobbes and other egoists, Hutcheson argues that human nature includes a disposition to benevolence. This characteristic enables us to be, sometimes, genuinely virtuous. It enables us to act from benevolent motives, whereas Hutcheson identifies virtue with just such motivations. Second, we are said to have a perceptual faculty, a moral sense, that enables us to perceive moral differences. When confronted with cases of benevolently motivated behaviour (virtue), we naturally respond with a feeling of approbation, a special kind of pleasure. Confronted with maliciously motivated behaviour (vice), we naturally respond with a feeling of disapprobation, a special kind of pain. In short, certain distinctive feelings of normal observers serve to distinguish between virtue and vice. Hutcheson was careful, however, not to identify virtue and vice with these feelings. The feelings are perceptions (elements in the mind of observers) that function as signs of virtue and vice (qualities of agents). Virtue is benevolence, and vice malice (or, sometimes, indifference); our moral feelings serve as signs of these characteristics. Hutcheson’s rationalist critics charged him with making morality relative to the features human nature happens at present to have. Suppose, they said, that our nature were different. Suppose we felt approbation where we now feel disapprobation. In that event, what we now call ‘vice’ would be called ‘virtue’, and what we call ‘virtue’ would be called ‘vice’. The moral sense theory must be wrong because virtue and vice are immutable. In response, Hutcheson insisted that, as our Creator is unchanging and intrinsically good, the dispositions and faculties we have can be taken to be permanent and even necessary. Consequently, although it in one sense depends upon human nature, morality is immutable because it is permanently determined by the nature of the Deity. Hutcheson’s views were widely discussed throughout the middle decades of the eighteenth century. He knew and advised David Hume, and, while Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow, taught Adam Smith. Immanuel Kant and Jeremy Bentham, among other philosophers, also responded to his work, while in colonial America his political theory was widely seen as providing grounds for rebellion against Britain.

The Spark That Still Shines: John Calvin on Conscience and Natural Law

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constance Y Lee
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Moral Discernment ◽  
Central Figure ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Sufficient Knowledge

Abstract John Calvin (1509–64), a central figure in Reformed theology, is perhaps best known for his bleak doctrine of total human depravity. This dismal view of human reason has commonly overshadowed his statement that ‘some sparks still shine’. This article proposes that Calvin’s account of conscience, by conserving an illuminated space in human nature, makes possible a formal doctrine of natural law. Calvin enlists the interconnectedness between the knowledge of God and human reason to frame his anthropology. According to this, human reason was originally created to perfectly access knowledge of God but after the Fall, can only attain imperfect access. Within this broader framework, by adopting a dialectic of dual perspectives, Calvin maintains that, however fallen, human nature still partially reflects the Imago Dei as first intended. As through a glass darkly, this divine image is reflected in human conscience endowing it with sufficient knowledge for moral discernment. Calvin’s emphasis on ‘common grace’ in the preservation of this knowledge allows him to simultaneously maintain human ignorance and their universal accountability to objective norms. In this way, Calvin’s account of conscience enables him to hold both apparent extremes in tension: the immanent fallibility of human beings with the external normative standards they ought to pursue.

Internet memes we live by (and die by)

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-173
Author(s):  
Chaoqun Xie
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Transformative Power ◽  
Internet Age ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
Revaluation Of Values

Abstract In the internet age, memes are at once products and driving forces of social practices. A meme contains a memetic message and a meme output, and boasts, if guided by a pragmatic way of thinking, several features, including but not limited to salience, frequency, adaptability, argumentativity, sociality, embeddedness, embodiedness, locality, relativity, emotionality and dynamicity. The current global COVID-19 pandemic serves as a fitting and timely touchstone to testify how human beings are surrounded by numerous good and evil memes in the online world, and how internet memes, as can be seen from the illustration of two specific memes, namely, the ‘stay home, stay safe’ meme and the ‘wear a mask’ meme, are impacting human life-worlds, online and offline, with their transformative power, be it constructive or destructive. Moreover, researching how memes plays a decisive part in internet-mediated interaction provides a lens of insight through which ‘deep states’ of human nature of both self and others can be uncovered and through which what Nietzsche called “a revaluation of values” is possible.

Mendelssohn, Moses (1729–86)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Arkush
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Critical Philosophy ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Liberty Of Conscience

A Jewish disciple of Leibniz and Wolff, Mendelssohn strove throughout his life to uphold and strengthen their rationalist metaphysics while sustaining his ancestral religion. His most important philosophic task, as he saw it, was to refine and render more persuasive the philosophical proofs for the existence of God, providence and immortality. His major divergence from Leibniz was in stressing that ‘the best of all possible worlds’, which God had created, was in fact more hospitable to human beings than Leibniz had supposed. Towards the end of his life, the irrationalism of Jacobi and the critical philosophy of Kant shook Mendelssohn’s faith in the demonstrability of the fundamental metaphysical precepts, but not his confidence in their truth. They would have to be sustained by ‘common sense’, he reasoned, until future philosophers succeeded in restoring metaphysics to its former glory. While accepting Wolff’s teleological understanding of human nature and natural law, Mendelssohn placed far greater value on human freedom and outlined a political philosophy that protected liberty of conscience. His philosophic defence of his own religion stressed that Judaism is not a ‘revealed religion’ demanding acceptance of particular dogmas but a ‘revealed legislation’ requiring the performance of particular actions. The object of this divine and still valid legislation, he suggested, was often to counteract forces that might otherwise subvert the natural religion entrusted to us by reason. To resolve the tension between his own political liberalism and the Bible’s endorsement of religious coercion, Mendelssohn argued that contemporary Judaism, at any rate, no longer acknowledges any person’s authority to compel others to perform religious acts.

scholarly journals Optimism and Activism: Establishing the Confucian Way Through Renxing

2004 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geir Sigurdsson
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Active Element ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Natural Processes ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Considerable Controversy ◽  
Good And Evil

In recent years, there has been considerable controversy over the notion of xing as it appears in the Mencius and in the Xunzi. The controversy has mostly revolved around the questions whether xing refers to a universal human nature or not, and whether their notions of shan and e can be accurately characterized as ‘good’ and ‘evil’. In this paper, the issue will be approached differently, and the issue of xing’s universal or non-universal scope largely ignored as unproductive. Instead, it will be argued that a more productive approach is to view Mencius’ and Xunzi’s differing claims about the quality of xing of human beings as reflecting their different practical considerations of how best to establish the Confucian way. The Mencian emphasis, then, on the goodness of human beings is an attempt to resist cynicism and defeatism in a time in which wars and horrors were common, and to maintain a belief in the possibility of realizing a harmonious and peaceful society: Mencius underscores the optimistic spirit in the philosophy initiated by Confucius. On the other hand, Xunzi’s claim about the problematic or unruly tendencies in the human xing are possibly resistances to a kind of thinking that celebrates passive conformity to natural processes: Xunzi emphasizes the active element in Confucius’ thought. Optimism and activism are both integral features of the Confucian spirit. Hence it is misleading to regard Mencius and Xunzi as contradicting each other in their divergent claims about xing. Since their claims rather rest on different practical considerations, they merely emphasise different aspects of Confucius’ thought, and, taken together, rather complement each other.

The Ethics of Joy

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Youpa Andrew
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Medical Model ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Essential Function ◽  
Physical Wellness ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
Ways Of Life

This book offers a reading of Spinoza’s moral philosophy. Central to the reading the author defends is the view that there is a way of life that is best for human beings, and what makes it best is that it is the way of life that is in agreement with human nature. It is important to note that Spinoza’s moral philosophy does not fit within a framework that takes accountability as an essential function of morality. An ethics of accountability is about what a person deserves. It is a system for assigning credit and debt in the economy of good and evil. The ethics of Spinoza’s Ethics is not about what a person deserves. Rather, it is about how to live joyously and lovingly, not sadly and hatefully. Instead of an ethics of accountability, Spinoza’s is an ethics of joy. It is centered on what, with respect to mental and physical wellness, deserves our attention and what, with respect to mental and physical wellness, does not deserve our attention. Spinoza’s ethics of joy belongs to a philosophical tradition that adheres to a medical model of morality. Accordingly, the purpose of morality is not to assign credit and debt in the economy of good and evil. Its purpose is to heal the sick and empower the vulnerable, which is to say that it is for each and every one of us. Furthermore, Spinoza’s moral philosophy is pluralistic in that there are as many good ways of life as there are ways of living joyously and lovingly. There is a variety of empowered ways of life, and there is a variety of disempowered ways of life.

Reflections on Veritatis splendor

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 447-454
Author(s):  
Servais Pinckaers ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Moral Theology ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
Veritatis Splendor ◽  
Good And Evil

The encyclical Veritatis splendor represented a renewal of moral theology in the spirit of Vatican Council II. Pope St. John Paul II emphasized Gospel teaching in light of the Old Testament, reiterating the animating role of the Holy Spirit in the New Law. Properly understood, the New Law is not a code of obligations, but a dynamic life of charity made intelligible through grace and the natural law. As a primary connection between human beings and divine law, natural law inclines persons toward the good, thus providing an apprehensible link between human freedom and objective truth—enabling us to determine what is good and evil. This understanding of judgment provides a corrective for theological trends toward proportionalism and consequentialism.

De Veritate

Grotiana ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-94
Author(s):  
Sarah Mortimer
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Civic Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
Christian Morality ◽  
Religious Controversy

Grotius always claimed that De veritate was not a controversial work, but it was not as innocuous nor as straightforward as Grotius would have his reader believe. It was the theological counterpart to his groundbreaking De iure belli ac pacis and it offered a distinctive version of Christianity which could complement his system of natural and international law. Both works were built upon a particular conception of human nature and natural law, one which was not shared by many of Grotius’ contemporaries. In De veritate, Grotius emphasised that human beings could and should embrace Christianity voluntarily, in response to the revelation they found in the Scriptures. In this way, Grotius provided a way of understanding Christianity which did not appeal to any innate notion of God, and which removed the Christian religion from the sphere of nature and from the shared civic life which was built upon natural foundations. His aim was to shield civic life from the potentially destabilising effects of religious controversy and to promote Christian morality, but his ethical reading of Christianity brought with it important political and theological consequences. This article will show both the novelty, and the instability, of Grotius’ conception of Christianity.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document