 | An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue Francis Hutcheson's first book, An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, was published in 1725, when its author was only thirty-one, and went through four editions during his lifetime. This seminal text of the Scottish Enlightenment is now available for the first time in a variorum edition based on the 1726 edition. The Inquiry was written as a critical response to the work of Bernard Mandeville and as a defense of the ideas of Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Shaftesbury. It consists of two treatises exploring our aesthetic and our moral abilities. Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746) was educated at the University of Glasgow, where he assumed the chair of moral philosophy in 1729. Wolfgang Leidhold is Professor of Political Science at the University of Cologne. Please note: This title is available as an ebook for purchase on Amazon , Barnes and Noble , and iTunes .The founder of moral sense theory was born in County Down, Ireland. Francis Hutcheson's father and grandfather were Presbyterian ministers, and he studied at the University of Glasgow from 1711 to 1717 in preparation for the Presbyterian ministry. For the next decade, he taught at an academy for dissenting clergy in Dublin, most of the time serving as its head. He was appointed professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow in 1730, a position he held until his death. Hutcheson's principal contributions to philosophy were in the fields of moral philosophy and aesthetics. His chief works are Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725), Philosophiae Moralis Institutio (1742), and the posthumously published System of Moral Philosophy (1755). Against the English rationalists Samuel Clarke and Richard Price, Hutcheson rigorously developed Shaftesbury's suggestion that moral distinctions are made by our sensitive rather than our rational nature. In aesthetics he gave an analogous account of our sense of beauty. Hutcheson's theories profoundly influenced Hume and also had a significant impact on Kant in his precritical period. (Bowker Author Biography) |
