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Thinkers

Francis Hutcheson

Scottish Enlightenment · Europe · 1694 to 1746

Irish-born Scottish thinker who held that we feel right and wrong through a moral sense. He thought the best act helps the most people.

What it is

Francis Hutcheson (1694 to 1746) was an Irish-born philosopher and one of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment. He argued that we recognise right and wrong, and beauty, through feeling and inner senses, not through reasoning alone. Moral sentimentalism, as this view is called, shaped Adam Smith, Thomas Reid and David Hume.

He was born in County Down and made his career at the University of Glasgow, where in 1729 he became Professor of Moral Philosophy, the first there to lecture in English instead of Latin. His main books were written before he moved to Scotland. He died in Dublin in 1746 while visiting the city.

The main ideas

  • A moral sense. We have inner senses as well as outer ones. Just as the eye tells us about colour, a moral sense gives us a feeling of approval for some actions and disapproval for others.
  • Many kinds of sense. Beauty is judged by a sense of imagination, honour by a sense of honour, and moral goodness by the moral sense.
  • Not by reason alone. He denied that the foundation of morality can be found in our powers of reasoning. He argued against philosophers who thought that right and wrong could be worked out like a proof.
  • Against self-interest. He rejected the view of Hobbes and Mandeville that all morality comes down to looking after oneself. If it did, he said, we would call a fertile field or a comfortable house virtuous.
  • Benevolence. He put kind concern for others at the centre of virtue.
  • The greatest happiness. He was the first to write that the best action is the one that brings the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers, an idea later taken up by the utilitarians.
  • Beauty as felt. He was among the first modern thinkers to treat beauty as the work of an internal sense, which helped make aesthetics a subject of its own.

What it looks like in practice

Imagine seeing someone give up their seat for a stranger who is struggling. Before you could explain why, you probably felt approval. Hutcheson would say that this immediate response is the moral sense at work, and that reasoning comes afterwards to describe it. This is an illustration of his line of questioning, not a passage from his writing.

Books and moments

  • An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725) is his best-known work, on beauty and virtue as matters of inner sense.
  • An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions, with Illustrations on the Moral Sense sets out his moral psychology and criticises the rationalists.

Questions and criticism

  • What are moral facts? Readers disagree about whether he thought moral qualities are real features of the world or only expressions of our feelings.
  • Is he really a utilitarian? He used the phrase "the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers", yet scholars ask whether his view fits later utilitarianism.
  • Can feeling be a guide? If morality rests on a sense, it is fair to ask what to do when people's senses disagree.

Close neighbours

David Hume and Adam Smith, both influenced by him, carried moral sentiment further, and the page on Thomas Hobbes shows a view he argued against. The page on Jeremy Bentham shows where the utilitarian idea he anticipated ended up.

Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 29 October 2026. The sources are listed below.

Who they connect to

Influenced

  • Adam Smith · Smith studied under him in Glasgow and built on his account of moral feeling.
  • David Hume · Hume built his account of morals on feeling on Hutcheson's moral sense.

Influenced by

  • Earl of Shaftesbury · Hutcheson took up his idea of a moral sense and gave it a full account.

Other Scottish Enlightenment thinkers

Sources we used

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