Philosophy 433 ����������� ����������� ����������� History of Ethics���������� ����������� Darwall����������� ����������� Winter
2004
HUTCHESON I
I� Tying up loose ends in Hobbes.
����������� A. Morality
as rules that require genuine sacrifice for mutual advantage;
����������� B. Normativity
of these rules depending on the fact that agents will do best if they deliberate
according to them;
����������� C. How does
this fit with the projectivist account?�
The desire for self-preservation will lead agents to judge that it would
be good for them to deliberate in accordance with these rules.� However, to do so, it would seem that they
need to take the rules themselves as authoritative�they must accept them as
valid norms.� If projectivism is to
explain that judgment, it would seem to have to hypothesize a distinctive motivational
state (norm acceptance) which normative judgments project.
II.�
Early modern natural law.
����������� A.� A law conception of morality:� Pufendorf, Hobbes, Locke.
����������� B.� The normativity of the moral law�Leibniz�s
and Cudworth�s objections: God�s goodness must be independent
of his Will (Leibniz�Robert Adams�s version: that�s so, but God�s goodness
makes what He wills obligatory (i.e., creates moral obligation).� Remaining problem how does it give God a
right to be obeyed?)� God�s authority
must be independent of His will.
III.�
Ethics of virtue reaction.�
The idea that morality requires a distinctive psychic state (in
addition to self-love, etc.) is an important theme in the thought of Francis
Hutcheson, an important figure in what has come to be known as the "Scottish
Enlightenment", a remarkable period in the eighteenth century in which
����������� The Inquiry
was first published in 1725, almost 75 years after Leviathan.� Probably the most important philosophical
event during the intervening period was Locke's Essay Concerning Human
Understanding in 1690, which worked out an empiricist epistemology and
philosophy of language owing much to Hobbes.�
Like Hobbes, Locke held all ideas come ultimately from experience.� He distinguished, famously, between simple
and complex ideas.� All simple ideas come
from experience.� And we form, through
imagination, complex ideas from simple ideas.
����������� As you will
see, Hutcheson follows Locke here.� But
whereas writers like Hobbes and Locke had argued that ideas distinctive of
morality reduce to other nonmoral ideas, Hutcheson denied this.� He held that if we actually consult our
experience we will see that it presents us with irreducible moral ideas.� Locke, for example, had argued that moral
ideas could be analyzed as follows: a moral obligation,
exists just in case God wills that we act in a certain way and promises
sanctions if we don�t.�
����������� Hutcheson
will argue, however, that experience presents us with an idea of morality, specifically
of "the morally approvable", which cannot be so reduced.
����������� Secondly,
where writers like Hobbes and Locke argued that the only motive to do what we ought can be egoistic, since they thought the only rational
motive to do anything is that it is the likeliest means to our own (self-regarding)
ends, Hutcheson denied this.� He believed
people can act out of benevolence, a direct desire for the happiness of others.� The major egoist of Hutcheson's time was
Bernard Mandeville. title page announces he will be
arguing "against the author of The Fable of the Bees," i.e.,
Mandeville.� The philosopher he announces
he will defend is the Earl of Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 3rd Earl
of Sh.), an extremely important moral philosopher at
the turn of the eighteenth century who also attacked egoism, and who was the
first to coin the phrase "moral sense" of which Hutcheson would make
so much.
III�
Moral goodness.�
We should begin our study of Hutcheson with the first paragraph of his
introduction:
����������� "The
word MORAL GOODNESS, in this treatise, denotes our idea of some quality apprehended
in actions, which procures approbation, attended with the desire of the agent's
happiness.� MORAL EVIL denotes our idea
of a contrary quality, which excited condemnation or dislike.� Approbation and condemnation are probably
simple ideas, which cannot be farther explained.� We must be contented with these imperfect
descriptions, until we discover whether we really have such ideas, and what
general foundation there is in nature for this difference of actions, as
morally good or evil."
����������� Note
several things:
����������� (i)� Our idea of moral goodness is of a quality
apprehended (to be) in actions,
����������� (ii) which (when apprehended) causes a distinctive response, viz.,
approbation and desire of the agent's happiness;
����������� (iii) approbation (and condemnation) are simple ideas (moral
goodness and moral evil being complex ideas defined partly in terms of these
simple ideas).
�����������
����������� Thus, if
there exists a quality, apprehended to be in actions,
which causes approbation and desire of the agent's happiness when it is
apprehended, then this quality will itself be moral goodness.� (N.B., Hutcheson does not say that moral
goodness is the quality of causing approbation when apprehended).� To see whether this quality exists we must
conduct an empirical investigation.� As
he says, "we must be contented with these imperfect descriptions, until we
discover whether we really have such ideas, and what general foundation there
is in nature for this difference of actions, as morally good or evil.�
����������� Let�s get
clear as to what simple idea Hutcheson means to refer by the terms
'approbation' and 'condemnation' in order to discover "whether we really
have such ideas." Here the best that Hutcheson can do is to ask us to
introspect.� "In this matter men
must consult their own breasts."
����������� In this
vein, consider your response to a person we "suppose possessed of honesty,
faith, generosity, kindness" and compare these with those we might have to
someone we suppose "possessed of the natural goods.� Do we not "find
that we necessarily love and approve the possessors of the former; but the
possession of the latter procures no approbation or good-will at all toward the
possessor, but often contrary affections of envy and hatred."� And similarly for natural
and moral evil.� We respond to the
former with very different feelings than we do to "treachery, cruelty, [or]
ingratitude."
IV�
Empiricist method.�
Throughout Section I, Hutcheson continues to sound the same theme:� if we consult our experience we see that we
have a perfectly natural, spontaneous, and involuntary response of approbation
and condemnation to different motives and traits of character.
����������� And
Hutcheson argues against Mandeville that moral approbation can�t be reduced to self-love:
"Suppose we reap the same advantage from two men, one of whom serves us
from an ultimate desire of our happiness, or good-will toward us; the other
from views of self-interest, or by constraint:�
both are in this case equally beneficial or advantageous to us, and yet
we shall have quite different sentiments of them.�� Thus� approbation is not a complex idea that
can be
reduced to the sense of our own
advantage.�
����������� Moreover,
if approbation were a feeling derived from the sense of advantage, then it would
not arise spontaneously, with no evident connection to one's advantage� (see sec. IV)
����������� Finally (sec.
VII), this idea could not wholly be the result of custom or education.� These cannot give us any new simple ideas.� At best they can get us to associate the
simple ideas we have with other things. Just as no training can give us the
idea of red.