Logic, Metaphysics, and the Natural Sociability of Mankind. Francis Hutcheson
virtue, of praise and honor, of novelty, harmony, imitation, and humor. And he insisted that these several senses were all of them innate, although they may be cultivated and reinforced by habit.25
The same senses were complemented by desires, which Hutcheson distinguished, following the scholastic distinction employed by de Vries, between lower or sensual desires and higher or rational desires. The mind always fastens upon the desire that is strongest. The will should not be supposed to be a power to turn or direct the mind in any direction it may choose. All that can be meant by the liberty of the will is the liberty or power to act on a desire or refrain from doing what we do not desire, a position he attributed again to Locke. Hutcheson’s idea of power was not, however, like Locke’s, the power to suspend desire; it was rather the importance of recognizing in the mind the presence of rational or calm desires, and of cultivating those desires, as opposed to the more violent desires excited by the body. Hutcheson was careful not to assert that the soul has command over the body (Part II, chapter 4). But he insisted that the cultivation of the internal senses and the calm desires offered the best assurance of the immortality of the soul. While the external senses and the violent desires expire with the body, the soul, reinforced by the nobler senses and desires, may survive the death of the body. It had been accordingly the conviction of the best men, as he considered them, that the imperfections, hardships, and injustices of this life could be compensated in the next, and so “the whole fabric and government of the world becomes fully worthy of the great and good God.”26
The concluding part of pneumatics or the science of the soul, Part III of Hutcheson’s Metaphysics, was natural theology or the study by reason, unaided by revelation, of the existence, the attributes, and the providence or operations of God. Hutcheson’s treatment of natural theology is remarkable for its rhapsodic evocation of the harmony, design, and beauty of the world. This way of demonstrating the existence of the creator stands in marked contrast to the revealed theology of Reformed theologians, who argued from the evidence of sin in our fallen human nature to the need for forgiveness of our sins by God. Reformed natural theologians, Gershom Carmichael among them, had attached particular importance to the glory of God, as contrasted with the fallibility of man; they revered especially those attributes of God that could not be shared with or communicated to man.27 Hutcheson reviewed some of the incommunicable attributes: independence, necessary existence, immutability, incomprehensibility, in Part II, chapter 2; but the attributes of God that he chose particularly to celebrate, in chapters 3 and 4, were the communicable attributes: above all, the benevolence of God. The benevolence of the Creator was manifested in human nature, in our capacity for virtue and in our ability to recognize virtue by a moral sense. Hutcheson’s metaphysics, his ontology and pneumatology, which eventuated in natural theology, provided, in his Latin writings, at least, a metaphysical foundation for his moral philosophy.28 The latter included his arguments, in many ways distinctive, for the natural sociability of mankind.
On the Natural Sociability of Mankind
Hutcheson was elected Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow in December 1729. He delivered his inaugural lecture, “On the Natural Sociability of Mankind,” almost a year later, in November 1730, on the occasion of his formal admittance to the university. Robert Wodrow, who attended the lecture, reported that “he delivered it very fast and low, being a modest man, and it was not well understood.”29 Wodrow also said that the subject of the lecture was “on a very safe and general topic,” a judgment he might not have made had he heard it more distinctly. For Hutcheson’s lecture was designed to challenge a number of widely accepted opinions: theological, juridical, and moral. The style of the lecture was engaging; it was written in a style that is conspicuously different from the scholastic idiom of the logic and most (not all) of the metaphysics. His students would later recall that Hutcheson spoke Latin “with abundant ease and fluency; and as his stile was formed on the very best models, particularly Cicero, so it was a pleasure to hear him speak in that language.”30 His inaugural oration is perhaps the best illustration of this tribute to his spoken Latin.
After some nostalgic recollections of his years as a student at the University of Glasgow—1710-11, as a student in the final undergraduate year; 1711-12, as a student of Greek and Latin literature; 1712-18, as a student of divinity—Hutcheson warmed to his theme. He would consider, first, what qualities of character are natural to man, with regard to moral life; second, whether society, in the absence of government, can be called natural; in each case, he would engage in rhetorical redescription of how the term “natural” should be used in theology and in jurisprudence. The last part of the lecture (more than a third of the text) was a response to his critics, to those moralists who maintained that all moral motivation may be reduced to self-love.
It was one of the dogmas of Reformed or Presbyterian theology that the natural condition of mankind was a state of sin, of fallen human nature. This natural state or condition was preceded by the state of innocence enjoyed by our first parents before the Fall; the state of nature was succeeded by the state of grace, in which the souls of some have been saved by the atonement made by Christ for our sins; and this progression from innocence to sin to grace culminated in the fourth and final state, the eternal state.31 Hutcheson’s metaphysics allowed him to offer an alternative vision of human nature and the human condition. He had made provision for final causes in his ontology, for internal sensibilities and calm desires in his pneumatology, for the communication of divine attributes, notably benevolence, in his natural theology. He now drew upon his metaphysics to redefine the meaning of the term “natural” as applied to human nature. The nature of a thing, he proposed, can be understood only by considering its final cause or end or purpose, that for which it was originally designed. Human nature was designed to allow men to live in a manner consistent with their internal sensibilities and higher desires. Although weakness and imperfection may be found in the original design of human nature, such weakness should not inhibit or divert us from acting in accordance with our nature: “All our innate desires strive against that weakness and declare that such weakness is not the end of our duties much less the goal which nature has set for our actions.”32 Hutcheson had redefined the state of nature as it had been understood by the Reformed theologians; he had identified the state of nature with the state of innocence. And he did not hesitate to declare that “Reformed theologians agree with all these doctrines, very rightly pointing to the original fabric and construction of our nature as it once was…. And evident signs of this design and workmanship are preserved, they acknowledge, in the very ruins of its fabric.”33
Hutcheson’s redescription of the Reformed doctrine of the state of nature had juridical implications. For not only Hobbes, but also Pufendorf, “the grand Instructor in Morals to all who have of late given themselves to that Study,”34 as Hutcheson once called him, had depicted the natural condition of mankind in a most unflattering light. Pufendorf described the state of nature as a state of poverty, weakness, and malice. Hutcheson proposed that writers on politics and jurisprudence would be best advised to discontinue use of the term “state of nature.” The condition of mankind in the absence of civil government could be better described as a state of liberty, a usage Hutcheson maintained consistently in his later publications on natural rights and politics. Hobbes and Pufendorf had both fallen into the teachings of the Epicureans, that self-love or the pursuit of pleasure and utility is the source of justice and social life. Hutcheson juxtaposed against this view the opinion of modern critics of Hobbes (Cumberland and Shaftesbury) and of Pufendorf (Titius and Carmichael). Shaftesbury in particular had described social life as a condition sought not only for utility and pleasure but also for itself. We seek sociability not only for the peaceable living and other benefits sociability may afford: we delight in the company of family, friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens and rejoice in their happiness and good fortune.35 Our natural sociability is reinforced by our internal senses of honor and decency, of the honestum and decorum. When human nature is considered in this light, we have many reasons to conclude that men are naturally sociable, that society is natural to man in the absence of government.
The last part of Hutcheson’s lecture (pp. 206-14) was a response to critics who thought that he was mistaken in his understanding of moral motivation; in the judgment of these critics, the motives that prompt us to be virtuous and permit us to live in society