Philosophiae Moralis Institutio Compendiaria, with A Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy. Francis Hutcheson

      Francis Hutcheson is considered by many scholars to be the father of the Scottish Enlightenment. His thought variously influenced leading figures in eighteenth-century Scotland, such as David Hume, Adam Smith, and Thomas Reid, in the rest of Europe, and in America. Hutcheson, like Shaftesbury and other neo-Stoic philosophers, viewed philosophy, not as a mere theoretical exercise, but as having a practical function. His argument for a virtuous life and for an active involvement in public life was based on his belief in the benevolence of God, the harmony of the universe, and men’s sociable dispositions. Hutcheson had the great merit of turning Shaftesbury’s aristocratic language into clear and concrete prose that well matched the empirical turn of mind in eighteenth-century Britain and could be understood by a wide readership. Hutcheson criticized the pessimistic account of human nature inherent in the legalistic conception of morality and justice in seventeenth-century Protestant theology and jurisprudence.

      Philosophiae Moralis Institutio Compendiaria was aimed at university students and had a large circulation within Scottish universities, Irish and English dissenting academies, and American colleges. The aim of the text was twofold: on one hand, to put forward an optimistic view of God, human nature, and the harmony of the universe; on the other hand, to provide students with the knowledge of natural and civil law required by the university curriculum.

      This work was preceded by An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725), a work largely influenced by the thought of Lord Shaftesbury and Richard Cumberland and reacting to the skeptical moral teaching of Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees; and by An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections. With Illustrations on the Moral Sense (1728), an answer to his critics. Hutcheson considered the two Inquiries on beauty and virtue, the Essay on passions, and the Illustrations to be complementary and referred to them as “the four treatises” which constituted his moral teaching. From 1725 to 1742 he carefully made additions and corrections to these works, a sign that he never judged them to be surpassed. However, Hutcheson’s moral thought is also presented in his Philosophiae Moralis Institutio Compendiaria, published in 1742 with a revised second edition in 1745—and translated into English with the title A Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy in 1747—as well as in A System of Moral Philosophy, published posthumously in 1755 by his son Francis, but already circulating among his friends in 1737.

      Therefore, we have three different versions of Hutcheson’s moral thought, and scholars have always found some difficulties in explaining their different aims and in finding consistency among them. In a celebrated monograph of 1900, William Robert Scott argued that there was a development in Hutcheson’s moral thought and identified four phases, from the Shaftesburian Inquiries, through the influence of Bishop Butler in the Essay and Illustrations, to the Aristotelian Institutio, and finally to the Stoic System. However, given Hutcheson’s remarks in the preface to the Philosophiae Moralis Institutio Compendiaria, it is more reasonable to consider this work to be an elementary book addressed to the young who study at universities, and not to a learned, adult public audience. Hutcheson was aware that “many such compends have been published by very learned men,” but added that “every teacher must use his own judgment on these subjects.” He thought that the “method and order which pleased” him “most” was “pretty different from what has of late prevailed,” and that it would “be of use to the students to have in their hands an abridgement, containing the method and the principal heads of argument, to recall to their memories the points more largely insisted upon in their lectures.” Combined with comments we have from William Leechman, James Wodrow, and William Thom on Hutcheson’s teaching, these remarks clearly suggest that the Institutio mostly reflects Hutcheson’s “private” (that is, advanced) afternoon lectures in Latin and were designed to help his students to elaborate their theses, according to the custom of the time. Also, the evidence suggests that his System of Moral Philosophy reflects his early morning public (that is, more basic) lectures in English.¹ As will be evident to the modern reader, this does not mean that the Institutio and the System were not elaborate works.

      Hutcheson’s remarks may also help us solve some problems about the order of composition of the two works. In 1737 he stated that the System “has employed my leisure hours for several summers past,” and it is possible that the composition of the Institutio dated to the same early years of his teaching in Glasgow as the System since the second and third books seem to be an enlargement of the Institutio. Some scholars have conjectured that the Institutio, as well as Hutcheson’s Logic and Metaphysics, could even have been composed during the twenties when he was teaching in the Dublin Academy that he then ran. This could explain why he wrote Latin compends in subjects