Posted on 31st July, 2025 in Blog posts
Francis Hutcheson: the greatest Scot?
Although I have written a novel revolving around the issue of moral sense and the origins of altruism (To the River), I did not realize, until reading Arthur Herman’s book The Scottish Enlightenment, the scale of the contribution of Hutcheson (1694-1796) to our understanding of the moral sense. That derives from nature, from our environment, and not as the theologians would have it, from a deity.
Hutcheson was also the first person to argue for animal rights, pointing out that other animals are sentient beings just as we are. This is as one with his teaching that we are all part of nature, and not the creation of some supernatural god. Today that seems commonplace, but in his day it was revolutionary.
This is more or less the argument of today’s neuroscientists and geneticists. Matt Ridley’s The Origins of Virtue, tells us that other animals are also altruistic, and that many of the attributes we ascribe only to human beings are shared by other sentient creatures.
Hutcheson was a great influence upon his pupil Adam Smith, David Hume and others of the Scottish Enlightenment. When I finish Herman’s fine book, I shall doubtless want to share what I have learnt with this website. It is particularly pertinent, as I am trying to think through an identity for Scotland consonant with the world so changed in the last few years, and the very foundation of our identity must surely be those Scots philosophers who made the modern world.