Francis Hutcheson

With respect to Scotland it must be acknowledged that Hume did far more to arouse the reflective spirit and encourage the literary taste of his countrymen, than they ever did to develop his.

Till Francis Hutcheson, an Irishman, began by his lectures in Glasgow to attract attention to Scotland as a seat for the higher learning, our country had but a poor reputation in that regard.

Her literature was scanty, her scholarship, except in theology, associated mainly with one illustrious name, that of Buchanan.

The reaction which, after the middle of the century, raised Edinburgh to a pinnacle of distinction in letters was yet in its infancy when Hume began to write.

This part of the work, as following on the treatment of the understanding and the passions, deals with moral judgments and the qualities of virtue and vice in character and actions.

It comes, therefore, properly under the general head of an inquiry into human nature and is conducted on the same principles of rigorous experimental analysis as the previous books, but without startling the reader with the skeptical paradoxes of the speculative sections.

In handling moral questions, Hume was entering a field which, since the time of Hobbes, English philosophers had diligently cultivated and on which more recently interest had been concentrated by the lectures of Francis Hutcheson.

Not unnaturally, therefore, he was anxious to obtain the opinions and suggestions of the distinguished Glasgow moralist on his performance and submitted his manuscript to Dr. Hutcheson for this purpose.

But my favorite early modern work, which isn't really a literary work, it's more of a philosophical work, but it, it's literary to me, because I think its argument is so beautiful.

It's written by this, um, theologian of the 18th century called Francis Hutcheson, and he basically sits down and says, "You know, I think that this whole idea of witchcraft has some problematic predicates.

One of them is if you execute 100 suspected witches, if even one of them is innocent, that's a really big problem, right? You can't just kill an innocent woman to, like, outflank the potential threat of witchcraft elsewhere.

It's not right.

And as far as I can tell, I know it's u-usually attributed to Locke's letter concerning toleration, which he undoubtedly read and which Jefferson took notes on.

But I think it came from Francis Hutcheson because he's really paraphr- paraphrasing almost word for word Hutcheson's definition of unalienable right as both something that it's not possible to alienate or surrender to government.

We have no power to do it, and also be no useful purpose served, especially that violates a duty, and we have a duty, band of cedents, so we should do that really.

So that's why I just cannot wait to hear you on Madison and freedom of conscience in a new way.

He loses that in seventeen eighty-nine.

But, um, but he, he was not where Sherman was.

And, and on that point, I will not ask you more about, uh, Francis Hutcheson, but, but the, but the, uh, standard account of Madison, which, uh, Philip Munoz sets out in his great book, uh, God and the Founders, is that Madison was, uh- A founder who believed that the state should be non-cognizant of religion, should take no notice of religion, and that is why he wanted the freedom of conscience ban to apply to the states.

He thought it was an unalienable right.

They disagreed about some, some important things among themselves about how people ha- became happy, what constituted happiness.

Uh, I think, for example, Francis Hutcheson, who you mentioned, who was Adam Smith's, uh, professor at the University of Glasgow, had a very sort of virtue-orientated conception of what happiness was about David Hume is a little bit like that, but for him it's more about ease and comfort and pleasure and other such things.

But what they are agreeing upon is the idea that if you're going to...

That with a commercial society, there are greater opportunities for human happiness, whether that's wrapped up in terms of virtue or whether it's wrapped up in terms of people's ability to do things, more complicated things, in a much easier way than they were hitherto able to do so.

They're gonna go after whatever they do in this self-interested way.

And, um, Francis Hutcheson, a, a contemporary who coined the phrase the "pursuit of happiness"-

Yeah

... that was used in the Declaration of Independence, he didn't mean buying Lamborghinis.

[upbeat music] The first battle that Madison fights as a young Princeton graduate who's been studying with John Witherspoon is against religious establishments in Virginia, and Patrick Henry supports mandatory tithing to the Anglican Church and test oaths.

And Madison, based on his readings of Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration and of Francis Hutcheson, who defines unalienable rights as those that can't be surrendered to government, says that freedom of conscience is a quintessential unalienable right because the opinions of men, as Madison says, "Being dependent on evidence contemplated by their own minds, cannot be controlled by others." In other words, I can't give you the power to tell me what to think in matters of religion or politics 'cause my thoughts are the product of reason and persuasion, not force or violence.

And that's the shift from the medieval view, that we get our opinions from the king or the pope, not from our own reasoning minds.

Another crucial source for Madison is John Milton in Areopagitica, the great free speech defense, which says that, "Truth has nothing to fear from error as long as reason is free to combat it," and Jefferson paraphrases that in his own great Virginia Bill of Religious Liberty.