Francis Hutcheson
Francis Hutcheson - A Famous Scottish Philosopher
Francis Hutcheson ((1694 - 1796) Although born in Ireland Francis Hutcheson is generally refered to as Scottish, possibly due to the fact that he spent most of his life in Scotland. Francis Hutcheson became professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow in 1729 and remained so until his death in 1746.
In logic he mainly followed John Locke, but his most important work was in ethics, as set out in Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue in 1725. He denied the value judgements derive from reason alone, and asserted the existence of a special 'moral sense', whose function is to perceive vice and virtu. Likewise he recognised an aesthetic sense, through which beauty is perceived. As to the criterion of what is morally good, he saw it in the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and in this foreshadowed the philosophy of the utilitarians.
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