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Francis Hutcheson (philosopher)

Francis Hutcheson
Francis Hutcheson b1694.jpg
Portrait by Allan Ramsay, circa 1745. Wearing a black academic gown over a brown coat, Hutcheson holds a copy of Cicero's De finibus.
Born (1694-08-08)8 August 1694
Saintfield, County Down, Ulster, Ireland
Died 8 August 1746(1746-08-08) (aged 52)
Dublin, Ireland
Alma mater University of Glasgow
Era 18th-century philosophy
Region Western Philosophy
School Empiricism
Scottish Enlightenment
Institutions University of Glasgow

The Rev. Francis Hutcheson (8 August 1694 – 8 August 1746) was an Irish philosopher born in Ulster to a family of Scottish Presbyterians who became known as founding fathers of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Hutcheson took ideas from John Locke, and he was an important influence on the works of several significant Enlightenment thinkers, including David Hume and Adam Smith.

He is thought to have been born at Drumalig in the parish of Saintfield, County Down, Ireland. He was the "son of a Presbyterian minister of Ulster Scottish stock, who was born in Ireland." Hutcheson was educated at Killyleagh, and went on to Scotland to study at the University of Glasgow, where he spent six years at first in the study of philosophy, classics and general literature, and afterwards in the study of theology, receiving his degree in 1712. While a student, he worked as tutor to the Earl of Kilmarnock.

Facing suspicions about his "Irish" roots and his association with New Licht theologian John Simson (then under investigation by Scottish ecclesiastical courts), a ministry for him in Scotland was unlikely to be a success, so he left the church, returning to Ireland to pursue a career in academia. He was induced to start a private academy in Dublin, where he taught for 10 years, also studying philosophy and produced during 1725 Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue. This writing is written as two treatises; the subject of the first is aesthetics (Concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design), and the second, morality (Concerning Moral Good and Evil). In Dublin his literary attainments gained him the friendship of many prominent inhabitants. Among these was The Rt. Hon. and Most Rev. Dr William King, the Church of Ireland Lord Archbishop of Dublin, who refused to prosecute Hutcheson in the Archbishop's Court for keeping a school without the episcopal licence. Hutcheson's relations with the clergy of the established church, especially with Archbishop King and with The Rt. Hon. and Most Rev. Dr Hugh Boulter, Lord Archbishop of Armagh, seem to have been cordial, and his biographer, speaking of "the inclination of his friends to serve him, the schemes proposed to him for obtaining promotion", etc., probably refers to some offers of preferment, on condition of his accepting episcopal ordination.


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