Francis Hutcheson (philosopher) - Return To Ireland

Return To Ireland

Facing suspicions about his "Irish" roots and his association with New Licht theologian John Simson (then under investigation by Scottish ecclesiastical courts), a ministry 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 Archbishop of Dublin, William King, 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 King and with Hugh Boulter (the 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.

While living in Dublin, Hutcheson published anonymously the four essays he is best known by: the Inquiry concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony and Design, the Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil, in 1725, the Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections and Illustrations upon the Moral Sense, in 1728. The alterations and additions made in the second edition of these Essays were published in a separate form in 1726. To the period of his Dublin residence are also to be referred the Thoughts on Laughter (1725) (a criticism of Thomas Hobbes) and the Observations on the Fable of the Bees, being in all six letters contributed to Hibernicus' Letters, a periodical that appeared in Dublin (1725–1727, 2nd ed. 1734). At the end of the same period occurred the controversy in the London Journal with Gilbert Burnet (probably the second son of Dr Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury) on the "True Foundation of Virtue or Moral Goodness." All these letters were collected in one volume (Glasgow, 1772).