Francis Hutcheson

Quotes

• “Wisdom denotes the pursuing of the best Ends by the best Means.”
• “Whence this secret Chain between each Person and Mankind? How is my Interest connected with the most distant Parts of it?”
• “That Action is best, which procures the greatest Happiness for the greatest Numbers; and that worst, which, in like manner, occasions Misery.”
• “All our Ideas, or the materials of our reasoning or judging, are received by some immediate Powers of Perception internal or external, which we may call Senses … Reasoning or Intellect seems to raise no new Species of Ideas, but to discover or discern the Relations of those received.”
• “A good man deliberating which of several actions proposed he shall choose, regards and compares the material goodness of them, and then is determined by his moral sense invariably preferring that which appears most conducive to the happiness and virtue of mankind.”
• “The ultimate notion of right is that which tends to the universal good; and when one's acting in a certain manner has this tendency, he has a right thus to act.”

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Key facts

Born

( 1694-08-08 ) 8 August 1694, Saintfield , County Down , Ulster , Kingdom of Ireland

Died

8 August 1746 (1746-08-08) (aged 52), Dublin , Kingdom of Ireland

Children

Francis Hutcheson the younger

Alma mater

University of Glasgow

Era

18th-century philosophy

Region

Western philosophy

School

Empiricism Scottish Enlightenment

Institutions

University of Glasgow

Notable works

A System of Moral Philosophy, in Three Books (1755)

Notable ideas

Moral sense theory

via Wikipedia infobox

Wikidata facts

Image

Francis Hutcheson b1694.jpg

via Wikidata · CC0