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John Clarke and Francis Hutcheson on Self-Love and Moral Motivation ROBERT M. STEWART I. INTRODUCTION AT LEASTSOMEof the acts we consider to be morally virtuous are so because they are benevolent. But what notion of benevolence is involved? If I generally avoid harming others and help them when I can, but only in order to promote my own happiness in this life or in a possible future life, am I genuinely benevolent? Or does benevolence require that I act for the good of others as an ultimate end, sometimes even subordinating my own welfare to that of other persons? Our answers to these philosophical or conceptual questions may in part depend on our beliefs about certain features of human motivation, particularly how we would answer such questions as the following: Are all desires ultimately for one's own good or happiness, or do we at least sometimes want the happiness of other people for their own sake, independently of any positive effect of their well-being on ourselves? Would we ever act to promote the welfare of others, or pursue any aim at all, unless we believed we would enjoy the activity or its results, or at least thought that the habit would somehow be for our own benefit in the long run? That these questions are not as simple as one might think is evident in the writings of the major British moralists, the relation between morality and interest being one of their main concerns. Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746) I wish to thank Professors W. K. Frankena, Henning Jensen, and D. D. Raphael for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. I am particularly grateful also to Professor David Fate Norton for his detailed suggestions and critical remarks. [~'61] 26z HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY was for the latter part of his career Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University, a leading member of the moral-sense school, and an important philosopher whose views were widely discussed. John Clarke (16871734 ), Master of the Grammar School in Hull and Gloucester, was a lesser figure among the British moralists and not nearly so well known. Though he was not a man of as many parts as Hutcheson or Hume, undoubtedly his professional position had a good deal to do with his comparative obscurity, for, as he stated himself, "the very name of a country school-master is enough to prejudice abundance of people against any thing, such a one can say, upon so abstruse a subject, that lies so much too out of the way of his province."' In fact, Clarke was a very able philosopher, an intelligent and witty writer, a devastating critic, and perhaps the most sophisticated proponent of hedonism in his time. Indeed, one cannot find anywhere in the literature a philosophical defense of psychological hedonism more articulate and plausible than his. Both Hutcheson and Clarke were influenced by Locke; ~ but Clarke's psychology and ethics--hedonism and theological utilitarianism -were much closer to Locke's, Clarke expressed his own doctrines in three critical works directed at several of his contemporaries: An Examination of the Notion of Moral Good and Evil (1725) is a refutation of William Wollaston's theory; The Foundation of Morality in Theory and Practice (n.d., but sometime between 1726 and 1728 ), his major work, is an answer to Samuel Clarke and Hutcheson; finally, An Examination of what has been advanced relating to Moral Obligation (173o) is another attack upon Samuel Clarke and his followers. He had hoped to publish a more comprehensive book on ethics, to be titled A Treatise upon Morality,~ but this projected work unfortunately never appeared. The philosophical debate between Hutcheson and John Clarke is worth the attention of anyone interested in the problems of human motivation and ' An Examination of what has been advanced relating to Moral Obhgation, in a late pamphlet, entitled, "A Defence of the Answer to the Remarks upon Dr. Clarke's Exposition of the Church-Catechism" (London, 173o), p. 5. In my quotations from Clarke and Hutcheson capital !.etters for nouns will be dropped, spelling modernized, and unnecessary italics omitted. E.g., in their general epistemology and psychology, and in their concept of natural...

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