The Correspondence between Francis Hutcheson and Gilbert Burnet: The Problem of the Date

Notes and Discussions THE CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN FRANCIS HUTCHESON AND GILBERT BURNEr: THE PROBLEM OF THE DATE One of the most significant periods in the development of western ethical theory occurred during the 17th and 18th centuries in Great Britain. Moral philosophy was more cultivaZed there than anywhere else in Europe and contributions came not only from Hobbes, Shaftesbury, Butler, Hume, Adam Smith and Bentham, but also from a large number of others who produced work of high quality although their names have not come down through the years as major figures. One might say that the average level of moral philosophy, both critical and constructive, was considerably above average. It was a period which saw the be#nning of attempts to deal with questions of moral philosophy in psychological terms. As such it brought out the relevance of epistemology to moral philosophy since the appeal to psychology was an attempt to keep ethics within a realm available to ordinary methods of observation. In opposition to this program the claim arose that knowledge in the area of morals could not achieve satisfactory certainty on such a basis and that the ultimate appeal must be to reason. We have, in short, "~he school of reason" arising in opposition to "the school of sentiment" and the beginning of a period of widespread con~oversy appearing in pamphlets, letters, journals, and books. Speaking in our terms, the controversies were concerned with such questions as the autonomy of ethics, the relation between description of fact and normative judgments, the meaning of ethical terms, the grounds of moral judgments, and the epistemological basis of moral principles. Issues in recta-ethics appeared as the offspring of controversies concerning the way in which we arrive at knowledge in moral subjects. One of the most interesting exchanges occurred between Francis Hutcheson 0694-1746) and Gilbert Burnet the Younger (1690-1726). Hutcheson was. at the time of the exchange, director of a private Presbyterian academy in Dublin, friend of a group of men who were in favor of the "new philosophy" of Locke and Shaftesbury and author of Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue which had been published in London early in 1725. The volume contained two essays, one "Concerning Beamy, Order, Harmony, Design" and the other, "Concerning Moral Good and Evil." The latter is now usually referred to as Inquiry into Virtue. Gilbert Burner was the second son of the bishop of Salisbury. He was prebendary of Salisbury from 1715 until 1726, the year of his death, and chaplain to King George the First from 1718. He supported Hoadley in the Bangorian controversy, publishing three pamphlets and a book on the issue,and various other pamphlets and sermons. Hutcheson had argued in the Inquiry that the egoistic account of moral good [87] 88 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY and evil is inadequate because, in a terminology used later by Hume in his adaptation of Hutcheson, "moral distinctions are not derived from reason but from a moral sense" which spon.taneously approves of actions on grounds other than theircontribution to our pleasure. Burnct objected that by resting his argument upon an appeal to sense Hutchcson had failed to offera satisfactoryfoundation for knowledge of moral matters. In the exchange of letters in the London Journal which followed, two from Hutcheson and four from Burnet, many of the issues of contemporary recta-ethicsappear in their eighteenth-century form. They are too complex and extensive to deal with in detail here. I have taken up some of them, particularlythe problem of Hutcheson's theory of justification,in an introduction to a forthcoming edition of Hutcheson's Illustrationson the Moral Sense,a an essay which grew directlyout of thisexchange with Burnet. In this note I want to consider only the problem of the date Of the exchange since there is a widespread, systematic and self-perpetuating mistake about it. There is no question that the lettersappeared in the London Journal, that Burner signed his letters "Philaretus" and that Hutcheson signed his "Philanthropus." And on the basis of reading secondary sources it would seem that there is no question of the date. There is complete agreement, or almost complete agreement, that itwas...