Locke, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson: Contesting Diversity in the Enlightenment and Beyond by Daniel Carey (review)

192 liberty points to a later part of the Inquiry , and to the Essay, where Hutcheson treats the sense of virtue. If a moral sense exists, it cannot be forced or inflicted on others, but must be cultivated under conditions of tolerance and the recognition of one’s place in a larger (divine) system. This aspect of his philosophy resonated with the early thoughts of Franklin, whose Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, which argues for a sublime cosmic order, was heavily influenced by Hutcheson’s Inquiry . But Franklin later regretted this work; and his later discussions of selfregulation and motivation were more in keeping with his own activities as an entrepreneur and engineer of change. This alone suggests the tensions that arise in situating Hutcheson’s moral philosophy and the cause of American liberty too closely in-line with each other. Hutcheson’s aesthetic philosophy is relevant both to present-day debates and to the problem of liberty. Historians might prefer an edition of Hutcheson more attendant to his role in the emergence of philosophy as a space in which ways of looking were shaped, to his arguments for the beautiful, to his own use of language. But until then these fine editions should sit well on most shelves. Christina Lupton University of British Columbia DANIEL CAREY. Locke, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson: Contesting Diversity in the Enlightenment and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge, 2006. Pp. x ⫹ 260. $85. Appearing in Quentin Skinner and James Tully’s ‘‘Ideas in Context’’ series for Cambridge University Press, Mr. Carey’s Locke, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson is an indispensable work of intellectual history, apt to reward even those not especially interested in the authors named in its title. He views the development of moral philosophy from Locke to Hutcheson, and more generally through the Scottish Enlightenment, in terms of a dialectic that may be outlined as follows: to discredit the notion that there are ideas or beliefs that all humans innately possess (the idea of God, or of what constitutes virtue), Locke adduced historical and anthropological examples of diversity in moral beliefs and practices (various peoples in the world are or have been apparent atheists; some engage or have engaged in practices, such as parricide or infanticide, that Europeans now deem vicious). As he sought to keep a lid on his skeptical observations, he preserved a basis for uniform moral judgments in natural law, reason, and revelation, but his critics felt that he broached an unwelcome moral relativism . Shaftesbury disagreed with his former mentor, reviving an ancient Stoic ideal of a uniform moral standard, inherent in the providential order of all things, that applies to all rational beings, even if only a cultivated elite can grasp and live according to it. To reconcile Locke’s empirical method with Shaftesbury ’s neo-Stoicism, Hutcheson skirted the issue of innate ideas by grounding a potentially uniform morality in a perceptual faculty (the moral sense) and/or a natural disposition to beneficence that requires only a moderate degree of rational management. Finally, the Hutcheson-influenced conjectural historiography of Adam Ferguson and Lord Kames accounts for diversity by historicizing it: peoples act and think differently according to their different stages of economic and cultural development. Elegant and persuasive, Mr. Carey’s dialectic uncovers an important aspect of Locke’s legacy to eighteenth-century 193 moral philosophy that is absent from prior historical accounts, including Isabel Rivers’s kindred Reason, Grace, and Sentiment: A Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England, 1660– 1780 (1991–2000). More so than Rivers’s study, Mr. Carey’s is a prod to further scholarship. For example, he says nothing of eighteenth-century literature , leaving much, I think, to be said. The tension he probes between the desideratum of correct or at least shared moral judgment, on one hand, and the empirical recognition of cultural diversity , on the other, animates a wide range of literary works from Behn to Equiano. And with regard to our own historical moment, Mr. Carey’s dialectic is intensely relevant to a ‘‘multiculturalist’’ agenda that seeks both to respect cultural diversity and yet claim some grounds for a unified notion of human rights. He extends his concerns beyond the Enlightenment...