Francis Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue

Daniel Floyd (University of Aberdeen)

Ed. by Janet Todd, University of Cambridge
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.3: Scottish Writing and Culture, 400-present.
Vol. editors: Kate Ash-Irisarri (University of Edinburgh), Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Gina Lyle (University of Glasgow), J. Derrick McClure (University of Aberdeen), Andrew Radford (University of Glasgow)

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Philosophy (any)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1725

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Scotland (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Treatise

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INQUIRY into the Original of our Ideas of BEAUTY and VIRTUE

¹ was Hutcheson’s best-known work for his contemporaries and later philosophers and went through four editions in his lifetime. Although many authors had commented on taste, Hutcheson was the first writer in English to provide a systematic theory, and in its two interrelated parts—on aesthetics and ethics —he tried to establish universal truths based on what he held to be innate responses of approbation, abhorrence, or (presumably) indifference, to specific actions and objects.

Treatise I, Concerning BEAUTY, ORDER, HARMONY, DESIGN, begins with an attempt to prove the existence of an internal sense of beauty that produces pleasure upon the perception of objects. Mental senses, Hutcheson insisted, correspond to the

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2076 words

Citation: Floyd, Daniel. "An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 27 May 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16819, accessed 19 April 2024.]

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