There were two sides in the discussion. Samuel Clarke and his followers held that moral distinctions are made by reason on the basis of our knowledge of the unchanging and unchangeable fitness of things. The other side, owing its original allegiance to Shaftesbury, held that moral distinctions are the deliverances of a moral sense.
Both sides held two points in common. First, moral knowledge must be accounted for by showing how it can be acquired by the exercise of some human faculty. In this respect they were all Lockeans: If something is knowable, you must show how it can be perceived. Second, moral knowledge cannot be simply a revelation from God, though of course God may enter the picture indirectly by having endowed us with our moral faculty. And when it came to picking out actual instances of virtue and vice, both sides were in agreement about the value of benevolence and the wrongness of acts of violence against other persons. Their debate, then, was over the character of the moral faculty.
Perception and Approval of Virtue
Hutcheson plucked from Shaftesbury's rhapsodies the notion of a moral sense and endeavored to give a systematic account of it as the moral faculty of humankind.
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