A System of Moral Philosophy
In Three Books

Published posthumously in 1755, these volumes offer the most comprehensive account of the moral and political philosophy of Francis Hutcheson.

Francis Hutcheson (Author)

9781108060295, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 2 July 2015

390 pages
24.4 x 17 x 2 cm, 0.62 kg

Often described as the father of the Scottish Enlightenment, Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) was born in the north of Ireland to an Ulster-Scottish Presbyterian family. Organised into three 'books' that were divided between two volumes, A System of Moral Philosophy was his most comprehensive work. It synthesised ideas that he had formulated as a minister and as the Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow (1729–46). Published posthumously by his son in 1755, prefaced by an account of his life, it is the only treatise by Hutcheson for which a manuscript is known to have survived. Asserting that individual natural rights derive from an innate understanding of moral behaviour, Hutcheson offers a model that mediates between individual interests and communal ideals. Containing the concluding chapters of Book 2 and Book 3, Volume 2 explores the role of familial and political governance in relation to communal happiness.

9. Concerning contracts or covenants
10. The obligations in the use of speech
11. Concerning oaths and vows
12. The values of goods in commerce
13. The principal contracts in a social life
14. Personal rights
15. The rights arising from injuries and damages
16. Concerning the general rights of human society
17. The extraordinary rights arising from some singular necessity
18. How controversies should be decided in natural liberty
Part III. Of Civil Polity: 1. Concerning the adventitious states or permanent relations
2. The rights and duties of parents and children
3. The duties and rights of masters and servants
4. The motives to constitute civil government
5. The natural method of constituting civil government
6. The several forms of polity
7. The rights of governors
8. The ways in which supreme power is acquired
9. Of the nature of civil laws and their execution
10. The laws of peace and war
11. The duration of the politick union, and the conclusion.

Subject Areas: Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ]