Emotion and virtue: David Hume and Francis Hutcheson

David Hume and Francis Hutcheson are two important thinkers who made significant contributions to the moral philosophy of the 18th-century Enlightenment with their unique approaches to understanding the nature of morality. The most distinctive feature of both thinkers' moral theories is that they oppose the rationalist tradition of moral philosophy and claim that the source of moral judgments is related to emotions rather than reason. At the center of Hutcheson's moral theory is the concept of "moral sense," which he explains as an innate faculty. According to him, good and evil are understood through human's natural emotional tendencies rather than rational inferences. People naturally tend to approve of actions that increase the happiness of others. Virtuous behavior is useful behavior that serves to "provide the greatest happiness." This approach has led Hutcheson's theory to be considered an early advocate of utilitarianism. Hume, on the other hand, developed Hutcheson's ideas further and claimed that the basis of morality is based on emotions rather than reason. According to him, reason has only an instrumental role, not a decisive role, in the emergence of moral action; therefore, reason is a slave to passions or emotions. Hume, who argues that emotions, not reason, determine moral distinctions, bases the source of virtue and vice on the observable fixed character traits of the agent. In this thesis, David Hume's An Enquiry into Human Nature and Francis Hutcheson's An Enquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue will be examined, and the moral theories presented by both thinkers based on their epistemologies and psychology will be compared. This comparison will shed light on the central role that their understanding of emotions and virtues plays in their moral theories.