Commerce as cooperation with the deity: Self-love, the common good, and the coherence of Francis Hutcheson

Abstract

There has been debate over the coherence of Hutcheson’s writings. Hutcheson’s writings on ethics have been taken as inconsistent with his work on jurisprudence and economics. This article argues that Hutcheson’s works are coherent when situated in theological context. We find across Hutcheson’s works a belief that God has benevolently designed the natural order. Hutcheson’s later works outline the rules by which we make our efforts to serve the common good effective in practice. The article contributes to our appreciation of the relationship between theology and the idea of mutual benefits in the history of economic thought.

Keywords:

• Francis Hutcheson
• self-love
• the division of labour
• property
• divine providence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 I thank an anonymous referee for suggesting I frame the article along these lines.

2 The principal elements of what Moore identifies as Hutcheson’s first system are contained in An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty, Order &c.; An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas Concerning Virtue or Moral Good; An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections; and Illustrations on the Moral Sense. Those in his second system include his Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy, Compend of Logic, Synopsis of Metaphysics, and System of Moral Philosophy.

3 Like Haakonssen, Rivers (2000, 2:161–164) emphasizes Hutcheson’s articulation of the role of reason and deliberation in moral judgment. She points out that Hutcheson brought out the role of reason in system in response to critiques of his system in the 1720’s by Gilbert Burnet and John Balguy. This articulation, however, should be thought of as making explicit that which had already been largely implicit in his 1725 Inquiry.

4 On Locke: Hutchison (1988, 60–62); Capaldi and Lloyd (2016, 1–13). On Butler and Tucker: Price (2019); Oslington (2017); Matson (2022a). On Smith: Oslington (2012); Hill (2001); Kleer (2000); van der Kooi and Ballor (2020); Matson (2021). On Stewart: Ruellou (2017).

5 In making this argument, it should be noted, Hutcheson builds upon efforts of Richard Cumberland, Thomas Rutherforth, and Shaftesbury, and he anticipates insights not only of Adam Smith but also William Paley. The classic conception of the invisible hand is of private interests serving the public good. Here, however, we see the hand of God reconciling the individual’s efforts to serve the public good with that individual’s own private interest (cf. Viner 1977, 62–72).

6 It is unlikely that Smith failed to appreciate the subtleties of his favorite teacher, just like it is highly unlikely that he failed to properly grasp Hume’s moral psychology (cf. Matson, Doran, and Klein 2019; Raynor 1984). But for reasons that are not clear, Smith provided his readers with misleading representations of both Hutcheson's and Hume’s ideas.

7 Note the similarity to what Smith says about the psychology of justice and the origins of property in the Lectures on Jurisprudence (Smith 1982a, 16–17).

8 On both these points, Hutcheson is clear, property does not derive from any physical or metaphysical aspect of the good in question, and in this respect, he differs from Locke. Like Hume, Hutcheson conceives of property as a moral quality that we attribute to individuals in consequence of particular lines of mental association. On the notion of property as a moral quality, a quality that can in some instances be determined by “accident” and some “trifling difference” (Hutcheson 1755a, 1:318). For an elaboration of Hutcheson in the tradition of “physicalist,” “exclusionary,” or “in rem” theories of property, see Robinson (2017).

9 Smith almost certainly heard Hutcheson deliver remarks on the division of labor, which would have paralleled the treatment in the System, when he was a student at Glasgow. For a discussion on Smith and Hutcheson on the division of labor see W.L. Taylor (1965, 55–62). For other useful comparisons of Smith and Hutcheson on the division of labor—and economic theory more broadly—see Skinner (1995); Scott (1900, 230–243).

10 Although not treated in this passage, Hutcheson introduces money in a later section of his System (and also the Short Intro) as a way of overcoming the double coincidence of wants problem.

11 Aspects of Hutcheson’s account here resemble Hume’s reasoning in Book III of his Treatise of Human Nature. Given their correspondence in the 1740’s, it is possible that Hutcheson was influenced by Hume’s reasoning. For a discussion of that correspondence see Turco (2007). On Hutcheson prefiguring Hume, to some extent, on ideas about convention, see Matson and Klein (2022, 21).