Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- PART ONE WHICHCOTE AND CUDWORTH
- PART TWO SHAFTESBURY
- PART THREE HUTCHESON
- 10 Early Influences on Francis Hutcheson
- 11 Hutcheson's Attack on Egoism
- 12 Hutcheson's Attack on Moral Rationalism
- 13 A Copernican Positive Answer and an Attenuated Moral Realism
- 14 Explaining Away Vice, or Hutcheson's Defense of a Copernican, Theistic Positive Answer
- PART FOUR DAVID HUME
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
13 - A Copernican Positive Answer and an Attenuated Moral Realism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- PART ONE WHICHCOTE AND CUDWORTH
- PART TWO SHAFTESBURY
- PART THREE HUTCHESON
- 10 Early Influences on Francis Hutcheson
- 11 Hutcheson's Attack on Egoism
- 12 Hutcheson's Attack on Moral Rationalism
- 13 A Copernican Positive Answer and an Attenuated Moral Realism
- 14 Explaining Away Vice, or Hutcheson's Defense of a Copernican, Theistic Positive Answer
- PART FOUR DAVID HUME
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In this chapter, I discuss several important features of Hutcheson's moral sense theory and the worries they gave rise to. In Section A, I explain why Hutcheson thought his theory was a moral realist one and one that secured the Positive Answer – as well as explaining why his rationalist predecessors would have denied that Hutcheson was right about either of these points. In A, I discuss the worry that Hutcheson's theory was incompatible with Christianity and compatible with atheism. In B, I discuss the worry that Hutcheson's theory could not ground a principled resolution to interpersonal moral conflict and thus implied a kind of moral relativism. In C, I discuss the worry that Hutcheson's theory could not ground a principled resolution to conflict within a person and thus left us with no reason to privilege our moral affections over our non-moral ones. And in E, I contrast Hutcheson's strategy for dealing with the last of these worries with the strategy used by Joseph Butler.
Attenuated and Robust Moral Realism; Ptolemaic and Copernican Positive Answers
Hutcheson's Moral Sense was cause for alarm among rationalists, and not just because it opposed a metaphysical position they had defended. For as the rationalists saw it, morality could not exist unless it was based in eternal and immutable truth. So according to the rationalists, if Hutcheson's anti-rationalist theory were true, we would have to conclude that morality does not exist.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006