Hutcheson on moral obligation and its relations to virtue and right
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21597915 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Xiao Qi (0000-0002-8992-8897, Nankai University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Pages | 1-23 |
| Publication date | 2025-12-16 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | British Journal for the History of Philosophy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0960-8788 • E-ISSN: 1469-3526 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09608788.2025.2592587 |
| OpenAlex | W7115590541 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 13 |
This paper examines Francis Hutcheson’s accounts of moral obligation and its relations to virtue and right in his four works on moral philosophy. I argue that Hutcheson derives the “complex moral idea” of moral obligation from one’s reflection on the moral sense’s disposition to approve of certain actions and disapprove of their omission; this reflective origin and dual sensational basis – both approbation and disapprobation – enable him to differentiate moral sense-based judgements about moral obligation from those about virtues. Hutcheson’s early works are ambiguous on the correspondence between moral obligations and rights. I argue that this can be explained by two difficulties confronted by these works: the ambiguity concerning which sensation primarily determines the strength of moral obligation, and the tension between how moral obligation and right are respectively evaluated, namely, one by considering agents’ particular motives and the other by assessing actions’ universalized consequences on the public good. Hutcheson’s later works address these difficulties by acknowledging moral disapprobation as the principal basis of moral obligation and revising his accounts of rights. Moral obligation, on these new accounts, works as a bridge between Hutcheson’s theories of virtue and natural law under the guarantee provided by divine providence
Intentionality · Moral obligation · Moral philosophy · Morality · Obligation · Virtue · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Reformed Theology and Governance
| Highly cited | No |
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