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1. Hutcheson’s Attack on Mandeville’s Egoistic Negative Answer. Hutcheson attacked two different aspects of Mandevillean egoism. First, he attacked the claim that all of our moral distinctions are based in self-interest, and second, he attacked the claim that all of our actions are motivated by self-interest. Let us look at these in order(145). 2. Hutcheson's idea of Aesthetic Judgment as a way of refuting Mandeville Hutcheson begins his attack on this egoistic account of our moral distinctions by first developing a non-egoistic account of aesthetic judgment. The pleasure we experience when we view a beautiful object, he argues, can be completely independent of any advantage we might hope to gain from it. Our aesthetic judgment is based on our sense of beauty, and our sense of beauty is entirely distinct from our perception of our own interests. But given that we possess one faculty of judgment that is entirely distinct from self-interest (a disinterested sense of beauty), it is eminently plausible to suppose that we also possess another faculty of judgment that is entirely distinct from self-interest (a disinterested moral sense)(145). 3. Hutcheson's idea of Benevolence. It is plain we have some secret Sense which determines our Approbation without regard to Self-Interest; otherwise we should always favour the fortunate Side without regard to Virtue, and suppose ourselves engaged with that Party” (Beauty and Virtue 122). The only plausible account of the pattern of our moral judgments is that we approve of actions as virtuous when we apprehend that they proceed from benevolence, or an “Instinct, antecedent to all Reason from Interest, which influences us to the Love of others” (Beauty and Virtue 155). The egoistic explanation is simply not credible(146-47). 4. Hutchson's idea of Compassion(Pity) as Instinct. As further proof of our benevolent nature Hutcheson points to “compassion” or “pity,” which leads us “to study the Interest of others without any Views of private Advantage” (Beauty and Virtue 237). Every human is “made uneasy” by the pain of others. And unless other factors intrude, we will try to relieve others’ pain when we see it, without any thought of whether it will benefit us. This is an automatic response, something our constitution compels us to immediately. When we witness another’s pain our distress “immediately appears in our Countenance” and we “mechanically send forth Shrieks and Groans” (Beauty and Virtue 238). Human nature must, then, include a “natural, kind Instinct” (Beauty and Virtue 239)(148)...we have a prior disinterested concern for others' well-being(149). 5. Hutcheson's refutation of Mandeville's argument of flattery as a reason for altruism. Hutcheson attacks the view that we pursue virtue only because of a selfish desire for honor. This was the position most closely associated with Mandeville, and Hutcheson’s opposition to it was probably the impetus for his anti-egoist project as a whole. Against Mandeville, Hutcheson argues that we think people are honorable only when we think they are virtuous (Beauty and Virtue 221–30). So since our sense of honor itself presupposes a prior sense of virtue, our sense of virtue cannot be derived entirely from our sense of honor. Furthermore, our desire for others to think us honorable presupposes that we care about virtue itself and not simply about the advantages we might gain from others’ opinions of us. That is why we would not necessarily give up an honorable reputation in order to gain a shameful but more profitable one. Hutcheson also points out that people are motivated to pursue virtue and avoid vice even when they have no reason to believe that anyone else will ever learn of their actions (Beauty and Virtue [5th ed.] 235). Our concern for virtue can exist entirely independently of our beliefs about others’ opinions of us. So Mandeville must be wrong when he claims that our concern for virtue is based entirely on the desire for others to think us honorable(149-50). 6. Hutcheson's refutation of Mandeville's idea of honor as a method of political manipulation. Another one of Mandeville’s claims that Hutcheson attacks is that those in power have manipulated us into caring about virtue (Beauty and Virtue 130–3). According to this view, it is in the self-interest of political leaders to convince the rest of us that there is great value in promoting the public good, and it is only as a result of politicians’ propaganda that we have come to admire and imitate public benefactors. In response, Hutcheson contends that if we had never had any prior admiration for or motive toward benevolence, political leaders could never have convinced us that anyone else had ever acted benevolently or that we should act benevolently ourselves. It would be as impossible for Mandevillean political leaders to create our benevolent motives and our idea of virtue as it would be for one blind person to give another blind person the perception of redness(150). 7. Hutcheson's Anti-rationalist Argument So when Hutcheson contends in the Inquiry that the view that “virtue arises from reason” is incorrect, what he means is that virtue does not originate in “long Deductions of Reason, which shew some Actions to be in the whole advantageous to the Agent, and their Contrarys pernicious.” What he means is that our approval of benevolence and our own benevolent motives are not based on the belief, arrived at through conscious ratiocination, that benevolence promotes our interests. When he is arguing against those who would derive morality from reason, he is arguing against rational egoists, or those who maintain that our only reason for caring about virtue is that it increases our own happiness (Beauty and Virtue 190–4). Thus, he tells us that by showing that morality originates in a moral sense, he has shown that we have an instinct toward virtue that is “antecedent to all Reason from Interest” (Beauty and Virtue 159). And the view that “Virtue arises from Reason” he summarizes by saying: “What is Reason but that Sagacity we have in prosecuting any End? The ultimate End propos’d by the common Moralists is the Happiness of the Agent himself, and this certainly he is determin’d to pursue from Instinct” (Beauty and Virtue 192)(153). 8. Hutcheson's Attack on Moral Rationalism This non-rationalist conception of ultimate ends leads directly to Hutcheson’s non-rationalist view of virtue. For Hutcheson believed that virtue consists of acting on one particular ultimate end: the happiness of humanity. Now it’s possible that one person might be more effective in pursuing his ultimate end than another person, and so one person might in that sense be more reasonable than the other. But this attribute of reasonability is not what distinguishes the virtuous person from the non-virtuous. A vicious person could be more adept at satisfying his selfish desires than a virtuous person may be at benefiting others. What distinguishes the virtuous person is his ultimate end – that is, that he pursues the happiness of humanity. So since no ultimate end is more reasonable than any other, a virtuous person is not necessarily any more reasonable than a non-virtuous person. Because reason is completely silent about which ultimate ends to pursue, reason cannot tell us that we ought to be virtuous rather than vicious(158). 9. Hutcheson's Copernican Positive Answer I have suggested that Shaftesbury was a Janus-faced thinker in that he looked back to a robust, seventeenth-century conception of moral reality and forward to an attenuated eighteenth- and twentieth-century viewˇ(which) Hutcheson completely abjuresˇ According to the Ptolemaic Positive Answer, human nature is good in that it accords with a moral standard that is independent of human nature itself. The Ptolemaic Positive Answer holds that there is a moral measure that exists outside of human minds and that human beings can succeed in living up to that measure. The moral status of human beings is based on how they stand in relation to principles that would exist whether or not any human beings existed. According to the Copernican Positive Answer, in contrast, there are no moral standards that are independent of human nature. The Copernican Positive Answer holds that human beings can and often do succeed in living up to the standards of morality. But the moral standards human beings can and do succeed in living up to are determined by human nature itself.
 
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