Forgotten Revolutionary: Francis Hutcheson

Today, more than ever, the materialism

and greed of modern society are in question.

With capitalism in crisis, we are searching for a different way

to control the drive for riches and the inequalities of society.

Similar questions arose in the 18th century

when a society based on exchange and material wealth first evolved.

This new era of material values provoked critical questions.

What really motivates human beings, what makes us happy

and what fundamental rights do we possess,

and at the centre of all those debates stood one man,

an Ulster-born philosopher who helped shape the modern world.

In this film, I'll investigate how his ideas have helped shape

the United States of America.

I'll find out how his words have been used worldwide

in the fight for liberty.

And back in Ireland,

I'll uncover his influence on early revolutionary movements.

Now there are just faded gravestones in this Dublin park,

but it's believed that there's a visionary buried here.

Someone whose ideas helped shape the modern world. Francis Hutcheson.

Today, we take it for granted that we are all born equal

and that we have fundamental human rights.

But 300 years ago, those ideas had to be fought for.

And Hutcheson was right at the centre of the battle.

Francis Hutcheson, I think, is a figure whose influence

upon the modern world is much underappreciated.

Hutcheson's influence has been seismic.

He is undoubtedly one of those great thinkers who has been lost

and should be recovered and there should be more study of his work, there's no question about that.

Today, with great upheavals around the world, we'll reveal how

Francis Hutcheson's ideas are as relevant as they have ever been.

And at a time of economic crisis, fractured communities

and deep unhappiness, we will see how the ideas of Francis Hutcheson

300 years after his death can shed light on our modern problems.

In the 1600s, civil war and rebellion swept through

the British Isles, with Protestants establishing their dominance.

Ireland at the end of the 17th century had been

devastated by decades of religious conflict.

The basic realities of Irish life were sectarian hatred,

economic crisis and colonial subordination to England.

This is the world Francis Hutcheson was born into

here in Saintfield, County Down.

Francis Hutcheson came from a line of Scottish Presbyterian ministers.

His grandfather had come to Ulster to minister to Scots settlers,

preaching at a church in Saintfield. Francis' father, John Hutcheson,

also became a minister in County Down.

I think John Hutcheson was a reasonably strict

and Orthodox Presbyterian minister.

He was deeply committed to his faith, I think, that's very clear.

And that's something which I think the young Francis embowered,

is a commitment to religious thought, as such.

At this time,

Presbyterian ministers in Ireland preached the doctrines of Calvinism.

The doctrines of Calvinism strike most of us today

as unbearably harsh and depressing.

Everyone of us is fallen, worthless in the eyes of the Lord.

God is absolute sovereign and God alone decides which of us

will be saved and which of us will be damned.

And, what's more, he's decided all of this before we were even born.

So however virtuous your actions, however blameless your life,

you might still end up facing eternal punishment.

Although Presbyterians did attend church in certain areas,

it was technically illegal for them to worship because at the beginning

of the 18th century, the Anglican Church of Ireland had firm control,

stamping down on both Catholics and dissenters like Presbyterians.

Francis was born in an age of religious intolerance,

an age when all power is concentrated in a single

established church, which excluded people like Francis and his family.

Not only that, but his own Presbyterian Church with its strict Calvinist creed

really stamped on any sign of independent thought.

So our modern notions of liberty, equality and democracy

are a million miles away from the world in which Francis grew up.

Aged eight years old,

Francis attended a small school in Saintfield.

As well as a father and grandfather who were Presbyterian ministers,

he had an elder brother who was not as academically gifted as Francis.

# When you were young, you were the king of carrot flowers

# And how you built a tower tumbling through the trees. #

Francis was a gifted child and so his grandfather adored him,

rather overlooking his elder brother, Hans.

Francis was deeply pained by this favouritism

and he did everything he could think of

to try and make sure that the two brothers received equal treatment.

So even at this early age,

Francis' belief in equality was beginning to show.

When Francis' grandfather died,

he left money for his favourite grandchild's education.

Back then, the only university in Ireland was Trinity College Dublin.

But being under the control of the established church,

Trinity refused to admit Presbyterian students.

Instead, Francis had to be sent to university in Scotland.

To prepare for this,

he attended a Presbyterian Academy at Killala, County Down.

To find out about the demanding education Hutcheson received,

I've come to see the only remaining artefact

from Francis' early 18th-century school.

So this looks like a very interesting document,

but what exactly is it?

Well, it is a unique record about the Killala Academy.

It's the student notebook of John King,

who was a student there for two years, from 1710 to 1712.

And that's the immediate two years after Francis Hutcheson's left.

We can be pretty sure, 99%, the notes in here are the notes Hutcheson would also have taken.

It's the same course, exactly the same time,

exactly the same subjects.

Now this academy was actually illegal, wasn't it?

In the eyes of the law, yes, but in County Down, there were so many Presbyterians, they got away with it.

The Presbyterians were always able to organise their own communities

where they were strong and where they were the dominant group,

-they could basically do as they pleased.

-What was the attitude of the establishment to that?

The establishment hated these academies.

They are illegal and they would rant about why the government weren't doing something about them.

What's the importance of this for Francis Hutcheson?

This gives us an indication of how it worked for them.

The logic, main points, sub points, some points of the sub points,

they went through from this to learning Scripture

and theology and then very often the sermons reflected this approach.

You could have a one-hour sermon with one main point with five sub points

and three sub points of each of the five sub points.

It's kind of dry, logical and methodical.

That's the style in the early 18th century.

-That doesn't sound much like Francis Hutcheson.

-He kicked against this.

He kicked against this over-organisation and the dogmatism of the theology,

particularly things like the universal sin

and the idea there is absolutely nothing good in any human being.

He did not accept that. And got into trouble for that.

Francis' hard work at school

enabled him to enter Glasgow University at the age of 17.

In Scotland, unlike Ireland,

Presbyterianism was the established religion,

but the Church was dominated by hardliners who were intolerant

of other faiths and resented government interference.

Just over a decade earlier,

a student had been hanged in Scotland for mocking the Scriptures.

It was a warning to students and lecturers

that they had to tread carefully.

When Hutcheson arrived in Glasgow, as a student, he was taught

by a newly appointed professor,

John Simpson, who was the professor of theology.

The thing about John Simpson

was that he was the most famous of the Presbyterian moderates.

He really did believe in toleration, he did believe in reason,

he did believe in that church and state should be able to coexist.

The trouble was he loved a fight.

Hutcheson's radical teacher eventually lost his job.

But Francis had already been exposed to new ideas.

After graduating, he returned to fresh challenges in Ireland.

Now a grown man, Hutcheson had great magnetism.

He was described as "A man of fair and somewhat florid complexion.

"His forehead is remarkably capacious.

"His eyebrows, lips and dark blue eyes peculiar expressive

"and every feature of his countenance

"indicative of good temper and intelligence."

I think that, first and foremost, he was a tolerant individual,

by which I don't merely mean that he was willing to put up

with people's vagaries and their idiosyncrasies.

I think he was genuinely curious about the variety of human life.

In his writings, he's regularly talking about

the common reader, the common person.

He describes how moral philosophers often have less insight

than the beggar on the street.

But Hutcheson's temper was to be tested by the Presbyterian community,

where there was considerable infighting.

Ministers and congregations now divided into two camps.

As the more traditional, or Old Light Presbyterians,

denounced those they called New Light.

What was new about the New Light

was that they emphasised the human capacity for goodness.

They also defended the right of individuals

to interpret the Bible for themselves.

Neither church nor state, they believed,

had the authority to dictate your religious beliefs.

For Hutcheson, the conflict became very personal.

His father was an Old Light Presbyterian

but Francis, having been exposed to many new ideas at university, was a New Light.

The Hutchesons were divided.

On his return from Scotland, Francis, now licensed as a minister,

deputised for his father one Sunday at Armagh.

But a member of the congregation complained of his liberal interpretation of the Gospel,

telling his father, "Your silly loon Frank has fashed all the congregation with his idle cackle.

"For he's been babbling this hour about the good

"and benevolent God and that the souls of the heathen themselves

"go to heaven if they follow their own consciences.

"Not a word does the daft boy ken or say about the good old comfortable doctrines o' election,

"reprobation, original sin and faith."

Ascribe to the Lord, O mighty ones, ascribe to the Lord,

glory and strength.

The Reverend Tony Davidson is a successor to Francis' father

at Armagh First Presbyterian Church.

-CONGREGATION:

-The voice of the Lord is powerful. The voice of the Lord is majestic.

Francis came here to preach as a young man and he went down like a lead balloon.

-Why was that?

-Well, he came from a different place from his dad.

His dad was a rigid Calvinist,

brought up with that sort of education, and that's what the people wanted.

Whereas he had had a different education in Glasgow.

He was one of the New Light, became a founder of it.

And came and preached and, of course, not everybody appreciated it.

What was the reaction of the congregation to Francis?

Three people liked it. They stayed. The rest of the congregation left.

They felt that if they didn't agree with the man,

even if he was a college kid and he got his degree, they walked out.

They were used to certain words and he didn't use those particular words.

It didn't trigger the usual response and so they walked out.

This conflict must have produced an awkward family situation?

It's fascinating, isn't it? And that's why the story is so powerful.

Here you have a father with one view and a son with the other.

And it makes for a fascinating story.

You wonder what on earth they said to each other afterwards.

What do you think the impact of his Armagh experience would have been

-on Francis?

-He's only 24. He's just been licensed.

He hasn't probably preached a lot.

Any of us who have preached know that if everybody walks out and there's only three left,

you would wonder about going back and preaching there. Definitely.

You might think of a different direction, which is what, in fact, he did.

# You better run

# Yes, you better run. #

Francis was to give his father further concerns.

Deciding his future didn't lie in preaching, Francis moved to the bright lights of Dublin.

# You better run

# Yes, you better run to the city on the river

# Yeah, you better run

# You better run

# You better run to the city on the river... #

One of Hutcheson's complaints about previous philosophers

was that they were dour and morose.

By contrast, Hutcheson's private correspondence

reveals a very convivial and clubbable personality with a playful sense of humour.

As an overworked university professor,

he reminisced with his Irish friends about days spent sauntering through the bookshops of Dublin

and nights spent drinking into the small hours.

Hutcheson's charm became useful when he was hired to run a prominent academy for Presbyterian Dissenters.

It was a dangerous position to hold at a time

when Presbyterians were legally barred from public office.

So Hutcheson came to Dublin around 1720.

What was the world of Dublin Dissent like at that time?

The Dissenters in Dublin had long been banned from Trinity College

and were very anxious to get a university

so they could train their ministers.

And they heard of the great Francis Hutcheson's career in Glasgow

as a student and they invited him here about 1719 or 1720.

How hostile was the environment for somebody trying to set up

a dissenting academy?

It was a very risky thing for Hutcheson to do,

to come and open a school in the hostile environment.

There was every possibility that school would have been

closed down and Hutcheson prosecuted for attempting it.

But that didn't happen.

Some people say it didn't happen because Hutcheson became friendly with Archbishop William King,

the sort of main man of the established church

in Dublin at the time, who regarded Hutcheson as a great scholar.

In fact, they became friends.

And that protected him and the school from persecution.

But it was a sort of a close-run thing.

Of course, then his father became very concerned

when he heard how friendly Hutcheson had become with the Archbishop

and that the Archbishop had been offering bribes to Hutcheson,

or as they said great preferment, if he would change his religion.

Hutcheson had to write to his father, assuring him he would not be joining the established church.

Francis risked further danger by developing his own ideas

that could be considered heretical.

He tried to examine philosophical concepts,

in terms of the day-to-day ways we see things.

This is another radical departure from previous philosophers,

who ignored the role of human perception.

We think of psychology as a quintessentially modern preoccupation.

Countless magazines promise to unlock the secrets of human nature.

But there's nothing new in this. Three centuries ago,

Francis Hutcheson began to map out our complex emotional world.

He was one of the very first people to do this.

The 16th and 17th centuries saw huge developments in art and science.

Learning was encouraged by observation and experiment.

Philosophers began to ask questions about human nature.

According to 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes,

a human being is a sophisticated organism,

all of whose functions can be explained like a machine.

Even the way we think can be understood as a basic physical process.

Hobbes really reduces all human behaviour to crude appetites

and desires, as basic as the need to eat.

It's all about maximising pleasure and avoiding pain.

Hobbes' world is an amoral world in which all human action

is rooted in self-interest.

And the inevitable result is that we come into competition

and therefore conflict with others.

Hobbes influenced Dutch philosopher Bernard Mandeville

who proposed how such a selfish society would work.

He described a bee colony that survives through the personal gain of each bee.

He thought that a working system for the public good only thrives

on the selfish actions of individuals.

Greed, he thought, is what drives society, as many people still believe today.

One of Hutcheson's main motivations was to distance himself

from what he saw as the selfish schools, the selfish school

of morality, which he associated with Hobbes and then with Mandeville.

He saw Hobbes as having reduced morality to self-interest.

We don't act in a moral way again because we want to act in a moral way

for its own sake, but because we think it will serve our interests.

Mandeville was perhaps more of a polemicist than Hobbes,

but they both argued positions that people find deeply antagonistic

and yet persuasive at the same time.

We have to find a way around them, which is not easy to do

in this period. It takes a lot of dexterity.

In Hutcheson's time, the long-established power structures

of monarchy and aristocracy were being challenged.

A new order was emerging where more power lay in exchange

and material wealth.

In a more consumerist and individualistic society,

the question of what motivates people was as timely as ever.

Horrified by Hobbes and Mandeville's bleak view of human nature,

Hutcheson set out to refute it.

He wanted to unravel what it is that allows us

to get on with the other people we come into contact with.

These issues of desire and morality were on his mind

when Francis fell in love.

Aged 30, he married Miss Mary Wilson from County Longford.

During their courtship, Francis was hard at work

on his first publication, his Inquiry Into Beauty And Virtue.

Here is one of the things he has to tell us.

"Love itself," he says, "is what gives beauty to the lover.

"And this is the strongest charm possible.

"The one that exerts the greatest power over us."

And the argument of the book is that morality works like beauty and love.

It's based not on reason, but on spontaneous feeling.

I think Hutcheson's marriage in the year of the writings

of the inquiry certainly may have shared some of his philosophical

thinking at that juncture where you fall in love with somebody

and then you have to sit down and work out why this might be so

and what their good qualities are.

You're taken in by somebody before you rationally commit to them.

In that sense, he set aside self-interest

and simply falls in love with who he's fallen in love with.

I think there is some parallel of his philosophical writings at this point

and his changing domestic circumstance.

The problem with the rational approach to morality is that -

I know what I ought to do, but there's nothing in me that makes me do it.

And the brilliant thing that Hutcheson did was to explain

why morality motivates. It motivates because it's a passion,

because it's a feeling, and we are animals, motivated by desires.

Morality is a kind of desire and that's why it moves us.

But if morality was a passion, a feeling,

the question remained for Hutcheson, how can we be objectively certain about what is good and evil?

He was engaged in a long-running quest for moral certainty.

That's to say, how is it that we can know that what we think

is right and wrong is really right and wrong and not just a matter of subjective opinion?

And his answer was to say that we had a moral sense, that is we had,

just like our other senses of seeing or hearing or tasting,

we have a moral sense that picks out real moral qualities in actions

and characters in the world.

Just as I see a tree or a butterfly and because I see it,

I know that it's there, so when I see virtue, I know it.

The ability for individuals to perceive moral qualities was a radical idea for its time.

This was an age when there was little freedom and few people even had the vote.

But according to Hutcheson's moral theory,

God has made all of us capable of moral judgement.

It isn't up to the Bible or the king or the government to tell us what is right or wrong.

God has given all of us the right to use our own moral sense.

For Hutcheson, the idea of rights came from the nature of human beings

themselves and that every person had a moral sense,

so that regardless of their upbringing or culture,

they could still recognise beyond those sort of limitations

that there were certain things

that were owed to human beings by virtue of being human in itself.

Then it didn't matter whether you were a commoner or an aristocrat when it came to appearing in court,

you were treated in exactly the same way.

In that sense, I think you can see there is a certain egalitarianism

that starts to flow out of Hutcheson's idea of human nature and human rights.

The moral sense had led Hutcheson to a vision of equality

and human rights for all, a subversive position to hold.

In 1725, his first book, An Inquiry Into Beauty And Virtue,

was published.

Perhaps it was the boldness of the ideas

that led the wily Hutcheson to publish it anonymously.

Hutcheson would have been worried about the kind of democratic quality

of his idea of the moral sense on two grounds.

One of which is that it rallied against the political structures

of the day, to some degree.

The politics of 18th-century Ireland was very hierarchically organised.

So there's that side to it.

The other side to the radicalism of Hutcheson's thought

about the moral sense is the human optimism that he brings to it.

The idea that we all are morally capable

and that we are able to improve ourselves runs against the strand

of traditional Presbyterian thought that understood human beings

as essentially reprobate and saved by God's grace.

Hutcheson, I think, comes to these convictions as a relatively young man

and he has the courage that young people have

when they are articulating new moral positions. And a lot of people in the Presbyterian traditional

resist what he is saying and even in the 19th century when people looking back on Hutcheson,

they are rather alarmed at some of the things he has had to say.

He remains controversial long after his time.

Hutcheson's achievement shouldn't be underestimated in these terms.

Hutcheson's bold writings caught the eye of an unlikely admirer in Dublin.

In the 1720s, King George I's personal representative in Ireland

was Lord Carteret, who resided at Dublin Castle.

Despite being an establishment figure,

Carteret was open to new and different ideas.

The Lord-Lieutenant went to the lengths of tracking down Hutcheson

through his publisher and invited him here

to Dublin Castle, the seat of British rule in Ireland.

Hutcheson was now rubbing shoulders with the political and social elite.

He was an outsider,

someone who'd moved from the world of second-class citizens

to the glamour and power of the establishment.

A rumour spread that Carteret had offered Hutcheson

an establishment job in Dublin.

But Hutcheson would have to become an Anglican to take such a prominent post.

His father was aghast at the thought.

Yes, his father was deeply concerned about the possibility

of Hutcheson converting. I think the father was concerned

because he could imagine how a young man working in Dublin,

suddenly coming into a large city, in 18th-century terms,

and finding himself fraternised by people of political clout

might well have their head turned

and think that this is a road forward to influence and prosperity.

Hutcheson resisted temptation.

Instead, in 1730, he was elected to the Chair of Moral Philosophy

at Glasgow University by just one vote.

At only 35 years old, he was rapidly becoming

one of the most influential philosophers in Scotland.

And soon, he became known for his radical new ways of teaching.

Later generations dated the beginning

of the Scottish Enlightenment from Hutcheson's appointment at Glasgow.

His lecture notes still survive.

And they begin by telling us that the point of moral philosophy

is to promote our greatest happiness and perfection.

One very simple innovation is that Hutcheson said this in English,

rather than Latin, as all his predecessors had done.

It's nicely symbolic of his determination to modernise university life.

But it also enabled him to develop the famously dynamic lecturing style

that appealed to students not just in Scotland,

but throughout the British Isles.

There's no question that Hutcheson was an inspiring figure.

I think his testimony by students, the students' notes, their memoirs, their defences of him,

the way that his reputation spread, the fact that people wanted

to acknowledge him, even when they disagreed with him.

By all accounts, Hutcheson was an incredibly charismatic teacher.

He lectured without notes, walking around the room as he spoke.

His eloquence and energy were legendary.

Francis Hutcheson was counsellor

and mentor to many of his Ulster Presbyterians students,

who were known to locals as the Wild Irish Taigs.

In keeping with his New Light ideas about human nature,

Hutcheson firmly believed people were naturally benevolent.

# And I've run out of pale ale

# And I feel like I'm in jail... #

Francis Hutcheson believed in human goodness,

that acts of benevolence like giving to charity are instinctive.

The moral sense propels us to act with generosity towards others

and this is hardwired into every one of us.

What's more, we get a sort of pleasure out of this,

a natural positive feeling results, quite beyond our conscious control.

Benevolence was the core model concept for Hutcheson.

While the Hutchesonian optimistic view of the world

has fallen greatly out of favour

and we need only to look at our news screens every night to see why

that might be, he hasn't lost the argument and we need only to look

at figures like Nelson Mandela or Aung San Suu Kyi to think of people

who do act out of genuinely selfless considerations.

Hutcheson was interested not just in how individuals

can look after each other, but how the government can enable people to live good lives.

After the religious and political crises of the recent past,

Hutcheson wanted to explore how societies could be held together.

# The word is about, there's something evolving... #

It was a critical question at a time of massive upheaval.

Scotland was on the verge of becoming an economic powerhouse.

There is an anxiety that in Enlightenment Scotland,

rising commerce, rising wealth,

rising trade with Britain's new empire,

will somehow corrupt individuals, will make individuals turned towards

their own selfish interests and so Hutcheson's theories can suggest -

actually, while individuals may want to buy a nice silver teapot,

they may want to take part in an increasingly globalised Atlantic economy,

they won't be in a Hobbesian state of nature where each man or woman

is fighting for their own individual interests,

their own wealth, because somehow there is a cut-off mechanism

and that cut off mechanism that can stop this Hobbesian state of nature,

this Hobbesian nightmare in a commercialising world,

is the innate moral sense.

Hutcheson thought the key role for government was to enable people

to flourish and live together through their moral sense.

Such a society would then be one

that achieved the greatest happiness of the greatest number.

This famous maxim was reiterated by a group called the Utilitarians some 40 years later.

One crucial legacy that Hutcheson has left us with

is the fundamental utilitarian principle that the greatest good

is the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people.

And that fundamental idea that that's what politics ought to be about,

achieving the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people,

is something that has remained with us

since the 18th century and still guides politics today.

Hutcheson believed that bringing about happiness is achieved

through governments allowing individuals to make their own decisions through the moral sense.

Hutchesonian benevolence, you could argue,

is key to the rhetoric of the big society,

in as much as the church, the university, the school,

the local foundation, are benevolent institutions,

but these institutions can only be benevolent if they give voice

and access to individuals on the local level.

We might be able to see echoes of Hutcheson,

or at least something Hutchesonian, in David Cameron's big society.

In as much as the big society in its rhetoric likes to suggest

that each individual deserves to have power devolved to him or her.

The potent intertwining of political

and religious power was also examined by Hutcheson.

When he was a student, his teacher had been accused of heresy.

And just years before, a student had been hanged.

Now, Hutcheson was to experience

the iron fist of religious authority for himself.

As a Glasgow professor, Hutcheson had to tread carefully

because the local authorities were watching vigilantly for any sign

that this Irishman might infect their students with New Light ideas.

Their moment came in 1738

when a student denounced Hutcheson for teaching heresy

and published a long list of his gross and dangerous errors.

But Hutcheson's students quickly rallied around him

and he easily survived this challenge.

It was a sign that the tide was turning

and that the Enlightenment had come to Scotland.

The threat of heresy looms over everyone in 18th-century Scotland.

How seriously he took the charges of heresy is of course difficult...

difficult to recapture, in a sense, at this stage.

But it could undermine people's careers.

There's no question about that.

It was fitting that Hutcheson's students should support him,

as he had taught them the right to resist authority.

-Hutcheson said...

-"The people have the right of defending themselves

"against the abuse of power.

"The people's right to resist is unquestionable."

One of the students wrote...

"If everyone had the art to create an esteem for liberty

"and a contempt for tyranny and tyrants, he was the man."

This inspiring teacher was becoming a driving force behind the Scottish Enlightenment,

a period of great intellectual blossoming.

Many ideas we take for granted today stem from this period.

Other thinkers began to question received wisdom,

one in particular was David Hume,

who would go on to become one of the world's most famous philosophers.

But back in 1739, he was unknown and struggling to get his voice heard.

So the young Hume approached the elder and better-known Francis Hutcheson.

Francis Hutcheson believed that the moral sense was planted within us

by a benevolent God

who wants to show us the difference between right and wrong.

But for David Hume, morality is a human invention,

a product of custom or of habit.

God had nothing to do with it.

Despite their differences, the two philosophers corresponded

and some letters still survive.

Here we have the original correspondence between Hume and Hutcheson.

Why did Hume turn to Hutcheson in the first place?

What he's looking for from Hutcheson is perhaps support,

renewed encouragement, perhaps even practical assistance

in launching his intellectual career, as he moves forward.

Hutcheson dominates the field in Scotland in the late 1730s.

He is the pre-eminent moral philosopher

and so the obvious man for whom Hume will reach out for help

and support at this stage in his own career.

You also have to bear in mind that Hume owes a great deal to Hutcheson.

Many people in the 18th-century didn't fully appreciate

the extent to which Hume actually builds on Hutcheson's philosophical achievements.

In particular, Hume borrows from Hutcheson the whole project

of attempting to map the human mind

and to describe its internal construction, its operations,

its workings, and how they play out in terms of human behaviour.

That's the project in which Hutcheson is engaging, it's the project in which Hume is also engaged.

But there's also more specific intellectual connection

between Hutcheson and Hume, in particular what Hutcheson

does in talking about the moral sense. And although people

in the 18th-century after both men had died tended to think of Hume

simply as a reaction against Hutcheson, it's very clear

that in terms of the use he made of the moral sense,

Hume was very much indebted to Hutcheson.

One shouldn't be taken in by the politeness and graciousness

in the correspondence that's come down to us.

Hume is applying for a professorship at Edinburgh University

where the day job, if you like, is teaching morality

to the next generation of Church of Scotland ministers.

And given Hume's not very well disguised doubts about religious belief and organised religion,

particularly in the form in which it is dominant

in 18th-century Scotland, it would be a dereliction of duty

no less for Hutcheson to nod through Hume's candidacy.

Hume tried to impress Hutcheson, but it didn't work.

Hutcheson was now the most powerful academic in Scotland

and he used his influence to make sure that Hume never got a university job.

But today, it's Hume who's got the memorial

and it's Hume, not Hutcheson, who is famous throughout the world.

Francis Hutcheson, I think, is a figure whose influence upon

the modern world is much under appreciated.

Without Hutcheson, I think, the Scottish Enlightenment

would have been a very different, assumed quite different character,

and perhaps would not have been as productive as it turned out to be.

Out of this vibrant period came another hugely influential figure.

In 1740, a young man in Hutcheson's class described him as...

"Undoubtedly beyond all comparison the most acute,

"the most distant, the most philosophical of all my teachers,

"the never to be forgotten Mr Hutcheson."

That student was the future legendary economist Adam Smith.

Today, Smith is a symbol of capitalism.

His seminal work, the Wealth of Nations,

is used globally as a justification for a free trade.

It argues that in business,

self-interest can work to the advantage of everyone.

It's no coincidence that the order of the chapters

in the Wealth of Nations is almost identical

to the sequence of Hutcheson's lectures.

I think Hutcheson could not have had a greater influence on Adam Smith

and, in many respects,

his greatest achievement is steering Smith into a line of thinking

about the human personality which was to be of historic importance.

Both examined how wealth and luxury

can fit with being a morally good person.

Modern economists sometimes depict Adam Smith as a champion

of naked self-interest, but the truth is very different.

Hutcheson's questions about society and benevolence matter deeply to Smith,

and given our economic and financial difficulties,

maybe those questions are worth asking once again.

I think if you look at Smith in the context of Hutcheson,

you start to see that there are aspects of Smith's work

which don't fit the caricature that we often have of Adam Smith.

I often think that Smith is characterised as the person

who said that it's basically through people

pursuing their self-interest that the common good is realised.

That is certainly an element of Smith's thought, but there's also a strong emphasis upon benevolence,

upon people wanting to do good for the sake of doing good.

People wanting to do good not because it's necessarily just in their self-interest,

but because it's in the interest of other people as well.

For someone like Smith, it's very clear that this comes out of the his exposure to many of the ideas

that you find in Francis Hutcheson's work, particularly Hutcheson's work on moral philosophy.

Hutcheson had influenced the great thinkers of the age

who would in turn shape much of the modern world.

But at the end of his life, he would underestimate his own achievement.

In 1746, Francis Hutcheson fell ill while visiting Dublin.

He'd become increasingly dissatisfied with his philosophical writings

and perhaps even felt he'd been outmanoeuvred by the infidel David Hume.

Hutcheson died shortly after

and was buried without fanfare or monument.

Yet his ideas were to have dramatic consequences.

At the beginning of the 18th century, the British colonies

in America enjoyed considerable religious freedom.

Churches completed to impose their values on this emerging nation.

# Your own personal Jesus... #

We all know the story of how America was founded by the Pilgrims

who fled religious persecution on the Mayflower.

Less well known is the mass migration of Irish Presbyterians

in the 18th century.

Fed up with religious discrimination at home,

they too sought a better life in the New World.

One such Ulster Scots immigrant was Francis Alison.

Evidence suggests he was educated in an Irish Presbyterian Academy,

probably that of Francis Hutcheson in Dublin.

He is also thought to have gone to Glasgow University.

He arrived in America in the 1730s in order to help

the fledgling Presbyterian Church.

With him, he brought the ideas of Francis Hutcheson.

Alison was not only well versed in Hutcheson's ideas,

he began to teach them for himself.

This is the spot where he opened his first academy in New London,

Pennsylvania, and it's believed this is the house where he lived.

Children here followed a curriculum based on Francis Hutcheson's writings and so, in effect,

what Alison was trying to do was to recreate

Hutcheson's celebrated Dublin Academy here in the New World.

Alison corresponded with Hutcheson about his teachings.

He also set up his own academy which became the University of Delaware.

But it wasn't just Francis Alison.

Hundreds of thousands of Ulster Scots came to America in the 18th-century,

with many taking up positions of power and influence.

Through them, Hutcheson's ideas spread like wildfire.

For new colonists, his writings could be particularly potent.

-Hutcheson wrote...

-"If the mother country attempts anything oppressive

"towards a colony, and the colony be able to subsist as a sovereign state by itself,

"or have its plan of polity miserably changed to the worse,

"the colony is not bound to remain subject any longer."

Part of the beauty of Hutcheson's influences that it comes almost

unmediated through the classroom and through the pulpit.

Hutcheson is widely read, he's widely quoted,

he's respected, his works are used as textbooks.

What about Hutcheson's ideas on colonies and colonial resistance?

One thing that's very important is his asking and answering,

when it is that colonies may turn independent.

Even though he's writing a full generation or more

prior to the American Revolution or what we might call the revolutionary moment, it's a question and answer

that Americans turn to good account, so when they're thinking about what the appropriate conditions

under which a people may declare themselves free and independent,

at what point a people can resist,

even to the point of arms against a tyrannical government.

In fact, they're wrestling with this very question in pulpits

and coffee houses, in their colonial legislatures.

For instance, in Massachusetts in 1772,

there was an election day sermon that quoted Hutcheson verbatim,

by name and approvingly.

So his asking and answering that question

was something that was crucial to Americans

working out their own response

to what they took to be a tyrannical regime.

This radical idea of independence influenced a generation of men

who were key to nation building, the Founding Fathers of America.

John Adams, a future president, wrote in his diary...

"16th of January 1756, a fine morning. A large frost up.

"Reading Hutcheson's Introduction to Moral Philosophy."

Statesman Benjamin Franklin called him "the ingenious Mr Hutcheson".

Architect of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson,

held Hutcheson's books in his library.

After a year of war with Britain,

the Founding Fathers led the American Revolution.

It culminated in the Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration of Independence was signed in this room.

It's become such a powerful familiar symbol of American nationhood

that we completely forget just how risky it was

for a bunch of small colonies

to take on the most powerful empire on the planet.

The first thinker to defend the right of colonists to resist

an oppressive mother country was Francis Hutcheson.

Perhaps in the back of his mind was Ireland's difficult relationship with Britain,

but it was in revolutionary America, in this very room,

Hutcheson's vision became a reality and that America became independent.

Not only that, but some of the wording of the Declaration of Independence

was essentially Hutchesonian in the values it expressed.

There's no doubt that on his Virginia plantation

in between having various illicit affairs

with enslaved African Americans, Thomas Jefferson loved to read Hutcheson.

A case can be made that Hutcheson influences Jefferson

in his writing of the US Declaration of Independence.

In several clauses of the Declaration,

particularly those that we know are directly written by Jefferson,

we can also see a focus on sense, sensibility and morality

that we can deduce are partially influenced

from a reading of Hutcheson.

Even the term "unalienable rights", basic human rights

that cannot be broken, was directly drawn from Hutcheson.

I think it's true to say the Founding Fathers of the United States

were all very familiar with Hutcheson's writings, so for that reason,

I think, his ideas were extremely profound, not just in terms of basic concepts of rights,

but even some of the language, like unalienable rights.

That's straight Hutcheson.

You find that in many of the pamphlets and writings

of many of the American Founding Fathers and revolutionaries.

Where else could they have got this language from?

But his influence on America did not end there.

Hutcheson was also one of the earliest critics of slavery, writing...

Hutcheson is being read by figures in the antislavery movement

and they read him, they find him to be a leading figure

who they can refer to as someone who lends prestige,

but also gives a philosophical grounding to their position.

Hutcheson is very important to the antislavery movement.

For over two centuries, Hutcheson's words have inspired

the fight for basic human rights and strikingly the right to happiness.

Nearly 50 years ago, here on the Mall in Washington,

Martin Luther King addressed 200,000 people.

His electrifying I Have A Dream speech is legendary.

But few people realise that King's appeal to life,

liberty and the pursuit of happiness was pure Francis Hutcheson.

# I won't be your whipping boy... #

The language of rights is alive and well in the United States.

It is very difficult for anyone in America, be they a philosopher,

a lawyer or a politician, to avoid using the language of rights

and even unalienable rights

because it's so ingrained in American political culture.

It's partly because of the American Founders, but that's also because

they were reading people like Francis Hutcheson.

Hutcheson has been largely forgotten in Ireland today.

His only monument is a blue plaque

on Saintfield First Presbyterian Church.

Yet, even here, his ideas returned after his death

to shape the actions of others.

Having helped inspire the American Revolution, Hutcheson's theories of rights and resistance

influenced the founders of the earliest Irish republican movement.

The American Revolution inspired the Ulster Presbyterians

who had carried Hutcheson's ideals into the late 18th century.

They played a key role

in organising the United Irishmen's Rebellion of 1798.

Many of the people who lost their lives are buried here in Saintfield.

They were fighting for an independent Irish Republic

with liberty for all, Protestant, Catholic and dissenter.

Today, our media is rife with news of different political and religious conflicts.

And Hutcheson's ideas are as valuable as they have ever been.

I think there are many things that Western societies, any society,

could learn from reading people like Francis Hutcheson.

He had this idea that commercial societies, whether they are in a state of boom

or in a state of economic depression,

if they're going to function they need more than just legal support,

that you need people who behave in a certain way, act in a certain way,

that know certain things should never be done, even if there are no laws prohibiting these things.

Hutcheson's ideas are in a sense hidden from view.

It's because they became the matter of consensus, that people stopped

reflecting on where they came from

and who articulated them and what positions they had to counteract in order for them to work.

We're still living with the consequences of that philosophical position

and living, in political terms, in the sense that he stood up for ideals of democracy

and tried to think about human beings as people who could live together fundamentally.

They could live together because they had something in common

and that thing that they had in common is a moral sense.

I think Hutcheson's kind of been forgotten because he's not a cynic.

He is an optimist about human nature.

Although one might look around and think that he was clearly wrong

to be so optimistic, actually it's a far too bleak

and one-sided picture to think

that human beings are solely motivated by selfish interests.

Clearly, it's more complicated than that

and I think that we would do well

to inject some of that Hutchesonian optimism

into our very cynical picture of the world.

# Know your rights

# These are your rights... #

Many of the principles that we take for granted, like equality

and basic human rights, were championed by Francis Hutcheson nearly three centuries ago.

He was a radical in his own time.

Someone who battled with powerful conventions to establish a new vision of humanity.

And today, when we face recession, and an uncertain future,

perhaps it's time we listened again to this forgotten revolutionary.

# Oh, know these rights

#You have the right to free speech

# As long as

# You're not dumb enough to actually try it

# Know your rights

# These are your rights. #

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