Born in Ireland but educated at the University of Glasgow, Francis Hutcheson was one of the influential figures of the Scottish enlightenment. Returning to Dublin following his degree, it was in the city that he wrote this work, An Enquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725). The copy here is of the fifth edition, published in 1753.
The Enquiry consists of two essays exploring aesthetics and morality. The first 'Concerning beauty, order, harmony, design' argued that humans possess an innate sense of beauty. The Pleasure taken from experiencing something is found within the object itself. An object can be considered beautiful if it conveys uniformity within variety: uniformity alone being dull and too much variety, confusing. Hutcheson argued that this sense was within everyone, but everybody makes their own judgements based on what they consider beautiful – this judgement is known as 'taste'. These ideas were repeated in his essay on morality, arguing that the public has an inbuilt sense of what is right and what is wrong, and to feel uneasy when unjust actions occur.
These philosophies earned Hutcheson the chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow and supporters from across the world, eventually coming to influence other philosophers such as David Hume, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham and even the Founding Fathers of the United States of America.