Francis Hutcheson and the Emergence of Modern Aesthetics

A Symposium

Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) is an obligatory and canonical figure in all the narratives of modern aesthetics. Surprisingly, therefore, the last and only book-length study to deal with his aesthetic thinking was Peter Kivy’s The Seventh Sense, published in 1976 (it was reissued in unchanged form in 2003 with the addition of some later essays by the same author). Though many of Kivy’s insights are enlightening even today, Hutcheson’s complex role in the emergence of modern aesthetics is worth studying beyond the scope of approach and discourse adopted in The Seventh Sense.

(1) The interpretations of Hutcheson’s aesthetics usually concentrate on his Inquiry concerning the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725), especially on its first part concerning “Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design” (i.e., the sense of beauty). Certainly, this first treatise contains the earliest (philosophical) aesthetics in Europe, which inspired an impressive number of authors (e.g. Alexander Gerard, David Hume, Henry Home, Adam Smith, Archibald Alison, etc.) to address this subject in Scotland during the 18th century. At the same time, if we take the “multidisciplinary nature” (see below) of modern aesthetic thinking into consideration, relevant passages can be found in the second part of the Inquiry (about moral sense) and in his other writings including, for example, his inaugural lecture On the Social Nature of Man, his Thoughts on Laughter, his An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Illustrations on the Moral Sense, his notes on The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (also a translation of his with James Moor), and his posthumous magnum opus, A System of Moral Philosophy.

(2) Hutcheson’s Inquiry has customarily been investigated through the prism of its reception. Consequently it is usually regarded as a starting point for the traditions which later led to Hume, Smith, Dugald Stewart or even Immanuel Kant (whose Critique of Judgment is indebted to some fundamental distinctions made in the Inquiry). At the same time, an approach from the opposite direction is also instructive: Hutcheson can fruitfully be studied as an end point or as a synthesising figure. His aesthetic thoughts represent the theoretical achievements accumulated in different discourses over the preceding 100 years. On this theoretically rich foundation, Hutcheson’s aesthetic conception can be a valid alternative to the aesthetics formulated in Leibnizian and Wolffian philosophical language by Alexander von Baumgarten, the inventor of the word “Aesthetica” (1735 / 1750), and the founder of aesthetics as an independent philosophical discipline.

(3) Finally but perhaps most importantly, it seems to be a profitable approach towards understanding Hutcheson’s theory in this field, if we mean by “the aesthetic” a radically modern phenomenon which emerged in the (second half of the) 17th and early 18th centuries (and not merely a vague adjective referring to the common set of philosophies or metaphysics of beauty and / or theories of arts in general), and which played a constitutive part in the formation of modern European culture (manners, communication, education, institutions, etc.). From this perspective “the aesthetic” appears as a result of the interaction and interference of several discourses: theology, moral philosophy, natural sciences, rhetoric, epistemology (psychology), philosophical anthropology, conversational literature, etc. So it had much less to do with fine arts and criticism than is usually supposed, and it is far from sufficient to study aesthetics as consisting of a definite corpus of art and philosophical reflections on it. (It was only a late 18th-century sequel that replaced aesthetics with the philosophy of art, and it meant a significant reduction in the scope and meaning of the earlier aesthetics for the sake of the autonomy of aesthetic experience, of the genius artist, of the work of art for its own sake, etc.) One of the illustrative ways of introducing this complex new phenomenon might be to consider it as the formation of a type of human being (homo aestheticus) in religious or theological texts (as the subject of new devotion or of spiritual exercises, as an exercitant or quietist prayer), in certain natural science tracts (as virtuoso), in moral and social philosophical aphorisms and essays (as discreto or honnête homme or man of wit and humour), in the conversational literature (as a sensitive, fine, well-bred gentleman or “friend”), or in periodical essays (as connoisseur or man of fashion), etc. By 1712 Joseph Addison could write the following in his seminal series of essays entitled The Pleasures of Imagination: “A man of a polite imagination is let into a great many pleasures, that the vulgar are not capable of receiving. He […] often feels a greater satisfaction in the prospect of fields and meadows, than another does in the possession. It gives him, indeed, a kind of property in everything he sees, and makes the most rude uncultivated parts of nature administer to his pleasures. So that he looks upon the world, as it were in another light, and discovers in it a multitude of charms, that conceal themselves from the generality of mankind.” (The Spectator, No. 411)”

Hence the “man of polite imagination” as homo aestheticus of the early 18th century is able to see the whole world (including, of course, belles-lettres and fine arts, too) in a new light, and, by means of this new vision and/or taste, to re-construct this world from within as his or her own pleasant and sociable social-cultural sphere in which life is worth living. The proper “aesthetic” objects are created by the special sophisticated faculties (taste, refined genius, polite imagination) of homo aestheticus; and these objects are not primarily artistic, but religious, natural scientific, moral or social-interpersonal instead, at least between the 1630s and 1730s. Francis Hutcheson was the first to address this new experience and this new type of European individual philosophically.

Between 2:00pm on Friday 23 January and approx. 3:30pm on Saturday 24 January, the programme will consist of two keynote lectures (the opening will be delivered by Professor Alexander Broadie, the closing by Professor Cairns Craig) and six 30–35-minute talks (three of them by Professor Michael Brown, Professor Daniel Carey and Dr Endre Szécsényi).

PROGRAMMEFriday, 23 January 20152.45pm – 3.00pm Welcome and Opening RemarksProfessor Cairns CRAIG, Director, RIISS, University of Aberdeen

3.00pm – 4.30pm Opening Keynote SpeechProfessor Alexander BROADIE, The University of Glasgow“Francis Hutcheson, George Turnbull and the Intersection of Aesthetics and Morals”Chair: Professor Michael Brown, University of Aberdeen

4.30pm – 4.45pm Tea and Coffee

4.45pm – 5.45pmDr Giovanni GELLERA, The University of Glasgow“The Epistemology of ‘Sense’ in 17th-century Scholasticism”Chair: Professor Michael Brown, University of Aberdeen

5.45pm – 6.00pm Tea and Coffee

6.00pmCelebration of three new books published by the recently reconstituted Aberdeen University Press:Ronald CRAWFORD’s on John Witherspoon (President of the College of New Jersey and signatory to the US Declaration of Independence), Hamish FRASER’s on Archibald Forbes (nineteenth-century war correspondent), and the autobiography of Sir Herbert Grierson (the first professor of EnglishLiterature at the University of Aberdeen). Introduced by Professor Cairns CRAIG, University of Aberdeen

7.30pm Dinner (Cafe Boheme, http://cafebohemerestaurant.co.uk/)(Those not listed on the programme should contact Endre Szécsényi, e.szecsenyi@abdn.ac.uk ifdesirous of attending the meal.)

Saturday, 24 January 2015

9.00am – 10.00amDr Endre SZÉCSÉNYI, University of Aberdeen / Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest“Hutcheson through the Prism of some Approaches to the Genealogy of Modern Aesthetics”Chair: Professor Alexander Broadie, The University of Glasgow

10.00am – 10.15am Tea and Coffee

10.15am – 11.15amProfessor Daniel CAREY, National University of Ireland“Hutcheson’s Aesthetics: The Pattern of Reception in the Eighteenth Century”Chair: Professor Alexander Broadie, The University of Glasgow

11.15am – 12.00am Sandwiches, tea & coffee

12.00am – 1.00pmProfessor Michael BROWN“The Politics of Irish Aesthetics: Hutcheson – Burke – Barry”Chair: Professor Daniel Carey, National University of Ireland

1.00.pm – 1.15pm Tea and Coffee

1.15pm – 2.45pm Closing Keynote SpeechProfessor Cairns CRAIG, University of Aberdeen“Hutcheson and the Psychology of Aesthetics”Chair: Professor Daniel Carey, National University of Ireland

Hosted by

Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies, University of Aberdeen

Venue

Meeting Room 1, Floor 7, Sir Duncan Rice Library, University of Aberdeen

Contact

For further information please contact: Endre Szécsényi, e.szecsenyi@abdn.ac.uk