Hutcheson responds to Mandeville by going on, what was basically, a long, drawn out, 18th century rant about "beauty" and "uniformity". This response was of greater interest to me than that of Adam Smith, who took a more direct approach to combatting Mandeville's attack on the selflessness of mankind, because it was one that I definitely wouldn't have thought of off the top of my head and I only understood after reading the writing for a second time. At least, I believe that I now understand Hutcheson's point.
Toward the end of Hutcheson's piece on beauty, he begins to speak about wisdom, and this is where he (finally) drives the point home for us. He writes, "Wisdom denotes the pursuing of the best Ends by the best Means; and therefore before we can from any Effect prove the Cause to be wise, we must know what is best to the Cause or Agent. Among men who have pleasure in contemplating Uniformity, the Beauty of Effects is an Argument of Wisdom, because this is Good to them; but the same Argument would not hold as to a Being void of this Sense of Beauty. And therefore the Beauty apparent to us in Nature, will not of itself prove Wisdom in the Cause, unless this Cause, or Author of Nature be suppos’d Benevolent; and then indeed the Happiness of Mankind is desirable or Good to the Supreme Cause." In my opinion, Hutcheson's point here is that because "beauty" and "uniformity" bring pleasure to the eye, anyone who creates something of beauty has brought joy to those who will view it in the future, and the act of creating it is, therefore, "benevolent" in its nature.
In this debate of the nature of man being either selfish or selfless, I find myself towards the side of Hutcheson and Smith. This is an optimistic approach, however, I feel that it is a necessary one. The world would be a very dark environment, in my opinion, if Mandeville were correct and everyone is just in it for themselves.
Source:
Francis Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue in Two Treatises, ed. Wolfgang Leidhold (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2004).
Accessed from http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2462 on 2013-09-11
Jeff, I definitely agree Smith was much more coherent and precise than Hutcheson when it came to refuting Mandeville. I was amazed Hutcheson felt the need to make the same point and say virtually the same thing(regularity/ beauty cannot be made by chance, because its mathematically impossible) in what seemed like 7 or 8 consecutive paragraphs.
ReplyDeleteAfter thinking about it some I don't think one side of this argument is the winner and one the loser. I tend to think that there is probably truths in both positions. Maybe when mankind first came to existence they operated in more of a "Mandevillian" sense, but as we evolved and realized that empathy and sympathy were evolutionarily desirable traits to possess and that they not only satisfied self-interest but the common good as well, that the emotions became implanted into our natural state of mind.
-Tanner
Hey, give Hutcheson a break, guys. He was an 18th c. philosopher! The style requires long and detailed explanations of ideas. It's funny, though, to picture him as a "ranter" raving about beauty and design, like you called him Jeff. Apparently he was so shy and quiet that people would have a hard time hearing him as he spoke.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, though, I think you get at a really useful point. Hutcheson is trying to show that if the supreme power were not benevolent, then it would not be wise for him (or her, but in the 18th c. of course it's always him) to please us with beautiful things. We must assume intentionality, and we want to assume wisdom, so we need to assume that he actually did what he intended--pleased us with beauty.
This long argument is ultimately a way of showing, I think, why people are inclined toward benevolence. If the entire universe does, then surely us, a small part, must. of course, there are other explanations, and it might be interesting to explore them in a paper.