Portal:Scotland/Selected article/Week 48, 2012

Francis Hutcheson (8 August 1694 – 8 August 1746) was a philosopher born in Ireland to a family of Scottish Presbyterians who became one of the founding fathers of the Scottish Enlightenment. Hutcheson was an important influence on the works of several significant Enlightenment thinkers, including David Hume and Adam Smith. He is thought to have been born at Drumalig, in the parish of Saintfield, County Down, Ireland. He was the "son of a Presbyterian minister of Ulster Scottish (or 'Scots–Irish') stock, who was born in Ireland." Hutcheson was educated at Killyleagh, and went on to Scotland to study at the University of Glasgow, where he spent six years at first in the study of philosophy, classics and general literature, and afterwards in the study of theology, receiving his degree in 1712. While a student, he worked as tutor to the Earl of Kilmarnock. He was licensed as a minister of the Church of Scotland in 1716.

In 1729, Hutcheson succeeded his old master, Gershom Carmichael, in the Chair of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow, being the first professor there to lecture in English instead of Latin. It is curious that up to this time all his essays and letters had been published anonymously, though their authorship appears to have been well known. In 1730 he entered on the duties of his office, delivering an inaugural lecture (afterwards published), De naturali hominum socialitate (About the natural fellowship of mankind). He appreciated having leisure for his favourite studies; "non levi igitur laetitia commovebar cum almam matrem Academiam me, suum olim alumnum, in libertatem asseruisse audiveram. (I was, therefore, moved by no mean frivolous pleasure when I had heard that my alma mater had delivered me, its one time alumnus, into freedom.) Yet the works on which Hutcheson's reputation rests had already been published. During his time as a lecturer in Glasgow College he taught and influenced Adam Smith, the economist and philosopher.