In this paper I discuss Shaftesbury’s moral sense theory in the context of his response to Locke’s philosophy and, in turn, Hutcheson’s adoption of Shaftesbury. After offering with some general background, I first look at the different senses of ‘scepticism’ at play in Shaftesbury’s work. I then narrow the focus to consider how Shaftesbury considered Locke’s attacks on moral nativism as tantamount to pyrhhonism. I then argued that at the bottom of Shaftesbury’s response to Locke lies a form of platonism. I then turn to Hutcheson, who sees Hobbes and Mandeville as a greater threat than Locke, in as much as that they seek to understand all moral practice as nothing but disguised self-interest. I then try to show that, in light of this difference, Hutcheson’s moral sense has a different character and grounds from the sense of Shaftesbury.
CITATION STYLE
Kail, P. J. E. (2013). Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and Moral Scepticisms. In International Archives of the History of Ideas/Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Idees (Vol. 210, pp. 95–107). Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4810-1_7
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