Dec 25, 2009

The Oxford Dictionary of Art | Hutcheson, Francis

Hutcheson, Francis (b Drumalig, Co. Down, 1694; d Dublin, 1746).
British philosopher, professor of moral philosophy at Glasgow University from 1730 until his death. His major work is An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725). In this he argues that aesthetic (and moral) judgement is founded on a special kind of perception. Just as our sense of sight enables us to see colours directly, so we possess an analogous ‘inner’ sense enabling us to perceive aesthetic or ethical values. To stimulate this inner sense aesthetically, an object must possess the right kind of ratio between ‘uniformity and variety’. Beauty, although a property of the object, also depends for its existence on our subjective engagement. This attempt to harmonize objective and subjective elements of aesthetic experience set a pattern for later British thought in the field.