Hutcheson, in his third chapter, adds a large list of virtues as specifications of the four cardinal virtues, a catalogue nowhere else so detailed, not even in the works of Cicero, Aristotle, or Henry More, to whom Hutcheson refers his readers.
In his second edition of 1745, Hutcheson does not change any word in the passages criticized by Hume, but his answer to Hume becomes more evident. In his Preface he declares: “The design of Cicero’s books de officiis, which are so very justly admired by all, has been mistaken inconsiderately by some very ingenious men, who speak of these books as intended for a compleat system of morals or ethicks.” But “The doctrine concerning virtue, and the supreme good, which is the principal <and most necessary> [three words omitted from the 1747 translation] part of ethicks, is to be found elsewhere. Nay in his own books de finibus, and Tusculan questions.” According to the Stoics, “the officia, or external duties of life” are “things indifferent, neither morally good nor evil.” Therefore, Cicero’s de officiis show “how persons in higher stations, already well instructed in the fundamentals of moral philosophy, should so conduct themselves in life, that in perfect consistence with virtue they may obtain great interest, power, popularity, high offices and glory.” Hume is certainly a likely target of this criticism.23
Hutcheson adds also two sections to the second chapter of the first book, presenting a detailed account of the passions according to the common Aristotelian and Ciceronian distinction—also adopted by Hume—of three classes of goods and evils: of the body, of the soul, and external goods.24 In this way Hutcheson can complete his account of human nature without renouncing his distinction between calm affections and turbulent passions. Finally, Hutcheson adds a seventh and last chapter to his first book. This chapter does not present new matter: the first section stresses the teleological and religious perspective of his ethics, the second section returns again to the four cardinal virtues, while the third is a warm encouragement to the practice of virtue and to confidence in God, with long quotations from Cicero. We can say that Hutcheson, fearful of the secularization of morals that Hume derives from human sentiments, tries to enforce the religious foundation, expands on his original idea that virtue is based on benevolence by tying it to the classical tradition of the four cardinal virtues, and presents his system as authorized by the most approved and cherished of the classical authors, Marcus Tullius Cicero, who used Aristotelian ideas to mitigate the rigorous teaching of the Stoics.
Editorial Principles
This edition is based on the second edition published in 1745, Philosophiae Moralis Institutio Compendiaria, Libris III. Ethices et Jurisprudentiae Naturalis Elementa Continens, Glasguae, Typis Roberti Foulis, M DCC XLV, and compared with the 1742 first edition, published with the same title and by the same publisher. The revisions that may have a substantial relevance have been included in the text by internal citations. While almost all additions and deletions are pointed out, more than 50 percent of the substitutions of mere stylistic relevance are not indicated: these include changes in capitalization, differences in spelling, minute changes of punctuation, changes in the order of words, and changes of verbal tenses and modes, of synonymic conjunctions, prepositions, and adverbs. Other relevant changes, such as a different order of paragraphs, are noted. In sum, the changes included in the text are indicated in the following way:
1. Strings of text (sentences or words) added to the 1745 edition are enclosed in {braces}.
2. Strings of text (sentences or words) deleted from the 1745 edition are enclosed in <angle brackets>.
3. Strings of text changed in the 1745 edition are indicated as follows: both the new and the old strings are enclosed in [square brackets] with the 1745 text first. To ease reading, the square brackets around 1745 text have been left out in cases where the change concerned no more than three words and the same number of words as in the 1742 text. So, for example, at page 3, line 4, “cognitu facilior [cognitione prior]” means that “cognitu facilior” of the 1745 edition is a substitution for “cognitione prior” of the first edition. So readers who want to read just the corrected 1745 edition have to accustom themselves to overlook strings in angle brackets, strings in square brackets where single, and strings in the second angle brackets where double.
Hutcheson draws heavily on Cicero for words, sentences, and parts of sentences. In adding quotation marks and references, I have restored to Cicero most of what was his own. Finally, a few printer’s errors have been silently corrected, and Greek standard characters are used instead of the original eighteenth-century abbreviations.
The English Translation
A Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy, in Three Books, Containing the Elements of Ethicks and the Law of Nature was printed in Glasgow by Robert Foulis in 1747. In the present edition, the Latin text and the text of the English translation are presented on facing pages. As we learn from the advertisement of the anonymous translator, Hutcheson would have preferred that the book had not been translated, but having found it impossible, he “therefor thought it proper it should rather be done in Glasgow.” I have not been able to identify the author of the translation, but he is likely to be a person with whom Hutcheson was acquainted. Internal evidence shows that he was familiar with Hutcheson’s thought as well as with the literature on natural law. Moreover, he had in his hands the manuscript of A System of Moral Philosophy, as many added notes and the wording of several sentences depend on it. In the advertisement the translator says also that he used “some few Latin terms of art in the second and third book,” and he omitted a few sections “relating solely to some Latin ways of speaking in the civil law”; at the same time, he “inserted some short sentences, or added a note or two, to make some point clearer.” Therefore in the present edition there are the following alterations:
1. Strings of text (sentences or words) added by the translator are enclosed in {braces}.
2. Significant strings of text (sentences or words) omitted from the 1747 translation are added, enclosed in <angle brackets>.
3. Cases in which the translation is significantly unfaithful: More accurate translations are added in square brackets in the text where feasible, otherwise in the notes. I kept these interpositions to a minimum, allowing for a margin of arbitrariness, as in all translation. So readers who want to read the 1747 translation as corrected by the editor have to accustom themselves to overlook strings in square brackets where single, and strings in the second angle brackets where double, as well as strings in braces.
In both the Latin and the English text, notes by Hutcheson and by the translator are preceded by the original footnote markers (*, †, ‡, §, ‖, #). Editor’s notes are added to the original notes in square brackets or, when required, separately numbered.
I have made the English version with its annotation self-contained and independent of the Latin text, with only occasional, necessary references to the notes of the latter.
My thanks are due in the first place to Knud Haakonssen, the general editor of this series, for the extremely valuable guidance and encouragement that he gave me at various stages in producing this edition of Hutcheson’s Institutio and its old translation, the Short Introduction. I am also indebted to James Moore for many discussions on Hutcheson’s views, and I have found especially helpful his notes and commentaries on the writings of Gershom Carmichael. I am grateful to my friend and colleague Giancarlo Giardina, of the Department of Classical and Medieval Philology at the University of Bologna, for discussing a few passages of Hutcheson’s Institutio.
Finally, I wish to express my special gratitude to Dan Kirklin, managing editor of the publishing
