An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (Natural Law and Enlightenment Classics)

ISBN: 0865977747

Author: Hutcheson, Francis

Condition: New

Francis Hutchesons first book, An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, was published in 1725, when its author was only thirty-one, and went through four editions during his lifetime. This seminal text of the Scottish Enlightenment is now available for the first time in a variorum edition based on the 1726 edition.The Inquiry was written as a critical response to the work of Bernard Mandeville and as a defense of the ideas of Anthony Ashley Cooper, Lord Shaftesbury. It consists of two treatises exploring our aesthetic and our moral abilities.Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746) was educated at the University of Glasgow, where he assumed the chair of moral philosophy in 1729.Wolfgang Leidhold is Professor of Political Science at the University of Cologne.