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The invention of concepts: Sense as a way of knowing according to Francis Hutcheson
Abstract
It is often claimed that aesthetics was an invention of the eighteenth century and the Scottish-Irish philosopher Francis Hutcheson is frequently cited, along with Shaftesbury, as one of the "fathers" of this invention. This observation contains some truth but the reason why it does so is poorly understood. In this essay, I argue that we need to pay particular attention to the architecture of conceptual forms if we are to make any headway in understanding how something like a theory of aesthetics or a theory of art comes to be formulated. Furthermore, paying attention to concepts rather than discourse helps us distinguish the ways in which we speak about items of cognition from the cognitive processes that lead to understanding in any specific case. The essay thus proposes a "conceptual turn" in historical humanistic inquiry.
I would like to expose that historicity, as the continuous process of adaptation of human life to specific problems (social, climatic, economic ...), is the framework where the moral work of the Scottish Enlightenment is built. The endless work of adaptation to the environment (which usually is understood by means of a conception of history by stages) is made without a clear idea or an initial design: our laws, rules, and moral world, are the unintended consequences of decisions made without a previous plan (neither divine, nor rational, nor natural). Such historical process of contextualization, which starts by means of human perfectibility, ultimately involves attention to the different interests and spheres of life. That situation provokes that the moral reflection remains parceled out in the small areas where these interests appear. This is the reason leading to the Scottish Enlightenment to seek some kind of universality which will be found on a moral sense that is naturally pleased with the artificial and historic public good.
Today there is a thriving 'emotions industry' to which philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists are contributing. Yet until two centuries ago 'the emotions' did not exist. In this path-breaking study Thomas Dixon shows how, during the nineteenth century, the emotions came into being as a distinct psychological category, replacing existing categories such as appetites, passions, sentiments and affections. By examining medieval and eighteenth-century theological psychologies and placing Charles Darwin and William James within a broader and more complex nineteenth-century setting, Thomas Dixon argues that this domination by one single descriptive category is not healthy. Overinclusivity of 'the emotions' hampers attempts to argue with any subtlety about the enormous range of mental states and stances of which humans are capable. This book is an important contribution to the debate about emotion and rationality which has preoccupied western thinkers throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and has implications for contemporary debates.
I have tried to do two things in this book: first, to make an analytic study of Francis Hutcheson's Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, and Design, in some detail and completeness; second, to trace the development in Britain of its leading idea, the sense of beauty, to its decline at the close of the eighteenth century.
A Companion to Epistemology
- Jonathan Dancy
- Ernest Sosa
An Inquiry concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design. Ed. and intr. Peter Kivy. The Hague: Martinus Nijhof
- Francis Hutcheson
On the Nature and Conduct of the Passions
- Francis Hutcheson