Abstract

Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) was a White philosopher from Ireland who spent much of his career in Scotland. He was a proponent of moral sentimentalism and moral sense theory, arguing that what makes actions right or wrong is the way our moral sense naturally responds to them. This chapter is a selection from Hutcheson’s work A System of Moral Philosophy, which was published posthumously but composed in the 1730s. It discusses slavery mainly in a general way, though it is quite clear that some of the arguments target transatlantic slavery in particular. Hutcheson’s discussions of slavery had an immense influence on other antislavery writers. They are also noteworthy because Hutcheson uses moral sense theory to rebut standard justifications of slavery, including natural slavery, war slavery, and hereditary slavery. As a result of his commitment to moral sense theory, human emotions and desires play a central role in his arguments.