B A U M A N R A R E B O O K S S C I E N C E & P H I L O S O P H Y 2 0 2 3 21 EXCEEDINGLY SCARCE FIRST EDITION OF FRANCIS HUTCHESON’S SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY, 1755 21. HUTCHESON, Francis. A System of Moral Philosophy. Glasgow: R. and A. Foulis and (London) by A. Millar, 1755. Two volumes. Quarto, period-style three-quarter calf, red morocco spine labels, marbled boards. $12,500 First edition of Hutcheson’s seminal work, assembling his famed Glasgow lectures, many attended by Adam Smith, together in book form for the first time, defending “the right of resistance to government” and attacking slavery in “a new political and social vision that went far beyond Locke… the vision of a ‘free society,’’’ his writings a pivotal influence on Jefferson in the Declaration, with a core chapter of this rare work seized upon by rebellious Americans to be reprinted in a 1772 issue of the Massachusetts Spy. The Scottish Enlightenment “marks a crucial turning point in America… [and] created the basic idea of modernity” (Herman, Scottish Enlightenment, vii-viii). Born in 1694, Hutcheson expanded his influence beyond seminal works such as System of Moral Philosophy with his tenure at the University of Glasgow and his crucial impact on students such as Adam Smith. In Hutcheson’s posthumous System, which assembles his lectures at Glasgow for the first time in book form, he asserts “‘the rights of resisting in people, when their fundamental privileges are invaded.’ In fact, it is through Hutcheson that… rights of resistance and popular sovereignty… merge in to the mainstream of the Scottish Enlightenment.... Hutcheson is Europe’s first liberal in the classic sense: a believer in maximizing personal liberty in the social, economic and intellectual spheres, as well as the political” (Herman, 71-2, 80). Deemed “the father of the Scottish Enlightenment,” Hutcheson is also viewed as “probably the most influential and respected moral philosopher in America in the 18th century” (Mailer, Nehemias (Scotus) Americanus, 241). He “affirms the importance of rights… and famously defends the right of resistance to government” in passages that Caroline Robbins argues “had a direct impact on the American founders” (Cambridge Companion, 318). Robbins notes he “developed and taught a theory about the right of resistance to the policies of the mother country, long before Franklin’s famous plan or the troubled reign of George III.” “Jefferson, with his belief in the moral sense and tendency to trust ‘the Heart’ over ‘the Head,’ is deeply Hutchesonian.” System clearly expresses Hutcheson’s belief “that we should each do our best to extend our benevolence… but he also had great respect for the degree to which human life is fundamentally an individual affair.” He also notably “criticizes religious coercion… and used the importance of our sense of natural liberty to defend private property… Jefferson follows Hutcheson in combining a strong commitment to rights—in the opening of the Declaration and, later, in his correspondence with Madison about the Constitution” (Cambridge Companion, 318-19, 344). Volume I with six-page Subscribers’ List including fellow leaders of the Scottish Enlightenment: Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith. Paper repair to front flyleaf (blank). A few signatures in both volumes with faint dampstain along upper margin, not affecting letterpress. Bindings fine and attractive.
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