Portal:Scotland/Selected article/Week 5, 2013



Francis Hutcheson (8 August 1694 – 8 August 1746) was a philosopher born in Ireland to a family of Scottish Presbyterians who became one of the founding fathers of the Scottish Enlightenment. Hutcheson was an important influence on the works of several significant Enlightenment thinkers, including David Hume and Adam Smith.

He is thought to have been born at Drumalig, in the parish of Saintfield, County Down, Ireland. He was the "son of a Presbyterian minister of Ulster Scottish (or 'Scots–Irish') stock, who was born in Ireland" Hutcheson was educated at Killyleagh, and went on to Scotland to study at the University of Glasgow, where he spent six years at first in the study of philosophy, classics and general literature, and afterwards in the study of theology, receiving his degree in 1712. While a student, he worked as tutor to the Earl of Kilmarnock. He was licensed as a minister of the Church of Scotland in 1716.