Abstract

Shaftesbury contended that sensibility or what he called "a moral sense" or "taste" is a faculty by which man responds to moral and aesthetic values. Moral and aesthetic pleasures do not involve self-interest or possession. Morality and art are interelated. A virtuous man, like an artist, creates the harmony of affections in his mind according to the principle of harmony he discerns in nature. Correspondingly an artist, besides creating the work of art, should create most of all the beauty of his character and spirit. Creativity is a vital, spontaneous, dynamic aspect of life itself. The artist does not imitate the finished product of Nature or of God, the Supreme Artist but the dynamic, creating process of Nature herself. ;Hutcheson insisted on benevolence as a sole motive of virtue. When we say that a certain action is good or bad, for Hutcheson, we merely express our pleasurable feeling of approval or unpleasurable feeling of disapproval after contemplating that action. Due to his grounding morality on sentiments, Hutcheson explained that reason merely presents an appropriate means to an end already determined by feelings or passions, the real motives of actions. In aesthetics, Hutcheson held that all beauty is relative in the sense that it necessarily depends on the perceiving mind. Art involves the imitation of the original. The right standard of beauty is uniformity amidst variety. Divergent opinions of beauty are explained by the association of ideas. Beauty is the evidence of God's benevolence: God wishes to reveal to man his "art, wisdom, design and beauty" which man discerns in the world through his sense of beauty. ;Hume adopted Hutcheson's moral theory but stressed sympathy instead of benevolence. Reason "is and ought to be the slave of passion." Sympathy based on associations was substituted for the moral sense. Justice, unlike natural benevolence, proceeds from our self-interest and is grounded on the social contract. Hume also substituted imagination for the sense of beauty. The imagination guided by associations becomes inventive in the sense that it can freely combine ideas present in the mind in all sorts of ways without the help of reason. . . . UMI.