The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Introduction
• Note On the Text
• Acknowledgments
• An Inquiry Into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue
• The Preface
• ∥ 1 Treatise I: Viz. an Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, &c.∥
• Section I: Concerning Some Powers of Perception, Distinct From What Is Generally Understood By Sensation.
• Section II: Of Original Or Absolute Beauty.
• Section III: Of the Beauty of Theorems.
• Section IV: Of Relative Or Comparative Beauty.
• Section V: Concerning Our Reasonings About Design and Wisdom In the Cause, From the Beauty Or Regularity of Effects.
• Section VI: Of the Universality of the Sense of Beauty Among Men.
• Section VII: Of the Power of Custom, Education, and Example, As to Our Internal Senses.
• Section VIII: Of the Importance of the Internal Senses In Life, and the Final Causes of Them.
• ∥ 1 Treatise II: Viz. an Inquiry Concerning the Original of Our Ideas of Virtue Or Moral Good.
• Introduction.
• Section I: Of the Moral Sense By Which We Perceive Virtue and Vice, and Approve Or Disapprove Them In Others.
• Section II: Concerning the Immediate Motive to Virtuous Actions.
• Section III: The Sense of Virtue, and the Various Opinions About It, Reducible to One General Foundation. the Manner of Computing the Morality of Actions.
• Section IV: All Mankind Agree In This General Foundation of Their Approbation of Moral Actions. the Grounds of the Different Opinions About Morals.
• Section V: A Further Confirmation That We Have Practical Dispositions to Virtue Implanted In Our Nature; With a Further Explication ∥ 1 of Our Instinct to Benevolence In Its Various Degrees ∥; With the Additional Motives of Interest, Viz. Honour, Shame
• Section VI: Concerning the Importance of This Moral Sense to the Present Happiness of Mankind, and Its Influence On Human Affairs.
• Section VII: A Deduction of Some Complex Moral Ideas, Viz. of Obligation, and Right, Perfect, Imperfect, and External, Alienable, and Unalienable, From This Moral Sense.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First of all I would like to thank Elisabeth Schreiber and Andreas Kamp, who—together with Christine Unrau, Fotios Amanatides, Johannes Clessienne, Hermann Halbeisen, Felix Krafft, Dirk Neumann, and Alexander Scheufens—revised the text and contributed to the task with many hours of research. I am much indebted to Christoph Fehige for his critical remarks and to Thomas Mautner and Luigi Turco (again!), who helped with a lot of information to fill many gaps and to locate additional copies of rare books.

The scientists and staff of the libraries with whom we have worked were extraordinarily helpful. Without their nonbureaucratic help, a timely completion of the revised edition would have been a futile attempt. I would like to express thanks especially to Peter X. Accardo (Harvard University), Polly Armstrong (Stanford University), Anne Bertling (English Seminar, Universität Münster), Patricia Boyd (Edinburgh University), Irene Danks and Eoin Shalloo (National Library of Scotland), June Ellner (University of Aberdeen), Lydia Ferguson (Trinity College Dublin), Helen Ford and Peter Larkin (University of Warwick), Ivana Frian (University of Birmingham), Michelle Gait (University of Aberdeen), Ruth Greenwood (British Library), Helen J. Hills (Cambridge University), Kathryn James (Yale University), Josie Lister and Dunja Sharif (Bodleian Library, Oxford), Robert MacLean (Glasgow University), Raymond L. Marcotte (Dartmouth College), Margaret Sherry Rich (Princeton University), Richard Virr (McGill University, Montreal), Christine Weidlich (Universitätsbibliothek, Bonn), and Christiane Wiese (Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin).

Last but not least, I am very much indebted to Laura Goetz and Knud Haakonssen, who supported our work with great patience and professional advice.

W. L.