Wollaston, William

Abstract

William Wollaston (1659–1724) was one of several early modern British philosophers known today as “moral rationalists.” Others in this group included John Balguy, Samuel Clarke, Ralph Cudworth, and Richard Price. They were foils or opponents of such “moral sentimentalists” as David Hume, Francis Hutcheson, and Lord Shaftesbury, their disagreements with whom anticipated and influenced many later debates over moral cognitivism and moral intuitionism. Uniting the rationalists was the view that reason, rather than feeling, sentiment, or a moral sense, is the source of moral perceptions. Many rationalists held also that what we detect when we perceive moral rightness is some sort of “fitness,” reasonableness, or agreement with truth. Wollaston held a form of the latter view according to which an act is morally right just in case it agrees with truth in this sense: it affirms no falsehoods. Although this view was untenable, it drew much favorable attention. The book in which it appeared, Wollaston'sReligion of Nature Delineated(1724), went through eight editions by 1759 and sold many thousands of copies. However, Wollaston's theory also drew harsh objections, some of which receive attention in this essay.