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The Novelist as a Moral Physician: Fielding, Hume and the Moral Sense School of Thought
Lelek, Jaromír ; Nováková, Soňa (advisor) ; Hill, James (referee)
Tom Jones was one of the seminal texts of fiction to come out of the eighteenth century that helped to build the English novel and to disseminate some of the philosophical tenets most significantly articulated by David Hume in his An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals and A Treatise of Human Nature. This work does not posit that Hume was the chief philosophical inspiration for Fielding; rather, the reason behind focus on Hume is that in his works we find the philosophy of the moral sense elaborated and articulated better than in any other moral philosopher of the eighteenth century, with the exception of Adam Smith. The aim of this thesis is to pursue the questions of ethics and sensibility as played out in Fielding's masterpiece, Tom Jones. The thesis opens with an account of Fielding's background and divine, philosophical and literary influences. The development and mainly characteristics of the novel of sentiment (1740s to 1750s) and sensibility (60s-70s) will be discussed. The notion of moral sense and the merger of ethics with aesthetics will be tracked in the history of philosophy, with a special focus on the Scottish Enlightenment with its main proponents Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Earl of Shaftesbury, Francis Hutcheson, David Hume and Adam Smith. The next chapter comprises close...
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