 The reference to Mandeville is significant here. In the Inquiry, Hutcheson considered it his task to defend, not the exact details of Shaftesbury’s scheme, but rather his general sentimentalism against the “self-interest” theories of Mandeville and Thomas Hobbes. But leaving aside his rejection of self-interest theorists for the moment (see  §2.1),  what is the nature of Hutcheson’s overall metaethic?