Shaftesbury's Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times was published in 1711. It ranges widely over ethics, aesthetics, religion, the arts (painting, literature, architecture, gardening), and ancient and modern history, and aims at nothing less than a new ideal of the gentleman. Together with Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Addison and Steele's Spectator, it is a text of fundamental importance for understanding the thought and culture of Enlightenment Europe. This volume presents a new edition of the text together (...) with an introduction, explanatory notes and a guide to further reading. (shrink)

Are human beings linked by a common nature, one that makes them see the world in the same moral way? Or are they fragmented by different cultural practices and values? These fundamental questions of our existence were debated in the Enlightenment by Locke, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson. Daniel Carey provides an important new historical perspective on their discussion. At the same time, he explores the relationship between these founding arguments and contemporary disputes over cultural diversity and multiculturalism. Our own (...) conflicting positions today reflect long-standing differences that emerged during the Enlightenment. (shrink)

Shaftesbury started his literary career in 1698 with an edition of Whichcote’s sermons. At the same time he worked on An Inquiry Concerning Virtue and his ‘Crudities’, which were incorporated after August 1698 in the Askêmata manuscripts. In this paper I argue that Shaftesbury’s critique of John Locke is based on central ideas from Whichcote’s sermons. In his examination of Locke’s epistemology and moral philosophy he uses Whichcote’s arguments, concepts and keywords. Locke’s rejection of the (...) ‘innate ideas’ reduces man to an abstract being, ‘absolutely indifferent towards whatever is presented to him’. In opposition to this reduction he posits Whichcote’s Connatural Notions, ‘the principles of which Man doth consist, in his very first Make’, i.e. the categorial form of human feeling, discernment, understanding and judgment. These connatural principles include the idea of good and evil, i.e. the foundation of a non-legalistic, autonomous morality. (shrink)

Many people today glorify wild nature. This attitude is diametrically opposed to the denigration of wild nature that was common in the seventeenth century. One of the most significant initiators of the modern revaluation of nature was Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury. I elucidate here Shaftesbury’s pivotal view of nature. I show how that view emerged as Shaftesbury’s solution to a problem he took to be of the deepest philosophical and personal importance: the problem (...) of how worship of God can be both transportingly emotional and entirely rational. In section 1 I sketch the denigration of wild nature in two of Shaftesbury’s predecessors: Burnet and Locke. I next turn to Shaftesbury’s problem, describing in section 2 the love of God he aspired to and in section 3 his commitment to rational religion. I then explain Shaftesbury’s solution, describing in section 4 his view of beauty in general and in section 5 his view of the beauty of nature. (shrink)

Shaftesbury's Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times was first published in 1711. It ranges widely over ethics, aesthetics, religion, the arts, and ancient and modern history, and aims at nothing less than a new ideal of the gentleman. Together with Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Addison and Steele's Spectator, it is a text of fundamental importance for understanding the thought and culture of Enlightenment Europe. This volume, first published in 2000, presents an edition of the text together (...) with an introduction, explanatory notes and a guide to further reading. (shrink)

Shaftesbury's Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times was first published in 1711. It ranges widely over ethics, aesthetics, religion, the arts, and ancient and modern history, and aims at nothing less than a new ideal of the gentleman. Together with Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Addison and Steele's Spectator, it is a text of fundamental importance for understanding the thought and culture of Enlightenment Europe. This volume, first published in 2000, presents an edition of the text together (...) with an introduction, explanatory notes and a guide to further reading. (shrink)

Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, was the grandson of the First Earl of Shaftesbury. The First Earl, along with John Locke, was a leader and founder of the Whig movement in Britain. Locke was the First Earl's secretary and also the tutor of the Third Earl. Both the First and Third Earls were members of parliament and supporters of Whig causes. Although both the First and Third Earls were involved in politics, the Third (...) Earl is better known for intellectual pursuits. Indeed, the Third Earl is second only to Locke in terms of influence during the eighteenth century. Yet if one takes into account effects upon literature, the arts, and manners, as well as upon philosophical trends and theories, Shaftesbury might be even more influential. Even if we restrict ourselves to philosophy, Shaftesbury's ideas were admired by thinkers as different as Leibniz and Montesquieu—something which could obviously not be said about Locke. Within ethics, Shaftesbury influenced Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Samuel Butler, and Adam Smith and is credited with founding the “moral sense” school of thought. (shrink)

The 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury drew on the naturalism of Locke to open up a naturalistic reading of experience conceived as a matter of reality revealing pattern perception that was lost to view in the impact of subsequent idealist readings of Locke's epistemology offered by Bishop Berkeley (1685–1753) and David Hume (1711–1776). This essay recovers and explicates Shaftesbury's alternative to idealist conceptions of pattern making.

Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, was the grandson of the First Earl of Shaftesbury. The First Earl, along with John Locke, was a leader and founder of the Whig movement in Britain. Locke was the First Earl's secretary and also the tutor of the Third Earl. Both the First and Third Earls were members of parliament and supporters of Whig causes. Although both the First and Third Earls were involved in politics, the Third (...) Earl is better known for intellectual pursuits. Indeed, the Third Earl is second only to Locke in terms of influence during the eighteenth century. Yet if one takes into account effects upon literature, the arts, and manners, as well as upon philosophical trends and theories, Shaftesbury might be even more influential. Even if we restrict ourselves to philosophy, Shaftesbury's ideas were admired by thinkers as different as Leibniz and Montesquieu—something which could obviously not be said about Locke. Within ethics, Shaftesbury influenced Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Samuel Butler, and Adam Smith and is credited with founding the “moral sense” school of thought. (shrink)

John Locke was born in Wrington and brought up in nearby Pensford, a village six miles south of Bristol. In 1647 Locke entered England's finest school,Westminster, under the renowned Richard Busby. At the close of his life, he recommended not only the New Testament but also Cicero's De Officiis (On Duties) as the best guides to morality. Locke always regarded civil and ecclesiastical governance as two equally consequential aspects of public life. Locke's political identity in aligned (...) him with the "Junto" Whigs, one of whose number, Lord Chancellor Somers, was a close associate. During his period in Shaftesbury's entourage, Locke became involved in England's growing commitment to America, a connection which had a profound impact on his thinking. From 1696 until his resignation through ill health in 1700, Locke was one of the state's most senior civil servants, a commissioner on the newly formed Board of Trade and Plantations. (shrink)

This book considers the context of the colonial policies of Britain, Locke's contribution to them, and the importance of these ideas in his theory of property. It also reconsiders the debate about John Locke's influence in America. The book argues that Locke's theory of property must be understood in connection with the philosopher's political concerns, as part of his endeavour to justify the colonialist policies of Lord Shaftesbury's cabinet, with which he was personally associated. The author (...) maintains that traditional scholarship has failed to do justice to Locke by ignoring the implications of contemporary British imperial policy for the interpretation of his political thought. (shrink)

In this chapter, I discuss Locke’s contributions to moral psychology. I begin by examining how we acquire moral ideas, according to Locke. Next, I ask what explains why we act morally. I address this question by showing how Locke reconciles hedonist views concerning moral motivation with his commitment to divine law theory. Then I turn to Shaftesbury’s criticism that Locke’s moral view is a self-interested moral theory that undermines virtue. In response to the criticism I (...) draw attention to Locke’s Christian conception of virtue. (shrink)

Two medical essays in the hand of John Locke survive amongst the Shaftesbury Papers in the National Archives (National Archives PRO 30/24/47/2, ff. 31r–38v and ff. 49r–56r). Since the 1960s their authorship has been disputed. Some scholars have attributed them to the London physician Thomas Sydenham, others have attributed them to Locke. Detailed analyses of their contents and the context of their composition provide very strong evidence for Lockean authorship. This is reinforced by the application of the (...) most recent techniques of computational stylistics. (shrink)

The third Earl of Shaftesbury had generally been known as the forerunner of the Moral Sense school of philosophers in the eighteenth century. Surprisingly little attention had been paid to his importance for literature and yet undoubtedly this had been very great. Originally published in 1951, this study gives an account of Shaftesbury's aesthetic and literary theory; his discussion of the imagination, ridicule, the aesthetic judgment and the sublime; and his anticipation of later writers such as Burke, Coleridge (...) and Kant. It also considers Shaftesbury's thought as part of the background of ideas in the Augustan period and his influence in such fields as literature, architecture and landscape gardening. In addition, the author assesses in more general terms Shaftesbury's attempt to maintain a Platonic viewpoint that would be more congenial to poetry than Locke's "new way of ideas". (shrink)

The third Earl of Shaftesbury had generally been known as the forerunner of the Moral Sense school of philosophers in the eighteenth century. Surprisingly little attention had been paid to his importance for literature and yet undoubtedly this had been very great. Originally published in 1951, this study gives an account of Shaftesbury's aesthetic and literary theory; his discussion of the imagination, ridicule, the aesthetic judgment and the sublime; and his anticipation of later writers such as Burke, Coleridge (...) and Kant. It also considers Shaftesbury's thought as part of the background of ideas in the Augustan period and his influence in such fields as literature, architecture and landscape gardening. In addition, the author assesses in more general terms Shaftesbury's attempt to maintain a Platonic viewpoint that would be more congenial to poetry than Locke's "new way of ideas". (shrink)

[Richard Glauser] Shaftesbury's theory of aesthetic experience is based on his conception of a natural disposition to apprehend beauty, a real 'form' of things. I examine the implications of the disposition's naturalness. I argue that the disposition is not an extra faculty or a sixth sense, and attempt to situate Shaftesbury's position on this issue between those of Locke and Hutcheson. I argue that the natural disposition is to be perfected in many different ways in order to (...) be exercised in the perception of the different degrees of beauty within Shaftesbury's hierarchy. This leads to the conclusion that the exercise of the disposition depends, from case to case, on many different cognitive and affective conditions, that are realised by the collaborative functionings of our ordinary faculties. Essential to Shaftesbury's conception of aesthetic experience is a disinterested, contemplative love, that causes (or contains) what we may call a 'disinterested pleasure', but also an interested pleasure. I argue that, within any given aesthetic experience, the role of the disinterested pleasure is secondary to that of the disinterested love. However, an important function of the disinterested pleasure is that, in combination with the interested pleasure, it leads one to aspire to pass from the aesthetic experience of lower degrees of beauty to the experience of higher ones in the hierarchy. /// [Anthony Savile] (1) If Shaftesbury is to be seen as the doyen of modern aesthetics, his most valuable legacy to us may not so much be his viewing aesthetic response as a sui generis disinterested delight as his insistence on its turning 'wholly on [experience of] what is exterior and foreign to ourselves'. Not that we cannot experience ourselves, or what is our own, as a source of such admiration. Rather our responses, favourable or no, are improperly grounded in any essentially reflexive, or first-personal, ways of taking what engages us. The suggestion is tested against the case of Narcissus. (2) Glauser interestingly emphasizes Shaftesbury's neo-Platonic conception of a hierarchy of aesthetic experience that culminates in the joyful contemplation of God. That hierarchy must be something that is less unitary and systematic than Shaftesbury himself had supposed, even when his emphasis on the tie between aesthetic pleasure and contemplative experience is allowed to extend beyond perception and to encompass episodes of thought itself. (shrink)

[Richard Glauser] Shaftesbury's theory of aesthetic experience is based on his conception of a natural disposition to apprehend beauty, a real 'form' of things. I examine the implications of the disposition's naturalness. I argue that the disposition is not an extra faculty or a sixth sense, and attempt to situate Shaftesbury's position on this issue between those of Locke and Hutcheson. I argue that the natural disposition is to be perfected in many different ways in order to (...) be exercised in the perception of the different degrees of beauty within Shaftesbury's hierarchy. This leads to the conclusion that the exercise of the disposition depends, from case to case, on many different cognitive and affective conditions, that are realised by the collaborative functionings of our ordinary faculties. Essential to Shaftesbury's conception of aesthetic experience is a disinterested, contemplative love, that causes (or contains) what we may call a 'disinterested pleasure', but also an interested pleasure. I argue that, within any given aesthetic experience, the role of the disinterested pleasure is secondary to that of the disinterested love. However, an important function of the disinterested pleasure is that, in combination with the interested pleasure, it leads one to aspire to pass from the aesthetic experience of lower degrees of beauty to the experience of higher ones in the hierarchy. /// [Anthony Savile] (1) If Shaftesbury is to be seen as the doyen of modern aesthetics, his most valuable legacy to us may not so much be his viewing aesthetic response as a sui generis disinterested delight as his insistence on its turning 'wholly on [experience of] what is exterior and foreign to ourselves'. Not that we cannot experience ourselves, or what is our own, as a source of such admiration. Rather our responses, favourable or no, are improperly grounded in any essentially reflexive, or first-personal, ways of taking what engages us. The suggestion is tested against the case of Narcissus. (2) Glauser interestingly emphasizes Shaftesbury's neo-Platonic conception of a hierarchy of aesthetic experience that culminates in the joyful contemplation of God. That hierarchy must be something that is less unitary and systematic than Shaftesbury himself had supposed, even when his emphasis on the tie between aesthetic pleasure and contemplative experience is allowed to extend beyond perception and to encompass episodes of thought itself. (shrink)

[Richard Glauser] Shaftesbury's theory of aesthetic experience is based on his conception of a natural disposition to apprehend beauty, a real 'form' of things. I examine the implications of the disposition's naturalness. I argue that the disposition is not an extra faculty or a sixth sense, and attempt to situate Shaftesbury's position on this issue between those of Locke and Hutcheson. I argue that the natural disposition is to be perfected in many different ways in order to (...) be exercised in the perception of the different degrees of beauty within Shaftesbury's hierarchy. This leads to the conclusion that the exercise of the disposition depends, from case to case, on many different cognitive and affective conditions, that are realised by the collaborative functionings of our ordinary faculties. Essential to Shaftesbury's conception of aesthetic experience is a disinterested, contemplative love, that causes what we may call a 'disinterested pleasure', but also an interested pleasure. I argue that, within any given aesthetic experience, the role of the disinterested pleasure is secondary to that of the disinterested love. However, an important function of the disinterested pleasure is that, in combination with the interested pleasure, it leads one to aspire to pass from the aesthetic experience of lower degrees of beauty to the experience of higher ones in the hierarchy. /// [Anthony Savile] If Shaftesbury is to be seen as the doyen of modern aesthetics, his most valuable legacy to us may not so much be his viewing aesthetic response as a sui generis disinterested delight as his insistence on its turning 'wholly on [experience of] what is exterior and foreign to ourselves'. Not that we cannot experience ourselves, or what is our own, as a source of such admiration. Rather our responses, favourable or no, are improperly grounded in any essentially reflexive, or first-personal, ways of taking what engages us. The suggestion is tested against the case of Narcissus. Glauser interestingly emphasizes Shaftesbury's neo-Platonic conception of a hierarchy of aesthetic experience that culminates in the joyful contemplation of God. That hierarchy must be something that is less unitary and systematic than Shaftesbury himself had supposed, even when his emphasis on the tie between aesthetic pleasure and contemplative experience is allowed to extend beyond perception and to encompass episodes of thought itself. (shrink)

Locke was born in Wrington, Somerset, on 29 August 1632. After the Civil War he was sent to Westminster School, and in 1652 to Christ Church, Oxford. A feature of the university in Locke's early years was growing interest in the natural sciences, fostered by, amongst others, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Robert Hooke. After graduating, Locke was much attracted to the work of these men, and soon he was engaged in medical research with Robert Boyle. He (...) remained in Oxford until 1667, when a chance meeting with Anthony Ashley Cooper, later Lord Shaftesbury, led to his joining Shaftesbury's London household, which from then on became Locke's usual residence, and where he acted as Shaftesbury's personal physician, conducted research with Thomas Sydenham. and became a Fellow of the Royal Society. (shrink)

This paper examines the contents of the sixth paragraph of the “Tyrrell Memoir”. This paragraph makes some strong, critical claims about both Locke’s “obsession” with the London physician Thomas Sydenham, and his purported dismissive attitude towards another physician, Richard Lower. In the paragraph, Tyrrell sides with the First Earl of Shaftesbury’s mocking attitude towards the triumvirate Locke, his close friend David Thomas, and Sydenham, and relates some extraordinary and hitherto unknown anecdotes. Tyrrell’s claims are assessed in relation (...) to what we know about the relations between these four men and in relation to the current state of Sydenham historiography. (shrink)

Adding to A.O. Aldridge’s 1951 list, this list of British eighteenth-century references to Shaftesbury provides further evidence that the philosophy of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson is an important rival to Lockean empiricism during the early and middle decades of the century. The peak of Shaftesbury’s influence occurs during the 1740’s and 1750’s when the deist controversy was at its height. A more conservative political and religious climate of opinion after 1759 is one reason for the decline of (...) class='Hi'>Shaftesbury’s reputation as a philosopher. Another is Shaftesbury’s displacement by Hume as an important enemy of orthodox Christianity. During the 1760’s and later, Hume is attacked by the Scottish “common sense” philosophers, who find anticipations of Humean scepticism in Locke and Berkeley (but not in Shaftesbury), thereby unwittingly helping to provide the foundation for the eventual establishment of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume as the “big three” of eighteenth-century philosophy. (shrink)

Adding to A.O. Aldridge’s 1951 list, this list of British eighteenth-century references to Shaftesbury provides further evidence that the philosophy of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson is an important rival to Lockean empiricism during the early and middle decades of the century. The peak of Shaftesbury’s influence occurs during the 1740’s and 1750’s when the deist controversy was at its height. A more conservative political and religious climate of opinion after 1759 is one reason for the decline of (...) class='Hi'>Shaftesbury’s reputation as a philosopher. Another is Shaftesbury’s displacement by Hume as an important enemy of orthodox Christianity. During the 1760’s and later, Hume is attacked by the Scottish “common sense” philosophers, who find anticipations of Humean scepticism in Locke and Berkeley (but not in Shaftesbury), thereby unwittingly helping to provide the foundation for the eventual establishment of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume as the “big three” of eighteenth-century philosophy. (shrink)

Adding to A.O. Aldridge’s 1951 list, this list of British eighteenth-century references to Shaftesbury provides further evidence that the philosophy of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson is an important rival to Lockean empiricism during the early and middle decades of the century. The peak of Shaftesbury’s influence occurs during the 1740’s and 1750’s when the deist controversy was at its height. A more conservative political and religious climate of opinion after 1759 is one reason for the decline of (...) class='Hi'>Shaftesbury’s reputation as a philosopher. Another is Shaftesbury’s displacement by Hume as an important enemy of orthodox Christianity. During the 1760’s and later, Hume is attacked by the Scottish “common sense” philosophers, who find anticipations of Humean scepticism in Locke and Berkeley (but not in Shaftesbury), thereby unwittingly helping to provide the foundation for the eventual establishment of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume as the “big three” of eighteenth-century philosophy. (shrink)

Contrary to the view that Francis Hutcheson attempted to expound, defend, and further develop the philosophical system described in Shaftesbury's Characteristics, some contemporaries of Hutcheson considered Hutcheson's differences from Shaftesbury to be at least as profound as the similarities. The clearest descriptions of those differences can be found in William Leechman's preface to Hutcheson's 1755 System of Moral Philosophy, and more elaborately in a review of Hutcheson's System, probably by Hugh Blair, published in the 1755 Edinburgh Review. Examining (...) Shaftesbury's and Hutcheson's moral philosophies in light of these two descriptions reveals that Shaftesbury's defense of virtue as natural to human beings, while a plausible response to Locke, clearly did not escape Hutcheson's censure of Epicurean egoism. (shrink)

Starting from Shaftesbury's criticism of Locke's moral philosophy an attempt is made to elucidate Locke's conception of ethics. An analysis of Locke's notion of moral goodness shows that moral philosophy in the Essay concerning Human Understanding is conceived in an egoistichedonistic way. This however does not imply for Locke subjectivism in ethics because the morally good has always to be in conformity to the devine or natural law being the touchstone of moral rectitude. Natural law (...) known to men in a double way, by revelation and by reason, also finds its more or less imperfect expression in the civil law and the law of opinion or reputation. Locke made the unsuccessful attempt to explain the morals of society and of the Scripture, civil and natural law by one principle, the assumption of God's creation and his care for the happiness of mankind. (shrink)

This is the first critical edition of the literary and historical writings of John Locke : poems, orations, a plan for a play, a guide to compiling a commonplace book, rules for societies, writings on the liberty of the press, and a memoir of Locke's patron, the first Earl of Shaftesbury, all framed by general and textual introductions.

Even philosophers who believe there is a single “problem of personal identity” conceive of that problem in different ways. They differ not only in their ways of stating the problem, but in the parts of philosophy to which they assign it, and in the resources they feel entitled to call upon in their attempts to deal with it. My topic in this paper is an eighteenth-century uncertainty about the place within philosophy of the problem of personal identity. Is it a (...) problem in metaphysics, or a problem in ethics? Here I try to show that the boundary between ethics and metaphysics was—for a line of philosophers beginning with Locke, continuing with Shaftesbury, and ending with Hume—a shifting and sometimes disputed one. I hope what I have to say will help to clarify a longstanding problem in the interpretation of Hume: his motive for repudiating, in the Appendix to the Treatise, the account of judgments of personal identity and simplicity he had provided in Book I. (shrink)

Introduction: "I chose therefore my party & am a whigg": the First and Third Earls of Shaftesbury as political icons / Patrick Muller, Dresden -- Part I. The First Earl of Shaftesbury -- Whig wit: Andrew Marvell and the Earls of Shaftesbury / Nigel Smith, Princeton University -- Trade for peace: a complete account of the First Earl of Shaftesbury: interest in Carolina's Indian trade / Andrew Agha, University of South Carolina, Columbia -- John Locke (...) and the reputation of the First Earl of Shaftesbury / Mark Goldie, University of Cambridge -- Part II. The Third Earl of Shaftesbury in his time -- Shaftesbury, an early voice of the radical enlightenment / Jonathan Israel, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University -- Shaftesbury and Locke: a tale of three letters / Daniel Carey, National University of Ireland, Galway -- "An equal commonwealth": Lord Ashley and the republican project of the late 1690s / Patrick Muller, Dresden -- Party politics in characteristicks / Jacob Sider Jost, Dickinson College, Carlisle -- Psychological and political balances: the Third Earl of Shaftesbury's reading of James Harrington / Laurent Jaffro -- (Re)defining the commonwealth: Shaftesbury's concept of political freedom / Angela Taraborrelli, St. John's University of Rome -- Shaftesbury's non-secular cosmopolitanism / David Alvarez, DePauw University, Greencastle -- Taste, the people and the public according to the Third Earl of Shaftesbury / Lawrence E. Klein, University of Cambridge -- Part III. The Third Earl of Shaftesbury: afterlife -- Art, morality and choice: the Third Earl of Shaftesbury and John Molesworth / William Molesworth, Dublin -- "Moral painting, by way of dialogue": Shaftesbury in the cry / Rebecca Anne Barr, National University of Ireland, Galway -- "Virtue pointing to her rugged mountain": Shaftesbury in America / James Pratt, University of Toronto -- Radicalizing sympathy: William Godwin's reading of Shaftesbury / Roman A. Barton, Humboldt-Universitat, Berlin. (shrink)

Edited versions of Second Treatise on Civil Government, Letter Concerning Toleration, Note on Happiness, The Sound Mind in the Sound Body, Reasonableness of Christianity, Conduct of the Understanding, which omit repetitious elements. The editor indicates all omissions. In his introduction he combats the text-book interpretation of Locke's Treatises by arguing that it was not intended to justify the Glorious Revolution. Rather it was a seditious document written ten years before for a projected plot by Shaftesbury against the Catholic (...) king, Charles II.—P. S. (shrink)