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| | The 1st Earl employed [[John Locke]], who acted as a physician in the Cooper household, to educate his grandson. Shaftesbury was greatly influenced by Locke, and later made a trip to Locke during his exhile in Holland. Yet this influence was not not always in the form of acceptance of ideas - indeed, Shaftesbury saw much of his philosophy as aimed against Locke's. For in his education, Shaftesbury was swayed by the examples of ancient stoicism and Platonic rationalism, which were often at odds with Locke's variety of egoism and empiricism. | | The 1st Earl employed [[John Locke]], who acted as a physician in the Cooper household, to educate his grandson. Shaftesbury was greatly influenced by Locke, and later made a trip to Locke during his exhile in Holland. Yet this influence was not not always in the form of acceptance of ideas - indeed, Shaftesbury saw much of his philosophy as aimed against Locke's. For in his education, Shaftesbury was swayed by the examples of ancient stoicism and Platonic rationalism, which were often at odds with Locke's variety of egoism and empiricism. |
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| − | Asthma (worsened by London's smog) forced Shaftesbury to end his political career at the age of 30, which marked the starting point of his philosophically most significant decade. | + | Asthma (worsened by London's smog) forced Shaftesbury to end his political career at the age of 30, which marked the starting point of his philosophically most significant decade. Beginning with the ''Inquiry concerning Virtue or Merit'' of 1699, Shaftesbury published a series of works in a variety of styles, chiefly focusing on ethics, aesthetics, politics and theology. In 1711, he collected those works into a single volume entitled ''Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times.'' Two years later, his respiratory problems overcame came him. After his death, two further volumes of his work were published. |
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| − | | + | Shaftesbury's work was highly influential throughout the 18th century, helping shape the ethical thought of figures as central as [[Hume]] and [[Kant]]. |
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| − | He was born at Exeter House in [[London]], the grandson of [[Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury]] and son of the second earl. His mother was Lady Dorothy Manners, daughter of John, Earl of Rutland. According to a story told by the third earl, the marriage was negotiated by [[John Locke]], who was a trusted friend of the first earl. The second Lord Shaftesbury appears to have been both physically and mentally inadequate. At the age of three his son was made over to the formal guardianship of his grandfather. Locke, who in his capacity of medical attendant to the Ashley household, had already assisted at the child's birth, and was now entrusted with the supervision of his education. This was conducted according to the principles enunciated in Locke's ''Thoughts concerning Education'', and the method of teaching [[Latin]] and [[Greek language|Greek]] conversationally was pursued with such success by his instructress, Elizabeth Birch, that at the age of eleven, it is said, Ashley could read both languages with ease.
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| − | In November [[1683]], some months after the death of the first Earl, his father sent him to [[Winchester College]] as a warden's boarder. Being shy and mocked because of his grandfather, he appears to have been miserable at school. He left Winchester in [[1686]] for a course of foreign travel. This brought him into contact with artistic and classical associations which would strongly influence his character and opinions. On his travels he apparently did not seek the conversation of other young English gentlemen on their travels, but rather that of their tutors, with whom he could converse on congenial topics.
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| − | In [[1689]], the year after the "[[Glorious Revolution]]", Lord Ashley returned to England, and for nearly five years he appears to have led a quiet and studious life. There can be no doubt that the greater part of his attention was directed to the perusal of classical authors, and to the attempt to realize the true spirit of classical antiquity. He had no intention, however, of becoming a recluse. He became parliamentary candidate for the borough of Poole, and was returned on [[May 21]], [[1695]]. He soon distinguished himself by a speech in support of the Bill for Regulating Trials in Cases of Treason, one provision of which was that a person indicted for [[treason]] or [[Misprision of treason|misprision of treason]] should be allowed the assistance of counsel. Although a [[British Whig Party|Whig]], Ashley could not be depended on to give a party vote. He was always ready to support propositions from other quarters, if they appeared to him to promote the liberty of the subject and the independence of parliament. His poor health forced him to retire from parliament at the dissolution of July 1698. He suffered from [[asthma]], a complaint which was aggravated by the London smoke.
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| − | Lord Ashley now retired to the [[Netherlands]], where he became acquainted with [[Georges-Louis Leclerc]], [[Pierre Bayle]], [[Benjamin Furly]], the English [[Quaker]] merchant, at whose house Locke had resided during his stay at [[Rotterdam]], and probably Limborch and the rest of the literary circle of which Locke had been a cherished and honored member nine or ten years before. To Lord Ashley this society was probably far more congenial than his surroundings in England. Unrestrained conversation on the topics which most interested him—[[philosophy]], [[politics]], [[morals]], [[religion]] was at this time to be had in the Netherlands with less danger and in greater abundance than in any other country in the world. To the period of this sojourn in the Netherlands must probably be referred the surreptitious impression or publication of an imperfect edition of the ''Inquiry concerning Virtue'', from a rough draught, sketched when he was only twenty years of age. This liberty was taken, during his absence, by [[John Toland|Toland]].
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| − | After an absence of over a twelvemonth, Ashley returned to England, and soon succeeded his father as [[Earl of Shaftesbury]]. He took an active part, on the Whig side, in the general election of 1700–1701, and again, with more success, in that of the autumn of 1701. It is said that [[William III of England|William III]] showed his appreciation of Shaftesbury's services on this latter occasion by offering him a secretaryship of state, which, however, his declining health compelled him to decline. Had the king's life continued, Shaftesbury's influence at court would probably have been considerable. After the first few weeks of [[Anne of Great Britain|Anne]]'s reign, Shaftesbury, who had been deprived of the vice-admiralty of [[Dorset]], returned to his retired life, but his letters to Furly show that he retained a keen interest in politics.
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| − | In August [[1703]], he again settled in the [[Netherlands]], in the air of which he seems, like Locke, to have had great faith. At [[Rotterdam]] he lived, he says in a letter to his steward Wheelock, at the rate of less than £200 a year, and yet had much to dispose of and spend beyond convenient living. He returned to England, much improved in health, in August [[1704]]. Although he had received immediate benefit from his stay abroad, he was showing symptoms of consumption, and gradually became a confirmed invalid. His occupations were now almost exclusively literary, and from this time forward he was engaged in writing, completing or revising the treatises which were afterwards included in the ''Characteristics''. He continued, however, to take a warm interest in politics, both home and foreign, and especially in the war against France, of which he was an enthusiastic supporter.
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| − | Shaftesbury was nearly forty before he married, and even then he appears to have taken this step at the urgent instigation of his friends, mainly to supply a successor to the title. The object of his choice (or rather of his second choice, for an earlier project of marriage had shortly before fallen through) was Jane Ewer, the daughter of a [[Hertfordshire]] gentleman. The marriage took place in the autumn of 1709, and on February 9, 1710/1, was born at his house at [[Reigate]], in Surrey, his only child and heir, the fourth Earl, to whose manuscript accounts we are in great part indebted for the details of his father's life. The match appears to have been happy, though Shaftesbury had little sentiment on the subject of married life.
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| − | With the exception of a ''Preface to the Sermons of Dr Whichcote'', one of the [[Cambridge Platonists]] or [[latitudinarian]]s, published in [[1698]], Shaftesbury appears to have printed nothing himself till [[1708]]. About this time the French [[Camisard]]s attracted much attention by their extravagances and follies. Various repressive remedies were proposed, but Shaftesbury maintained that fanaticism was best defeated by raillery and good-humour. In support of this view he wrote a letter ''Concerning Enthusiasm to Lord Somers'', dated September [[1707]], which was published anonymously in the following year, and provoked several replies. In May 1700, he returned to the subject, and printed another letter, entitled ''Sensus Communis, an Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour''. In the same year he also published ''The Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody'', and in the following year ''Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author''. None of these pieces seems to have been printed either with his name or his initials. In 1711, the ''Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times'' appeared in three volumes, also without any name or initials on the title-page, and without even the name of a printer. These volumes contain in addition to the four treatises already mentioned, ''Miscellaneous Reflections'', now first printed, and the ''Inquiry concerning Virtue or Merit'', described as formerly printed from an imperfect copy, now corrected and published intire, and as printed first in 1699.
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| − | The declining state of Shaftesbury's health rendered it necessary for him to seek a warmer climate and in July 1711 he set out for [[Italy]]. He settled at [[Naples]] in November, and lived there for more than a year. His principal occupation at this time must have consisted in preparing for the press a second edition of the ''Characteristics'', which appeared in 1713, soon after his death. The copy, carefully corrected in his own handwriting, is preserved in the [[British Museum]]. He was also engaged, during his stay at Naples, in writing the little treatise (afterwards included in the ''Characteristics'') entitled ''A Notion of the Historical Draught or Tablature of the Judgment of Hercules'', and the letter concerning ''Design''. A little before his death he had also formed a scheme of writing a ''Discourse on the Arts of Painting, Sculpture, Etching, &c.'', but when he died he had made but little progress with it. Medals, and pictures, and antiquities, he writes to Furly, are our chief entertainments here. His conversation was with men of art and science, the virtuosi of this place.
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| − | The events preceding the [[Treaty of Utrecht]], which he regarded as preparing the way for a base desertion of our allies, greatly troubled the last months of Shaftesbury's life. He did not, however, live to see the actual conclusion of the treaty ([[March 31]], [[1713]]), as he died the month before, February 4, 1712/3. His body was brought back by sea to England and buried at St Giles's, the family seat in Dorsetshire. His only son, Anthony Ashley, succeeded him as 4th earl, and his great-grandson was the famous philanthropist, the 7th earl.
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| − | ==Assessment==
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| − | Shaftesbury's amiability of character seems to have been one of his principal characteristics. Like Locke he had a peculiar pleasure in bringing forward young men. Among these may be especially mentioned Michael Ainsworth, a native of Wimborne St Giles, the young man who was the recipient of the Letters addressed to a student at the university, and was maintained by Shaftesbury at [[University College, Oxford]]. The interest which Shaftesbury took in his studies, and the desire that he should be specially fitted for the profession which he had selected, that of a clergyman of the Church of England, are marked features of the letters. Other protegés were Crell, a young Pole, the two young Furlys and Harry Wilkinson, a boy who was sent into Furly's office at Rotterdam, and to whom several of the letters still extant in the Record Office are addressed.
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| − | In the popular mind, Shaftesbury is generally regarded as a writer hostile to religion. But, however short his orthodoxy might fall if tried by the standards of any particular church, his temperament was pre-eminently religious. This fact is shown in his letters. The belief in a God, all-wise, all-just and all-merciful, governing the world providentially for the best, pervades all his works, his correspondence and his life. Nor had he any wish to undermine established beliefs, except where he conceived that they conflicted with a truer religion and a purer morality.
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| − | To the public ordinances of the church he scrupulously conformed. But, unfortunately, there were many things both in the teaching and the practice of the ecclesiastics of that, day which were calculated to repel men of sober judgment and high principle. These evil tendencies in the popular presentation of [[Christianity]] undoubtedly begot in Shaftesbury's mind a certain amount of repugnance and contempt to some of the doctrines of Christianity itself; and, cultivating, almost of set purpose, his sense of the ridiculous, he was too apt to assume towards such doctrines and their teachers a tone of raillery.
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| − | But, whatever might be Shaftesbury's speculative opinions or his mode of expressing them, all witnesses bear testimony to the elevation and purity of his life and aims. As an earnest student, and ardent lover of liberty, an enthusiast in the cause of virtue, and a man of unblemished life and untiring beneficence, Shaftesbury probably had no superior in his generation. His character and pursuits are the more remarkable, considering the rank of life in. which he was born and the circumstances under which he was brought up. In many respects he reminds us of the imperial philosopher [[Marcus Aurelius]], whose works he studied with avidity, and whose influence is stamped upon his own productions.
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| − | ==Writing==
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| − | Most of Shaftesbury's writings have been already mentioned. In addition to these there have been published fourteen letters from Shaftesbury to Molesworth, edited by Toland in 1721; some letters to Benjamin Furly, his sons, and his clerk Harry Wilkinson, included, in a volume entitled ''Original Letters of Locke, Sidney and Shaftesbury'', which was published by Mr T Forster in 1830, and again in an enlarged form in 1847; three letters, written respectively to Stringer, Lord Oxford and Lord Godoiphin, which appeared, for the first time, in the General Dictionary; and lastly a letter to Le Clerc, in his recollections of Locke, first published in ''[[Notes and Queries]]'', Feb. 8, 1851. The ''Letters to a Young Man at the University'' (Michael Ainsworth), already mentioned, were first published in 1716. The Letter on Design was first published in the edition of the ''Characteristics'' issued in 1732. Besides the published writings, there are several memoranda, letters, rough drafts, etc., in the Shaftesbury papers in the Record Office.
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| − | Shaftesbury took great pains in the elaboration of his style, and he succeeded so far as to make his meaning transparent. The thought is always clear. But, on the other hand, he did not equally succeed in attaining elegance, an object at which he seems equally to have aimed. There is a curious affectation about his style—a falsetto note—which, notwithstanding all his efforts to please, is often irritating to the reader. Its main characteristic is perhaps best hit off by [[Charles Lamb]] when he calls it genteel. He poses too much as a fine gentleman, and is so anxious not to be taken for a pedant of the vulgar scholastic kind that he falls into the hardly more attractive pedantry of the aesthete and virtuoso. But he is easily read and understood. Hence, probably, the wide popularity which his works enjoyed in the 18th century; and hence the agreeable feeling with which, notwithstanding all their false taste and their tiresome digressions, they impress the modern reader.
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| | ==Philosophy== | | ==Philosophy== |
| − | Shaftesbury's philosophical importance is due mainly to his [[ethics|ethical]] speculations, in which his motive was primarily the refutation of Hobbes's egoistic doctrine. By the method of empirical psychology, he examined man first as a unit in himself and secondly in his wider relations to the larger units of society and the universe of mankind. His great principle was that of Harmony or Balance, and he based it on the general ground of good taste or feeling as opposed to the method of reason:
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| − | #In the first place man as an individual is a complex of appetites, passions, affections, more or less perfectly controlled by the central reason. In the moral man these factors are duly balanced. "Whoever," he says, "is in the least versed in this moral kind of architecture will find the inward fabric so adjusted, ... that the barely extending of a single passion too far or the continuance ... of it too long, is able to bring irrecoverable ruin and misery" (''Inquiry concerning Virtue or Merit'', Bk. II. ii. 1)
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| − | #As a social being, man is part of a greater harmony, and, in order that he may contribute to the happiness of the whole, he must order his extra-regarding activities so that they shall not clash with his environs. Only when he has regulated his Internal and his social relations by this ideal can he be regarded as rule moral. The [[egoist]] and the [[altruism|altruist]] are both imperfect. In the ripe perfection of humanity, the two impulses will be perfectly adjusted.
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| − | Thus, by the criterion of harmony, Shaftesbury refutes [[Thomas Hobbes|Hobbes]], and deduces the virtue of benevolence as indispensable to morality. So also he has drawn a close parallel between the moral and the aesthetic criteria. Just as there is a faculty which apprehends beauty in the sphere of art, so there is in the sphere of ethics a faculty which determines the value of actions. This faculty he described (for the first time in English thought) as the Moral Sense (see Hutcheson) or Conscience (cf. [[Joseph Butler|Butler]]). In its essence, it is primarily emotional and non-reflective; in process of development it becomes rationalized by education and use. The emotional and the rational elements in the moral sense Shaftesbury did not fully analyse (see [[Henry Home, Lord Kames|Home]]).
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| − | From this principle, it follows:
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| − | #that the distinction between right and wrong is part of the constitution of human nature;
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| − | #that morality stands apart from theology, and the moral qualities of actions are determined apart from the arbitrary will of God;
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| − | #that the ultimate test of an action is its tendency to promote the general harmony or welfare;
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| − | #that appetite and reason concur in the determination of action;
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| − | #that the moralist is not concerned to solve the problem of [[freewill]] and [[determinism]].
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| − | From these results we see that Shaftesbury, opposed to [[Thomas Hobbes|Hobbes]] and Locke, is in close agreement with [[Francis Hutcheson|Hutcheson]], and that he is ultimately a deeply religious thinker, inasmuch as he discards the moral sanction of public opinion, the terrors of future punishment, and the authority of the civil authority as the main incentives to goodness, and substitutes the voice of conscience and the love of God. These two alone move men to aim at perfect harmony for its own sake in the man and in the universe.
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| − | Shaftesbury's philosophical activity was confined to ethics, religion, and aesthetics where he was one of the earliest writers to bring into prominence the concept of the [[Sublime (philosophy)|sublime]] as an aesthetic quality. For metaphysics, properly so called, and even psychology, except so far as it afforded a basis for ethics, he evidently had no taste. Logic he probably despised as merely an instrument of pedantic judgment for which, in his day, and especially at the universities, there was only too much ground.
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| − | The main object of the [[Moralist]]s is to propound a system of natural theology, and to vindicate, so far as natural religion is concerned, the ways of God to man. The articles of Shaftesbury's religious creed were few and simple, but these he entertained with a conviction amounting to enthusiasm. They may briefly be summed up as a belief in one God whose most characteristic attribute is universal benevolence, in the moral government of the universe, and in a future state of man making up for the imperfections and repairing the inequalities of the present life. Shaftesbury is emphatically an optimist, but there is a passage in the Moralists (pt. ii. sect. 4) which would lead us to suppose that he regarded matter as an indifferent principle, coexistent and coeternal with God, limiting His operations, and the cause of the evil and imperfection which, notwithstanding the benevolence of the Creator, is still to be found in His work. If this view of his optimism be correct, Shaftesbury, as Mill says of [[Leibniz]], must be regarded as maintaining, not that this is the best of all imaginable but only of all possible worlds. This brief notice of Shaftesbury's scheme of natural religion would be conspicuously imperfect unless it were added that it is popularized in [[Alexander Pope|Pope]]'s ''Essay on Man'', several lines of which, especially of the first epistle, are simply statements from the Moralists done into verse. Whether, however, these were taken immediately by Pope from Shaftesbury, or whether they came to him through the papers which [[Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke|Bolingbroke]] had prepared for his use, we have no means of determining.
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| − | ==Reception==
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| − | The influence of Shaftesbury's writings was considerable both at home and abroad. His ethical system was reproduced, though in a more precise and philosophical form, by Hutcheson, and from him descended, with certain variations, to [[David Hume|Hume]] and [[Adam Smith]]. Nor was it without its effect even on the speculations of Butler. Of the so-called deists Shaftesbury was probably the most important, as he was certainly the most plausible and the most respectable. No sooner had the ''Characteristics'' appeared than they were welcomed, in terms of warm commendation, by Le Clerc and [[Gottfried Leibniz|Leibnitz]].
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| − | In 1745 [[Denis Diderot]] adapted or reproduced the ''Inquiry concerning Virtue'' in what was afterwards known as his ''Essai sur le Mérite et la Vertu''. In 1769 a French translation of the whole of Shaftesbury's works, including the ''Letters'', was published at Geneva. Translations of separate treatises into German began to be made in 1738, and in 1776-1779 there appeared a complete [[German language|German]] translation of the ''Characteristics''. [[Hermann Theodor Hettner|Hermann Hettner]] says that not only Leibnitz, [[Voltaire]] and Diderot, but [[Gotthold Ephraim Lessing|Lessing]], [[Moses Mendelssohn|Mendelssohn]], Wieland and [[Johann Gottfried von Herder|Herder]], drew the most stimulating nutriment from Shaftesbury. His charms, he adds, are ever fresh. A new-born Hellenism, or divine coitus of beauty presented itself before his inspired soul.
| + | Shaftesbury's philosophy stems from a surprising variety of sources: [[Plato]], the stoics, the Cambridge Platonists, and John Locke. In many ways more a rationalist than an empiricist, Shaftesbury is nevertheless marked as one of the founders of the (typically empiricist) view that our moral concepts and judgments are based on sentiment and feeling, as opposed to reason and rational intuition. While therefore being an innovative thinker, his overarching view of the universe, with its focus on harmony and insistence on the human-independence of beauty and goodness, harkens back to the vision laid out over two millenia earlier in Plato's ''Republic''. |
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| − | Herder is especially eulogistic. In the ''Adrastea'' he pronounces the ''Moralists'' to be a composition in form well-nigh worthy of Grecian antiquity, and in its contents almost superior to it. The interest felt by German literary men in Shaftesbury was revived by the publication of two excellent monographs, one dealing with him mainly from the theological side by [[Gideon Spicker]] (Freiburg in Baden, 1872), the other dealing with him mainly from the philosophical side by [[Georg von Gizycki]] (Leipzig, 1876).
| + | ===The Harmonious Universe=== |
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| − | ==References==
| + | While Shaftesbury's chief object of inquiry, following Locke, is the nature of humans and the human mind, he insists that humans can only be understood with respect to their role in the larger systems of which they are a part. To reinforce this, he asks his readers to consider how well someone would fare in understanding the nature of a watch if he were unaware of its role as an instrument to measure time. |
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| − | In [[Thomas Fowler]]'s monograph on Shaftesbury and Hutcheson in the series of English philosophers (1882) he was able to supplement the printed materials for the Life by extracts from the Shaftesbury papers in the Record Office. These include, besides many letters and memoranda, two Lives of him, composed by his son, the fourth earl, one of which is evidently the original, though it is by no means always closely followed, of the Life contributed by Dr Birch to the ''General Dictionary''.
| + | Shaftesbury saw the universe as a harmonious system composed of sub-systems. The human species counted as one such sub-system, and each individual human a sub-system of the species. The goodness of any particular entity or subs-system is a function of how well it contributes to the larger systems of which it is a part. In other words, Shaftesbury's vision of the universe is thoroughly teleological (i.e. concerned with the purposes of entities). |
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| − | For description and criticism of Shaftesbury's philosophy:
| + | Unsurprisingly, Shaftesbury was a proponent of the so-called 'Argument from Design,' which infers the existence of an intelligent and powerful creator from the harmonious and complex nature of the universe. Yet Shaftesbury presents the argument in a somewhat unusual light by comparing the systemiticity of the universe with the systemiticity of the succession of ideas in our minds. Our ideas do not follow one another haphazardly - rather, their occurrence is (often) in accordance logical principles. This order is explained by the fact that the mind is governed by a rational force (the mind's intelligence). If this explanation appears apt, Shaftesbury concludes, then an exactly parallel argument should be accepted for the existence of some intelligent, governing force in the universe. |
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| − | *[[James Mackintosh]], ''Progress of Ethical Philosophy''
| + | ===Moral Sentiment and Virtue=== |
| − | *[[W. Whewell]], ''History of Moral Philosophy in England''
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| − | *[[Théodore Simon Jouffroy]], ''Introduction to Ethics'' (Channing's translation)
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| − | *[[Leslie Stephen]], ''English Thought in the Eighteenth Century''
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| − | *[[James Martineau]], ''Types of Ethical Theory''
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| − | *[[Windelband]],'s history of Philosophy (Eng. trans., 1893)
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| − | *[[Walter Mooney Hatch]]'s unfinished edition with appendices of the ''Characteristics'' (1870)
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| − | *[[J. M. Robertson]]'s edition of the ''Characteristics'' (1900)
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| − | *[[Benjamin Rand]] (1900) ''The Life, Unpublished Letters and Philosophical Regimen of Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury''
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| − | For his relation to the religious and theological controversies of his day, see:
| + | Shaftesbury saw the goodness of any entity or act as based in that things' contribution to its overall system, so that all creatures are capable of good actions. Yet he insists that something further is required for a creature's action to be virtuous: it must be done from a motive of goodness, and this motive requires the existence of a certain reflective power. |
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| − | *[[John Leland (Presbyterian)|John Leland]], ''View of the Principal Deistical Writers''
| + | ==Attacks on Egoism=== |
| − | *[[V. Lechler]], ''Geschichte des Englischen Deismus''
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| − | *[[John Hunt]] (1870-3), ''Religious Thought in England, from the Reformation to the end of last century''
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| − | *[[C. J. Abbey]] and [[J. H. Overton]], ''The English Church in the Eighteenth Century''
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| − | *[[Adam Storey Farrar]] (1863]], ''Critical History of Free Thought in Reference to the Christian Religion'' (Bampton Lectures 1862 )
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| − | *[[Gustav Zart]], ''Einfluss der englischen Philosophen seit Bacon auf die deutsche Philosophie des 18ten Jahrhunderts'' (Berlin, 1881).
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| | ==External links== | | ==External links== |
Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (February 26, 1671 – February 4, 1713), was an English politician, philosopher and writer.
Biography
Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 3rd Early of Shaftesbury, was born in 1671. His grandfather (the 1st Earl) had supported Cromwell and, later, the Whig party. Shaftesbury was primarily raised by his grandfather, and would later become a member of the Whig party during his own political career.
The 1st Earl employed John Locke, who acted as a physician in the Cooper household, to educate his grandson. Shaftesbury was greatly influenced by Locke, and later made a trip to Locke during his exhile in Holland. Yet this influence was not not always in the form of acceptance of ideas - indeed, Shaftesbury saw much of his philosophy as aimed against Locke's. For in his education, Shaftesbury was swayed by the examples of ancient stoicism and Platonic rationalism, which were often at odds with Locke's variety of egoism and empiricism.
Asthma (worsened by London's smog) forced Shaftesbury to end his political career at the age of 30, which marked the starting point of his philosophically most significant decade. Beginning with the Inquiry concerning Virtue or Merit of 1699, Shaftesbury published a series of works in a variety of styles, chiefly focusing on ethics, aesthetics, politics and theology. In 1711, he collected those works into a single volume entitled Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times. Two years later, his respiratory problems overcame came him. After his death, two further volumes of his work were published.
Shaftesbury's work was highly influential throughout the 18th century, helping shape the ethical thought of figures as central as Hume and Kant.
Philosophy
Shaftesbury's philosophy stems from a surprising variety of sources: Plato, the stoics, the Cambridge Platonists, and John Locke. In many ways more a rationalist than an empiricist, Shaftesbury is nevertheless marked as one of the founders of the (typically empiricist) view that our moral concepts and judgments are based on sentiment and feeling, as opposed to reason and rational intuition. While therefore being an innovative thinker, his overarching view of the universe, with its focus on harmony and insistence on the human-independence of beauty and goodness, harkens back to the vision laid out over two millenia earlier in Plato's Republic.
The Harmonious Universe
While Shaftesbury's chief object of inquiry, following Locke, is the nature of humans and the human mind, he insists that humans can only be understood with respect to their role in the larger systems of which they are a part. To reinforce this, he asks his readers to consider how well someone would fare in understanding the nature of a watch if he were unaware of its role as an instrument to measure time.
Shaftesbury saw the universe as a harmonious system composed of sub-systems. The human species counted as one such sub-system, and each individual human a sub-system of the species. The goodness of any particular entity or subs-system is a function of how well it contributes to the larger systems of which it is a part. In other words, Shaftesbury's vision of the universe is thoroughly teleological (i.e. concerned with the purposes of entities).
Unsurprisingly, Shaftesbury was a proponent of the so-called 'Argument from Design,' which infers the existence of an intelligent and powerful creator from the harmonious and complex nature of the universe. Yet Shaftesbury presents the argument in a somewhat unusual light by comparing the systemiticity of the universe with the systemiticity of the succession of ideas in our minds. Our ideas do not follow one another haphazardly - rather, their occurrence is (often) in accordance logical principles. This order is explained by the fact that the mind is governed by a rational force (the mind's intelligence). If this explanation appears apt, Shaftesbury concludes, then an exactly parallel argument should be accepted for the existence of some intelligent, governing force in the universe.
Moral Sentiment and Virtue
Shaftesbury saw the goodness of any entity or act as based in that things' contribution to its overall system, so that all creatures are capable of good actions. Yet he insists that something further is required for a creature's action to be virtuous: it must be done from a motive of goodness, and this motive requires the existence of a certain reflective power.
Attacks on Egoism=
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