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The Earl of Shaftesbury | |
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| Born | (1671-02-26)26 February 1671 London, England |
| Died | 16 February 1713(1713-02-16) (aged 41) Naples, Kingdom of Naples |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | 18th-century philosophy Early modern philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Cambridge Platonism |
Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (26 February 1671 – 16 February 1713) was an EnglishWhig politician, philosopher and writer.
He was born atExeter House in London, the son and first child of the futureAnthony Ashley Cooper, 2nd Earl of Shaftesbury and his wifeLady Dorothy Manners, daughter ofJohn Manners, 8th Earl of Rutland.
Letters sent to his parents revealemotional manipulation attempted by his mother in refusing to see her son unless he cut off all ties to his sickly and secluded father. At the age of three Ashley-Cooper was made over to the formal guardianship of his grandfatherAnthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury.John Locke, as medical attendant to the Ashley household, was entrusted with the supervision of his education. It was conducted according to the principles of Locke'sSome Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), and the method of teachingLatin andGreek conversationally was pursued by his instructress, Elizabeth Birch. At the age of eleven, it is said, Ashley could read both languages with ease.[1] Birch had moved to Clapham and Ashley spent some years there with her.[2]
In 1683, after the death of the first Earl, his father sent Lord Ashley, as he now was by courtesy, toWinchester College. Under a Scottish tutor, Daniel Denoune, he began a continental tour with two older companions,Sir John Cropley, 2nd Baronet, andThomas Sclater Bacon.[3]
After theGlorious Revolution, Lord Ashley returned to England in 1689. It took five years, but he entered public life, as a parliamentary candidate for theborough of Poole, and was returned on 21 May 1695. He spoke for the Bill for Regulating Trials in Cases of Treason, one provision of which was that a person indicted fortreason ormisprision of treason should be allowed the assistance of counsel.[1]
Although aWhig, Ashley was not partisan. His poor health forced him to retire from parliament at the dissolution of July 1698. He suffered fromasthma.[1] The following year, to escape the London environment, he purchased a property inLittle Chelsea,[3] adding a 50-foot extension to the existing building to house his bedchamber and Library, and planting fruit trees and vines. He sold the property toNarcissus Luttrell in 1710.[4]
He wasLord Proprietor of the English colony of Carolina in North America and the Bahamas during this time.
Lord Ashley moved to theNetherlands. Away for over a year, Ashley returned to England, and shortly succeeded his father asEarl of Shaftesbury. He took an active part, on the Whig side in theHouse of Lords, in theJanuary 1701 English general election, and again, with more success, in theNovember 1701 English general election.[3]
After the first few weeks ofAnne's reign, Shaftesbury, who had been deprived of the vice-admiralty ofDorset, returned to private life.[1] In August 1703, he again settled in theNetherlands. AtRotterdam 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.[5]
Shaftesbury returned to England in August 1704, he landed atAldeburgh,Suffolk having escaped a dangerous storm during his voyage.[6] He had symptoms ofconsumption, and gradually became an invalid. He continued to take an interest in politics, both home and foreign, and supported England's participation in theWar of the Spanish Succession.[5]
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 atNaples in November, and lived there for more than a year.[7]
Shaftesbury died atChiaia in theKingdom of Naples, on 15 February 1713 (N.S.) His body was brought back to England and buried atWimborne St Giles, the family seat in Dorset.[3]
John Toland was an early associate, but Shaftesbury after some time found him a troublesome ally. Toland published a draft of theInquiry concerning Virtue, without permission. Shaftesbury may have exaggerated its faults, but the relationship cooled.[3] Toland edited 14 letters from Shaftesbury toRobert Molesworth, published in Toland in 1721.[7] Molesworth had been a good friend from the 1690s and he regarded Molesworth as a mentor.[8] Other friends among English Whigs wereCharles Davenant,Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun,Walter Moyle,William Stephens andJohn Trenchard.[3]
From Locke's circle in England, Shaftesbury knewEdward Clarke,Damaris Masham andWalter Yonge. In the Netherlands in the late 1690s, he got to know Locke's contactBenjamin Furly. Through Furly he had introductions to become acquainted withPierre Bayle,Jean Leclerc andPhilipp van Limborch. Bayle introduced him toPierre Des Maizeaux.[3] Letters from Shaftesbury to Benjamin Furly, his two sons, and his clerk Harry Wilkinson, were included in a volume entitledOriginal Letters of Locke, Sidney and Shaftesbury, published byThomas Ignatius Maria Forster (1830, and in enlarged form, 1847).
Shaftesbury was a patron of Michael Ainsworth, a young Dorset man ofWimborne St Giles, maintained by Shaftesbury atUniversity College, Oxford. TheLetters to a Young Man at the University (1716) were addressed to Ainsworth. Others he supported includedPierre Coste andPaul Crellius.[3]
Most of the works for which Shaftesbury is known were completed in the period 1705 to 1710. He collected a number of those and other works inCharacteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (first edition 1711, anonymous, 3 vols.).[9][10] His philosophical work was limited to ethics, religion, and aesthetics where he highlighted the concept of thesublime as an aesthetic quality.[7]Basil Willey wrote "his writings, though suave and polished, lack distinction of style".[11]
This listing refers to the first edition.[12] The later editions saw changes. TheLetter on Design was first published in the edition of theCharacteristicks issued in 1732.[7]
Volume IThe opening piece isA Letter Concerning Enthusiasm, advocatingreligious toleration, published anonymously in 1708. It was based on a letter sent toJohn Somers, 1st Baron Somers of September 1707.[13] At this time repression of the FrenchCamisards was topical.[7] The second treatise isSensus Communis: An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour, first published in 1709.[9][14] The third part isSoliloquy: or, Advice to an Author, from 1710.[15]
Volume IIIt opens withInquiry Concerning Virtue and Merit, based on a work from 1699. With this treatise, Shaftesbury became the founder ofmoral sense theory.[9][16] It is accompanied byThe Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody, from 1709.[9] Shaftesbury himself regarded it as the most ambitious of his treatises.[17] The main object ofThe Moralists is to propound a system ofnatural theology, fortheodicy. Shaftesbury believed in one God whose characteristic attribute is universal benevolence; in the moral government of the universe; and in a future state of man making up for the present life.[7]
Volume IIIEntitledMiscellaneous Reflections, this consisted of previously unpublished works.[9] From his stay at Naples there wasA Notion of the Historical Draught or Tablature of the Judgment of Hercules.[7]
Shaftesbury as a moralist opposedThomas Hobbes. He was a follower of theCambridge Platonists, and like them rejected the way Hobbes collapsed moral issues into expediency.[18] His first published work was an anonymousPreface to the sermons ofBenjamin Whichcote, a prominent Cambridge Platonist, published in 1698. In it he belaboured Hobbes and hisethical egoism, but also the commonplacecarrot and stick arguments of Christian moralists.[3] While Shaftesbury conformed in public to theChurch of England, his private view of some of its doctrines was less respectful.[7]
His starting point in theCharacteristicks, however, was indeed such a form ofethical naturalism as was common ground for Hobbes,Bernard Mandeville andSpinoza: appeal to self-interest. He divided moralists intoStoics andEpicurean, identifying with the Stoics and their attention to thecommon good. It made him concentrate onvirtue. He took Spinoza andDescartes as the leading Epicureans of his time (in unpublished writings).[19]
Shaftesbury examined man first as a unit in himself, and secondly socially. His major principle was harmony or balance, rather thanrationalism. In man, he wrote,
"Whoever 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".[20]
This version of agolden mean doctrine that goes back toAristotle was savaged by Mandeville, who slurred it as associated with a sheltered and comfortable life, Catholicasceticism, and modern sentimental rusticity.[21] On the other hand,Jonathan Edwards adopted Shaftesbury's view that "all excellency is harmony, symmetry or proportion".[22]
On man as a social creature, Shaftesbury argued that the egoist and the extremealtruist are both imperfect. People, to contribute to the happiness of the whole, must fit in.[23] He rejected the idea that humankind is naturally selfish; and the idea that altruism necessarily cuts across self-interest.[24]Thomas Jefferson found this general and social approach attractive.[25]
This move relied on a close parallel between moral and aesthetic criteria. In the English tradition, this appeal to amoral sense was innovative. Primarily emotional and non-reflective, it becomes rationalised by education and use. Corollaries are that morality stands apart from theology, and the moral qualities of actions are determined apart from thewill of God; and that the moralist is not concerned to solve the problems offree will anddeterminism. Shaftesbury in this way opposed also what is to be found in Locke.[23]
The conceptual framework used by Shaftesbury was representative of much thinking in theearly Enlightenment, and remained popular until the 1770s.[26] When theCharacteristicks appeared they were welcomed by Le Clerc andGottfried Leibniz. Among the Englishdeists Shaftesbury was significant, plausible and the most respectable.[23]
In terms ofAugustan literature, Shaftesbury's defence ofridicule was taken as an entitlement to scoff, and to use ridicule as a "test of truth". Clerical authors operated on the assumption that he was afreethinker.[27]Ezra Stiles, readingCharacteristicks in 1748 without realising Shaftesbury had been marked down as adeist, was both impressed and sometimes shocked. Around this timeJohn Leland andPhilip Skelton stepped up a campaign against deist influence, tarnishing Shaftesbury's reputation.[28]
While Shaftesbury wrote on ridicule in the 1712 edition ofCharacteristicks, the modern scholarly consensus is that the uses of his views on it as a "test of truth" were a stretch.[29] According toAlfred Owen Aldridge, the "test of truth" phrase is not to be found inCharacteristicks; it was imposed on the Augustan debate byGeorge Berkeley.[30]
The influence of Shaftesbury, and in particularThe Moralists, onAn Essay on Man, was claimed in the 18th century byVoltaire (in his philosophical letter "On Pope"),[31]Lord Hervey andThomas Warton, and supported in recent times, for example byMaynard Mack.Alexander Pope did not mention Shaftesbury explicitly as a source: this omission has been understood in terms of the political divide, Pope being a Tory.[32] Pope references the character Theocles fromThe Moralists in theDunciad (IV.487–490):
"Or that bright Image to our Fancy draw,
Which Theocles in raptur'd vision saw,
While thro' Poetic scenes the Genius roves,
Or wanders wild in Academic Groves".
In notes to these lines, Pope directed the reader to various passages in Shaftesbury's work.[23]
Shaftesbury's ethical system was rationalised byFrancis Hutcheson, and from him passed with modifications toDavid Hume; these writers, however, changed from reliance on moral sense to thedeontological ethics of moral obligation.[33] From there it was taken up byAdam Smith, who elaborated a theory ofmoral judgement with some restricted emotional input, and a complex apparatus taking context into account.[34]Joseph Butler adopted the system, but not ruling out the place of "moral reason", a rationalist version of the affective moral sense.[35]Samuel Johnson, the American educator, did not accept Shaftesbury's moral sense as a given, but believed it might be available by intermittent divine intervention.[36]
In the Englishsentimental novel of the 18th century, arguments from the Shaftesbury–Hutcheson tradition appear. An early example inMary Collyer'sFelicia to Charlotte (vol.1, 1744) comes from its hero Lucius, who reasons in line withAn Enquiry Concerning Virtue and Merit on the "moral sense".[37] The second volume (1749) has discussions ofconduct book material, and makes use of thePhilemon to Hydaspes (1737) ofHenry Coventry, described by Aldridge as "filled with favorable references to Shaftesbury."[38][39] The eponymous hero ofThe History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753) bySamuel Richardson has been described as embodying the "Shaftesburian model" ofmasculinity: he is "stoic, rational, in control, yet sympathetic towards others, particularly those less fortunate."[40]A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768) byLaurence Sterne was intended by its author to evoke the "sympathizing principle" on which the tradition founded bylatitudinarians, Cambridge Platonists and Shaftesbury relied.[41]
In 1745Denis Diderot adapted or reproduced theInquiry concerning Virtue in what was afterwards known as hisEssai sur le Mérite et la Vertu. In 1769 a French translation of the whole of Shaftesbury's works, including theLetters, was published at Geneva.[23]
Translations of separate treatises into German began to be made in 1738, and in 1776–1779 there appeared a complete German translation of theCharacteristicks.Hermann Theodor Hettner stated that not only Leibniz,Voltaire and Diderot, butGotthold Ephraim Lessing,Moses Mendelssohn,Christoph Martin Wieland andJohann Gottfried von Herder, drew from Shaftesbury.[23]
Herder in early work took from Shaftesbury arguments for respecting individuality, and against system and universal psychology. He went on to praise him inAdrastea.[42]Wilhelm von Humboldt found in Shaftesbury the "inward form" concept, key for education in the approach ofGerman classical philosophy.[43] Later philosophical writers in German (Gideon Spicker withDie Philosophie des Grafen von Shaftesbury, 1872, andGeorg von Gizycki withDie Philosophie Shaftesbury's, 1876) returned to Shaftesbury in books.[44]
At the beginning of the 18th century, Shaftesbury built afolly on the Shaftesbury Estate, known as the Philosopher's Tower. It sits in a field, visible from the B3078 just south ofCranborne.
In the Shaftesbury papers that went to thePublic Record Office are several memoranda, letters, rough drafts, etc.[7]
A portrait of the 3rd Earl is displayed inShaftesbury Town Hall.[45]
Shaftesbury married in 1709 Jane Ewer, the daughter of Thomas Ewer ofBushey Hall,Hertfordshire. On 9 February 1711, their only child Anthony, the futurefourth Earl was born.[3]
His son succeeded him in his titles and republishedCharacteristicks in 1732. His great-grandson was the famous philanthropist,Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury.[7]
The following list of Shaftebury's principal publications has been sourced fromThe third Earl of Shaftesbury, 1671–1713 by Robert Voitle.[46]
Attribution
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Fowler, Thomas; Mitchell, John Malcolm (1911). "Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of". InChisholm, Hugh (ed.).Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 24 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 763–765. Works by or aboutAnthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury atWikisource
Quotations related toAnthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury at Wikiquote| Parliament of England | ||
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| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forPoole withSir Nathaniel Napier, Bt 1695–1698 | Succeeded by |
| Peerage of England | ||
| Preceded by | Earl of Shaftesbury 1699–1713 | Succeeded by |
