## 1. Introduction


### 1.1 Life and works



Anthony Ashley Cooper lived from 1671 to 1713. His grandfather, the
first Earl of Shaftesbury, oversaw his early upbringing and put John
Locke in charge of his education. He would eventually come to disagree
with many aspects of Locke's philosophy, but Locke was clearly a
crucially important influence on his philosophical development. The
two remained friends until Locke's death. He served in
Parliament (before his father died, when he was Lord Ashley) and the
House of Lords (after his father died, when he had became the third
Earl). Ill health curtailed his political career when he was 30 years
old. (The standard biography is Voitle 1984).



The first work he published was an edited collection of sermons by
Benjamin Whichcote, in 1698. He wrote an unsigned preface to the
sermons in which he praised Whichcote's belief in the goodness
of human beings and urged his readers to use Whichcote's
"good nature" as an antidote to the poisonous egoism of
Hobbes and the pessimistic supralapsarianism of the Calvinists.



In 1699, John Toland arranged publication of an early version of the
*Inquiry concerning Virtue*. Shaftesbury later renounced this
version of the *Inquiry*, claiming that it was produced without
his authorization, although the details of the episode are
unclear.



Most of the works for which Shaftesbury is famous were written between
1705-1710. It was during this period that he rewrote the
*Inquiry concerning Virtue, or Merit* and completed versions of
*The Moralists: A Philosophical Rhapsody* (the first version of
which was called *The Social Enthusiast, A Philosophical
Adventure*), *A Letter concerning Enthusiasm*, *Sensus
Communis: An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour*, and
*Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author*.



In 1711, Shaftesbury collected his mature writings and added to them
extensive notes and commentaries (which he called *Miscellaneous
Reflections on the preceeding Treatises, and other Critical
Subjects*), naming the the resulting three-volume work
*Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times*. He revised
*Characteristicks* over the course of the next two years, up
until his death in 1713. A version with his final changes appeared in
1714.



There have been three recent editions of *Characteristicks*: a
single volume edited and with an introduction and scholarly apparatus
by Klein (1999), with modernized spelling and punctuation; two volumes
edited and with an introduction and scholarly apparatus by Ayers
(1999), with original typography; and three volumes with an
introduction by Den Uyl (2001), with original typography, and with the
addition of "A Notion of the Tablature, or Judgment of
Hercules" and "A Letter concerning Design." In this
entry, I will refer (as 'C') to the online-accessible
version of Den Uyl's Liberty Fund edition, citing the volume and
original page numbers.



Not all of Shaftesbury's writings are collected in
*Characteristicks*. Some, such as *Second Characters*,
he intended to publish but did not complete; this might also be true
of *Chartae Socraticae* and *Pathologia* (see Jaffro,
Maurer, and Petit 2013). Others, such as *The Adept Ladies*, he
may have circulated privately but decided not to publish. Still
others, such as *Askemata*, he might have written for personal
or therapeutic purposes rather than for public consumption. The most
comprehensive collection of Shaftesbury's published and
unpublished writings is the *Standard Edition: Complete Works,
Correspondence and Posthumous Writings*, edited by Wolfram Benda
et al. (1981-present).


### 1.2 Purpose and form of philosophy



According to Shaftesbury, the purpose of philosophy is to make us
better people. Philosophy's job is to help us to improve
ourselves--to "regulate our governing Fancys, Passions, and
Humours" (C 1.283)--so that we can become wiser, more
virtuous, and more organized selves. Philosophy is
"*Mastership* in Life and Manners"
(C 3.159; see also 3.303). As Rivers
puts it, philosophy for Shaftesbury is "the art of learning to
live well" (Rivers 2000a: 87; see Klein 1994: 82). Den Uyl says,
Shaftesbury's "main purpose [is] to encourage, promote, or
otherwise foster an environment conducive to the exercise of
virtue" (Den Uyl 1998: 282).



Shaftesbury's belief in the fundamentally
"self-improving" (C 2.427) purpose of philosophy leads him
to criticize the turgid, analytic methods of the Scholastics and of
modern thinkers such as Descartes and Locke (Schneewind 1998: 307 and
Rivers 2000a: 87). As one of his characters puts it, philosophy must
be rescued from its imprisonment in "Colleges and Cells"
where it has been immured by "Empiricks, and pedantick
Sophists" (C 2.184). To achieve its proper goals, philosophy
needs to assume guises very different from the dry, unmoving texts of
Shaftesbury's predecessors.



Because he thinks that "straightforward discursive writing could
have little chances of successfully promoting virtue in a modern
context," Shaftesbury presents his own ideas in "a
daunting array of formats" (Den Uyl 1998: 276). These formats
include: a letter to a friend, a manual for writers, an epistolary
novelistic dialogue, a series of "*random*"
reflections delivered without "*Regularity* and
*Order*" (C 3.8, 3.2), an argumentative inquiry, and a
witty essay that eschews "the Gravity of strict Argument"
in favor of the "way of *Chat*" (C 3.97).


### 1.3 Features of Shaftesbury interpretation: persuasion, illustrations, unpublished texts



Grean claims that Shaftesbury's forms are "determined by
the means of persuasion" more than argumentative rigor, which
poses a challenge for interpretation (Grean 1967: xviii). Carey says,
"we cannot look to his work for an argument structured by
premises and logical deductions" (Carey 2006: 106). To
complicate matters, Shaftesbury adopts different personae in different
literary performances, and there are significant interpretative
questions about the extent to which we ought to identify the views of
Shaftesbury's first-person narrators with Shaftesbury
himself--especially when one persona explicitly distinguishes
himself from another (C 2.263 and 3.12; see Marshall 1986; Prince
1996; Chaves 2008). In addition, some commentators take
Shaftesbury's works to be laced with self-distancing irony
(Klein 1994: 96-99; Jaffro 2008). This diversity of forms,
styles, tones, and personae makes it difficult to attribute to
Shaftesbury a single philosophical system of thought. Shaftesbury
himself wrote: "The most ingenious way of becoming foolish, is
*by a System*" (C 1.290).



Another noteworthy feature of Shaftesbury interpretation is his use of
illustrations. Shaftesbury worked on numerous allegorical
illustrations for the second edition of *Characteristics*,
putting tremendous effort into both the overall plan and the minute
details of these illustrations and engaging in extensive
correspondence with the artists he hired to execute the pictures. He
seemed to want his audience to read the illustrations as carefully as
the words, their meanings (some readily apparent, others subtle to the
point of hiddenness) essential to a full understanding of the text.
(The fullest discussion of the illustrations is Paknadel 1974. Rivers
2000a and Muller 2010, 2012, and 2013 also shed light on how the
illustrations interact with and enhance the message of
Shaftesbury's text.) Shaftesbury took care, as well, to compose
the marginal headings and index to *Characteristicks*, and his
choices in those places can also be cited as evidence for certain
interpretative views (see Rivers 2000b). *Characteristicks* was
one of the earliest books in English to have an index.



Yet another issue in Shaftesbury interpretation is the role to give to
writings not included in *Characteristicks*. These include
completed works, unfinished versions of projected publications, and
correspondence. Perhaps most important in this regard are
Shaftesbury's private notebooks, or *Askemata* (the
definitive version is the *Standard Edition;* some of the
writings from the notebooks are also collected in *Regimen*,
edited by Rand). There is a question, however, of whether
*Askemata* and other unpublished writings constitute a more
accurate picture of Shaftesbury's real views, or whether at
least some of those writings should be taken to have served private
therapeutic purposes that differ from the stating of his settled,
fully considered positions. Shaftesbury has one of his narrators in
*Characteristicks* object to the publication of private
ruminations (C 1.162-4), and he himself did not intend for
*Askemata* ever to be published*.*  Moreover, Jaffro has
argued that Shaftesbury thought that the private self should be
"secreted" from the public self--that there should be
a "gap" between them (Jaffro 2008: 349)--which only
complicates further the attempt to corral everything Shaftesbury wrote
into a systematic, or even fully coherent, single philosophical
position.


### 1.4 Relationship to Stoicism



A closely related question is how best to understand
Shaftesbury's relationship to Stoicism. Stoicism was clearly a
major influence on Shaftesbury, but the exact nature of his
thought's relationship to Stoicism is a matter of debate. Some
commentators argue that Shaftesbury is essentially a Stoic through and
through (Tiffany 1923; see also Sellars 2016 and Stuart-Buttle 2019).
Others argue that some of his ideas comport with Stoicism, while
others do not (Maurer and Jaffro 2013).



The strong Stoic interpretation emphasizes the unpublished
*Askemata*, which are notebooks in which Shaftesbury engages in
a process of self-improvement based on Stoic principles (see Klein
1994: 60 and 81-88; Rivers 2000a: 92; Taylor 1989: 251-2;
Gatti 2014). Shaftesbury refers to and quotes Stoic sources throughout
*Askemata*. When he was writing in these notebooks, Shaftesbury
seems to have Stoic ideas in the forefront of his mind, and proceeds
on the assumption that those ideas are the key to becoming the person
he wants to be. As well, Shaftesbury's unpublished
*Pathologia* is a Latin text that is entirely devoted to an
explication of Stoic psychology. Shaftesbury's unpublished
*Chartae Socraticae* can also be read as an endorsement of
Stoicism and a rejection of contemporary philosophy.



The main idea the strong Stoic interpretation believes Shaftesbury
emphasizes is an exclusive concern with the state of one's own
soul, which is within one's own control, and a resultant
withdrawing of concern from everything else. This interpretation
highlights the many passages in *Askemata* in which Shaftesbury
urges himself to focus only on his internal state, to maintain
equanimity, not to allow anything external to disturb his serenity.
Shaftesbury's choice of illustration for the frontispiece of
*Characteristicks* echoes this idea: it's a ship on a bay
and a ray of light on a still dish of water, which is intended to
illustrate quotations from Marcus ("What view you take is
everything, and your view is in your power. Remove it when you choose,
and then, as if you had rounded the cape, come calm serenity, a
waveless bay") and Epictetus ("As is the water-dish, so is
the soul; as is the ray which falls on the water, so are the
appearances"). (For discussion of this illustration, see
Paknadel 1974, 297-8.)



There are, however, aspects of *Characteristicks* that other
commentators have thought to be at odds with the strong Stoic
interpretation. Maurer and Jaffro (2013) maintain that
Shaftesbury's concern with the public good and his endorsement
of pity do not fit with the Stoic view. Klein's reading (1994)
emphasizes the importance Shaftesbury places on aesthetic beauty,
politeness, and manners, and how those might differ from Stoicism.
Shaftesbury also refrains from publishing his own thought in the
systematic form distinctive of much of Stoic thought (compare to
*Pathologia*).



Defenders of the strong Stoic interpretation suggest that Shaftesbury
conceals his true beliefs in order to reach an audience that may not
be ready for the unadulterated, austere message of Stoicism. According
to this interpretation, for instance, Shaftesbury's real view is
that aesthetic beauty (the beauty of physical things, such as art) is
of no value. He only brings aesthetic beauty into his discussion as a
decoy or sugar-coating, a ploy to induce a wider audience toward a
moral position that would have left them cold if it had been delivered
unadorned (see Tiffany 1923; Derhmann 2014; Stuart-Buttle 2019).



An alternative explanation is that Shaftesbury used his unpublished
notebooks as a means to work on improving himself with Stoic ideas
during psychologically fraught times, but that those notebooks do not
necessarily reflect the essence of his true philosophy (see Klein
1994). The essays he worked hard to polish and publish as
*Characteristicks* might be a better reflection of his
considered views. Another possibility is that he thought different
things at different times: the notebooks might accurately reflect a
Stoic orientation at some points in his life, but for all that he
still might have held non-Stoic ideas about aesthetics and public
concern at other points. In response, the strong Stoic interpretation
may contend that even in *Characteristicks* there are
indications (esoteric perhaps, but evident to those who know where to
look) that seemingly non-Stoic ideas are but a decoy.


## 2. Morality


### 2.1 Virtue and goodness



Shaftesbury maintains that virtue is the promotion of the good of all
humankind.



> 
> 
> To love the Publick, to study universal Good, and to promote the
> Interest of the whole World, as far as lies within our power, is
> surely the Height of Goodness. (C 1.37)
> 
> 
> 



The virtuous person strives to develop an "equal, just, and
universal Friendship" with humanity as a whole (C 2.242). This
view of virtue is a precursor to Hutcheson's proto-Utilitarian
view that "that Action is best, which procures the greatest
Happiness for the greatest Numbers" (Hutcheson 1726: 125).
Levy-Eichel also points to Shaftesbury's coinage of
"*Moral Arithmetic*" (C 2.99) as a crucial part of
the pre-history of Utilitarianism, and its use of mathematics in moral
subjects (Levy-Eichel 2020). (For further discussion of
Shaftesbury's influence on Utilitarianism, see Driver 2014. For
a view of Shaftesbury's differences from later Utilitarians, see
Crisp 2019: 86).



Shaftesbury's view of virtue is part of his teleological view of
goodness. Something is good, according to Shaftesbury, if it
contributes to the "Existence or Well-being" of the system
of which it is a part (C 2.18). Every animal is a part of its species.
A particular animal, say a tiger, is a good member of its
species--it's a good tiger--if it contributes to the
well-being of the tiger species as a whole. There is also "a
system of all animals," which consists of the
"order" or "economy" of all the different
animal species (C 2.19). A good animal is one that contributes to the
well-being of "animal Affairs" in general (C 2.19). The
system of all animals, moreover, works with the system "of
Vegetables, and all other things in this inferior World" to
constitute "*one system* of a Globe or Earth" (C
2.19). So something is a good earthly thing if it contributes to the
existence of earthly things in general. And the system of this earth
is itself part of a "*Universal System*" or
"a System *of all Things*"
(C 2.20). To be "*wholly* and *really*" good
a thing must contribute to the good of the universe as a whole (C
2.20). This progression of ever-larger systems is a bit dazzling, and
we might wonder how we can know (or even make sense of) whether
something is contributing to the well-being of the universe as a
whole. But Shaftesbury avoids this problem by discussing in detail
only that which makes "a sensible Creature" a good member
of its species--by focusing on whether an individual creature is
promoting the well-being of its species (C 2.21). Perhaps Shaftesbury
believes that a creature that contributes to the well-being of its
species will also always contribute to the well-being of the universe
as a whole, in which case being a good member of one's species
would be coextensive with being "wholly and really"
good.



The goodness or evilness of a sensible creature, according to
Shaftesbury, is based on the creature's motives, and not simply
on the results of the creature's actions (C 2.21-22). (As
we will see, this leads to the crucial claims that every motive to
action involves affection or passion [C 2.40-44], and that
reason alone cannot motivate [C 2.28-52, 77-81]).
Shaftesbury strongly emphasizes the importance of motive, arguing that
if creatures promote the good of the species only because they are
forced to or only because promoting the good is a means to other ends,
then they are not actually good themselves. Creatures are good only if
their motivating affections are directed "*primarily and
immediately*" at the good of the species, not if the
connection between their affection and the good of the species is
accidental (C 2.26).



Goodness is something that is within the reach of all sensible
creatures, not only humans but also non-human animals. A creature is
good if its affections promote the well-being of the system of which
it is a part, and non-human animals are just as capable of possessing
this type of affection as humans. "Virtue or Merit," on
the other hand, is within the reach of "*Man* only"
(C 2.28). That's because virtue is tied to a special kind of
affection that only humans possess. This special kind of affection is
a second-order affection, an affection that has as its object another
affection. We humans experience these second-order affections because
we, unlike non-human animals, are conscious of our own passions. Not
only do we possess passions, but we also reflect on or become aware of
the passions we have. And when we reflect on our own passions, we
develop feelings about them. Imagine you feel the desire to help a
person in distress. In addition to simply feeling that desire, you
become aware that you are feeling that desire. When you become aware
of that, you experience a positive feeling (or "liking")
towards your desire to help. Or imagine you feel the desire to harm a
person who has bested you in a fair competition. In addition to simply
feeling the desire to harm, you become aware that you are feeling that
desire. When you become aware of that, you experience a negative
feeling (or "dislike") towards your desire to harm. These
are the kinds of phenomena Shaftesbury has in mind when he writes
that



> 
> 
> the *Affections* of Pity, Kindness, Gratitude, and their
> Contrarys, being brought into the Mind by Reflection, become Objects.
> So that, by means of this reflected Sense, there arises another kind
> of Affection towards those very Affections themselves, which have been
> already felt, and are now become the Subject of a new Liking or
> Dislike. (C 2.28)
> 
> 
> 


### 2.2 The moral sense



Shaftesbury calls this capacity to feel second-order affections the
"Sense of Right and Wrong" or the "Moral
Sense" (C 2.28-36, 2.40-46, 2.51, 2.53, 2.60),
although the term is not one he emphasizes or explains in detail (see
Rivers 2000a: 124). There is little evidence that he thinks the moral
sense is a distinct psychological faculty in the way that Hutcheson
did. Nevertheless, Shaftesbury does think that the moral sense
(whether one faculty or a less bounded disposition) is that which
produces in us feelings of "like" or "dislike"
for our own (first-order) affections. When the moral sense is
operating properly (when it's fulfilling its teleological
purpose), it produces positive feelings towards affections that
promote the well-being of humanity and negative feelings towards
affections that detract from the well-being of humanity. The
second-order feelings that the moral sense produces can themselves
motivate to action, and people are virtuous if they act from those
second-order feelings. In contrast, non-human animals, because they
lack the powers of reflection necessary for consciousness of their own
affections, do not possess a moral sense. So non-human animals are
incapable of achieving virtue (C 2.28-31).



Shaftesbury argues that because our sense of morality is a sentiment,
it can be opposed only by another sentiment, and not by reason or
belief.



> 
> 
> Sense of Right and Wrong therefore being as natural to us as
> *natural Affection* itself, and being a first Principle in our
> Constitution and Make; there is no speculative Opinion, Persuasion or
> Belief, which is capable *immediately* *or directly* to
> exclude or destroy it... And this Affection being *an original
> one* of earliest rise in the Soul or affectionate Part; nothing
> beside contrary Affection, by frequent check and controul, can operate
> upon it, so as either to diminish it in part, or destroy it in the
> whole. (C 2.44).
> 
> 
> 



Shaftesbury does acknowledge that the sense of right and wrong
requires the reflective capacity to conceptualize motives. A creature
who "cannot reflect on what he himself does" cannot have a
sense of right and wrong. For this reason, Shaftesbury says that human
morality is based on "*rational Affections*" (C
2.36). But it is still affections that morality is based on.
Shaftesbury writes, "So that, by means of this reflected Sense,
there arises another kind of Affection towards those very Affections
themselves, which have been already felt, and are not become the
Subject of a new Liking or Dislike" (C 2.28). Reflection paves
the way for the feeling of moral sentiment. But the
sentiment--the "Liking or Dislike," the
"Exercise of the Heart" (C 2.30)--is still
essential.



Shaftesbury puts affection in the driver's seat because he
believes affection alone can motivate. He never states outright what
Hume would explicitly argue for: that reason on its own is
motivationally inert. But the Humean claim is implied by what
Shaftesbury does say. Throughout the first version of the
*Inquiry*, he attributes every instance of motivation to
affection. He says that reason is necessary "to secure a right
application of the Affections," but there he is granting to
reason merely the instrumental role of discovering what will best
benefit the species (C 2.35). Affection remains that which motivates
us to pursue that benefit. Shaftesbury says as well that the
motivational force of an affection can be directly opposed only by the
motivational force of "*contrary* Affections" (C
2.44). If a person has a motivating affection, she will
"necessarily act according to it" unless it is opposed by
some other affection (C 2.52). "[T]here is no speculative
Opinion, Persuasion or Belief, which is capable *immediately* or
*directly* to exclude or destroy" a natural affection (C
2.44). "[N]othing beside contrary Affection, by frequent check
and control, can operate upon it, so as either to diminish it in part,
or destroy it in the whole" (C 2.44) Shaftesbury acknowledges
that beliefs can cause alterations in the affections, and that the
altered affections can lead us in directions opposite to those
we'd been motivated to follow before. If I come to believe a
particularly charismatic person is a great benefactor to humanity, I
may then become motivated to emulate behavior of hers to which I would
otherwise have been opposed. If I come to believe that a particular
group of people is trying to destroy humanity, I may become motivated
to attack them in ways that would previously have offended my sense of
right and wrong. But belief's role in motivation is once again
instrumental. It operates on my motivation only "indirectly, by
the intervention of opposite or of favourable Affections causally
excited by any such Belief" (C 2.45). Affection is the source of
all motivational force. Belief on its own mounts no motivational
push-back. These ideas are a clear influence on Hutcheson and Hume,
who also hold that all motivation is sentimental and that therefore
morality is based on sentiment.



One of the most intensely debated issues in Shaftesbury scholarship
concerns the moral sense. The two main views can be called the
constitutive interpretation and the representative interpretation.



The constitutive interpretation holds that morality is constituted by
the subjective affective responses of each human. Sidgwick is often
cited as a proponent of this interpretation. Sidgwick claims that
"Shaftesbury is the first moralist who distinctly takes
psychological experience as the basis of ethics" (Sidgwick 1902:
187) and that Shaftesbury thinks morality is based on a "sense
[that] may naturally vary from man to man as the palate does"
(Sidgwick 1902: 212-13). Sidgwick thought that this subjectivist
aspect of Shaftesbury's view did damage to morality because it
undermined the reasons that might be given for being moral. Price
thought something similar, contending that Shaftesbury's focus
on "affection" led to his "overlooking entirely
... the *authority* belonging to virtue" (Price
1769: 317). Tuveson is in the same camp, contending that
Shaftesbury's view differed from prior versions of a moral sense
(such as Henry More's) by eliminating the role of reason
altogether.



> 
> 
> It is the feeling, not reason, which is the right moral judge; it is
> the emotions, according to the *Inquiry,* which are the right
> moral guide. (Tuveson 1948: 258)
> 
> 
> 



In saying this, Tuveson claims that Shaftesburean moral judgments are
based on an immediate reaction--an inclining to or recoiling
from--and not on a discursively-arrived upon "opinion or
formal judgment" (Tuveson 1960: 53; see Filonowiz 1989: 192).
Tuveson also claims that Shaftesburean moral judgments do not
represent anything in mind-independent reality. According to Tuveson,
Shaftesbury thought that "that the value area of the mind must
constitute a world to itself, outside the process of cognition"
(Tuveson 1960: 54). Those in the constitutive camp may emphasize
Shaftesbury's influence on Hutcheson and Hume, whose
sentimentalism is sometimes taken to eschew commitment to
mind-independent moral properties.



The representative interpretation holds, in contrast, that the
affective responses of Shaftesbury's moral sense represent moral
facts or properties that exist independently of our reactions to them.
Irwin advances this view when he claims that Shaftesbury "treats
the moral sense as a sign of objective moral properties, not as their
metaphysical basis" (Irwin 2008: 369), and that the moral sense
has "an indicative (or detective) role."; According to
Irwin, Shaftesbury believes that moral properties have a
"logical independence from" our beliefs and judgments
about them (Irwin 2015: 866-7). Schneewind also believes that
Shaftesbury's moral sense detects objective moral properties,
contending that the moral faculty



> 
> 
> is special because through it we become aware of an objective
> order... The approval and disapproval themselves are feelings,
> but they reveal that the set of passions being considered either is or
> is not harmonious. (Schneewind 1998: 302)
> 
> 
> 



Rivers develops a similar view, arguing that our moral faculty enables
us to "recognize and respond" to the objective property of
harmony (Rivers 2000a: 143; see also 126). Those in the representative
camp may emphasize the influence on Shaftesbury of the Cambridge
Platonists, whose rationalist moral theories included a clear
commitment to the existence of moral properties independent of our
reactions (Cassirer 1953: 159-202; Gill 2006: 77-82).



The representative and constitutive camps can both cite passages that
pose interpretative challenges to the other side.



In favor of the representative interpretation and challenging for the
constitutive are claims Shaftesbury makes that seem to imply that
moral properties are independent of human reactions. He maintains, for
instance, that what is destructive of the human species can never
be



> 
> 
> *Virtue* of any kind, or in any sense; but must remain still
> horrid Depravity, notwithstanding any Fashion, Law, Custom, or
> Religion; which may be ill and vitious *it-self*, but can never
> alter the *eternal Measures*, and immutable independent Nature
> of *Worth* and Virtue. (C
> 2.35-36)
> 
> 
> 



He also calls himself a "realist," and seems to do so in a
way that precludes a constitutive reading (see Irwin 2015 and Carey
2006: 98-99 and 130-4). As one of his characters puts it
when speaking of the author of the *Inquiry*:



> 
> 
> For being, in respect of Virtue, what you
> lately call'd *a Realist*; he endeavours to shew,
> "That it is really something *in it-self*, and in the
> nature of Things: not arbitrary or *factitious*, (if I may so
> speak) not constituted from without, or dependent on *Custom*,
> *Fancy*, or *Will*; not even on the *Supreme
> Will* it-self, which can no-way govern it: but being necessarily
> good, is govern'd by it, and ever uniform with it." (C
> 2.267)
> 
> 
> 



Shaftesbury says as well that "the principal End" of
*Characteristicks* is



> 
> 
> "To assert the Reality of a Beauty and
> Charm in *moral* as well as
> *natural* Subjects; and to demonstrate the Reasonableness of a
> *proportionate* Taste, and
> *determinate* Choice, in *Life*
> and *Manners*." The Standard of
> this kind, and the noted Character of *Moral* Truth
> [are] firmly establish'd in Nature
> it-self. (C 3.303; see 1.336)
> 
> 
> 



Those in the representative camp can also claim support from
Shaftesbury's comparison of virtue to beauty. Shaftesbury
contends that beauty is a mind-independent, objective property (more
on this below). But since aesthetic responses are representative of
mind-independent reality, and our moral responses are similar or
perhaps identical to our aesthetic responses, it follows that our
moral responses are representative as well (Schneewind 1998:
303-4; Carey 2006: 107, 125, and 132-4).



In favor of the constitutive interpretation and challenging for the
representative are statements Shaftesbury makes that seem to imply
that the basis for virtue is dependent only on human reactions and
thus insensitive to any mind-independent fact (Taylor 1989:
256-7; Den Uyl 1998: 90; Gill 2000: 538-47). He says, for
instance, that our reason to be virtuous is impervious even to the
supposition that we know nothing of the external world.



> 
> 
> For let us carry *Scepticism* ever so far, let us doubt, if we
> can, of every thing about us; we cannot doubt of what passes
> *within our-selves*. Our Passions and Affections are known to
> us. *They* are certain, whatever the *Objects* may be,
> on which they are employ'd. Nor is it of any concern to our
> Argument, how these exterior Objects stand; whether they are Realitys,
> or mere Illusions; whether we wake or dream. For *ill Dreams*
> will be equally disturbing. And a good *Dream*, if Life be
> nothing else, will be easily and happily pass'd. In this Dream
> of Life, therefore, our Demonstrations have the same force; our
> *Balance* and *Economy* hold good, and our Obligation to
> Virtue is in every respect the same. (C
> 2.173)
> 
> 
> 



In a similar vein he writes,



> 
> 
> If there be no *real* Amiableness or Deformity in moral Acts,
> there is at least *an imaginary one* of full force. (C
> 2.43)
> 
> 
> 



Commentators on either side of the representative-constitutive divide
may try to show that passages that seem troublesome for their
interpretation do not mean what the other side claims. Towards that
end, commentators may try to soft-pedal one set of Shaftesbury's
statements, perhaps emphasizing the different purposes and different
personae in Shaftesbury's writings, or explicating the fuller
context of various quotations in a way that reveals that Shaftesbury
is not himself endorsing certain claims but rather arguing that even
on assumptions he does not accept his main points about virtue will
still stand. Jaffro has argued that Shaftesbury consciously changed
his mind, or at least decided that he should change how to express his
views, moving from an early account that had subjectivist implications
to a later account that was more objectivist (Jaffro 2007). Another
possible response to this interpretative issue is to hold that
Shaftesbury is simply inconsistent, or that he is unaware of the
implications of some of his own claims. As Raphael puts it, "The
fact is that no coherent view can be extracted from Shaftesbury about
the moral faculty or about moral theory in general" (Raphael
1947: 17). Kivy writes,



> 
> 
> It has been the opinion of many, from Shaftesbury's time to our
> own, that no coherent view emerges; and I am inclined, in the last
> analysis, to agree. (Kivy 2003: 16)
> 
> 
> 



Darwall (1995) has developed an interpretation of Shaftesbury's
moral sense that does not fit in either the constitutive or the
representative camp. According to Darwall, Shaftesbury believes that
the normative authority of morality leads to the view that the basis
of morality is within each agent, which conflicts with interpretations
that hold that the moral sense represents something external. But
Darwall also holds that Shaftesbury believes that there is a
rationally necessary view of morality that each agent should come to,
which conflicts with interpretations that hold that the moral sense
produces subjective and contingent emotional experiences. On
Darwall's interpretation, Shaftesbury is concerned with autonomy
and rationality in a way that warrants classifying him as a clear
precursor to Kant. Den Uyl has raised concerns about Darwall's
interpretation by contending that the moral sense is the source of
favorable attitudes rather than the law-like rules of a proto-Kantian
rationalist (Den Uyl 1998: 304). Another objection to Darwall's
interpretation can be found in Irwin, who claims that
Shaftesbury's moral sense view is externalist--i.e., that
one's moral sense produces responses that have no necessary
connection to one's motivation or reason to act morally (Irwin
2015: 877 and 880). Darwall's interpretation, in contrast,
requires a strongly internalist reading of Shaftesbury.


### 2.3 Motivation, egoism, and hedonism



Throughout his works, Shaftesbury attacks a view of human motivation
that he associates with Hobbesian and voluntarism. Some commentators
have thought that the view of human motivation Shaftesbury advances in
these anti-Hobbesian and anti-voluntarist passages is ardently
non-egoistic--i.e., that Shaftesbury believes that human agents
can be motivated by considerations other than self-interest (Den Uyl
1998; Schneewind 1998; Irwin 2008; Carey 2006). Other commentators
have argued that Shaftesbury himself holds an egoist view of human
motivation--that he thinks every human's actions are
motivated by self-interested desires--and that his attacks on
Hobbes and the voluntarists are directed only at what he takes to be
an incorrect view of self-interest (Sidgwick 1902; Peach 1958;
Trianosky 1998; Grote 2010; Crisp 2019, 78). Still other commentators
have claimed that Shaftesbury is inconsistent, opposing egoist views
of human motivation in some passages and assuming them in other
passages (Martineau 1886: 508; Wiley 1940: 74).



Those who interpret Shaftesbury as an anti-egoist point to passages in
which he argues that theories that rely exclusively on selfish
motivation cannot explain plainly observable human behavior. In
*Wit and Humour*, Shaftesbury attacks those who



> 
> 
> wou'd new-frame the human Heart; and ... reduce all its
> Motions, Balances and Weights, to that one Principle and Foundation of
> a cool and deliberate *Selfishness*. (C 1.116)
> 
> 
> 



In fact, Shaftesbury argues, careful observation reveals that humans
are motivated by many non-selfish considerations.



> 
> 
> [W]hoever looks narrowly into the Affairs of it, will find, that
> *Passion*, *Humour*, *Caprice*, *Zeal*,
> *Faction*, and a thousand other Springs, which are counter to
> *Self-Interest*, have as considerable a part in the Movements
> of this Machine. There are more Wheels and *Counter-Poises* in
> this Engine than are easily imagin'd. 'Tis of too complex
> a kind, to fall under one simple View, or be explain'd thus
> briefly in a word or two. The Studiers of this *Mechanism* must
> have a very partial Eye, to overlook all other Motions besides
> [selfishness]. (C 1.115)
> 
> 
> 



People exhibit non-selfish "Civility, Hospitality, Humanity
towards Strangers or People in distress" (C 1.118). Their
concern for



> 
> 
> *Relations*, *Friends*, *Countrymen*,
> *Laws*, *Politick Constitutions*, *the Beauty of
> Order and Government*, and *the Interest of Society and
> Mankind* ... *naturally* raise a stronger Affection
> than any which was grounded upon the narrow bottom of mere Self.
> (C 1.117)
> 
> 
> 



Indeed, even those tendencies that are most destructive are usually
based in sociable, non-selfish concerns. War and social disruption are
usually caused not by selfishness but by a powerful concern for party
or clan. It is love and fellowship for those in one's group that
lead to widespread conflict, not self-love.



> 
> 
> In short, the very Spirit of *Faction*, for the greatest part,
> seems to be no other than the Abuse or Irregularity of that *social
> Love*, and *common Affection*, which is natural to Mankind.
> For the Opposite of *Sociableness* is *Selfishness*. And
> of all Characters, the thorow-selfish one is the least forward in
> *taking Party*. (C 1.114-15)
> 
> 
> 



Some have tried to show that all of these seemingly sociable
tendencies result only from "*a more deliberate*, or
*better-regulated Self-love*" (C 1.118). But (according
to Shaftesbury) such views either fail to explain what people actually
do or collapse into tautology (C 2.226-7).



Against Hobbes himself, Shaftesbury presents a pleasantly ironic
*ad hominem* argument. If Hobbes had truly been entirely
concerned with his own self-interest, he would never have publicly
advanced the view that people are motivated entirely by self-interest.
He would, rather, have spoken "the best of human Nature"
so that he could "the easier abuse it" (C 1.94). But
Hobbes did not behave in this way. He tried to convince people of the
selfishness of human beings precisely because he wanted to help humans
beings, even though this conduct placed him at great peril. His very
advancement of the selfish thesis refutes it. That



> 
> 
> good sociable Man, as savage and unsociable as he wou'd make
> himself and all Mankind appear by his Philosophy, expos'd
> himself during his Life, and took the utmost pains, that after his
> Death we might be deliver'd from the occasion of these Terrors.
> He did his utmost to shew us ... that there was nothing which by
> Nature ... drew us to the Love of what was without, or beyond
> *our-selves*: Tho the Love of such great Truths and sovereign
> Maxims as he imagin'd these to be, made him the most laborious
> of all Men in composing Systems of this kind for our Use; and
> forc'd him, notwithstanding his natural Fear, to run continually
> the highest risk of being a Martyr for our Deliverance. (C
> 1.89-90)
> 
> 
> 



According to Shaftesbury, both Hobbes and the voluntarists believed
that the only motive humans have to be moral is that a powerful being
will reward them for virtue and punish them for vice. The
Hobbesian's rewards and punishments are meted out by the
sovereign, the voluntarist's by God. Were it not for this
powerful being's rewards and punishments, according to
Shaftesbury's understanding of Hobbesianism and the voluntarism,
humans would have no motivating reasons to be moral. In an oft-cited
letter, Shaftesbury places Locke in the same category as Hobbes and
the voluntarists, condemning the lot of them for reducing all moral
motivation to these selfish concerns. (For discussion of this letter
and Shaftesbury's philosophical relationship to Locke, see Carey
2006: 98 and 138; Stuart-Buttle 2019: 90-105). Central to much of
Shaftesbury's account of morality, in contrast, is the claim
that people are virtuous only to the extent that they are motivated by
something other than selfish concern to gain reward and avoid
punishment (C 2.23, 2.25, 2.60, 2.66). According to Shaftesbury,
virtue consists not in the actions people perform, but in their
motives for performing them. And the motive with which we identify
virtue is concern for humanity, not selfishness. Shaftesbury
emphasizes this point by drawing attention to the difference between
knaves and saints. In order to be motivated to do the right thing,
knaves "stand in need of such a rectifying Object as *the
Gallows* before their eyes," but someone truly honest will
not have such a need.



> 
> 
> And if a Saint had no other Virtue than what
> was rais'd in him by the same Objects of Reward and Punishment,
> in a more distant State; I know not whose Love or Esteem he might gain
> besides, but for my own part, I shou'd never think him worthy of
> mine. (C 1.127)
> 
> 
> 



We judge saints to be virtuous because we think they are motivated by
something other than the selfishness of the knave. If we came to
believe that the saints were motivated by self-interest as well (e.g.,
by desire for reward in the afterlife), we would no longer judge them
to be virtuous. As Shaftesbury puts it,



> 
> 
> If the Love of doing good, be not, of it-self, a *good* and
> *right* Inclination; I know not how there can possibly be such
> a thing as *Goodness* or *Virtue*. (C 1.98)
> 
> 
> 



Shaftesbury maintains, further, that stressing reward and punishment
is actually counterproductive to the promotion of virtue. This is
because a stress on reward and punishment tends to crowd out or
obliterate the intrinsic concern for the good of the species that is
essential to true virtue. He writes,



> 
> 
> I Have known a Building, which by the Officiousness of the Workmen has
> been so *shor'd*, and *screw'd up*, on the
> side where they pretended it had a Leaning, that it has at last been
> turn'd the contrary way, and overthrown. There has something,
> perhaps, of this kind happen'd in *Morals*. Men have not
> been contented to shew the natural Advantages of Honesty and Virtue.
> They have rather lessen'd these, the better, as they thought, to
> advance another Foundation. They have made *Virtue* so
> mercenary a thing, and have talk'd so much of its
> *Rewards*, that one can hardly tell what there is in it, after
> all, which can be worth rewarding. (C 1.97; see also 2.33-34 and
> 39-40)
> 
> 
> 



People who dwell on reward and punishment are more likely to become
overly concerned with their own "Self-good, and private
Interest," which must "insensibly diminish the Affections
towards publick Good, or the Interest of Society and introduce a
certain Narrowness of spirit" (C 2.58). Stressing reward and
punishment cannot make people more virtuous, and it may very well make
them less so (C 1.97-98, 2.52-56). It is for this reason
that Shaftesbury has one of his characters in *The Moralists*
say that the author of the *Inquiry*



> 
> 
> endeavors chiefly to establish *Virtue* on Principles, by which
> he is able to argue with those who are not as yet induc'd to own
> a God, or *Future State*. If he cannot
> do thus much, he reckons he does nothing. (C 2.266-7)
> 
> 
> 



Shaftesbury here seems to anticipate the "overjustification
hypothesis" of Lepper, Greene, and Nisbitt (1973).



In his discussions of Hobbes and the voluntarists, then, Shaftesbury
seems to be attacking the view that humans are motivated only by
self-interest and, relatedly, that self-interest is the only reason
for us to be moral. This anti-egoist reading can also point to
Shaftesbury's aesthetic views, which center on the idea that our
love of beauty is entirely non-selfish (see Stolnitz 1961a and b).
Shaftesbury makes this seemingly anti-egoistic aesthetic point when he
distinguishes the entirely non-selfish appreciation of a thing's
beauty from the self-interested desire to own or command that thing
(2.396-7).



Other commentators, however, interpret Shaftesbury as an egoist, and
even a hedonist egoist, as someone who holds that every human action
is motivated by the agent's desires for his or her own pleasure
(Sidgwick 1902: 185; Peach 1958; Trianosky 1978; Grote 2010; for
discussion of Shaftesbury and hedonist view, see Crisp 2019,
84-5 and 91). A crucial text for the egoist reading is the
beginning of Book 2 of the *Inquiry*, where Shaftesbury
writes



> 
> 
> We have consider'd *what* Virtue
> *is*, and to whom the Character belongs. It remains to inquiry,
> *What Obligation* there is *to* Virtue;
> or *what Reason* to embrace it. (C
> 2.45)
> 
> 
> 



Shaftesbury goes on to argue that being moral is in every
person's own best interests--that one will be happier if
one is virtuous rather than vicious. As he sums up his argument in the
conclusion of the *Inquiry*,



> 
> 
> Thus have we endeavour'd to prove what was propos'd in the
> beginning... To be wicked or vitious, is to be
> miserable and unhappy... On the other side; *the
> Happiness* and *Good* of Virtue has
> been prov'd. (C 2.98-99)
> 
> 
> 



And again:



> 
> 
> "*That to yield or consent to any thing ill or immoral, is a
> Breach of Interest, and leads to the greatest Ills*": and,
> "That on the other side, *Every thing which is an Improvement
> of Virtue, or an Establishment of right Affection and Integrity, is an
> Advancement of Interest, and leads to the greatest and most solid
> Happiness and Enjoyment*." (C 2.100).
> 
> 
> 



This performance in the *Inquiry* is the basis for
interpretations that claim that Shaftesbury believes that the only
salient answer that could be given to the question, Why be moral?, is
that being moral is in one's own self-interest--and, more
generally, that Shaftesbury thinks that self-interest is the only
ultimate reason for action.



How do egoistic interpretations handle the many texts in which
Shaftesbury attacks selfish theories of morality and human nature?
Some have come to the exasperated conclusion that Shaftesbury is
simply inconsistent, sometimes assuming egoism sometimes opposing it
(Martineau 1886: 508; Wiley 1940: 74). Others have argued that
Shaftesbury's criticisms of selfish theories do not conflict
with an overall egoistic interpretation. Grote (2010) maintains that
when Shaftesbury attacks Hobbes, the voluntarists, and other
"selfish" theorists, he is not attacking the view that
self-interest is the only reason to be virtuous but rather is
attacking the view that *externally-bestowed* rewards and
punishments are the only reasons to be virtuous. According to Grote,
what Shaftesbury means to show is that virtue has decisive
"natural advantages"--that being virtuous will make
one happier regardless of what anyone else may do to you.
Shaftesbury's opponents, on this reading, are those who claim
that the relevant self-interested considerations are the rewards and
punishment meted out by God or sovereign. The crucial contrast is
between, on the one hand, the arbitrariness of the rewards and
punishments of the voluntarist God and the Hobbesian sovereign and, on
the other hand, the naturalness of the internal mental enjoyments that
come from being virtuous--not the contrast between
self-interested and non-self-interested motives.



Such is how egoistic interpretations attempt to explain away what many
have taken to be Shaftesbury's attacks on egoist explanations of
human behavior. How do anti-egoist interpretations attempt to explain
away the efforts Shaftesbury makes in Book 2 of the *Inquiry*
to show that virtue's conduciveness to one's own happiness
is reason to embrace it? Schneewind denies Shaftesbury ever tries
"to bribe the reader into becoming virtuous, by showing that it
pays" (Schneewind 1998: 308). According to Schneewind, in Book 2
of the *Inquiry* Shaftesbury is



> 
> 
> trying to show that the natural world--the realm in which the
> natural good of happiness exists--is such that it makes sense for
> us to act morally within it. (Schneewind 1998: 308)
> 
> 
> 



Irwin argues that virtuous Shaftesburean agents have an immediate
aversion to vice that is based on a kind of aesthetic disgust-reaction
rather than a reflective calculation about what will benefit them in
the long run (Irwin 2008: 357).



Irwin also thinks we can find in Shaftesbury elements of a eudaimonist
theory, according to which "it is reasonable to examine the
contribution of virtue to happiness" because "the pursuit
of happiness [is] the pursuit of rational structure and
harmony"--which does not collapse into the Hobbesian egoist
view that we should be virtuous because it maximizes our pleasure
(Irwin 2008: 357). Den Uyl also locates in Shaftesbury something akin
to "a classical virtue ethics" (Den Uyl 1998: 292). Crisp
thinks "Shaftesbury's account is Aristotelian," in
that one's happiness is one's chief good but the virtuous
person "recognizes that their good itself consists in virtuous
activity, which will itself involve direct concern for the good of
others for their own sake" (Crisp 2019: 79). Filonowicz argues
that virtue and happiness are so closely identified in Shaftesbury
that it distorts his view to claim that we seek one as a mere means
for the other. Shaftesbury is not trying to show



> 
> 
> that we are required to be moral by the sheer personal utility of
> being so... [H]is point, rather, [is] that questions of expected
> overall benefit or less will seem moot to anyone who has actually
> achieved, and so experienced, moral health or harmony of affection.
> Virtue is experienced as being its own reward. (Filonowicz 2008:
> 86)
> 
> 
> 



On the eudaimonist interpretation of Shaftesbury, virtue benefits its
possessor, but the person who possesses virtue does not do the right
thing because she thinks it will make her happy. To possess virtue is
to be committed to certain values, and it's those values that
motivate the virtuous person, not the self-interested benefits that
may result. Indeed, a virtuous person will sacrifice what are
typically considered benefits to self in order to live up to those
values. Caring about other people is not merely a means to some
distinct pleasurable experience. Caring about other people for their
own sakes is itself essential to, is constitutive of, the experience
of living well. Virtue is intrinsically choice-worthy. Annas (2008)
has shown the same combination of claims--that virtue consists of
caring non-instrumentally about certain kinds of conduct that are
objectively proper for human beings, and that the reason to be
virtuous is that it will lead to the best life--is present in
many eudaimonist views.



In his *Essay on the Passions*, Hutcheson addresses the same
question that non-egoist interpretations of Shaftesbury must face in
light of Shaftesbury's arguments for the coincidence of virtue
and interest--i.e., if virtue is non-self-interested, why show
that virtue is in everyone's self-interest? Hutcheson
writes,



> 
> 
> It may perhaps seem strange, that when in this *Treatise*
> Virtue is supposed *disinterested*; yet so much Pains is taken,
> by a *Comparison* of our several *Pleasures*, to prove
> the *Pleasures of Virtue* to be the greatest we are capable of,
> and that consequently it is truest *Interest* to be
> *virtuous*. (Hutcheson 1742: viii)
> 
> 
> 



Hutcheson goes on to maintain that while virtue does consist of truly
non-selfish concern for humanity, it is still useful to show that
virtue does not conflict with happiness, as that will prevent people
from believing in a conflict between the two ends that would
constitute a great obstacle to virtue. It seems possible that
Shaftesbury was anticipating this Hutchesonian thought (a thought that
Hutcheson attributes to Shaftesbury) when arguing in Book 2 of the
*Inquiry* for the coincidence of virtue and happiness.



Regardless of whether or not Shaftesbury is accurately characterized
as egoistic, he clearly does contend that virtue conduces to
one's happiness and vice to one's misery--that
"*Virtue* and *Interest* may be found at last to
agree" (C 2.16). And he develops a psychological explanation for
this agreement. Central to this explanation is his distinction between
pleasures of the body and pleasures of the mind. Shaftesbury argues
that a person's happiness depends more on mental pleasures than
on bodily pleasures. He then seeks to show that living virtuously is
by far the best way to gain the crucially important mental pleasures
(C 2.47-73). Shaftesbury bases much of his argument for the
connection between virtue and happiness on the idea that the mental
pleasures are within one's own control, insulated from the
vicissitudes of "Fortune, Age, Circumstances, and Humour"
(C 2.434). As one of Shaftesbury's characters rhetorically
asks,



> 
> 
> How can we better praise the goodness of *Providence*, than in
> this, 'That it has plac'd our Happiness and Good in things
> *We* can bestow upon *ourselves'*? (C 2.435; see
> 2.228-34)
> 
> 
> 



In arguing for the importance of the mental pleasures, Shaftesbury
also develops a view of the difference between higher and lower
pleasures--and of the superiority of the former--that
clearly anticipates Mill's use of that distinction in chapter 2
of *Utilitarianism* (C 2.228-34; see Crisp 2019,
88-91).



One of the most famous claims in *Characteristicks* is that
beauty and good are one and the same (C 2.399, 415, 422). Many
commentators have criticized this claim for being obscure, confused,
or incoherent (Brown 1751, 162; Martineau 1886, 498; Albee 1916, 183;
Tiffany 1923, 667; Bernstein 1977, 325; Filonowicz 2008, 101-2;
Crisp 2019, 83-84). But in the context of *The
Moralists*, the claim turns out to be a straightforward statement
of Shaftesbury's view that a person will be happiest if she
makes moral beauty (i.e., virtue) her highest priority. The claim that
beauty and good are one and the same, in other words, is
Shaftesbury's way of expressing in the *The Moralists* the
*Inquiry*'s conclusion that "Virtue is *the*
*Good*, and Vice *the Il*l of every-one" (C
2.177). (See Gill 2021. See also Axelsson 2019, 208.)



Much of the interpretative discussion of Shaftesbury's response
to the question, Why be moral?, has focused on Book 2 of the
*Inquiry*. But Shaftesbury discusses the issue in *Wit and
Humour* and *Soliloquy* as well, asking in the later:
"*Why shou'd a Man be honest in the dark?*"
(C 1.125). Shaftesbury suggests that a person who asks this question
is already lost to virtue--that someone who cares about virtue
for its own sake won't need another reason to act virtuously,
and that someone who needs another reason doesn't have what it
takes to be truly virtuous in the first place. Shaftesbury also
suggests that we should be honest even in the dark (i.e., virtuous
even when we will not be punished for vice) because such conduct is a
necessary condition for having an identity or unified self at all (C
1.283-4). The importance of developing a (unified) self is a
striking, recurring theme in Shaftesbury's writings, and he
suggests that helping one to develop such a self is the *raison
d'etre* of philosophy (see Mijuskovic 1971, Winkler 2000,
Purviance 2004, and Jaffro 2014; more on this below).



An additional response Shaftesbury offers to "why be
moral?" is to equate a commitment to morality to the love of
beauty (Brown 1995; Gill 2014). He writes,



> 
> 
> [A] real *Genius*, and thorow *Artist*, in whatever
> kind, can never, without the greatest unwillingness and shame, be
> induc'd to act below his Character, and for mere Interest be
> prevail'd with to prostitute his Art or Science, by performing
> contrary to its known Rules... Be they ever so idle, dissolute,
> or debauch'd; how regardless soever of other Rules; they abhor
> any Transgression in *their* Art, and wou'd chuse to lose
> Customers and starve, rather than by a base Compliance with the World,
> to act contrary to what they call the
> *Justness* and *Truth of Work*.
> 
> 
> 
> "Sir", (says a poor Fellow of this kind, to his rich
> Customer) "you are mistaken in coming to me, for such a piece of
> Workmanship. Let who will make it for you, as you fansy; I know it to
> be *wrong*. Whatever I have made hither to, has been *true
> Work*. And neither for your sake or any body's else, shall I
> put my hand to any other".
> 
> 
> 
> This is Virtue! *real Virtue*, and Love of *Truth*;
> independent of *Opinion*, and above the World.
> This Disposition transfer'd to the
> whole of *Life*, perfects a Character, and makes that
> *Probity* and *Worth* which the Learned are often at
> such a loss to explain. For is there not a *Workmanship* and
> *a Truth* in Actions? (C
> 1.261-2)
> 
> 
> 



Here Shaftesbury points out that we readily accept the possibility of
artists remaining committed to their art, regardless of the external
rewards that may result from betraying it. We don't think such
artists need an answer to the question, "Why produce excellent
works rather than poor ones?" because we understand their
valuing the art as an end in itself. But one's
life--one's character and conduct--can be, or can fail
to be, morally beautiful. And the commitment people who appreciate
moral beauty have to instantiate it can have the same force on their
conduct as an artist's commitment to produce excellent works.
Some might think that connecting morality and beauty in this way
minimizes or undermines the importance of morality. But given
Shaftesbury's realist view of beauty--and his equating of
beauty and truth--no such thing follows on his account. Just as a
true artist never considers producing bad art, a truly honest person
"never deliberates" about whether to be honest. "He
acts from his Nature, in a manner necessarily, and without Reflection.
. . . He can't deliberate in the Case of a plain Villainy"
(C 1.81). Shaftesbury is here describing a commitment to virtue that
seems to be closer to traditional deontological views, in that it has
a non-negotiable, overriding practical authority. Like a traditional
deontologist, Shaftesbury thinks the virtuous person will do the right
thing regardless of any other consequences that may result. Moral
reasons have a practical authority that is intrinsic to them, not the
result of their being commanded or of their being instrumental to any
other end. But Shaftesbury differs from many traditional deontologists
in the role he gives to sentiment. Traditional deontologists believe
that rationality alone grounds morality's authority.
Shaftesbury's non-negotiable commitment to morality, in
contrast, is based in the sentiment. Shaftesbury's picture of an
impassioned and dedicated artist models a commitment to doing
what's right that is based in sentiment but is nonetheless
categorical.



As I mentioned above, some commentators take Shaftesbury to be not
only egoistic but also hedonistic, attributing to him the view that
the ultimate practical justification is always pleasure for the agent
(Grote 2010; Martineau 1886, 508; Peach 1958; Trianosky 1978; see also
Crisp 2019, 84-5). Book 2 of the *Inquiry* seems to provide
evidence for this reading, as Shaftesbury argues there that the reason
to be virtuous is that it will make us happiest, and the reasons he
gives for its making us happiest often involve the virtuous
life's producing greater quantity and quality of pleasure (see C
2.99-105, 126-130, 147-154, 168-177).



There are, however, numerous other places in *Chararacteristicks*
where Shaftesbury explicitly rejects that pleasure is the true or
ultimate measure of choice-worthiness. He ridicules those who
"rate *Life* by the Number of Exquisiteness of *the
pleasing Sensations*" (C 1.123). He holds that the truly
virtuous person has a non-negotiable commitment to virtue that defies
hedonistic weighing (C 1.129-30, 1.133, 1.261-2). He
dismisses as absurd the proverb "*That Tastes are different,
and must not be disputed*" (C 2.228). He explicitly contends
"that *Pleasure* is no rule of Good," because we
judge which pleasures are and are not worth pursuing (C. 1.309; see
also 2.249-50). I shouldn't fancy things "as I
please"; rather I should "*learn* to fansy, to
admire, *to please*, as the Subjects themselves are
deserving" (C 1.339). My rule of choice should not be
"*because I please*" (C 1.339). I should ask,
"is this Pleasure *right*?" (C 1.340). The question
is not whether something pleases, but "whether we are
*rightly* pleas'd" (C 2.227). Only some pleasures are
really good, not all of them (C 2.229-30). We should define the
choice-worthiness of pleasures by whether they are good; we
shouldn't define goodness by pleasure. The only sense in which
it's true that pleasure is what we always seek is the empty
tautological sense according to which pleasure is just defined as that
which "we think eligible" (C 2.227; see also
2.233-34).



How does Shaftesbury's rejection of pleasure as the measure of
choice-worthiness square with his seeming reliance in Book 2 of the
*Inquiry* on virtue's superiority at producing pleasure?
Perhaps the eudaimonist reading explained above accounts for the
combination of his claims that the virtuous person acts for
non-self-interested reasons and that the virtuous person has a more
pleasurable life than the vicious. Alternatively, the hedonistic
interpretation might read the criticisms of pleasure as actually
criticisms only of physical pleasures, not of mental pleasures.
Another possibility is that Shaftesbury changed his mind. In the
*Inquiry*, which he wrote early in his career, he emphasized
pleasure. In *The Moralists*, *Common Sense*, and
*Soliloquy*, which he wrote later, he de-emphasized pleasure,
indicating a move away from an early hedonistic view.


## 3. Self, identity, and liberty



Shaftesbury discusses self and identity throughout
*Characteristicks*. There are different views of how those
discussions relate to traditional philosophical questions about
personal identity.



In *The Moralists*, Shaftesbury contends that there is no
physical or mental element that persists through a person's
entire life, yet it seems that one can remain the same self even amid
all those changes. A person is a single thing, retaining an identity
throughout the years. But that identity cannot consist of physical
matter, as every particle of a person changes over time. The
'*Stuff* ... of which we are compos'd', says
Theocles, 'wears out in seven, or, at the longest, in twice
seven Years, [as] the meanest Anatomist can tell us. Now where, I
beseech you, will that same *One* be found at last, supposing it
to lie in the *Stuff* it-self, or any part of it? For when that
is wholly spent, and not one Particle of it left, we are *Our-selves*still as much as before' (C 2.350). Nor can a person's
identity be based on any idea or emotion, as all of a person's
ideas and emotions change as well. There's no single mental item
that has the constant existence that would be needed to fund a
person's identity. So since a person remains "*one and
the* same, when neither *one* Atom of Body, *one*Passion, nor *one* Thought remains the same," his
identity must be based on "a Sympathy of Parts" (C 2.351).
His identity must consist of an overall organization, of a
"simple Principle: of which all the person's different
aspects partake (C 2.352).



Hume was dismissive of Shaftesbury's claims in *The Moralists*about the identity, writing "If the reader is desirous to
see how a great genius may be influenc'd by these seemingly
trivial principles of the imagination ... let him read my Lord
*Shaftesbury's* reasonings concerning the uniting principle
of the universe, and the identity of plants and animals [in] his
*Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody:* (Hume 1739-40:
1.4.6.6). It seems, however, that Hume did learn something about
personal identity from *The Moralists*. For Hume's own
view, like Shaftesbury's, relies on the idea that there is no
single "constant and invariable" mental item that can fund
personal identity: compare Hume's *Treatise* 1.4.6.2 and C
2.350-51. Of course Hume and Shaftesbury draw opposite
conclusions, with Shaftesbury moving from the premise that there is no
constant and invariable physical or mental item to the conclusion that
personal identity must consist of something other than a physical or
mental item, and Hume moving to the conclusion that there is no
personal identity.



Thiel attributes to Shaftesbury the metaphysical position that the
self, that which constitutes the identity of a person, is a simple
immaterial substance (Thiel 2011: 241-2). Jaffro distinguishes
"between a normative sense of 'being oneself' or
'remaining the same person', and the metaphysical sense,
that is, personal identity," and argues that Shaftesbury is more
concerned with the former (Jaffro 2014: 158). Winkler (2000) and
Purviance (2004) pursue a similar line, arguing that Shaftesbury does
not intend to provide an answer to the metaphysical question of
personal identity. Shaftesbury's interest in selves and
identity, on this view, is practical rather than metaphysical. His
concern is to explain a sense of self and identify that is a moral
achievement--namely, the achievement of internal harmony of all
one's psychological principles, both at one moment and through
time. On these readings, the important point is that achieving this
synchronic and diachronic internal harmony ought to be a
person's fundamental goal, and Shaftesbury intends to give his
readers guidance on how to achieve it.



Jaffro (2014) and Boeker (2018) elaborate on the practical aspect of
Shaftesbury's view. Jaffro and Boeker both emphasize the
importance of self-control, where that involves the higher, reasonable
aspect of one's self determining one's actions rather than
the lower, appetites and passions (see also Crisp 2019: 88). Jaffro
contends that Shaftesbury has a three-stage position on the
self-control a persistent practical self requires. The first stage is
a naive belief that one can simply decide to act from her higher
principles and succeed at it. The second stage is an avoidance
strategy, which involves changing circumstances so that the lower
appetites and passions cannot find room to play as large a role in
one's actions. The third stage is Stoic self-transformation,
which involves changing one's soul so that appetites and
passions no longer pull in a different direction from the higher
parts. Jaffro suggests that Shaftesbury believes that the third stage
of self-transformation is accessible only to the supremely
intellectual few, and that most people can only aspire to the second
stage of avoidance (see also Stuart-Buttle 2019: 102). Boeker argues,
in contrast, that Shaftesbury believes that all humans can engage in a
journey toward the third stage, and that *Characteristicks* is
intended to exhort them along on that journey.



Closely related to Shaftesbury's positions on identity and self
are his views of personal liberty. There is dispute about whether
Shaftesbury advances a position on the philosophical question of free
will and determinism. His view of the laws of nature seem to suggest
that he believes in a determinist universe, but Grean (1967) suggests
that when he discusses evil he might be allowing a Pelagian exception
for free will. According to Grean, Shaftesbury "argues that
providence has granted us the power to know and obtain what is good,
and to know and avoid what it is evil. It is up to us to make use of
these powers, to be *men* in the true sense--autonomous
agents of Deity itself" (Grean 1967: 90; see also Axelsson 2019:
189). Woldt believes, in contrast, that Shaftesbury holds a
compatibilist conception of free will (2014: 143-5). Boeker
(2018) argues that Shaftesbury's texts do not include enough
substances on the issue to attribute to him one position or another.
(See also Crisp 2019: 78.)



Boeker (2019) maintains that what Shaftesbury is interested in is
positive freedom, or self-mastery. On this view, a person is free when
she acts from her highest and most reasonable principles, rather than
her lower appetites and passions. Many parts of
*Characteristicks* do seem to involve this idea of a
person's comprising two competing parts. These includes the
story of Hercules choosing virtue over pleasure (C 3.347-392),
the story of two brothers battling for a football (C 1.187), the
self-dialogue of *Soliloquy* (C, 1.156-59), and the story of a
nobleman who faces loss of control to sexual desire (C
1.176-88). All these stories make the point that to be free is
for one's higher part to win out over one's lower part
(see also Crisp 2019, 75-76).


## 4. Aesthetics


### 4.1 Beauty



Beauty is at the center of Shaftesbury's aesthetics. Shaftesbury
discusses the beauty of literature, music, and painting. He takes the
primary instances of physical beauty to be features of the natural
world. Shaftesbury's characters in *The Moralists* dismiss
the beauty of gardens, arguing for the superiority of naturalness or
wildness over the artifice and "formal Mockery of princely
Gardens" (C 2.393-4). But Shaftesbury himself was a great
lover of gardens, and the gardens he himself planned were more formal
than they were wild or natural. For fascinating discussions of
Shaftesbury's views of gardening and their influences, see
Leatherbarrow (1984), Liu (2008), Fleming (2014), and Myers (2010 and
2017).



Shaftesbury's conception of beauty has metaphysical and
epistemological components. Metaphysically, beauty consists of
"*Unity of Design*" (C 3.349). Anything that has
multiple parts that can be in unity with each other can be beautiful.
An artwork can be beautiful, a machine can be beautiful, a natural
object can be beautiful, nature as a whole can be beautiful, a human
character can be beautiful. Shaftesbury uses various words to describe
this property: "harmony," "proportion,"
"regularity," "order," "balance,"
"symmetry." His idea that this is what beauty consists of
seems deeply indebted to Aristotelian and Stoic conceptions of the
fine and the beautiful.



Epistemologically, we discern beauty through experience of a positive
affection. We experience a positive "internal Sensation"
when we hear musical harmonies, when we observe a proportionate
building, when we appreciate the balance of nature, when we witness
fully integrated characters (C 2.285). "Nor can [one's
mind] with-hold its *Admiration* and *Extasy*, its
*Aversion* and *Scorn*, any more in what relates to one than
to the other of these Subjects" (C 2.29). We have a
"taste" for unified wholes. We have a "liking"
for harmony and a "dislike" of its contrary. We have an
emotional sensibility that's tuned to standards of order,
regularity, and balance.



A question for Shaftesbury is whether his metaphysical view of the
property of beauty is conceptually prior to his epistemological view
of our discernment of beauty, or vice versa. We might, in other words,
ask him: in a world in which we were built to like disharmonious
things, would we all be wrong about what is beautiful (metaphysics
prior), or would disharmonious thing be in fact beautiful
(epistemology prior)? Shaftesbury's texts may not provide a
perfectly clear answer to this question, but there is certainly
evidence that he would want to say that the metaphysics is prior. For
he wanted to be a "*Realist* in Morality," where
realism involves "immutable" and "*eternal
Measures*" of morality that are independent of any mind (C
2.267; 2.36). Such mind-independent moral measures are necessary for
Shaftesbury's refutation of what he takes to be the pernicious
subjectivism of Hobbes and the despicable voluntarism of the
Calvinists. And he explicitly equates the metaphysical status of moral
beauty with the beauty of objects. Here's a passage in which he
makes an emphatic statement that seems to affirm the mind-independence
of beauty in general and of moral beauty in particular.



Harmony is Harmony *by Nature*, let Men judg ever so ridiculously
of Musick. So is *Symmetry* and *Proportion* founded still
*in Nature*, let Mens Fancy prove ever so barbarous, or their
Fashions ever so *Gothick* in their Architecture, Sculpture, or
whatever other designing Art. 'Tis the same case, where
*Life* and Manners are concern'd. *Virtue* has the
same fix'd Standard. The same *Numbers*, *Harmony*,
and *Proportion* will have place in Morals; and are discoverable
in the *Characters*and *Affections* of Mankind; in which are
laid the just Foundations of an Art and Science, superior to every
other of human Practice and Comprehension. (C 1.353)



The standards of beauty have an existence that is independent of human
responses, distinct from any "human Practice and
Comprehension." Even if we responded totally differently than we
actually do, the same sounds would be beautifully harmonious, the same
structures would be beautifully symmetrical, and the same characters
would be beautifully integrated.



But there's a problem with this affirmation of the
mind-independence of beauty. Shaftesbury relies on the idea that
harmony will be harmony and symmetry will be symmetry regardless of
how humans respond to advance the idea that virtue will be virtue
regardless of how humans respond. But this line of thought seems to
involve an illicit slide between non-normative and normative
understandings of the key terms. It may be reasonable to grant that
there are non-normative properties of harmony and symmetry that have a
mind-independent existence--that some sounds would be harmonious
and some objects would be symmetrical regardless of whether there were
any human minds, or how human minds responded to them. But to say
those sounds and objects are beautiful is to invoke a normative
component. It's to imply that the harmonious and the symmetrical
are more valuable, are in some sense *better* than the dissonant
and the lopsided. And Shaftesbury has given us no reason to accept
that harmony and symmetry would continue to be normatively superior
even if human minds were constructed to respond negatively to them and
positively to dissonance and lopsidedness. Shaftesbury might have
given us reason to believe there would be a non-normative difference
between unified and disunified objects regardless of how anyone
responds to them. But that's not what he needs to establish the
mind-independence of beauty as something normative. What he needs is
to show that unity would be more valuable, would be *better* than
disunity, even if our sensibility was constructed to respond
positively to the disunified. The comparison with the non-normative
properties of harmony and symmetry doesn't help with that.


### 4.2 Aesthetic experience



Aesthetic responses, for Shaftesbury, involve some kind of affective
reaction, but there is interpretative disagreement about the extent to
which that affective reaction is immediate or reflective. In some
passages, Shaftesbury seems to suggest that our sense of beauty
operates immediately, like our sensations of color.



> 
> 
> No sooner the Eye opens upon *Figures*, the Ear to
> *Sounds*, than straight *the Beautiful* results, and
> *Grace* and *Harmony* are known and acknowledg'd.
> (C 2.414)
> 
> 
> 
> The Shapes, Motions, Colours, and Proportions of [*Bodys*, or
> the common Subjects of *Sense*] being presented to our Eye;
> there necessarily results a Beauty or Deformity, according to the
> different Measure, Arrangement and Disposition of their several Parts.
> (C 2.28-9; see also 2.285)
> 
> 
> 



Stolnitz takes these passages to show that for Shaftesbury
"Aesthetic response is 'immediate,' in the sense
that it takes place without discursive reflection" (Stolnitz
1961b: 198; see also 1961a: 112). In other passages, however,
Shaftesbury emphasizes the need for extensive cultivation and
reflection in order to pass accurate aesthetic judgment (see Glauser
2002: 45).



> 
> 
> Taste or *Judgment* ... can hardly
> come ready form'd with us into the World... Use, Practice
> and Culture must precede the *Understanding* and *Wit*
> of such an advanc'd Size and Growth as this. A legitimate and
> just Taste can neither be begotten, made,
> conceiv'd, or produc'd, without the antecedent
> *Labour* and *Pains* of Criticism.
> (C 3.164)
> 
> 
> 



Shaftesbury goes on to offer an extensive defense of critics,
maintaining that the kind of discursive attention they give to art is
necessary for artistic improvement and full appreciation (C
3.165-9). Such passages have led other commentators to conclude
that correct aesthetic taste for Shaftesbury requires well-cultivated
reflective, discursive abilities (Rivers 2000a: 126-9; Darwall
1995: 186; Townsend 1982: 210-12).



Shaftesbury clearly distinguishes between a person's
appreciating the beauty of an object and a person's appreciating
the benefits an object can produce for him or herself. He writes, for
instance, of the obvious difference between the enjoyment of the
beauty of an ocean or landscape, on the one hand, and the desire to
command these things and gain advantage from them, on the other (C
2.396-7). He also contends that the pleasure we experience when
coming to appreciate beauty is



> 
> 
> of a kind which relates not in the least to any private
> Interest..., nor has for its Object any Self-good or Advantage of
> the private System. The Admiration, Joy, or Love, turns wholly upon
> what is exterior, and foreign to our-selves. (C 2.104)
> 
> 
> 



A person who is truly responding to beauty does not consider the
desirable consequences that may be associated with a beautiful object
but rather responds favorably to the object "for its own
sake" (C 2.59), based purely on "*the Excellence of the
Object*" (C 2.273). Such a person's response is not
sensitive to external circumstances but results merely from
"seeing and admiring" (C 2.43).



On the basis of these passages, Stolnitz argues that Shaftesbury lays
the groundwork for the idea that aesthetic responses are essentially
"disinterested" (Stolnitz 1961a and b; see also Glauser
2002 and Savile 2002.) Shaftesbury, according to Stolnitz, was the
first to develop this concept, which "is nowhere to be found in
classical and medieval aesthetics. It is Shaftesbury who claims the
distinction of being the first thinker to bring the phenomenon of
disinterestedness to light and analyzing it" (Stolnitz 1961a:
100). Appreciation of beauty, on this view, has nothing to do with
thoughts about any instrumental purpose a work of art may serve, not
to do with the promotion of ends of any kind. Someone might value an
artwork because it will improve morals, or make money, or teach
history, or inspire religious adoration. But its aesthetic value is
utterly distinct from any of those. "Aesthetic perception looks
to no consequences ulterior to itself" (Stolnitz 1961a: 108).
According to this idea, which Stolnitz takes to be the defining
feature of modern aesthetic theory, an aesthetic response is a
response solely to the intrinsic features of an object, independent of
any other type of consideration, such as the object's utility to
the perceiver or to society, its moral value, or its capacity to
increase knowledge. Aesthetics, on this view, is autonomous,
self-contained, impersonal, non-instrumental. Stolnitz is careful (in
a way that some of his critics have failed to note) not to claim that
Shaftesbury himself held exactly this aesthetic view. What Stolnitz
claims, rather, is that Shaftesbury's distinguishing of
perceptions of beauty and judgments of self-interest was a crucial
influence on the disinterested aesthetic views that would come later,
even if Shaftesbury himself also held views that did not fit with
those later views (Stolnitz 1961a: 100 and 108).



Numerous commentators have argued against the view that Shaftesbury
advances the notion of aesthetic disinterestedness (see Townsend 1982;
Rind 2002; Mortensen 1995; Arregui and Arnan 1994; White 1973;
Axelsson 2019: 180-4). In contrast, they take Shaftesbury to
hold that the value of aesthetic beauty is entirely instrumental. On
this anti-Stolnitzian view, Shaftesbury intends to contrast an
appreciation of an object's beauty only with certain vicious or
selfish concerns, not with all non-aesthetic considerations
whatsoever. An appreciation of beauty, on this reading of Shaftesbury,
is "not to be identified with luxury, covetousness, avarice,
ostentation, and similar ... immoral qualities" (Mortensen
1994: 637; see also Rind 2002: 72-3). But an appreciation of
beauty can and should involve consideration of virtue and the
improvement of moral character. Townsend says that Shaftesbury does
not ever truly give "disinterestedness a special significance.
It is not really proposed as any kind of test, nor does it
characterize a special class of perceptions or judgments. It is much
more important to Shaftesbury to determine what our true interests
are" (Townsend 1982: 211). The editors of the *Standard
Edition* write in their preface to the volume on
Shaftesbury's aesthetics, "for Shaftesbury the enjoyment
of art was never to be an end in itself, but had always to serve a
moral purpose (*Second Characters:* 18). Derhmann says that
Shaftesbury believed that "Art is merely the means to a further
end," where that end is moral improvement" (2014: 48). In
explicit attack on Stolnitz, Mortensen writes, "On the contrary,
Shaftesbury's aim was *to situate the contemplation of art
within a morality acceptable to his contemporaries*" (1994:
631). According to Mortensen, Shaftesbury's goal was to give a
"moral defense of the appreciation of art," according to
which art appreciation is justified by its capacity to improve moral
character.



Stolnitz paints Shaftesbury as facing forward, toward the modern view
of art for art's sake."[T]he work of art must be evaluated
in respect of its intrinsic structure and significance, not as a moral
vehicle"; when we are in the aesthetic realm, "the ethical
question withdraws" (Stolnitz 1961a: 99 and 107). According to
these other commentators, Shaftesbury affirms the intrinsic value of
virtue; art has only the instrumental value of promoting virtue. They
paint Shaftesbury as looking backward, to Stoicism. (See Tiffany 1923;
Dehrmann 2014; for discussion, see Axelsson 2019.



Shaftesbury contends that all appreciation of beauty is appreciation
of mind. When we respond positively to beautiful objects, what we are
really responding to is the mind that designed them, not the physical
stuff itself. "[T]here is no Principle of Beauty in
*Body*," he says. "[T]he Beautifying, not the
Beautify'd, is the really *Beautiful*" (C
2.404-5; see also 2.426). Shaftesbury also places all beauty in
a three-part hierarchy. The lowest order of beauty belongs to
"*the dead Forms*"--physical things such as
manmade works of art and natural objects (C 2.406). The second order
of beauty belongs to human minds, or "*the Forms which
form*, that is, which have intelligence, action, and
operation" (C 2.406). The third order of beauty belongs to that
"which forms not only such as we call mere Forms, but even*the Forms which form*" (C 2.408). This highest, most supreme
and sovereign beauty, belongs to God, who has created everything in
the world, including human minds (see Kivy 2003: 12, Den Uyl 1998:
294). With his hierarchy, Shaftesbury expresses the idea that the
beauty of human minds is superior to the beauty of physical objects,
and that the beauty of God's mind is superior to the beauty of
human minds, although his reasons underlying this idea are not
perfectly clear.



Adherents of the instrumentalist interpretation take
Shaftesbury's points about beauty of mind and the hierarchy as
evidence that Shaftesbury thinks physical objects are not really
beautiful at all, and that we should aspire to care only about the
beauty of minds (see especially Tiffany 1923). On this view, the
beauty of objects (including all art) is merely an early stage of
appreciation of beauty that the wise person eventually leaves behind.
Against this interpretation, however, Glauser argues that
Shaftesbury's notion of beauty-as-unity implies that material
things can truly be beautiful, even if Shaftesbury's characters
sometimes seem to suggest otherwise. According to Glauser's
interpretation of Shaftesbury, because a material thing really can
possess a unified form, a material thing really can have the property
of beauty. It may be a less significant kind of beauty than the beauty
of a mind, but it can be beauty nonetheless. Because works of art
"are temporarily beautified by their respective principles, they
do have beauty, although in some lesser measure" (Glauser 2002:
30). Glauser thinks that in the passages that seem to assert that
material things cannot possess beauty the character of Theocles has
been "carried away by his own rhetoric." Other times,
Shaftesbury rightly affirms that physical things can be beautiful,
such as when he has Theocles say that that "which is
beautify'd, is beautiful only by the accession of something
beautifying" (C 2.404) and that what we admire is "Mind,
or the Effect of Mind" (C 2.405).



Whatever the best interpretation may be of Shaftesbury's view of
aesthetic responses, Mortensen (1994) does marshal plentiful evidence
that one of Shaftesbury's chief goals was to advance a concept
of good "taste" that would improve the moral character of
British gentlemen. Klein (1994) expands on this idea, showing how
Shaftesbury sought to develop the concepts of taste, manners, and
politeness in such a way as to provide a moral foundation for British
life that would supplant the outdated and unsatisfactory institutional
supports of church and court. Den Uyl (1998) also explicates
Shaftesbury view of the moralizing effects of the perception of
beauty, pointing to Shaftesbury's claims that



> 
> 
> to be *a Virtuoso* ... is a higher step towards the
> becoming a Man of Virtue and good Sense, than the being what in his
> Age we call *a Scholar* (C 1.333)
> 
> 
> 



and



> 
> 
> Thus are the *Arts* and *Virtues* mutually Friends; and
> thus the Science of *Virtuoso's* and that of
> *Virtue* it-self, become, in a manner, one and the same. (C
> 1.338)
> 
> 
> 


## 5. Politics


### 5.1 How political is *Characteristicks*?



In recent years, a number of commentators have highlighted
Shaftesbury's political commitments and their role in his
philosophy. Klein (1994) was one of the earliest and most developed
attempts to chart the political in Shaftesbury's thought. Jaffro
(2018), Muller (2018), Jost (2018), and Axelsson (2019,
223-38) have made similar points (see also Williams 2005, 234).
Shaftesbury was, of course, the grandson of the first Earl of
Shaftesbury, and the family was strongly associated with the Whig
Party. Shaftesbury himself (when he was Lord Ashley) was a Whig member
of the House of Commons from 1695-1698. After his father's
death in 1699 he assumed the Earldom and entered the House of Lords,
while continuing to play a role in Whig electoral efforts of 1701
(and, to a lesser extent, of 1705).



Klein argues that *Characteristicks* was largely motivated by
Shaftesbury's anti-Tory politics. Klein highlights
Shaftesbury's endorsement of the 1688 revolution, of religious
toleration, of a balance of power between Parliament and monarch,
and--most centrally--of extensive liberty. Klein says that
Shaftesbury's goal "was a program of education in which
the moral and literary would be combined to produce virtuous public
action. Shaftesbury was designing a Whiggism that was civic and
humanist." Klein argues that Shaftesbury's discussion of
"imposture" in *A Letter concerning Enthusiasm* was
an attack on Tory religious views. Klein also cites a 1710 letter in
which Shaftesbury says that in the third volume of
*Characteristicks* he intended "to attack and provoke a
most malignant party," and goes on to express the hope that his
work will destroy that party's hold on English academics,
religion, and culture (*Regimen* 432).



Jaffro (2018) argues that Shaftesbury takes "balance" to
be the ideal of both a political constitution and a human's
psychological make-up. And Jaffro argues the value Shaftesbury places
on balance is an implicit commitment to Harrington's political
program in *The Commonwealth of Oceana*.



Jost (2018) and Muller (2018) both find esoteric political
messages in Shaftesbury's work. According to Jost,
Shaftesbury's exhortation to of divide oneself into two for
self-reflection is an implicit endorsement of the Whig party over the
Tories. Muller argues that Shaftesbury's attack on religion
based on selfish reward in the afterlife is an implicit attack on Tory
tyranny.



Questions have been raised about how political in general and partisan
in particular Shaftesbury's *Characteristicks* is (Gill
2020). Shaftesbury seems at times to be repudiating partisanship,
arguing for an identification with all people that rises above
political squabbles. Many of his central positions on beauty and
morality may not involve any clear political commitments. And while in
some letters Shaftesbury vociferously attacks Tories, in others he
claims that he doesn't think of himself as powerfully aligned
with any political party (*Regimen* 366-67).


### 5.2 Liberty and ridicule



An overriding feature of Shaftesbury's political thinking is the
importance of "Liberty in general"
(C 3.314). In a letter, he said that "the Triumph of
Liberty" is "the hinge and Bottom of all three [volumes of
*Characteristicks*] and of the whole Work it self" (see
Klein 1994: 124). He opposes absolutism and tyranny in all forms,
arguing vociferously for free public discourse and toleration of
different religious practices. He tries to show that control by church
and court is not necessary--is in fact counterproductive--to
the virtue, sociability, and politeness of citizens (see Klein 1994:
124-135 and 195-7; Den Uyl 1998: 310; Carey 2006: 126). On
Klein and Muller's readings (discussed above), proper
attention to Shaftesbury's commitment to liberty and to the
weakening of the control of church and court reveals that
*Characteristicks* is fundamentally a pro-Whig, anti-Tory tract
(Klein 1994: 125; Muller 2013 and 2014a).



Den Uyl argues that Shaftesbury does not think the state can or should
actively promote virtue (Den Uyl 1998: 310-315). Schneewind
makes a similar point when he writes, "The virtuous agent is not
created by the political structure he inhabits. He brings his
character to it" (Schneewind 1998: 309; see also 295-8,
307-9). The best political course, consequently, is for the
state to allow as much liberty as possible, because that is most
likely to give individuals their own opportunity to fashion morally
beautiful characters. Political liberty creates the conditions for
virtue, even if politics cannot promote virtue itself. (For possibly
countervailing evidence see C 2.36-7, where Shaftesbury might be
suggesting that proper civic laws can promote virtue).



Muller argues that Shaftesbury's commitment to liberty is
grounded in his fundamental moral position that virtue consists not
merely of performing certain actions but of acting from the right
motives (Muller 2012 and 2013; see C 2.12-15, 32, 38). A
person who benefits others only because she thinks she will be
rewarded if she does so, and will be punished if she does not, does
not possess virtue. Her beneficence is virtuous only if it is
motivated by concern for others, not by selfish considerations
external to others' welfare. Thus, even if the authorities of
church and court can institute rewards and punishments that may induce
certain kinds of behavior, they will have done nothing to promote
virtue.



Shaftesbury believes that a free exchange of ideas will produce the
same benefits for the intellectual world that a
"*Free-Port*" produces for commerce, and he
maintains that



> 
> 
> *Wit* will mend upon our hands and *Humour* will refine
> it-self; if we take care not to tamper with it, and bring it under
> Constraint. (C 1.64)
> 
> 
> 



Shaftesbury contends as well that the more liberty there is in a
society, the greater its advancements will be in politeness,
understanding, and the arts. "All Politeness is owing to
Liberty," he writes.



> 
> 
> We polish one another, and rub off our Corners and rough Sides by a
> sort of *amicable Collision*. To restrain this, is inevitably
> to bring a Rust upon Mens Understandings. 'Tis a destroying of
> Civility, Good Breeding and even Charity it-self, under pretence of
> maintaining it. (C 1.64-5)
> 
> 
> 



About the arts he writes,



> 
> 
> 'Tis easy ... to apprehend the Advantages of our Britain
> [over states with less liberty] and what
> effect its establish'd Liberty will produce in every thing which
> relates to *Art*. (C 1.219)
> 
> 
> 
> Justness of Thought and Style, Refinement in Manners, good Breeding,
> and Politeness of every kind, can come only from the Trial and
> Experience of what is best. Let but the Search go freely on, and the
> right Measure of every thing will soon be found. (C 1.10)
> 
> 
> 



On this basis Den Uyl attributes to Shaftesbury a belief in the
efficacy of a "marketplace of ideas" to "promote
truth and the reformation of character" (Den Uyl 1998: 314; see
also Darwall 1995: 186).



One of the most conspicuous elements of Shaftesbury's belief in
the benefits of free speech and other forms of liberty is his
"*Test* of Ridicule" (C 1.11). He argues that the
state should allow the people to engage in public ridicule because it
will ultimately expose the problems in faulty views and leave
unscathed the strengths of reasonable views. As Lund (2012) and Amir
(2016) point out, Shaftesbury never says explicitly that ridicule is
the test of truth, but he makes statements that are very similar to
that. He writes, "I am sure the only way to save Mens Sense, or
preserve Wit at all in the World, is to give Liberty to Wit" (C
1.19). Also: "Truth ... may bear *all* Lights"
(C 1.61) and "Nothing is ridiculous except what is
deform'd" (C 1.128). Ridicule will reveal the
ridiculousness of things that really are ridiculous, but no lasting
"Ridicule can lie against Reason" (C 1.11). Reasonable
positions will always be able "to endure a Ridicule wrongly
plac'd" because while people may be "frighted out of
their wits", they will never "be laugh'd out of
'em" (C 1.96). True ideas will not be harmed by ridicule,
while false ideas will. One of Shaftesbury's prime examples of
truth and reasonableness being able to withstand ridicule is Socrates,
toward whom ridicule was directed but to whom ridicule did not stick
(C 1.32). His prime example of ridicule undermining what really is
ridiculous is the use of humor and wit to mock fanatical religious
views. Indeed, ridicule is the very best way to deal with unhinged
religious fanatics. For while governmental restriction on those
enraptured by "superstition and enthusiasm" is likely only
to inflame their ardor, witty ridicule (such as puppet shows) will
work to deprive such views of the opposition they need to thrive,
inevitably leading to their withering in the face of the reasonable
and sober (C 1.18).



Amir (2016) argues that Shaftesbury's optimism about
ridicule's capacity to undermine falsity and only falsity is
based on his metaphysical view that what is true is harmonious.
According to Amir, without the belief that everything that is true is
harmonious, and that all deformity fails to capture truths of
God's creation, Shaftesbury's optimism about the test of
ridicule will appear unmotivated and naive.



Shaftesbury does not, however, propose unlimited free speech. While he
is in favor of a good-humored ridicule, he also thinks there is a
vicious kind of ridicule that does not serve the purposes of
truth--although it is not always clear what principled
distinction he draws between on the one hand "genteelest
Wit" and "true Raillery," and on the other
"scurrilous Buffoonery" and "Malignity hid under
Humanity" (C 1.63, 1.65; Klein 1995, 138). The former works as a
test of truth, but the latter does not. The latter may thus be subject
to legal penalty: "If men are vicious, petulant, or abusive; the
Magistrate may correct them" (C 1.10). This raises the question
of whether Shaftesbury can produce an account of the right kind of
ridicule. He seems to believe that the right kind of ridicule is
motivated by a genuine and good-humored concern for truth and public
good, while the wrong kind is not. But it is far from clear that this
will give us a principled method for determining which speech should
be allowed and which should not.



Carroll (2018) shows that Shaftesbury supported various restrictions
on speech and publication throughout his political career. He might
have been opposed to pre-publication censorship, but he was not
opposed to post-publication penalties that would serve as a deterrent.
As a result, Carroll maintains, we should not take Shaftesbury's
defense of speech to be an argument for a completely open public
sphere. (See also Muller 2013 and Chavez 2008.)



Even for speech he takes to be a legitimate contribution to worthwhile
discourse it is not clear how expansive a realm of freedom Shaftesbury
has in mind. Sometimes he suggests that completely free discussion is
appropriate only within a club for elites, and not amid the
hurly-burly of the hoi polloi. As he writes in *Wit and
Humour*,



> 
> 
> For you are to remember (my Friend!) that I am writing to you in
> defence only of the Liberty of *the Club*, and of that sort of
> Freedom which is taken amongst *Gentlemen* and
> *Friends*, who know one another perfectly well. And that
> 'tis natural for me to defend Liberty with this restriction, you
> may infer from the very Notion I have of Liberty it-self. (C 1.75)
> 
> 
> 



(For discussion of Shaftesbury's view of the "club"
and the public, see Carey 2006: 128 and Chaves 2008: 54.)


### 5.3 Toleration



Shaftesbury's commitment to liberty extends to toleration of
religious difference (see Carey 2006: 144-5 and Klein 1994:
137). His reasons for this are consonant with his reasons for thinking
the best the state can do with regard to personal morality is create
the conditions for people to achieve virtue on their own. Just as it
is impossible to force people to virtue because virtue essentially
involves acting from reasons other than external reward and
punishment, so too is it impossible to force people to true religious
devotion because true religious devotion essentially involves an
inward feeling of love--"the *disinterested Love of*
God" (C 2.271), the "love of God
*for his own sake*" (C
2.58)--and not merely the kind of external behavior that can be
enforced. Forcing people to love God is no more possible than forcing
someone to romantically love another person (C 1.17-19). In
fact, attempts to force religious uniformity--"a hopeful
Project!" Shaftesbury sarcastically calls it--are bound to
failure, likely resulting only in in the further corruption of
people's characters (C 1.19).



> 
> 
> But a new sort of Policy, which extends it-self to another World, and
> considers the future Lives and Happiness of Men rather than the
> present, has made us leap the Bounds of natural Humanity; and out of a
> supernatural Charity, has taught us the way of plaguing one another
> most devoutly. It has rais'd an Antipathy which no temporal
> Interest cou'd ever do; and entail'd upon us a mutual
> Hatred to all Eternity. (C 1.18-19)
> 
> 
> 



Restrictions on religious practices are likely to be as
counterproductive as attempts to enforce virtue. Shaftesbury is not,
however, opposed to state-established religion. "People
shou'd have a *Publick Leading* in Religion," he
writes.



> 
> 
> For to deny the Magistrate a Worship, or take away a National Church,
> is as mere Enthusiasm as the Notion which sets up Persecution. For why
> shou'd there not be publick Walks, as well as private Gardens?
> (C 1.17)
> 
> 
> 


### 5.4 Criticism of social contract theory



Shaftesbury rejects Hobbesian social contract theory. He argues that
the selfish beings Hobbes described in his state of nature bear no
resemblance to humans as they actually are. He takes the theory to be
based on the claim that humans originally existed in a state of nature
that was an unsociable war of all against all. Such a picture is
flatly contradicted by the facts of human nature as Shaftesbury
understands them. Our innate constitution compels us toward society.
Our inborn "Facultys" move us directly toward
"Fellowship or Community" (C 2.317). Sociability is as
natural to humans--as inextricably built into human
nature--as self-interest (C 2.78; 2.318-19).



Shaftesbury also argues that there is an incoherence in Hobbes's
combination of the claims that it is not wrong to kill or maim other
humans in the state of nature and that the original compact justifies
allegiance to government:



'Tis ridiculous to say, there is any Obligation on Man to act
sociably, or honestly, in a form'd Government; and not in that
which is commonly call'd *the State of Nature*. For, to
speak in the fashionable Language of our modern Philosophy:
"Society being founded on a Compact; the Surrender made of every
Man's private unlimited Right, into the hands of the Majority,
or such as the Majority shou'd appoint, was of free Choice, and
by a Promise." Now *the Promise* it-self was made in the
*State of Nature*: And that which cou'd make *a
Promise* obligatory in the State of Nature, must make
*all*other Acts of Humanity as much our real Duty, and natural
Part. Thus *Faith*, *Justice*, *Honesty*, and
*Virtue*, must have been as early as the State of Nature, or they
cou'd never have been *at all*. The Civil Union, or
Confederacy, cou'd never make *Right* or *Wrong*; if
they subsisted not before. He who was free to any Villany before his
Contract, will, and ought to make as free with his Contract, when he
thinks fit. The *Natural Knave* has the same reason to be *a
Civil one*; and may dispense with his politick Capacity as oft as
he sees occasion: 'Tis only *his Word* stands in his
way--A Man is oblig'd *to keep his Word*. Why? Because
*he has given his Word to keep it*--Is not this a notable
Account of the Original of moral Justice, and the Rise of Civil
Government and Allegiance! (C 1.109-110; see also
2.310-321)



Shaftesbury's argument is in the form of a dilemma. Either
promises in the state of nature have obligatory force, or they do not.
If promises in the state of nature do have obligatory force, then
Hobbes can account for our obligation to obey government but only by
abandoning his story about a state of nature in which violence toward
others is not wrong. For someone who acknowledges that promises are
naturally obligatory will have no grounds for denying that other
things are naturally obligatory as well: "If in original and
pure Nature, it be wrong to break a Promise, or be treacherous;
'tis as truly wrong to be in any respect in human, or any way
wanting in our natural part towards human kind" (C 1.110). If,
on the other hand, Hobbes claims that promises do not have obligatory
force in the state of nature, then he has to abandon his account of
our obligation to obey government. For if a promise in the state of
nature has no obligatory force, and if the only difference between a
knave in the state of nature and knave in the commonwealth is that the
latter made a promise in the state of nature, then the
commonwealth-knave is no more in violation of his obligations than the
nature-knave.



Humans are naturally sociable. Society is humankind's natural
condition.



> 
> 
> In short, if Generation be *natural*, if natural Affection and
> the Care and Nurture of the Offspring be *natural*, Things
> standing as they do with Man, and the Creature being of that Form and
> Constitution he now is; it follows, "That Society must be also
> *natural to him*; And That out of Society and Community he
> never *did*, nor ever *can* subsist". (C
> 2.318-19)
> 
> 
> 



Social contract theory, according to Shaftesbury, is based on false
views of human psychology.


## 6. Innate Ideas



Shaftesbury resists Locke's attack on innate ideas, particularly
as it applies to morality. Shaftesbury maintains that the "main
scope and principal end" of *Characteristicks* is
"to assert the Reality of a Beauty and
Charm in *moral* as well as
*natural* Subjects" (C 3.303), and he believes that
Locke's rejection of innate ideas undermines that moral reality.
Locke's rejection of innate ideas, as Shaftesbury sees it,
implies that our moral ideas must be nothing but the result of custom
and instruction, and that they are therefore relative to the
contingent events of each person's own society and upbringing.
But morality, if it exists, must be based in a uniform nature.
Morality is natural or it is nothing at all. And Locke's
rejection of innate ideas implies that morality is not natural. (For
discussion of Shaftesbury's attack on Locke's view of
innate ideas, see Carey 2006, 98-99; Uehlein 2017; and
Stuart-Buttle 2019: 90-102. Stuart-Buttle responds to
Spellman (1998: 201), who argues that Shaftesbury badly misinterprets
Locke.)



Because the word 'innate' is ambiguous and controversial,
Shaftesbury chooses to affirm the naturalness of morality in other
terms (C 2.411-12). "Implanted" is a word he uses
often, contending that a "sense of Right and Wrong" (C
2.60), a "Principle of Virtue" (C 2.38), and
"original ideas of goodness" (C 1.33) are
*implanted* in every human. He also speaks of our
"Pre-conceptions, or Pre-sensations" of morality, which
are ideas, principles, and affections that possess moral content but
do not originate in experience (C 2.412-3; see also 2.307;
2.25-6). Another word he uses to express his opposition to
Locke's anti-nativism is 'anticipation,' as when he
writes,



> 
> 
> [W]e cannot resist our natural Anticipation in behalf of Nature;
> according to whose suppos'd
> *Standard* we perpetually approve and disapprove, and to whom
> in all natural Appearances, all moral Actions (whatever we
> contemplate, whatever we have in debate) we inevitably appeal. (C
> 3.214; see also 2.45, 2.412; 2.420; 3.214)
> 
> 
> 



His point here is that we base our moral judgments on a standard that
we recognize prior to (or in anticipation of) any of our particular
experiences. Similarly, he says that we have a
"*Prepossession* of the Mind, in favour of this moral
Distinction" (C 2.44). The distinction that is important to
Shaftesbury is between aspects of human life that are based in
instincts or natural tendencies, and aspects that result from
artifice, culture, and instruction (C 2.411). Shaftesbury's main
contention is that many morally significant aspects of human life fall
in into the first category rather than the second. We naturally care
for children. We naturally seek company and prefer sociability to
solitariness. We naturally form groups bound by "Love of a
common City, Community, or Country" (C 2.308-9). We
naturally find some types of conduct beautiful and virtuous, and
others not so.



But while Shaftesbury claims that all humans naturally (or
instinctively) possess (or are imprinted with) a sense of right and
wrong (a principle of virtue, original ideas of goodness), he also
believes that a great deal of cultivation and refinement is necessary
in order to develop correct and proper judgment (C 1.190-1).
Virtue and good taste may be natural, but it turns out that a proper
education is needed for most people to achieve them. How can
Shaftesbury both insist on the naturalness of morality and beauty, and
contend for the need of intensive critical moral and aesthetic
reflection? Carey has argued that Shaftesbury believes this apparent
problem can be dissolved by the Stoic concept of *prolepsis*
(Carey 2006: 110-116). Prolepses are notions that do "not
depend on or derive from instruction or experience" (Carey 2006:
112). But prolepses are merely mental anticipations, not fully formed
concepts--they are *pre*-conceptions--and as
such they can be poorly developed and misapplied. To give prolepses
their most complete form and to apply them properly, practice and
cultivation are necessary. Shaftesbury can thus hold that ethics
requires the "right application of the Affections" (C
2.35), and he can attribute mistaken ethical judgments to a
"Defect in the application of that unavoidable
*Impression* and first natural Rule of *Honesty* and
*Worth*" (C 3.303-4).


## 7. Religion


### 7.1 Anti-voluntarism



Central to Shaftesbury's religious views is a rejection of the
voluntarist claim that morality is determined by divine will. If
God's will determined morality, Shaftesbury argues, it would be
meaningless to praise God for being moral.



> 
> 
> For whoever thinks there is a God, and
> pretends formally to believe that he is *just* and
> *good*, must suppose that there is independently such a thing
> as *Justice* and *Injustice*, *Truth* and
> *Falshood*, *Right* and *Wrong*; according to
> which he pronounces that *God is just*, *righteous*, and
> *true*. (C 2.49-50)
> 
> 
> 



Anyone who believes it is meaningful to love God because of
God's virtue must believe that morality is prior to God's
will.



Against the voluntarists, Shaftesbury maintains that God's will
is determined by morality. As Theocles (of *The Moralists*)
says of the position advanced by the author of the
*Inquiry*,



> 
> 
> [I]n respect of Virtue, what you lately
> call'd *a Realist*; he endeavours to shew, "That it
> is really something *in it-self*, and in the nature of Things:
> not arbitrary or *factitious*, (if I may so speak) not
> constituted from without, or dependent on *Custom*,
> *Fancy*, or *Will*; not even on the *Supreme
> Will* it-self, which can no-way govern it: but being
> *necessarily good*, is govern'd by it, and ever uniform
> with it". (C 2.267)
> 
> 
> 



There are certain things we know to be necessarily true, such as that
a contradiction cannot hold and that it must be wrong to punish one
person for a different person's wrongdoing. But voluntarism has
the contrary--and thus absurd--implications.



> 
> 
> If the mere *Will*, *Decree*, or *Law* of God be
> said absolutely to constitute *Right* and *Wrong*, then
> are these latter words of no significancy at all. For thus if each
> part of a Contradiction were affirm'd for Truth by the supreme
> Power, they wou'd consequently become *true*. Thus if one
> Person were decreed to suffer for another's fault, the Sentence
> wou'd be *just* and *equitable*. And thus, in the
> same manner, if arbitrarily, and without reason, some Beings were
> destin'd to endure perpetual Ill, and others as constantly to
> enjoy Good; this also wou'd pass under the same Denomination.
> But to say of any thing that it is *just* or *unjust*,
> on such a foundation as this, is to say nothing, or to speak without a
> meaning (C 2.50)
> 
> 
> 



Evident here is Shaftesbury's belief that our certainty about
some things (including our certainty that the conduct supralapsarian
Calvinists attribute to God is wrong) is sufficient basis for the
rejection of all theologies that place God's will prior to
morality. In passages such as this, Shaftesbury manifests a profound
affinity with the Cambridge Platonists (see Cassirer 1953:
159-202; Rivers 2000a: 88; Gill 2006: 12-29 and
77-82).



As we have seen, Shaftesbury also argues that belief in voluntarism
has significantly deleterious moral effects. If you believe certain
actions are wrong only because God arbitrarily commands you not to
perform them, then your overwhelming reason for not performing those
actions will be the self-interested desire to avoid God's
punishment. But if that self-interested desire becomes your
overwhelming motivation, it will crowd out and eventually destroy the
other-loving motives that are essential to your own virtue and
happiness (C 2.55-6, 2.58-9; see also 1.97, 2.48-50,
2.267).


### 7.2 Criticism of revelation: miracles, scripture, fanatical enthusiasm



Shaftesbury's own position on religious belief has negative and
positive aspects. The negative aspect is opposition to belief based on
revelation. The positive aspect is affirmation of a perfectly good God
based on observation of the natural order.



Shaftesbury argues against reliance on revelation in the form of
miracles, of scripture, and of (certain types of) enthusiastic
experiences.



Shaftesbury holds that the occurrence of miracles would contradict
rather than support proper theological belief. The essential feature
of the observable world on which proper theological belief is based is
its *order*, the operation of myriad different systems
according to elegant and harmonious natural laws. But a miracle is an
occurrence that violates that order, something defined as a
contradiction of natural law. As such, a miracle would undermine
belief in a Creator who works by "just and uniform" laws
(C 2.334). A miracle would evince not a single great and good God but
"either the *Chaos* and *Atoms* of the Atheists,
or the *Magick* and
*Daemons* of the Polytheists" (C
2.335-6). As Theocles says in *The Moralists* to a
character who has made a plea for miracles:



> 
> 
> For whilst you are labouring to unhinge Nature; whilst you are
> searching Heaven and Earth for Prodigys, and studying how to
> *miraculize* every thing; you bring Confusion on the World, you
> break its Uniformity, and destroy that admirable Simplicity of Order,
> from whence the One infinite and perfect
> Principle is known. (C 2.335)
> 
> 
> 



Even if a miracle could establish the existence of a being with
unusual power, it would not prove that such a being had the qualities
of perfect goodness we should rightly attribute to God.



> 
> 
> For what tho innumerable *Miracles* from every part
> assail'd the Sense, and gave the trembling Soul no respite? What
> tho the Sky shou'd suddenly open, and all kinds of Prodigys
> appear, Voices be heard, or Characters read? What wou'd this
> evince more than "That there were *certain* Powers
> cou'd do all this?" But
> "*What* Powers; Whether
> *One*, or *more*; Whether *Superior*, or
> *Subaltern*; *Mortal*, or *Immortal*;
> *Wise*, or *Foolish*; *Just*, or *Unjust*;
> *Good*, or *Bad*": this wou'd still remain a
> Mystery; as wou'd the true Intention, the Infallibility or
> Certainty of whatever *these* Powers
> asserted (C 2.334)
> 
> 
> 



Belief in beings with unusual powers is not the same thing as true
theism, which is belief in a perfectly good--perfectly
orderly--God (C 2.6).



Shaftesbury raises multiple objections to religious views that claim
to be based solely on the revealed word of scripture. It is claimed
that those who write scripture are divinely inspired. But even if they
are divinely inspired, they must still write in human language. And
the translation from divine inspiration to human language opens up
space for interpretation and criticism.



> 
> 
> 'Tis indeed no small Absurdity, to assert a Work or Treatise,
> written in *human Language*, to be above *human
> Criticism*, or *Censure*. For if the Art of Writing be from
> the grammatical Rules of human Invention and Determination; if even
> these Rules are form'd on casual Practice and various Use: there
> can be no *Scripture* but what must of necessity be subject to
> the Reader's narrow Scrutiny and strict Judgment; unless a
> Language and Grammar, different from any of human Structure, were
> deliver'd down from Heaven, and miraculously accommodated to
> human Service and Capacity. (C 3.229)
> 
> 
> 



At least as problematic for the claim to base religion entirely on
scripture is the great diversity of texts for which claims of divine
inspiration have been made. There have been many different versions of
the scriptural stories through the centuries. And human
decisions--decisions that can be examined, explained, critiqued,
questioned--have led to some texts being deemed canonical,
complete, and perfect and others apocryphal, partial, inaccurate. As
Carey puts Shaftesbury's point,



> 
> 
> How can we establish the text itself, distinguishing the apocryphal
> from the canonical corpus of writings, given the range of manuscripts,
> transcripts, copies, and textual traditions associated with different
> sects, each of which adopts an alternative version when it comes to
> power? (Carey 2006: 144)
> 
> 
> 



Even if we can all agree on one text, moreover, we must still apply it
to our own lives in order to determine how to live according to its
teachings. And such application once again opens up a space that can
be filled only by interpretation. Perhaps we will accept one
person's interpretation above all others, but then we are basing
our religion on that person's judgment and not on scripture
alone.



> 
> 
> If we follow any One *Translation*, or
> any One Man's *Commentary*, what
> *Rule* or Direction shall we have, by which to chuse that One
> aright? (C 3.324)
> 
> 
> 



Shaftesbury's point is not that scripture should be ignored
(although see Stuart-Buttle 2019: 93). It is that any use anyone ever
makes of scripture will necessarily involve "*his own*
Discernment, and Understanding"--either one's own
judgment of which text to privilege and how best to interpret it, or
one's own judgment that somebody else's judgment about
those things is best (C 3.72). Shaftesbury maintains, as well, that
the best interpretations will be those that are deeply informed by
extra-scriptural knowledge of the history, tradition, and
language--"collateral Testimony of other antient Records,
Historians, and foreign Authors"--of the times in which
scriptural texts were first composed and complied (C 3.236). To truly
understand scripture, we must approach it the way we would approach
any other ancient text. The result will be



> 
> 
> a nicely critical *Historical Faith*, subject to various
> Speculations, and a thousand different *Criticisms* of
> Languages and Literature. (C 3.72)
> 
> 
> 



Such criticism, far from undermining respect for the word of God, is
"necessary to the Preservation and Purity of Scripture" (C
3.316).



Shaftesbury also opposes religion that purports to be based entirely
on direct revelation of an enthusiastic experience. Enthusiasts (or,
rather, the kinds of enthusiasts Shaftesbury opposes; below we will
discuss enthusiasm he approves of) are those who base their religious
views on what they claim to be their immediate spiritual experiences
of God. Such experiences are passionate, emotional, non-rational. And
while Shaftesbury does not deny that true contemplation of the divine
has an emotional component, he argues that we cannot determine merely
from the character of a passionate experience itself whether it is the
result of divine inspiration or human distemper. A single individual
in a cave can make noises that, because of echoing and darkness, cause
a group of people to feel great fear and thus give them to believe
they are under threat from a huge gang of monsters. Their feeling of
fear--their panic--is certainly real, but that feeling does
not on its own constitute proof of the belief about what caused it. In
the same way, a group of people can experience some powerful emotion
that they attribute to the experience of God, but the power of the
emotion itself is no proof of the divine cause. For



> 
> 
> there are many *Panicks* in Mankind, besides merely that of
> Fear. And thus is Religion also *Panick*; when Enthusiasm of
> any kind gets up. (C 1.16)
> 
> 
> 



Shaftesbury thus describes enthusiastic experiences as internal
"commotions" that may be one of



> 
> 
> those Delusions which come arm'd with the specious Pretext of
> moral Certainty, and *Matter of Fact*. (C 1.44)
> 
> 
> 
> Enthusiasm is wonderfully powerful and
> extensive ... [and] ... it is a matter of nice Judgment, and
> the hardest thing in the world to know fully and distinctly...
> Nor can Divine Inspiration, by its outward Marks, be easily
> distinguish'd from it. For Inspiration is *a real*
> feeling of the Divine Presence, and Enthusiasm *a false one*.
> But the Passion they raise is much alike. (C 1.52-53)
> 
> 
> 



Scary noises in a dark cave can produce the same feeling of fear,
whether they are caused by many monsters or one trickster. The feeling
itself does not constitute proof that the feeler's belief about
the cause is correct.


### 7.3 Natural religion, the argument from design, and justified enthusiasm



The central feature of the positive aspect of Shaftesbury's
religion is belief in a perfectly good God based on an argument from
design. (At C 2.364-5, he suggests that it is possible to give
an a priori argument for the existence of God as well). Proper
attention to the magnificent order of natural phenomena, Shaftesbury
argues, leads inevitably to the conclusion that the world was created
by a perfect being. If we found a perfectly designed piece of
architecture on a desert island, we would conclude that a mind had
formed it even if we could see no intelligent being in the area. Just
so, Shaftesbury argues, we must conclude that a mind has formed the
world as a whole, even though such a mind is not present to our
senses. Shaftesbury develops this argument most fully in *The
Moralists*, in which Theocles convinces Philocles that perfect
theism follows from an understanding of nature as a whole (C
2.284-5, 2.340-393). Everything is "fitted and
join'd" together, Theocles contends, each contributing to
the "Order, Union, and Coherence of *the Whole*" (C
2.287). "All we can see either of the Heavens or Earth,
demonstrates Order and Perfection" (C 2.291). "All things
in this world are *united*" in a "universal
system" (C 2.287). And



> 
> 
> having recogniz'd this uniform consistent fabric, and
> own'd the *Universal System*, we must of consequence
> acknowledg a *universal* Mind. (C 2.290)
> 
> 
> 



Shaftesbury contends that such considerations--the argument from
design--constitute a rational basis for theism. They provide
"abundant Proof, capable of convincing any fair and just
Contemplator" (C 2.288).



Shaftesbury also insists, however, that essential to true religion is
a passionate love for the Divine and its creation. Shaftesbury's
religion consists not merely of a calm belief in a creator-God but
also of a passionate "*Admiration*" of the
world's "*Majesty* or *Graudure,*" of
something that "captivates the Heart" (C 3.31-2).
Indeed, in what may seem like a surprising twist, Shaftesbury says
that in fact the truly religious frame of mind, because it reaches
beyond calm understanding, is a kind of enthusiasm. The writer of
*A Letter concerning Enthusiasm*, after ridiculing enthusiasts
throughout, eventually claims to have "justify'd Enthusiasm,
and own'd the Word" and
signs off as "your *Enthusiastick Friend*" (C 1.55;
see also 2.206-10, 368-376, 218-9, 124, 220, 394;
3.22, 33). It seems that Shaftesbury wants to develop a religious view
that is neither entirely passionate (like the fanatics he ridicules in
*A Letter*) nor entirely rational (like the Deists he was
sometimes associated with). This raises the question of how the
passionate and rational elements of Shaftesbury's religion fit
together.



Muller (2010a) argues that for Shaftesbury the passionate element
is necessary because rationality cannot fully establish the existence
of a perfectly good God. Liu (2004), and McAteer (2016) are in
substantial agreement. Reason alone, on this view, cannot get us all
the way to perfect theism. The extra distance can be traversed only by
an emotional aesthetic response to the beauty of creation. Muller
writes,



> 
> 
> In contemplating the beauty of nature, fancy transcends the limits of
> the human mind and ascends into the infinite, imagining the harmonious
> concatenation of causes. Theocles' sublime meditations do not
> attempt to produce logically sound arguments; they are allegorical
> verbal paintings of the deity's creation. The order of the
> divine cosmos, its inherent goodness, does not lend itself to strict
> philosophical investigation so that its "*Mysterious*
> Beauty" (C 2.393) cannot be rationally *understood* by
> human beings. (Muller 2010: 224)
> 
> 
> 



There are "secret truths of divine creation" that we can
appreciate only through non-rational means (Muller 2010: 224).
Muller argues for this interpretation through an account of
Shaftesbury's theodicy, i.e., his response to the seeming evils
in a world supposedly created by a perfectly good, omnipotent God.
According to Muller, Shaftesbury contends that belief in such a
God implies that no real evil can truly exists. All evil is merely
apparent. Everything in the world is actually entirely good. But this
position cannot be established rationally. Indeed, according to
Muller, this position is "anti-rational" (Muller
2010: 227). We can only come to accept it through an emotional
aesthetic response--an imaginative "Conceit of something
*majestick*" (C 3.30), an "Extasy" (C
1.36)--to the beauty of the world.



Grean, in contrast, takes Shaftesbury to advance a more thoroughly
rational basis for perfect theism (Grean 1967: 19-36). On
Grean's interpretation, an enthusiastic passion is "fair
and plausible" only if it is tethered to a thoroughly rational
theological understanding, not if it goes beyond such an
understanding. Such a reading emphasizes statements such as the
following from Philocles:



> 
> 
> Nor cou'd God witness *for himself*, or assert his Being
> any other way to Men, than "By revealing himself to their
> *Reason*, appealing to their *Judgment*, and submitting
> his Ways to their *Censure*, and *cool
> Deliberation*" (C 2.333).
> 
> 
> 



Theocles also seems to eschew the need for any non-rational means to
theism when he says that observation provides "abundant Proof,
capable of convincing any fair and just Contemplator, of the Works of
Nature" (C 2.288). In addition, Shaftesbury condemns the idea
that a person should ever believe anything not supported by "an
impartial Use of his Reason" or that is "too hard for his
Understanding" (C 1.35). Contemplation of the order of things is
"the only means which cou'd establish the *sound
Belief* of a Deity" (C 2.333). Without fully rational
belief, "Theology must have no Foundation at all" (C
2.269).



Shaftesbury does believe that true theism involves an emotional
response--that a truly religious frame of mind includes something
more than simply a calm, rational belief in Deity (at which the Deists
might have been satisfied to stop). But on Grean's
interpretation, that additional emotional element is added to rational
belief, not something that is needed to carry us to a belief that
reason alone cannot reach. The model for this kind of emotional
element is the profound aesthetic pleasure that a mathematician may
experience upon coming to understand an elegant proof, or that a
biologist may experience upon coming to understand the perfect
organization of a complex set of features of an organism or ecosystem
(C 2.17 and 2.43). The profound aesthetic pleasure of the
mathematician and the biologist does not go beyond understanding but,
rather, is entirely posterior to, dependent on it (C
2.374-5).



It is true--as Muller, Liu, and McAteer point out--that
Shaftesbury thinks there are certain things that appear to us to be
bad or evil, things that we cannot understand how to reconcile with a
perfectly good and all-powerful God. But there is in Shaftesbury an
attempt at a rational argument for the conclusion that even those
things are actually for the best (C 2.288-92, 2.363-5).
There are numerous features of the world whose purpose we have not
initially understood. Over time, however, we have come to see the
purpose that many of those things serve, achieving a rational
realization that what had initially seemed bad or evil is in actuality
entirely to the good. But since we have had so many of these
experiences in the past--of initially not understanding a thing
and its appearing to us to be bad or evil, and of then coming to
understand it and realizing that it is in fact good--it is
reasonable to conclude that those things we currently do not
understand and that appear to us as evil are also actually for the
best. Imagine you know a very brilliant person. In the past she has
done things you initially did not understand the rationale for at all.
But in time you eventually came to see that those things were
perfectly planned and executed, and you now realize that they were
exactly the right things to have done (even if you hadn't been
able to see that initially). Now imagine that this person does
something in the present that you do not understand the rationale for.
Your past experience gives you reasonable grounds for trusting that in
fact she has perfect justification for what she is doing--that
her actions really are for the best, even if you currently cannot see
the reasons for them. Given the finiteness of our minds and the
infiniteness of God's, it is only to be expected that God acts
in certain ways we cannot understand. But in the past we have had so
many experiences of examining natural objects we initially did not
understand and coming to see the harmonious workings of all their
wondrous mechanisms, it is reasonable to believe that those things we
currently do not understand are in fact for the best. As Shaftesbury
puts it,



> 
> 
> Now, in this mighty Union, if there be such
> Relations of Parts one to another as are not easily discover'd;
> if on this account the End and Use of Things does not every-where
> appear, there is no wonder; since 'tis no more indeed than what
> must happen of necessity: Nor cou'd supreme Wisdom have
> otherwise order'd it. For in an Infinity of Things thus
> relative, a Mind which sees not *infinitely*, can see nothing
> *fully*. (C 2.288)
> 
> 
> 


### 7.4 Virtue and belief in God



Another significant feature of Shaftesbury's religious views is
his position on the relationship between virtue and belief in God.
This is the topic with which Shaftesbury begins the *Inquiry*,
telling us that his goal is



> 
> 
> to inquire what *Honesty* or Virtue is,
> consider'd by it-self; and in what manner it is influenc'd
> by Religion: how far *Religion* necessarily implies
> *Virtue*; and whether it be a true Saying, *That 'it
> is impossible for an Atheist to be virtuous, or share any real degree
> of Honesty, or* Merit. (C 2.7)
> 
> 
> 



It is in the context of addressing this question that Shaftesbury
develops his ideas of the moral sense--i.e., his view that within
every human is the means to understand morality and act in accord with
it--and the conclusion he draws from this is that one's
capacity to realize virtue is independent of one's religious
belief. Our moral sense naturally leads us to virtue (C 2.16-18
and 25-6), and atheism does nothing at all to damage that
natural tendency (C 2.27). Shaftesbury thus denies "*that it
is impossible for an Atheist to be virtuous,*" contending
instead that some



> 
> 
> who have paid little regard to Religion, and been consider'd as
> mere Atheists, have yet been observ'd to
> practice the Rules of *Morality,* and act in many Cases with
> such good Meaning and Affection towards Mankind, as might seem to
> force an Acknowledgment of their being *virtuous* (C 2.4)
> 
> 
> 



Rivers has suggested that establishing the independence of religion
and morality is one the most important aspects of, and perhaps the
primary motivation for, Shaftesbury's development of the moral
sense (Rivers 2000a).



Shaftesbury does believe, however, that religious belief can affect
one's moral sense and one's motivation to be moral. Belief
in a perfectly good God promotes virtue in a number of ways. For



> 
> 
> nothing can more highly contribute to the fixing of right
> Apprehensions, and a sound Judgment of Sense of Right and Wrong, than
> to believe a God who is ever, and on all accounts, represented such as
> to be actually a true Model and Example of the most exact Justice, and
> highest Goodness and Worth. (C 2.51)
> 
> 
> 



And when God is represented as having



> 
> 
> a Concern for the good of *All*, and an Affection of
> Benevolence and Love towards *the Whole*; such an Example must
> undoubtedly serve (...) to raise and increase the Affection
> towards Virtue. (C 2.56)
> 
> 
> 



Shaftesbury also says that belief in a perfect God increases
one's motivation to be moral because one will have a strong wish
to please the Supreme Being and because one will be better able to
withstand misfortune and hardship, which are important respects in
which theism conduces to virtue in a way atheism does not (C
2.56-77). In contrast, belief in an immoral God, which
Shaftesbury calls 'daemonism,' will have deleterious
effects, promoting vice at the expense of virtue. For religious zeal
based on belief in a capricious and violent god will promote cruelty
and barbarity (C 2.13; 2.35-6; 2.47-49).



> 
> 
> [W]here a real Devotion and hearty Worship is paid to a supreme Being,
> who in his History or Character is represented otherwise than as
> really and truly just and good; there must ensure a Loss of Rectitude,
> a Disturbance of Thought, and a Corruption of Temper and manners the
> Believer. His Honesty will, of necessity, be supplanted by his Zeal,
> whilst he is thus unnaturally influenc'd, and render'd
> thus immorally devout. (C 2.50-51)
> 
> 
> 



"Religion", Shaftesbury concludes,
"is capable of doing great Good, or Harm" to one's
moral character, while atheism does not have an effect "in
either way" (C 2.51).


## 8. Sex and related issues



Commentators have recently brought attention to issues of sex and
gender in Shaftesbury's work. Shaftesbury frequently contrasts
female with male characteristics, almost always with the purpose of
elevating the latter and lowering the former (see C 1.24, 1.75, 1.149,
1.193-5, 1.214-5, 2.16, 2.35, 2.154, 2.161, 2. 186, 2.191;
*Second Characters* 225). Trumbach argues for a "homosexual
reading" of Shaftesbury's *Askemata* (1998: 441).
Klein says Shaftesbury's letters suggest "homosexual
longings and attachments" that social convention and obligation
kept him from acting on (Klein 2004). Branch (2006: 264) also finds
suggestions of homosexuality in his writing. Klein (2004) and
Tierney-Hynes (2015) both emphasize the "homosocial"
character of Shaftesbury's view of elevated human society, such
as in the friendship between Theocles and Philocles of *The
Moralists*. Tierney-Hynes also detects in *Soliloquy* extended
comparisons of writing and sex-acts, exploring in particular a
comparison between the self-reflection Shaftesbury recommends to
writers and masturbation. Barker-Benfield and Branch find in
Shaftesbury's writings "a repression of male
behavior" (Barker-Benfield 1992, 112) that leads to "an
aggressive sexualization of philosophy," culminating in "a
metaphorical sexual assault on the 'Deity'" (Branch
2006, 10). Muller (2010b) seeks to discredit all these readings
by arguing that they misinterpret key passages by failing to take into
account the surrounding features of Shaftesbury's own texts, the
early eighteenth-century context in which Shaftesbury was writing, and
the ancient Greek subjects (such as Plato and Socrates) Shaftesbury
was discussing. Voitle's view of Shaftesbury's letters
accords with Muller's reading (Voitle 1984: 242-244).