SHAFTESBURY, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of. - Philosopher, initiator of the moral philosophy of sentiment (v.), b. in London on 26 Feb. 1671, d. in Naples on 15 Feb. 1713. He was educated by his uncle according to the pedagogical principles of Locke (v.), who was also his first teacher. He studied the Neoplatonic philosophers (Cambridge school) and was in contact with the major philosophers of his time not only in his homeland, but also on the European continent, where he often went to attend to his frail health. Far from political life, he devoted himself completely to the meditation of moral problems. Of his ethical ideal, set forth in numerous works, he gave example in his most noble form of life, an object of great admiration among his contemporaries. In 1709 he married Jane Ewer, by whom he had a son. He spent the last two years of his life in Naples (cf. B. Croce, op. cit. in bibl.).
S. conceives the universe as a perfectly harmonious unity, in which all things through natural impulses tend at the same time toward their own perfection and toward that of the whole. Man is part of this universe: all his natural impulses are good, both the egoistic ones
(Hobbes) as those altruistic (Cumberland; cf. Inquiry, I, ed. 1900, p. 280 ff.), provided they are coordinated among themselves toward the integral perfection of the individual. Morality therefore does not consist in obedience to universal norms, to divine precepts or to human laws, but in following natural impulses, which allow the joy of the fullness of one's own life, in intimate inner communion with the harmonious life of all human society and indeed of the entire universe. Religion does not precede but follows morality, and indeed fundamentally coincides with it, since it is not reason but living personal contact with the universe that makes one feel the existence of God as the animating principle of universal harmony. This living intimately connected with God's animating action is the ultimate meaning of all morality (cf. Philosophical regimen, p. 20 ff.). The criterion of morality derives neither from reason (rationalism) nor from empirical knowledge of utilities (utilitarianism), but from the moral sentiment, which is an intrinsic capacity of every individual, connatural to his very being, to perceive immediately through reflection what is or is not in conformity with the harmony of his own being and therefore with social and universal harmony (Inquiry, I, ed. cit., chaps. 2 and 3). It is fundamentally an aesthetic judgment or "moral taste," the beautiful and the good being for S. completely synonymous. Morality thus becomes an aesthetic activity of individual, social and universal perfection and also the principle of all human knowledge. S. thus initiates optimistic dynamic individualism (v.) and preludes many Romantic positions. His importance in the history of philosophy is due less to the intrinsic value of his thought, moreover profoundly modified by his immediate continuators (Hutcheson, Butler), than to original intuitions, which would be taken up not only by the Enlightenment thinkers (Diderot, Voltaire), but also by Kant, Lessing, Mendelssohn, Herder, Schlegel, Schleiermacher, and which also influenced literature (Pope, Goethe).
Principal works: Inquiry concerning virtue and merit (1699); The sociable enthusiasm (1705), republished under the title The moralist, or the philosophical rapsody (1709); A letter concerning enthusiasm (1708); Seussus communis: an essay on the freedom of wit and humour (1709); Soliloquy, or advice to an author (1710); Miscellaneous reflections (1710). All these writings were reissued in a single work in 3 vols.: Characteristics of man, manners, opinions, times (1711; various subsequent editions; recent edition in 2 vols. edited by J. M. Robertson, London 1900). Of the unpublished writings and letters (whose first collection dates back to 1716) were published by B. Band, The life, Unpubl. letters and Philosophical regimen of A. Earl of S. (ibid. 1900); S.'s second Characters or the language of forms (Cambridge 1914).
Bibliography11 works
Tullio Piacentini