Shaftesbury. He was Locke's patron, and was himself educated under
Locke's supervision. His weak health prevented him from following an
active political career, and his life was mainly devoted to
intellectual interests. After two or three unhappy years of school
life at Winchester, he traveled abroad, chiefly in Italy, with a
tutor. In early adulthood he lived in Holland, and in later life his
health drove him to Italy once more. He was an ardent student of the
classics, especially of Plato, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, a
devotee of liberty of thought, and an amateur of art. His writings,
penned between 1701 and 1712, were published in three volumes titled
Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711); a revised
and enlarged edition was ready at the time of his death in 1713. The
essays include "A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm," "Sensus Communis, an
essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humor," "Soliloquy, or Advice to an
Author," "An Inquiry Concerning Virtue and Merit," "The Moralist, a
Philosophical Rhapsody," Miscellaneous Reflections on the said
Treatises, and other critical Subjects," A Notion of the Historical
Draught or Tablature of the Judgment of Hercules, with a Letter
concerning Design." The most important of these is "An Inquiry
Concerning Virtue and Merit." He comments that the miscellaneous style
of the collection was in vogue in his day.The Characteristics opens
with remarks on and on "Wit and Humor". Regarding religious
enthusiasts (or fanatics), he tells us that "vapors naturally rise,"
and he would dispel them by . "The melancholy way of treating religion
is that which, according to my apprehension, renders it so tragical,
and is the occasion of its acting in reality such dismal tragedies in
the world." He would "recommend wisdom and virtue in the way of
pleasantry and mirth," and tells us that "good- humor is not only the
best security against enthusiasm, but the best foundation of piety and
true religion." It does not appear very clearly what is the nature of
the piety and religion which he would recommend. Sometimes he seems to
scoff at Biblical passages, and at all their spiritual verities and
holy mysteries; at other times he makes it appear as if he wished to
be considered a believer in Christianity. There is, however, latent
levity in the profession he makes: "We may in a proper sense be said
faithfully and dutifully to embrace those holy mysteries even in their
minutest particulars, and without the least exception on account of
their amazing depth." This suffices to assure us of our own "steady
orthodoxy, resignation, and entire submission to the truly Christian
and catholic doctrines of our holy church, as by law established."
Shaftesbury has largely caught the spirit of Locke, but he by no means
follows him, especially in his rejection of innate ideas. "Twas Mr.
Locke that struck at all fundamentals, threw all order and virtue out
of the world, and made the ideas of these, which are the same with
those of God, unnatural, and without foundation in our minds. Innate
is a word he poorly plays upon: the right word, though less used, is
connatural." He shows that there are many of our mental qualities
natural to us. "Life, and the sensations which accompany life, come
when they will, are from mere nature and nothing else. Therefore, if
you dislike the word innate, let us change it, if you will, for
instinct, and call instinct that which nature teaches, exclusive of
art, culture, or discipline." Beginning with these lower affections,
he goes on to show that "preconceptions of a higher kind have place in
human kind, preconceptions of the 'fair and beautiful.'"
He reviews Descartes' "I think therefore I am," and argues that
nothing is more certain: "for the Ego or I being established in the
first part of the proposition, the Ergo, no doubt, must hold it good
in the latter." However, he adds, "For my own part, I take my being
upon trust." He continually appeals to the "Sensus Communis," or
Common Sense, and his general doctrine is thus expressed: "Some moral
and philosophical truths there are withal so evident in themselves,
that it would be easier to imagine half mankind too have run mad, and
joined precisely in one and the same species of folly, than to admit
any thing as truth which should be advanced against such natural
knowledge, fundamental reason, and common sense." He allows that what
is natural to us may require labor and pains to bring it out.
Shaftesbury's moral theory targets the account of conduct as found in
Hobbes and, more implicitly in Locke. He concedes that we do indeed
have affections in us which have regard to our own interest or
happiness; they included,
love of life, resentment of injury, pleasure, or appetite towards
nourishment and the means of generation; interest, or the desire of
those conveniences by which we are well provided for or maintained;
emulation, or love of praise and honor; indolence, or love of ease and
rest.
However, these lead only to "the good of the private," and are not the
natural foundation for virtue. Like Butler later argues, there are
also social (or "natural") affections which are directed to the good
of the species to which we belong. He argues that there is no conflict
between the two systems. It is not merely that there are social as
well as self-regarding impulses or affections, but that the system of
human nature as a whole points to the subordination of the
self-regarding affections in favor of the social affections as the
essential feature of the "natural" or virtuous life. This is because
the means to our good is placed in a network of relations to our
fellow humans. Indeed, our natural affections stretch even further: we
take in the universe so that we will love all things that exist in the
world. For, in the universal design of things, "nothing is
supernumerary or unnecessary", and "the whole is harmony, the numbers
entire, the music perfect."
Contrary to those such as Hobbes and Mandeville who seek to found
virtue on self-interest, Shaftesbury argues that
Whoever looks narrowly into the affairs of it, will find that
passion, humor, caprice, zeal, faction, and a thousand other springs
which are counter to self-interest, have as considerable a part in the
movement of this machine. There are more wheels and counterpoises in
this engine than are easily imagined.
Virtue consists in the proper exercise of these two classes of
affections (the selfish and social). Vice arises when the public
affections are weak and deficient, when the private affections are too
strong, or affections spring up which do not tend to the support of
the public or private system. He holds that virtue, as consisting in
these affections, is natural to humans, and that he who practices it
is obeying the ancient Stoic maxim, and living according to nature.
The virtues which he recommends fall far beneath the stern standard of
the Stoics, and leave out all the peculiar graces of Christianity.
They consist of, "a mind subordinate to reason, a temper humanized and
fitted to all natural affection, an exercise of friendship
uninterrupted, thorough candor, benignity, and good nature, with
constant security, tranquillity, equanimity.
In spite of his insistence upon the harmony of virtue and
self-interest, or of the self-regarding with the social affections,
Shaftesbury is convinced that the good is not pleasure. "When Will and
Pleasure are synonymous; when everything which pleases us is called
pleasure, and we never chuse or prefer but as we please, 'tis trifling
to say, 'Pleasure is our good.' For this has as little meaning as to
say, 'We chuse what we think eligible'; and, 'We are pleased with what
delights or pleases us.' The question is, Whether we are rightly
pleased, and chuse as we should do" (Characteristics 2:226-227). The
good is not mere satisfaction or pleasure, but that which satisfies a
person as a human.
Shaftesbury's great objection to the theological ethics of Locke and
of popular opinion is that it destroys the reality and
disinterestedness of virtue. Action inspired by the motive of reward
or punishment is, because self-interested, not truly virtuous. Not
until a person "is come to have any affection towards what is morally
good, and can like or affect such good for its own sake, as good and
amiable in itself," can that person be called "good or virtuous"
(Characteristics 2:66). The appeal to self-interest by rewards and
punishments may be a means of moral education used by God, as it is
used by parents and guardians and by the state. But its aim must be to
educate us to the disinterested love of virtue and supreme Goodness.
Similarly, to make virtue dependent upon the will of God is to destroy
the very idea of virtue, and to make the inference to supreme Goodness
impossible. "For how can Supreme Goodness be intelligible to those who
know not what Goodness itself is? Or how can virtue be understood to
deserve reward, when as yet its merit and excellence are unknown? We
begin surely at the wrong end, when we would prove merit by favour,
and order by a Deity" (Characteristics, 2:267). The alternative
between a theological and an independent theory of ethics is, he
holds, the alternative between ethical nominalism and realism.
Shaftesbury's own view is that virtue is "really something in itself
and in the nature of things: not arbitrary or factitious… constituted
from without, or dependent on custom, fancy, or will: not even on the
Supreme Will itself, which can no way govern it: but being necessarily
good, is governed by it, and ever uniform with it" (Loc. cit.).
Shaftesbury is aware that the question of the character of the
virtuous act is not the same as that of the mental faculty which looks
at it and appreciates it. Natural to us is a "sense of right and
wrong," to which Shaftesbury gives the name This moral sense
apprehends the beauty or deformity, the proportion or disproportion,
of actions and affections.
"It feels the soft and harsh, the agreeable and disagreeable, in
the affections; and finds a foul and fair, a harmonious and a
dissonant, as really and truly here, as in any musical numbers, or in
the outward forms or representations of sensible things. Nor can it
withhold its admiration and extasy, its aversion and scorn, any more
in what relates to one than to the other of these subjects"
(Characteristics 2:83).
This faculty of the moral sense he represents as a kind of sense
organ. Locke describes two types of senses, the external and the
internal (and from these tries to derive all our ideas or
perceptions). In Shaftesbury, two internal senses occupy an important
place: the sense of beauty and the moral sense:
No sooner does the eye open upon figures, the ear to sounds, than
straight the Beautiful results, and grace and harmony are known and
acknowledged. No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human
affections and passions discerned (and they are most of them as soon
discerned as felt), than straight an inward eye distinguishes and sees
the fair and shapely, the amiable and admirable, apart from the
deformed, the foul, the odious, or the despicable
Although this advances beyond Locke's discussion of the senses in the
Essay, he is anxious to connect his view of the moral sense with
Locke's account of the inward sense.
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