shaftesburyAnthony Ashley Cooper was the grandson of the first Earl of 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.
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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