What do you think?
Rate this book
Shaftesbury: Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times
Shaftesbury's Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times was first published in 1711. It ranges widely over ethics, aesthetics, religion, the arts (painting, literature, architecture, gardening), and ancient and modern history, and aims at nothing less than a new ideal of the gentleman. Together with Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Addison and Steele's Spectator, it is a text of fundamental importance for understanding the thought and culture of Enlightenment Europe. This volume, first published in 2000, presents an edition of the text together with an introduction, explanatory notes and a guide to further reading.
532 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1711
8 people are currently reading
244 people want to read
About the author
Anthony Ashley Cooper
222 books11 followersAnthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury was an English politician, philosopher and writer.
He was born at Exeter House in London, the son of the future Anthony Ashley Cooper, 2nd Earl of Shaftesbury and his wife Lady Dorothy Manners, daughter of John Manners, 8th Earl of Rutland. At the age of three he was made over to the formal guardianship of his grandfather Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury. John Locke, as medical attendant to the Ashley household, was entrusted with the supervision of his education.
He was born at Exeter House in London, the son of the future Anthony Ashley Cooper, 2nd Earl of Shaftesbury and his wife Lady Dorothy Manners, daughter of John Manners, 8th Earl of Rutland. At the age of three he was made over to the formal guardianship of his grandfather Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury. John Locke, as medical attendant to the Ashley household, was entrusted with the supervision of his education.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 13, 2019
Why is it that the Leviathan has 632 reviews on Goodreads, compared to Shaftesbury’s 2? Even Locke’s Essay has 121 by comparison. I can really only guess at why the Characteristicks meets with blank stares nowadays, whereas the texts it responded to are relatively common knowledge. Is there something about predicating social relations on power and epistemology on empiricism that really sticks? Okay, this question I can answer, with a sigh. But Shaftesbury’s philosophy, as I’ve come to realize on dwelling over his magnum (and solum) opus for a while, is no less grounded in taking measure of the way things are, so to speak. For all his exorbitantly optimistic notions of natural harmony dictating the intrinsic goodness of human behavior, he takes the pragmatist position of setting opinion, passion, and fancy in certain charge of the will. Shaftesbury is for this reason (and more) the people’s philosopher, who objects to the pretense of philosophical systems that deal little, if at all, with the way individuals at large lead their lives. This must have told against him too, in the long run – that the Characteristicks are such a formally variable show of resistance to system or method itself. I could say so much more about the project whose influence has become so puzzlingly anonymous... But then I’ll be writing part of a dissertation on it, so there will be ample occasion.
April 26, 2007
Shaftesbury's works are always fun to read -- this contains his work on humor, one of the few extended discussions of the topic in philosophy.
September 5, 2023
Shaftesbury is a theist and a moral realist. From his conviction of an absolute divine order in the world flows all of his other beliefs. And yet, he ends up with positions remarkably close to the Epicureans and Deists he dislikes (and misunderstands, IMHO). He gets there via his other driving belief: that you should be a normal guy who can have a conversation with other people.
I became interested in reading him for his Inquiry Concerning Virtue, or Merit and his Soliloquy, or Advice to An Author. In the Inquiry, S explains what he thinks a person's religion has to due with their morality. As a teenager I had a letter to the editor published in the Boston Globe arguing precisely that religiosity was not correlated with morality, so I have a horse in this race. S is radically more chill than his religious contemporaries, going so far as to say that he's seen plenty of moral atheists and corrupt faithful. He ends up concluding that theism is likely to push you in the right direction, but by no means guarantees moral goodness.
More interesting is the way his epistemology connects his moral realism to his theism. Foremost in the Shaftesbury epistemology is that you learn moral facts by introspection into life experience and talking with people, not by revelation. The reasoning behind this has a strongly pragmatic or Carnapian flavor, in that it insists people be able to articulate the practical meaning of moral goodness.
God can't change moral facts. If He could, then what would you mean when you say "morality"? Regardless of whether you'd be correct or not, you couldn't even give a definition that could be cashed out in terms of practical, real-world experiences. This isn't a problem if you want to insist that God's will is ineffable, but we are talking about guiding human behavior here. Any morality capable of being acted on must at some point be converted to terms our moral sense can understand. So S comes away from his inquiry advocating for, essentially, a moral sense theory with a realist backdrop.
Furthermore, if God is merely morally good by your definition, then to praise Him for his goodness is hollow because it doesn't mean anything coming from you.
All this puts S in the interesting position of being able to criticize some commonly accepted attributes of God on the grounds that they offend his moral sense.
In the Soliloquy, S is concerned with how to be a good author. More specifically, he's concerned with moral improvement and the role writing plays in it. To write advice that people will listen to, you need to know what you're talking about. When the topic is "the turns of humour and passion, the variety of manners, the justness of characters and truth of things" or "in the ordinary
circumstances of life, how love, ambition and the gayer tribe of fancies, as well
as the gloomy and dark spectres of another sort, prevail over our mind", you need experience thinking about these things. And these you have to learn by introspective reflection on your feelings and deeds. Again, taking the life experience of a normal guy seriously is what is required to learn what you need to know.
Being a good writer and being a good human feed off one another.
I became interested in reading him for his Inquiry Concerning Virtue, or Merit and his Soliloquy, or Advice to An Author. In the Inquiry, S explains what he thinks a person's religion has to due with their morality. As a teenager I had a letter to the editor published in the Boston Globe arguing precisely that religiosity was not correlated with morality, so I have a horse in this race. S is radically more chill than his religious contemporaries, going so far as to say that he's seen plenty of moral atheists and corrupt faithful. He ends up concluding that theism is likely to push you in the right direction, but by no means guarantees moral goodness.
More interesting is the way his epistemology connects his moral realism to his theism. Foremost in the Shaftesbury epistemology is that you learn moral facts by introspection into life experience and talking with people, not by revelation. The reasoning behind this has a strongly pragmatic or Carnapian flavor, in that it insists people be able to articulate the practical meaning of moral goodness.
If the mere will, decree or law of God be said absolutely to constitute right and wrong, then are these latter words of no significance at all. For thus, if each part of a contradiction were affirmed for truth by the Supreme Power, they would consequently become true. Thus, if one person were decreed to suffer for another’s fault, the sentence would be just and equitable. And, thus, in the same manner, if arbitrarily and without reason some beings were destined to endure perpetual ill and others as constantly to enjoy good, this also would pass under the same denomination. But to say of anything that it is just or unjust on such a foundation as this is to say nothing or to speak without a meaning.
God can't change moral facts. If He could, then what would you mean when you say "morality"? Regardless of whether you'd be correct or not, you couldn't even give a definition that could be cashed out in terms of practical, real-world experiences. This isn't a problem if you want to insist that God's will is ineffable, but we are talking about guiding human behavior here. Any morality capable of being acted on must at some point be converted to terms our moral sense can understand. So S comes away from his inquiry advocating for, essentially, a moral sense theory with a realist backdrop.
Furthermore, if God is merely morally good by your definition, then to praise Him for his goodness is hollow because it doesn't mean anything coming from you.
For it is hard
to imagine what honour can arise to the Deity from the praises of creatures
who are unable to discern what is praiseworthy or excellent in their own
kind.
All this puts S in the interesting position of being able to criticize some commonly accepted attributes of God on the grounds that they offend his moral sense.
I know not how it comes about that He who is ever
said to do good the most disinterestedly should be thought desirous of being
praised so lavishly.
In the Soliloquy, S is concerned with how to be a good author. More specifically, he's concerned with moral improvement and the role writing plays in it. To write advice that people will listen to, you need to know what you're talking about. When the topic is "the turns of humour and passion, the variety of manners, the justness of characters and truth of things" or "in the ordinary
circumstances of life, how love, ambition and the gayer tribe of fancies, as well
as the gloomy and dark spectres of another sort, prevail over our mind", you need experience thinking about these things. And these you have to learn by introspective reflection on your feelings and deeds. Again, taking the life experience of a normal guy seriously is what is required to learn what you need to know.
To conclude: the only method, which can justly qualify us for this high priv-
ilege of giving advice, is in the first place to receive it ourselves with due sub-
mission where the public has vouchsafed to give it us by authority. And if in
our private capacity we can have resolution enough to criticize ourselves and
call in question our high imaginations, florid desires and specious sentiments,
according to the manner of soliloquy above-prescribed, we shall, by the nat-
ural course of things, as we grow wiser, prove less conceited and introduce into
our character that modesty, condescension and just humanity which is essen-
tial to the success of all friendly counsel and admonition. An honest home-
philosophy must teach us the wholesome practice within ourselves. Polite read-
ing, and converse with mankind of the better sort, will qualify us for what
remains.
Being a good writer and being a good human feed off one another.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews