Sensus Communis: An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour U.A. (Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley Cooper): Standard Edition I. Wor)

by Anthony Ashley Cooper, Christine Jackson-Holzberg (Editor), Patrick Muller (Editor)

Der Band beginnt mit dem fur Shaftesburys Argumentations- und Kompositionsweise paradigmatischen Text Sensus Communis. Darin werden die Bedingungen des Schreibens vor dem Hintergrund von Zensur und religioser Intoleranz Shaftesbury pladiert fur Doppelbodigkeit, Mehrdeutigkeit, Witz und Ironie. Zudem bietet der Band erstmalig die aus dem Nachlass stammenden und fur die Vorbereitung und Drucklegung der zweiten Ausgabe der Characteristicks bestimmten Anweisungen fur den Drucker und den Kupferstecher hinsichtlich der emblematischen Illustrationen, ferner die vollstandig transkribierten Verbesserungen und Anmerkungen im Handexemplar von 1711, sowie die Aufzeichnungen, Supplemente und Varianten in Shaftesburys Exemplar von The Sociable Enthusiast, einer Zwischenstufe auf dem Weg zur ersten Druckfassung der Moralists. Diese Erstveroffentlichungen vermitteln auf anschauliche Weise Einblicke in die Werkstatt des Schriftstellers und dokumentieren den unablassigen limae labor des Autors, eine fast ubergenau anmutende Sorgfalt bei der Erstellung und Bearbeitung seiner Schriften. Zur weiteren Verdeutlichung werden auch alle von Shaftesbury getilgten Stellen transkribiert oder zumindest angezeigt, da es sich hierbei haufig um Inhalte handelt, welche die Grenze des offentlich Sagbaren uberschreiten. Sensus Communis can be seen as the paradigm of Shaftesbury's technique in argumentation and composition. It focuses on the problems posed for writers by censorship and religious intolerance. Shaftesbury's ambiguity, nuancing, wit and humour. - A number of previously unpublished texts shed new light on the Earl's revision of his own texts and his preparations for their the instructions to his printer and to the engraver regarding emblematic illustrations designed for the second edition of Characteristicks; the planned emendations, additions, and related notes recorded by him in his personal copy of the 1711 text; the autograph supplements and emendations found in his copy of The Sociable Enthusiast, i.e., in the first printed version of what would later appear as The Moralists. This material (published here for the first time) shows the author at work, documenting Shaftesbury's seemingly tireless limae labor - the painstaking, even pedantic thoroughness with which he strove continually to emend and improve. In order to illustrate further the type of redaction to which he subjected his texts, the edition also records all deletions made by the Earl, where possible restoring the original wording; in many cases this offers a good indication of what he considered unsuitable for wider circulation.

416 pages, Hardcover

Published December 31, 1992

About the author

Anthony 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.