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ABSTRACT
Shaftesbury believed that the height of virtue was impartial love for all of humanity. But Shaftesbury also harboured grave doubts about our ability to develop such an expansive love. In The Moralists, Shaftesbury addressed this problem. I show that while it may appear on the surface that The Moralists solves the difficulty, it in fact remains unresolved. Shaftesbury may not have been able to reconcile his view of the content of virtue with his view of our motivational psychology.
Notes
1 For discussion of the form of The Moralists see Prince, Philosophical Dialogue in the British Enlightenment, 47–73; Hoover, ‘Voices and Accents’, 72–96; and Jaffro, ‘Shaftesbury on the “Natural Secretion” and Philosophical Personae’, 349–59.
2 This paper will focus mainly on The Moralists and other parts of Characteristics. I will say little about things Shaftesbury wrote but chose not to include in Characteristics. For discussion of the picture of Shaftesbury’s moral views that emerges from some of his unpublished writings see: Maurer and Jaffro, ‘Reading Shaftesbury’s Pathologia’; Klein, Shaftesbury and the Culture of Politeness; and Müller, ‘Dwell with honesty & beauty & order’. For discussion of the relationship between Shaftesbury’s published and unpublished writings see Jaffro, ‘Shaftesbury on the “Natural Secretion” and Philosophical Personae’.
3 Cooper, Anthony Ashley, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, volume 2, page 36 of original pagination. All references to Characteristics will be in this form.
4 For discussion of Shaftesbury’s sentimentalist view of motivation see Terence Irwin, The Development of Ethics, 353–71 and Joseph Filonowicz, Fellow-Feeling and the Moral Life, 48–55.
5 See also C 2.110–13, where Shaftesbury contrasts ‘intire Affection’, or concern for all of humanity, with ‘narrow or partial Affection’.
6 Shaftesbury would not have denied that benevolence toward a subset of humanity (such as one’s friends and family, and even one’s self) can be virtuous. But he believes that the height of virtue is universal benevolence (C 2.137). And he also believes that partial benevolence – what he calls ‘close Sympathy and conspiring Virtue’ or our ‘cantonizing’ tendency – often leads to the greatest conflicts and worst destruction (C 1.112–13).
7 Shaftesbury also discusses the difficulty of loving something as abstract as humanity as a whole in Sensus Communis, where he says that ‘Universal Good, or the Interest of the World in general, is a kind of remote philosophical Object. That greater Community falls not easily under the Eye’ (C 1.111). See Chavez, ‘Philosophy and Politeness in Shaftesbury’s Characteristics’, 61.
8 Most important for what is to come the next morning is Theocles's evening speech on the existence of God (C 2.282–95).
9 Hume was dismissive of the The Moralists’ claims about identity, writing ‘If the reader is desirous to see how a great genius may be influenc’d by these seemingly trivial principles of the imagination … let him read my Lord Shaftesbury’s reasonings concerning the uniting principle of the universe, and the identity of plants and animals [in] his Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody’ (Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, 1.4.6.6). It seems, however, that Hume did learn from Theocles's views on identity. For Hume’s own view, like Theocles's, relies on the idea that there is no single ‘constant and invariable’ mental item that can fund personal identity: compare T 1.4.6.2 and C 2.350–1. Of course Hume and Theocles draw opposite conclusions, with Theocles moving from the premise that there is no constant and invariable mental item to the conclusion that personal identity must consist of something other than a mental item, and Hume moving to the conclusion that there is no personal identity. For recent discussion of Shaftesbury’s views of identity in general and personal identity in particular, see Winkler, ‘All Is Revolution in Us’ and Jaffro, ‘Shaftesbury on Human Frailty and the Will’. Winkler raises the reasonable worry that Shaftesbury attributes identity in a much more profligate manner than would those who have been concerned with ‘the classical philosophical problem of personal identity, a problem about the conditions for a thing’s persistence over time’ (Winkler, ‘All Is Revolution in Us’, 12). Jaffro attempts to assuage this worry by distinguishing ‘between a normative sense of “being oneself” or “remaining the same person”, and the metaphysical sense, that is, personal identity’ (Jaffro, ‘Shaftesbury on Human Frailty and the Will’, 158). I think Jaffro’s distinction is a promising way of viewing passages on identity from Shaftesbury’s Soliloquy. But given how Theocles's argument moves seamlessly from the identity of an oak tree to what seems to be the moral identity of a person to the identity of all of nature, I wonder whether Jaffro’s distinction applies easily to The Moralists.
10 Shaftesbury uses this sense of genius in Soliloquy (C 1.168), and refers to it in his Index as ‘Genius, or Guardian-Angel’. For discussion of Shaftesbury’s uses of genius in Soliloquy, see McMahon, Divine Fury, 19, 22–3. Shaftesbury also uses this sense of ‘genius’ in a 1706 letter to Pierre Coste (Shaftesbury, The Life, Unpublished Letters, and Philosophical Regimen of Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, 357).
11 On the transition from a ‘genius’ being something a person has to being something a person is, see McMahon, Divine Fury, 70–2.
12 The notion of a genius as a person is also important for addressing another aspect of Philocles's challenge to Theocles. Philocles says,
[W]ere it possible for me to stamp upon my Mind such a Figure as you speak of … it might probably have its effect; and I might become perhaps a Lover after your way: But more especially, if you cou’d so order it, as to make things reciprocal between us, and bring me to fansy of this Genius, that it cou’d be ‘sensible of my Love, and capable of a Return’.
13 In his Index to Characteristics, Shaftesbury refers to this use of ‘genius’ under the heading of ‘Genius of the World … See Deity’.
14 For explication of this idea in Shaftesbury see: Darwall, The British Moralists and the Internal Ought, 188; Axelsson ‘Shaftesbury on the Natural Affections and Taste’, 37; and Müller ‘Hobbes, Locke and the Consequences’, 322.
15 Maurer and Jaffro point out that having ‘the public good’ as the goal of one’s conduct may conflict with ‘stricter versions of Stoicism’ that Shaftesbury otherwise endorsed (‘Reading Shaftesbury’s Pathologia’, 215–16). Perhaps we can see Theocles's shift from Day One of The Moralists to Day Two as reflecting the tension between Shaftesbury’s commitments to less strict and more strict versions of Stoicism.
16 Places where Shaftesbury discusses the naturalness of internal aspects of humans include: 1.71, 1.83, 1.88, 1.90, 1.92, 1.104, 1.108–18, 1.189, 1.280, 1.348, 2.14–15, 2.22–7, 2.40–5, 2.87, 3.29, 3.33, 3.69, 3.143–5, 3.158, 3.162.
17 I wish to acknowledge an anonymous BJHP referee for urging on me the importance of the points in this paragraph.
18 Places where Shaftesbury expresses the idea that following nature is good include: 1.110–11, 1.114, 1.121, 1.135, 1.142, 1.280, 1.339, 2.30, 2.71, 2.80–1, 3.30, 3.33, 3.35–6, 3.107, 3.137, 3.216–8.
19 Shaftesbury’s theodicy is relevant here. Müller has argued that Shaftesbury aimed in The Moralists to show that natural evil does not actually exist, that all aspects of the natural world are in fact good (‘Dwell with Honesty & Beauty & Order’, 209–10, 225). But what is so striking is that Theocles tries to convince Philocles of these things only as they concern the non-human parts of the natural world, and not as they concern humankind. He tries to show that all natural things are perfect and harmonious, whatever their initial appearances. But he does not try to show that humanity partakes of that perfection and harmony. The point can be put in terms of aesthetic reactions. Müller maintains that the cornerstone of Shaftesbury’s theodicy is the experience of the beauty of creation (221–4, 230). I agree. Theocles does his best to bring Philocles to an aesthetic appreciation of all natural objects (C 2.388–9; 401). But Theocles never suggests that humanity is beautiful. Quite the contrary; see C 2.112, 2.291, 2.392–4. Theocles advances a cosmodicy, but he does not advance an anthropodicy.
20 For elucidating discussion of Shaftesbury’s love of non-human nature and its influences, see Gatti, ‘The Aesthetic Mind’; Liu, ‘The Surprising Passion for Wild Nature’; and Fleming, ‘The Third Earl of Shaftesbury’.
21 Using the design argument as a solution to the problem of evil is a logically possible route for Shaftesbury, but it seems to me that it is not something we find any significant development of in The Moralists. An anonymous referee for BJHP has suggested that it was just because of these limitations of the design argument – that it did not apply convincingly to human activity – that Shaftesbury initiated an inquiry into the aesthetics of the beautiful. It might not be possible to provide a proof of the goodness of humanity that convinces in the same way as math or logic. Nor would a purely subjective liking be a sufficient basis for the steady, settled love for humanity that virtue requires. But if the focus of virtuous concern is an object of beauty – which for Shaftesbury involves both the rational and the sentimental (or, perhaps, transcends the distinction between the two) – then the problem raised by Philocles may be solved. On this reading, Shaftesbury’s moral sense embodies an appreciation of beauty that transforms a philosophical limitation of the design argument as the basis for ethics into a new principle bridging reason and sentiment. My main reservation about applying this reading to the Moralists, as I explain in footnote 19, is that not even Theocles seems to be able to see beauty throughout the realm of all human activity; see C 2.112, 2.291, 2.392–4.
22 For discussion of whether Shaftesbury intended for The Moralists to reach a single firm conclusion or to end in something more like aporia, see: Prince, Philosophical Dialogue in the British Enlightenment, 47–54) and Hoover, ‘Voices and Accents’.
23 In ‘Shaftesbury’s Philosophical Poetics’, Müller notes how The Moralists ‘reflects [a] seesawing between philosophical reflection and public calling’ (256). In ‘Reading Shaftesbury’s Private Writings’, Lori Branch discusses the tension between Shaftesbury’s desire to be ‘a lover of men’ while remaining ‘immune to the slings of commerce with them’ (265). See also Bullard, ‘Review of Askemata’, 532–4 and Chavez, ‘Philosophy and Politeness in Shaftesbury’s Characteristics’, 51–68.