Reading Shaftesbury's Pathologia: An Illustration and Defence of the Stoic Account of the Emotions

Summary

The present article is an edition of the Pathologia (1706), a Latin manuscript on the passions by Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713). There are two parts, i) an introduction with commentary (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2012.679795), and ii) an edition of the Latin text with an English translation (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2012.679796) . The Pathologia treats of a series of topics concerning moral psychology, ethics and philology, presenting a reconstruction of the Stoic theory of the emotions that is closely modelled on Cicero and Diogenes Lærtius. It contains a most detailed typology of the passions and affections as well as an analysis of a series of psychological connections, for example between admiration and pride. On the basis of his reconstruction of Stoic moral psychology and ethics, Shaftesbury argues that in one of his phases, Horace should be interpreted as a Stoic rather than as an Epicurean. The translation and the commentary draw attention to the relations between the Pathologia and Shaftesbury's English writings, most importantly Miscellaneous Reflections and the Inquiry Concerning Virtue, or Merit, which sheds light on several features of Shaftesbury's relation to Stoicism.

Keywords:

• Shaftesbury
• Stoicism
• emotions
• passions
• moral psychology
• Horace
• Cicero

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Alexander Broadie, Richard Glauser, James A. Harris, Thomas E. Jones, Ralph MacLean, Joanna Patsalidou, Philip Reimann, Delphine Soulard, Richard Whatmore, participants of workshops and seminars on the British Moralists in Paris (2011), Neuchâtel (2006 and 2011), Fribourg (2012), an anonymous referee, and our colleagues at the Research Centre Philosophies et rationalités (PHIER) in Clermont-Ferrand for insightful comments, linguistic support and most patient benevolentia.

Notes

¹For more historical context, see James Dybikowski, ‘Letters from Solitude: Pierre Coste's Correspondence with the Third Earl of Shaftesbury’, in Les réseaux de correspondance à l’âge classique (XVIe-XVIIIe siècle), edited by Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire, Jens Häseler and Anthony McKenna (Saint-Etienne, 2006), 109–33.

²See The Life, Unpublished Letters, and Philosophical Regimen of Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, edited by Benjamin Rand (London, 1900). See also the more extensive and reliable edition in Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, and Le Refuge Français. Correspondence, edited by Rex A. Barrell (Lewiston, NY, 1989).

³We wish to thank Delphine Soulard for communicating to us her detailed description of these documents. On the context, see also John Milton, ‘Pierre Coste, John Locke, and the Third Earl of Shaftesbury’, in Studies on Locke: Sources, Contemporaries, and Legacy, edited by Sarah Hutton and Paul Schuurman (Dordrecht, 2008), 195–223.

⁴See Laurent Jaffro, ‘“De bon lieu”: Pierre Coste, James Harris, et la dissémination de l'interprétation shaftesburienne d'Horace’, La Lettre Clandestine, 15 (2007), 47–60.

⁵Pierre Coste to Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, 08 July 1706, in the Hampshire County Record Office (HRO) 9M73/G255/5. The project was to succeed: see Horace, Œuvres d'Horace, traduites en françois par le P. Tarteron de la Compagnie de Jésus. Avec des remarques critiques sur la traduction, revised fourth edition, 2 vols, (Amsterdam, 1710).

⁶Barrell, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, and Le Refuge Français, 163 and following.

⁷See Horace, Epistles, I. 1. 16.

⁸Horace, Epistles, I. 10. 24.

⁹Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Askêmata, in PRO 30/24/27/10, page 376 in Shaftesbury's pagination. The text follows the HRO allograph manuscript, which is evident from its using the expression ‘ex invidentia ergo’ instead of ‘ex malevolentia ergo’.

¹⁰Robert Voitle, The Third Earl of Shaftesbury, 1671–1713 (Baton Rouge, 1984), 254–58. According to Voitle, Shaftesbury was probably hosted there by the third Earl of Gainsborough, with whom he had a family connection. Shaftesbury's cousin, Dorothy Manners, of the house of Rutland, wife of Gainsborough, was later to succeed in marrying her daughter to the fourth Earl of Shaftesbury, aged fourteen.

¹¹This does however not exclude the possibility that other manuscripts existed anterior to both PRO and HRO.

¹²Compare for example the consistent change in HRO from allograph odium malevolens (correctly copied from PRO) to autograph pudor odiosus; see Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Pathologia, edited and translated by Laurent Jaffro, Christian Maurer and Alain Petit, this issue, 5 and following. This autograph modification reappears below in HRO.

¹³Most importantly, HRO allograph reads vitæ hujus operisque et laboris, whereas PRO has operisque crossed out and replaced by cursusque; see Shaftesbury, Pathologia, this issue, 8). The subsequent expressions quasi scripti alicujus vel Picturæ and manus ultima imposita are copied from PRO to HRO and supposedly later crossed out in PRO only.

¹⁴Shaftesbury, Askêmata, in PRO 30/24/27/10, page 374 in Shaftesbury's pagination.

¹⁵Thomas Hobbes, The Elements of Law Natural and Politic, edited by J. C. A. Gaskin (Oxford, 2008), I. xi. 13, 54 and following.

¹⁶See for example the following books, just to mention a couple: Jacqueline Lagrée, Le néostoïcisme. Une philosophie par gros temps (Paris, 2010); Margaret Graver, Stoicism and Emotion (Chicago, 2007). See also several contributions to the following edited volume and journal special issue: Hellenistic and Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Jon Miller and Brad Inwood (Cambridge, 2003); The Place of the Ancients in the Moral Philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment, edited by James A. Harris (The Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 8 (2010)). A similar phenomenon can be stated concerning the study of the reception of Epicureanism and other classical philosophical systems.

¹⁷On the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see for example Lagrée, Le néostoïcisme, 19 and following.

¹⁸See Marcus Tullius Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, IV. v.

¹⁹We use the term ‘emotions’ in a generic sense, covering both violent emotions or ‘passions’ (in a specific sense) and calm emotions or ‘affections’ (in a specific sense). These are usually treated as different from mere affects or impulses, which do not involve representations of objects or states of affairs as good or ill.

²⁰See for example James Fieser, ‘Hume's Classification of the Passions and its Precursors’, Hume Studies, 18 (1992), 1–17 (6).

²¹Shaftesbury, Pathologia, this issue, 3 and following. See also Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, book IV and Diogenes Lærtius, The Lives of the Philosophers, book VII.

²²Shaftesbury, Pathologia, this issue, 1 and following.

²³For the Stoics, reason is identical with internal discourse or logos.

²⁴Fieser, ‘Hume's Classification’, 2, 7.

²⁵See Laurent Jaffro, ‘La question du sens moral et le lexique stoïcien’, in Shaftesbury. Philosophie et politesse, edited by Fabienne Brugère and Michel Malherbe (Paris, 2000), 61–78 (68–71).

²⁶See Lærtius, Lives of Philosophers, book VII, 110, 116. On classifications of the passions in classical Stoicism, see Graver, Stoicism and Emotion, 53–59.

²⁷Shaftesbury, Pathologia, this issue, 1 and following.

²⁸Shaftesbury, Pathologia, this issue, 2.

²⁹Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections on the preceding Treatises, and other Critical Subjects, in Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, edited by Douglas Den Uyl, 3 vols (Indianapolis, 2001), III, 1–209 (119). This terminology informs our translation—except for the English term ‘grief’, which we use to translate the Latin ægritudo, ‘pain’ being used as a translation for dolor.

³⁰Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, in Characteristicks, III, 119 and following, 121 and following.

³¹Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, An Inquiry Concerning Virtue, or Merit, in Characteristicks, II, 1–100 (50 and following).

³²Compare with the discussion in Shaftesbury, Inquiry, in Characteristicks, II, 80 and following.

³³Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, in Characteristicks, III, 119 and following. This passage looks almost like a translation from the Pathologia.

³⁴Shaftesbury, Inquiry, in Characteristicks, II, 15.

³⁵Shaftesbury, Inquiry, in Characteristicks, II, 18.

³⁹Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, in Characteristicks, III, 121.

³⁶Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, in Characteristicks, III, 117.

³⁷Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, in Characteristicks, III, 120 and following.

³⁸Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, in Characteristicks, III, 122.

⁴⁰Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, in Characteristicks, III, 121.

⁴¹Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, in Characteristicks, III, 135.

⁴²Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, in Characteristicks, III, 122.

⁴³See Christian Maurer, ‘Hutcheson's Relation to Stoicism in the Light of His Moral Psychology’, The Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 8 (2010), 33–49 for an account of how Hutcheson deals with a very similar problem and rejects certain stricter versions of Stoicism. On pity, see further Lagrée, Le néostoïcisme, 136 and following.

⁴⁶Shaftesbury, Pathologia, this issue, 8 and following.

⁴⁴Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Sensus Communis, an Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour in a Letter to a Friend, in Characteristicks, I, 37–93 (74); Shaftesbury, Inquiry, in Characteristicks, II, 16.

⁴⁵Shaftesbury, Inquiry, in Characteristicks, II, 16.

⁴⁸Shaftesbury, The Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody, in Characteristicks, II, 101–247 (220 and following).

⁴⁷Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, in Characteristicks, III, 111–14.

⁴⁹The Letter was written in September 1707. Shaftesbury ridicules the London ‘French Prophets’ and, through them, primitive Christianity. On the context, see Michael Heyd, ‘Be Sober and Reasonable’: The Critique of Enthusiasm in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries (Leiden, 1995).

⁵⁰Shaftesbury, Pathologia, this issue, 5 and following.

⁵¹Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, in Characteristicks, III, 121, 123 note.

⁵²Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, in Characteristicks, III, 123.

⁵³Epictetus and Simplicius, Epictetus His Morals, with Simplicius His Comment, edited and translated by George Stanhope (London, 1694), 67.

⁵⁵Stanhope, Epictetus, 77.

⁵⁴Shaftesbury, Pathologia, this issue, 7.

⁵⁶The numbers refer to thematic sections in our Latin edition and English translation.