OLL’s February Birthday: Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury. (February 26, 1671 - February 4, 1713)

February’s OLL Birthday essay is dedicated to Anthony Ashley Cooper, better known to history as the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, or sometimes just Shaftesbury. He was an important statesman and Whig politician during the turbulent years following the Glorious Revolution, but he is probably best remembered as one of the earliest philosophers in what became known as “moral naturalism,” and was one the principal figures in English Deism. 

Anthony was born in Exeter House in London (on the site of the current Strand Palace Hotel), the eldest of six children, into an aristocratic family. His father was, of course, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Second Earl of Shaftesbury (1652-1699), while his mother, Lady Dorothy Manners (1656-1698), was the daughter of the Eighth Earl of Rutland. His early homelife seemed unsettled, due to some apparent tensions between his parents, as well as between his grandfather, the First Earl of Shaftesbury, and his father. The situation was not helped by the fact that his father suffered from some sort of degenerative disease, which left him increasingly incapacitated. As a result of all these factors he went to live with his grandfather when he was three years old and spent much of his childhood in his grandfather’s house. The First Earl of Shaftesbury was a famous Whig statesman and he made a tremendous impression on his grandson, who adored him. While there, his education was entrusted to John Locke, the family physician who had in fact delivered the young Anthony and attended to his mother. Locke educated the boy according to his own pedagogical theories, assisted by a certain Elizabeth Birch, with whom Anthony lived for a time. Something of a child prodigy, Anthony was speaking and reading Latin and Greek fluently by the age of eleven. After his grandfather died in 1683, his father sent him to study at Winchester College. While there, he acquired an interest in neo-platonism which deepened during a two year tour of Europe from 1687 to 1689, during which he visited his old tutor and family friend, John Locke, in the Netherlands.

After his return to England he was obliged to take over the duties of running the family estate from his, by now bedridden, father. Besides these responsibilities, he entered the House of Commons as a Whig in 1695. His poor health (he suffered from asthma and perhaps tuberculosis) forced him to retire in 1698, after which he lived in the Netherlands for a time (befriending Pierre Bayle [1647-1706] while there). Returning to England following the death of his father, and thus inheriting his title, he again served in parliament, this time in the House of Lords, in 1701. Following the coronation of Queen Anne in 1702 he retired from public life and again moved to Holland for a short time, returning to England in 1704. 

It was during the period after his return to England until about 1710 that Shaftesbury wrote most of his philosophical works, published anonymously in 1711 in three volumes as Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, and Times. The book was an immediate sensation, both in England and on the Continent. As mentioned above, from an early age, Shaftesbury had been influenced by the ideas of the Cambridge Platonists, and the influence of Neoplatonism in his work is easy to see. Perhaps the most important implication of these ideas was that of an inherent moral sensibility present in all people. The existence of such a moral sense as a basis for ethical behavior was at odds with both the orthodox Christian understanding of the depraved nature of postlapsarian humanity, as well as the Hobbesian State of Nature, a “war of all against all,” populated by violent, self-interested brutes. Along these same lines, Shaftesbury argued that the “moral sense” was “common sense,” that is, a sense of the common good. The “private good” was that which was what was right for people (or animals) in their self-interest as members of their species. Shaftesbury defined “virtue” as the “real good,” or the harmonization of one’s private good with the common good of one’s species. To put it another way, virtuous behavior was that which furthered the good of all humankind. 

Shaftesbury also explored the premise that beauty and goodness were related, and developed a complex and compelling theory of Aesthetics. Indeed, Shaftesbury himself stated that the aim of the Characteristicks was to introduce the idea of “moral beauty” to society. Perhaps even more importantly, Shaftesbury held that aesthetic experience and intellectual reflection are intimately connected. We appreciate the beauty of an object or idea by reflecting on its harmony. To put it another way, our intellect is influenced by our aesthetic imagination. As Shaftesbury scholar Douglas J. Den Uyl put it, “The aesthetic dimension was, therefore, the link between intellect and imagination, sentiment and judgement.” 

Shaftesbury’s ethical and aesthetic philosophy, perhaps not surprisingly, complemented his Whiggish politics. In both the Characteristicks and in his political career, he was a champion of religious toleration, individual liberty, and a tireless advocate of the supremacy of parliament over the crown. 

In the meantime, in 1709 he married Jane Ewer, from an aristocratic family from Hertfordshire. They had one child, Anthony, born in 1711. Unfortunately for the young family, Shaftesbury’s health, never very good, declined precipitously during this period, and in 1711 he decided to move to a warmer climate and settled in the affluent Chiaia District in Naples, where he died in 1714. His body was brought back to England and laid to rest in the family estate in Dorset. 

Shaftesbury, besides being an indefatigable champion of individual liberty during his career in parliament, is also important for historical developments in the fields of ethics and aesthetics. The “moral sense” school of ethics originated by Shaftesbury was developed further by Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, and Adam Smith, and his work in aesthetic theory laid the groundwork for most future work on the subject, most directly perhaps in Edmond Burke’s concept of the sublime.