Shaftesbury

The problem of evil is not only a logical problem about God’s goodness but also an existential problem about the sense of God’s presence, which the Biblical book of Job conceives as a problem of aesthetic experience. Thus, just as theism can be grounded in religious experience, atheism can be grounded in experience of evil. This phenomenon is illustrated by two contrasting literary descriptions of aesthetic experience by Jean-Paul Sartre and Annie Dillard. I illuminate both of these literary texts with a discussion of the 18th Century philosopher Lord Shaftesbury’s concept of ‘enthusiasm’.

Az értékkonzervatívok igenis fontosnak tartanak bizonyos a priori mércéket. Ám kérdés, honnét tudják ezeket "levezetni", ha nem engedik be az elméletet a politika világába. A józan észre hivatkozó konzervatív gondolkodásmód e kérdésre kínál választ. Nem hajlandó feladni az értékalapú politizálást, de tartózkodik attól is, hogy ideológiai konstrukciókat erőltessen a gyakorlati politika világára. Az érvelés lényege, hogy rendelkezünk olyan, mindnyájunkban fellelhető érzékenységgel (sense), amelyben elődeink tapasztalatai összegződnek, s amely másrészt biztosítja a politikai közösségünk nyilvános diskurzusának implicit logikáját. Ez a konzervatív elképzelés azt vallja, a józan ész fogalmával jelölt politikai tudás-forma nem mindenkor érvényes, fogalmilag meghatározható elvont elvek formájában ad gyakorlati eligazítást, hanem kicsit ahhoz hasonlít, ahogy a hagyományos elképzelés szerint az erények képesek befolyásolni döntéseinket és irányítani cselekvéseinket: mindenfajta életidegen teoretizálás nélkül. Az alábbi dolgozat arra tesz kísérletet, hogy néhány, bizonyos fokig esetlegesen kiválasztott szerző vonatkozó nézeteire utalva felidézze, milyen elgondolások szolgáltak a józan észt középpontba állító gondolkodásmód mögött. Kiindulópontul Oakeshottnak a tapasztalatról és gyakorlatról vallott elképzelése fog szolgálni. Ezután-ahogy eszmetörténeti előadásaiban Oakeshott maga is-visszakeresem a józan észre utaló politikai gondolkodásmód két antik előzményét (Oakeshott 2006). Arisztotelész vonatkozó elképzeléseiből fogok kiindulni, majd megmutatom, miként telítődik politikai tartalommal Cicerónál a sensus communis fogalma. Mindez azért fontos, mert az antik előzményekre való hivatkozás visszatérő elem a modern nyugati intellektuális konzervativizmusban. Ezt követően Vicóval, Shaftesburyvel és Burke-kel fogunk foglalkozni, a józan ész fogalmának egymástól eltérő, de közös, antik forrásokat használó, kora modern képviselőivel, akiknek vonatkozó elképzelései maguk fontos állomást jelentettek a józan ész modern, konzervatív újrahasznosításának folyamatában. míg azonban Burke szerepét senki nem vonná kétségbe a konzervativizmus születése kapcsán, Vico vagy akár Shaftesbury konzervatív pedigréje egyáltalán nem evidens. A jelen dolgozat mégis emellett érvel, továbbgondolva az Isaiah Berlin és Mark Lilla értelmezése által fémjelzett irányt, s összhangban Gadamer vonatkozó elképzeléseivel. A dolgozat egy olyan konzervatív hagyomány felmutatása, amely a józan észnek mérce-szerepet szán, nem ellentétesen a természetjog korábbi, klasszikus tanításával, ám el kívánja kerülni a klasszikus természetjog skolasztikus és doktriner jellegét. E tekintetben a józan észnek a prudencia erényéhez kapcsolódó, s így antik forrásokig visszanyúló, a kora modernitásban újra elővett, majd jó időre háttérbe szoruló értelmezése lesz irányadó.

On analyse le contexte théologico-politique dans lequel s’inscrit l’interprétation proposée par Diderot du célèbre péricope de Saint Paul : Omnis potestas a Deo ordinata est. Donnée pour définir l’autorité politique, elle a tout de suite suscité de vives critiques de la part des apologistes antiencyclopédistes. L’analyse approfondie du débat ouvert autour de son texte permet de voir comment il redéfinit le rapport entre souverain et sujets dans la nation : contrairement aux traditions absolutistes dont se nourrissaient les pensées politiques conservatives de ses ennemis, le philosophe ne l’envisage plus comme étant un pouvoir absolu du droit divin, mais comme un pouvoir ordinaire régi par la loi (potentia Dei ordinata), mettant ainsi en valeur un véritable contrat social, et ambitionnant sans doute une monarchie constitutionnelle. C’est dans cette perspective que Diderot se réapproprie les textes du Mémoire d’Henri IV de Sully, et les réinterprète totalement. On a pu croire à tort qu’il adoptait explicitement une forme d’obéissance passive à la souveraineté royale. Mais au début des années 50, Diderot présente aux lecteurs du Dictionnaire raisonné un modèle monarchique axé sur une nouvelle conception de la délibération publique héritière de la philosophie de la communication sociale de Shaftesbury.

A sustained analysis of the applicability of Foucault's conception of care of the self to Arendt's ethical concern with solitude as a precondition for internal conversation , personality formation, resistance to normative pressures. Genealogy of solitude in the work of Seneca, Montaigne.

Locke's concept of rights influenced the Framers of the Constitution, which has increased the stakes in later interpretation of what Locke’s model of rights entailed. “Lockean rights” now suggests a perfect right unlimitable by the state in the public interest. Such a right is theoretically interesting, but it is not what Locke had in mind, and it was not the model of rights Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton, and other inherited from Locke's Second Treatise.

This paper was an initial reconstruction of Locke's model of a right, locating it within the legal culture of his time and place. His model of what a right is, in itself, was not controversial then (as the perfect and unlimitable right would have been). It was an interest that could be asserted against a party who harmed it unreasonably, but it remained subject to reasonable limitations in its own use. Thus Locke did not propound a model of rights beyond reasonable limits by law.

Rozprawa Krzysztofa Wawrzonkowskiego nawiązuje do zamierającej dziś w Polsce, choć niegdyś świetnie u nas prosperującej dyscypliny, jaką jest historia estetyki. Dzieło Władysława Tatarkiewicza, Historia estetyki, będące chlubą kultury polskiej, kończy się niestety na omówieniu poglądów myślicieli siedemnastowiecznych. Toruńska szkoła estetyczna, nawiązująca do tradycji Henryka Elzenberga, podejmuje kontynuację tej tradycji. Niniejsza rozprawa Krzysztofa Wawrzonkowskiego, wraz z jego pracą Smak, geniusz, sztuka. Filozofia piękna Alexandra Gerarda w świetle estetyki kantowskiej, oraz książkami Adama Grzelińskiego (Angielski spór o istotę piękna. Koncepcje estetyczne Shaftesbury`ego i Burke`a) i Marty Śliwy (Teoria piękna w filozofii Francisa Hutchesona) dostarcza wyczerpującej prezentacji historii osiemnastowiecznej estetyki brytyjskiej. Tym samym, mimo luki pokoleniowej, podjęta zostaje kontynuacja problematyki tak istotnej dla polskich estetyków minionych generacji.
(z recenzji prof. dr. hab. Mirosława Żelaznego)

This paper examines Shaftesbury’s reflections on the nature of philosophy in his Askêmata notebooks, which draw heavily on the Roman Stoics Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. In what follows I introduce the notebooks, outline Shaftesbury’s account of philosophy therein, compare it with his discussions of the nature of philosophy in his published works, and conclude by suggesting that Pierre Hadot’s conception of ‘philosophy as a way of life’ offers a helpful framework for thinking about Shaftesbury’s account of philosophy.

This essay examines the different answers that British moralists gave to the question ‘what does virtue consist in?’ Rather than as a royal road to present-day views in ethics, their answers are best understood when considered against the background of early modern natural law theories and their projected metaphysics of morals. The emerging ‘science of morality’ dealt with the metaphysical problem of determining what sort of thing virtue is. Considered from this vantage point, the British moralists struggled with the problem of deciding whether moral concepts signify laws of nature, rational drives in human beings, irrational drives in human beings, volitions of a legislator, or social institutions. British moral philosophies in the eighteenth century can be divided up according to whether they defended the thesis that moral qualities are artificial, the thesis that they are part of nature, or the thesis that they are the product of historical experience.

Ruth Boeker offers a new perspective on Locke’s account of persons and personal identity by considering it within the context of his broader philosophical project and the philosophical debates of his day. Her interpretation emphasizes the importance of the moral and religious dimensions of his view. By taking seriously Locke’s general approach to questions of identity, Boeker shows that we should consider his account of personhood separately from his account of personal identity over time. On this basis, she argues that Locke endorses a moral account of personhood, according to which persons are subjects of accountability, and that his particular thinking about moral accountability explains why he regards sameness of consciousness as necessary for personal identity over time. In contrast to some neo-Lockean views about personal identity, Boeker argues that Locke’s account of personal identity is not psychological per se, but rather his underlying moral, religious, metaphysical, and epistemic background beliefs are relevant for understanding why he argues for a consciousness-based account of personal identity. Taking his underlying background beliefs into consideration not only sheds light on why many of his early critics do not adopt Locke’s view, but also shows why his view cannot be as easily dismissed as some of his critics assume.

The eighteenth century was a period of intensely dialogic activity, attempting an equal and mutually inspirational exchange of ideas, free from constraints. Hence the popularity and the rapid growth in the production and consumption of the printed dialogue as a commodity among others amidst the general expansion of the exchange of pleasurable commodities is understandable; this actual commerce of ideas, reflecting the open market of the new consumer-oriented capitalism, could be re-presented in a form that ensured their even greater circulation.

At this period, when books are being exchanged at an unprecedented rate, the kind that I am looking at—the printed representation of debate—is also blooming. Alongside that, consumed even more avidly, is the much more well-known growth of the novel—Bakhtin’s supremely dialogic text. I want to show that the printed dialogue in the eighteenth century shares the dialogicity of the novel and overcomes the monologic traits suggested above: texts from Mandeville, Shaftesbury, and Hume, and Behn’s translation of Fontenelle transcend the genre’s earlier form. In fact, the eighteenth-century dialogue is so variegated, and the early novel so multiform and unclassifiable, that it is not just that the dialogue influences the novel, or that dialogue becomes an important component of the novel, but that the two genres overlap considerably.

Die Frage, auf die dieses Buch eine Antwort zu geben versucht, lautet: Was weiß die Lyrik? Die Frage richtet sich an die europäische Tradition, soweit sie dafür in Betracht kommt, also an die Neuerfindung der Poesie in der Renaissance und die prägnanten Momente im achtzehnten und zwanzigsten Jahrhundert, in denen das Projekt der Dichtung als einer eigenen Wissensinstanz im analytischen Zusammenspiel mit den Wissensmodellen der Zeit wieder aufgenommen und weiter getrieben wurde. Die Untersuchungen zu Celtis, Shaftesbury, Klopstock und Valéry (mit einem kurzen Ausblick auf Stefan George) haben modellhaften Charakter, sie gelten den Grundvorstellungen, die in Werk und Theorie der genannten Autoren ihre Stunde hatten.

La libertad es un concepto ampliamente discutido y abarca un amplio espectro de interpretaciones. Los primeros filósofos de la antigua Hélade ya discutían sobre ella, su significado, sus implicaciones y su relevancia en la vida política de la polis griega. El siglo XVIII, también conocido como el Siglo de las luces, evidenció un clamor generalizado en la Europa occidental por un cambio político orientado a un individualismo liberal y gobiernos reducidos. Sin embargo, las ideas de la Ilustración no fueron creadas por un orden precisamente espontáneo. El siglo XVII fue sumamente importante para cimentar las bases del liberalismo aclamado en el siglo siguiente. En ese contexto surge la filosofía del aclamado padre del liberalismo, John Locke. Inspirado por teólogos medievales, como Richard Hooker; influenciado por grandes políticos, como es el caso de Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, y motivado por la teoría de la naturaleza humana de Thomas Hobbes, John Locke se convirtió en el principal defensor y expositor de los principios que influyeron los grandes movimientos Ilustrados del siglo XVIII.
Ensayos suyos como On Toleration y Two Treatises on Government (1689) sirvieron de base para toda una filosofía de libertad, responsabilidad, individualismo, gobierno limitado por medio del constitucionalismo y persecución de la felicidad. La ideología que precede dicha filosofía es a la que hoy en día denominamos como: liberalismo. Si bien, no soy el primero, ni seré el último, en bautizar a John Locke como “el padre del liberalismo”. Existen opiniones adversas, que contrastan contradicciones entre su teoría y su vida cotidiana. Este ensayo pretende, por medio de un análisis de sus principales obras políticas, desglosar el contenido liberal de sus ensayos y contrastarlos con la realidad de la vida del autor. Si bien es cierto que existen ciertas contradicciones “del dicho al hecho” en Locke, su influencia en la realidad política de la Europa ilustrada es, a todas luces, irrefutable e imprescindible.

This article explores the interpretative importance of Shaftesbury's profound classicism for an understanding of his philosophical objectives, and challenges the general tendency of recent scholarship to marginalise or ignore the substantive content of that philosophy. I argue that Shaftesbury’s classicism finds its most important context, and his vindication of Stoicism and contempt for the moral teachings of Christianity its contemporary significance, in Locke’s distinctive treatment of classical moral philosophy. Precisely because scholars have paid scant attention to the latter, they have failed to comprehend the novelty and importance of the former.

There is a widely held view, due to the work of Jerome Stolnitz, that the concept of a distinctively aesthetic mode of perception, one defined by the characteristic of disinterestedness, originated with such writers as Shaftesbury, Addison, Hutcheson, Burke, and Archibald Alison. I argue through a detailed examination of the texts that this view is a complete misrepresentation. Those of the writers under discussion who employ the concept of disinterestedness (which not all of them do) do not give it the so-called “perceptual” meaning that Stolnitz does, and none of them use it to define a specifically “aesthetic” mode of perception, attention, pleasure, or anything else. The governing concept of their aesthetic thought was neither “disinterestedness” nor “the aesthetic” but (with the exception of Shaftesbury) “taste.” I conclude with an analysis of what the differences are, and why they matter.

In The Fable of the Bees, Bernard Mandeville declared that 'it is impossible we could be sociable Creatures without Hypocrisy'. Mandeville set out his ideas of sociability against Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, whose notions of virtue he dismissed as 'a vast Inlet to Hypocrisy'. The main goal of this article is to reconstruct Mandeville's account of hypocrisy, first by explaining why he accords it such a prominent role in understanding our moral and social norms, and, second, by piecing together his criticisms of Shaftesbury's rival ethical theory. In doing so, the article outlines a more general Mandevillean framework for assessing when hypocrisy is likely to prove either socially beneficial or pernicious, while also examining what is at stake in choosing to expose rather than tolerate other people's hypocrisy.

Die Aufklärung 1 ist verbunden mit einem Ideenkomplex, der dann in politi-scher Hinsicht letztlich zu Ordnungsvorstellungen führt, in deren Rahmen der "pursuit of happiness" des Einzelnen garantiert werden kann. Ethisch-politisch kann dieses Glück oder die Glückseligkeit unterschiedlich ausge-legt werden, 2 und es findet seinen Ausdruck als Zielvorstellung nicht nur in philosophischen Texten, sondern auch in literarischen. Im vorliegenden Buch 3 von Stefanie Arend, Germanistikprofessorin in Rostock, wird die Ge-dankenfigur der Glückseligkeit in ihrer Bedeutung für die Aufklärung so en-cadriert, daß zunächst die Glückseligkeit als unwahrscheinlicher Extremfall im antiken und mittelalterliche Denken bei Aristoteles, Seneca und Thomas analysiert wird, bevor dann mit Hobbes sozusagen ein Generalverdacht ge-gen die antike und christliche Konzeption der Glückseligkeit entfaltet wird. Für Arend stellt Hobbes' Denken einen radikalen Bruch dar gegenüber einer Konzeption, die in der Glückseligkeit eine Art "Sehnsuchtsort" (S. 65) gese-hen haben mag, denn bei Hobbes finde sich eine radikale Polemik gegen die christliche Lehre des Heilsversprechens. Auch wenn es zweifelhaft ist, 1 Handbuch europäische Aufklärung : Begriffe-Konzepte-Wirkung / hrsg. von Heinz Thoma.-Stuttgart ; Weimar : Metzler, 2015.-V, 608 S. ; 25 cm.-ISBN 978-3-476-02054-3 : EUR 79.95 [#4009]; für Deutschland siehe auch Aufklärung : das deutsche 18. Jahrhundert-ein Epochenbild / Steffen Martus.-Reinbek bei Hamburg :

This paper seeks to explore what Herder is actually doing in his Treatise on the Origin of Language and how this fits into his philosophy as a whole. Through the lens of Herder’s critique of Rousseau, the paper demonstrates how he construes the human being, in virtue of the organization of its soul-forces (Seelenkräfte) and the condition of need into which it is born, as compelled to develop itself in two related ways. First, the human being develops its capacity for reason and language from the outset, proceeding through various stages of their development: reflective awareness, inner language, and spoken language. Second, the human being also develops natural affections from the very beginning, which, in turn, ground its natural sociability. Language, reason, and sociability together form the basis of human culture and civilization and their development is governed by a set of natural laws that emerge from Herder’s metaphysics.

This book examines the nature and significance of religious enthusiasm in early Enlightenment England. In the early modern period, the term ‘enthusiasm’ was a smear word used to discredit the dissenters of the radical Reformation as dangerous religious fanatics. In England, the term gained prominence from the Civil War period and throughout the eighteenth century. Anglican ministers and the proponents of the Enlightenment used it more widely against Paracelsian chemists, experimental philosophers, religious dissenters and divines, astrologers or anyone claiming superior knowledge. As a result, our understanding of enthusiasm is largely influenced by the hostile discourse of Augustan moralist and early Enlighteners. But who exactly were these enthusiasts? What did they believe in, how did they operate as a community and what impact did they have on their contemporaries? This book aims to answer these questions by concentrating on the notorious case of the French Prophets. It demonstrates how the understanding of enthusiasm evolved around 1700, designating anything from a religious fanaticism to a social epidemic and even a bodily disease. It offers the first comprehensive approach to enthusiasm, looking at this multifarious issue from a successively social, religious, cultural, political and medical perspective. Based on extensive archival research, it sheds new light on the reality of enthusiasm away from the hostility of Enlightenment discourse.

In how far is it possible to use the term “radicalism” in connection with the third Earl of Shaftesbury? The essay argues that, as an active politician, Shaftesbury was sometimes an idealist, but mostly a pragmatist, and that he fought the more radical political battles (always in support of the Whig cause) in the republic of letters, starting with a series of reissues of classical republican texts, all edited by John Toland, between 1698 and 1700; the Earl’s own edition of sermons by the Cambridge Platonist Benjamin Whichcote can be seen as a supplementary volume to these republications. With his own Characteristicks (1711), Shaftesbury positioned himself as a writer in the tradition of Harrington (whom, as he wrote to Thomas Stringer in 1700, he regarded as “a Prophet & one inspir’d”), but one whose political agenda lies hidden under a complex veil of allusions. Thought to their logical extreme, the Earl’s views amount to a Utopian discourse that envisions a secular millenarian constitution for Great Britain – a constitution that, after the bitter religious feuds raging during the first decade of the eighteenth century, embodies a radically secular state.

Rather than reading Shaftesbury in anticipation of later forms of disinterestedness, this essay seeks to unpack the larger significance of his aesthetics by tracing his ideas back to their ancient sources. This essay looks to the venerable tradition of world contemplation. It argues that Shaftesbury advances a specifically Stoic model of world contemplation in The Moralists. The text's principal concern is not with this or that beautiful object but with the whole of which it and the viewer are indivisibly a part; its aim is not so much to account for how we perceive beauty as to foster a characteristically Stoic orientation toward the world, one in which we overcome our egocentric view of things and align ourselves with the natural workings of the world or universe in its entirety. Far from being 'autonomous' from the rest of life, the Stoic world contemplation Shaftesbury advocates entails a robust affirmation of existence, clear-eyed gratitude for being part of the universe, whatever the challenges and however fleeting our time in it may be.

This article has a dual focus.  On the one hand, it traces the history of the tradition of the floating and rotating dome and relates it to the idea of the sublime.  On the other hand, it delves into the phenomenological component of the sublime as discussed in philosophy and as presented in literature and in architecture in relationship to expansive space.  In the process, it distinguishes between the architectural sublime, the cosmological sublime, and the spatial sublime.

The aim of this paper is to show that Shaftesbury's thinking about liberty is best understood in terms of self-mastery. To examine his understanding of liberty, I turn to a painting that he commissioned on the ancient theme of the choice of Hercules and the notes that he prepared for the artist. Questions of human choice are also present in the so-called story of an amour, which addresses the difficulties of controlling human passions. Jaffro distinguishes three notions of self-control that are present in the story of an amour. Although I agree with many aspects of Jaffro's interpretation, I question his conclusion that self-control in the Stoic sense is best reserved for 'moral heroes.' I propose an alternative developmental interpretation, according to which all human beings are on an intellectual journey aimed at personal and moral improvement. My interpretation takes seriously that for Shaftesbury philosophy is meant to be practical and help improve our lives. I end by arguing that rather than trying to situate Shaftesbury's concept of liberty within debates among compatibilists and incompatibilists it is more promising to understand it in terms of self-mastery and thus regard it as a version of positive liberty.

The chapter presents a synthetic account of the young Herder’s metaphysics and epistemology, based on several short pieces from the 1760s, with the intention of bringing into relief their strikingly systematic and coherent nature. The objective is to give the reader a greater sense of the philosophical depth of Herder’s anthropology. The first section examines God’s relationship to the world he creates. The second turns to the analogous relationship, based on interaction, between the soul and the body it builds for itself. And in the third, we bring this all together in order to understand how the embodied soul, through engagement with the world, obtains knowledge, and acquires its identity as a historical-cultural being.

By founding morality on the particular sentiments of approbation and disapprobation, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith implied that the nature of moral judgment was far more intuitive and accessible than their rationalist predecessors and contemporaries would, or at least easily could, allow. And yet, these ‘Sentimentalists’ faced the longstanding belief that the human affective psyche is a veritable labyrinth – an obstacle to practical morality if not something literally brutish in us. The Scottish Sentimentalists thus implicitly tasked themselves with distinguishing and locating the particular sentiments of approbation and disapprobation in the human psyche. In this paper, I argue that this task led Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith to adopt a remarkable thesis when it came to the nature of the moral sentiments, namely, that the sentiments of moral approbation and disapprobation are peculiar – somehow radically unlike other sentiments.

Was Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury a libertine? This article seeks to identify the libertine elements in Shaftesbury’s thought and actions in order to provide a more nuanced understanding of his sexuality and its importance to his philosophy. I demonstrate that Shaftesbury’s ideals of masculine homosociality structured both his notions of human sociability and the philosophic rhetoric in which he articulated them.

Shaftesbury’s libertinism was ultimately a discursive pose; there is a raffishness of style, albeit platonic, as well as a highly erotic content, however esoteric and exclusively homoerotic, to his writings. Both of which belie his strident condemnations of the libertinism of his contemporaries.

The objective of this paper is to trace the influence of Stoic dispositional innatism (prolepsis) on the early development of Herder’s concept of force (Kraft) through an examination of two of the most likely sources of transmission of this tradition: Leibniz and Shaftesbury. The interdependence of soul-forces (Seelenkräfte), the obscure (dunkel), and dispositional innatism is then explored in Herder’s plan for an aesthetics that genuinely comes to grips with the lower, sensuous regions of the soul that he presents against the backdrop of his critical engagement with Baumgarten.

"Re/Minding the Modern traces a small number key concepts of humanistic inquiry (will – person – judgment – action) from antiquity through the early nineteenth century. Its main contention is that under conditions of modernity, both of these conceptions become gradually incoherent and eventually unintelligible. As a result, our grasp of the nature and function of concepts is decisively altered, which in turn compromises our understanding of humanistic inquiry itself.

Part I explores the genesis of the concept of the Will in Aristotle's and the Stoics' theory of judgment and then moves on to its consolidation in St. Augustine's De Trinitate and in Aquinas' Summa. Subsequent chapters focus on the increasing tension between willing and cognition, and on the ascent of voluntarist and irrational models of human agency in Ockham, Hobbes, and Locke.  They are followed by chapters exploring the gradual dissolution of the concept of the Will and its displacement onto eighteenth-century models of the "passions." The focus here is on Shaftesbury, Mandeville, Hutcheson, Hume, and A. Smith.

Part II explores the later Coleridge’s philosophical theology, especially his unique and ambitious retrieval of conceptions of Person and Will via neo-Platonic philosophy and Trinitarian theology. The objective here is to trace how humanistic concepts and the Basisphänomene (as Ernst Cassirer calls them) they seek to elucidate acquire meaning and significance only inasmuch as we are prepared positively to engage (rather than “historicize”) their previous usages.  Concepts like will and person are essentially interpretive, which is to say, not neutral tools but evaluative, heuristic frameworks that afford us orientation even as they are subject to continual re-interpretation. Readings in this second part take on Coleridge's Aids to Reflection, his later Notebooks, as well as the fragments associated with his Opus Maximum.  From these texts, the argument leaps back to the emergent conception of human personhood in the Cappadocian Fathers, St. Augustine, Boethius, Richard of St. Victor, as well as forward to post-Coleridgean, Judaic models of personhood as constituted in the I-Thou relationship (in M. Buber and E. Levinas).
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Resumen La reflexión sobre la antigüedad y la herencia clásica constituye uno de los pilares centrales de pensamiento de Anthony Ashley Cooper, conde de Shaftesbury (1671-1713). En este artículo se lleva a cabo un estudio del significado que la referencia a la antigüedad adquiere en la estética y en la teoría artística del filósofo. Dada la amplitud del tema, el artículo se divide en dos partes. En la primera se examina su interpretación de aquellos temas del debate contemporáneo de los anti-guos y los modernos que tienen una especial relevancia, tanto a la hora de reconstruir su visión de la relación entre la cultura antigua y la moderna, como de entender los motivos de su adhe-sión a una concepción clásica del saber humano, y de comprender también su lectura de algunos conceptos artísticos de raíz clásica que alcanzaron un gran protagonismo en la estética de la Ilustración, como la noción de entusiasmo o la idea de lo sublime. En la segunda parte se analiza la naturaleza específica del clasicismo de Shaftesbury: las razones de su defensa de la recupera-ción del modelo clásico en Inglaterra a principios del siglo xviii, las principales características de su teoría artística inspirada en la antigüedad y en la crítica clásica, y el trasfondo filosófico, moral y político que guía su concepción del arte. Palabras clave: Anthony Ashley Cooper, Shaftesbury (1671-1713), antigüedad, antiguos y modernos, arte, teo-ría artística y estética de la Ilustración, clasicismo en Inglaterra, siglo xviii. Abstract Shaftesbury and the classical model The reflexion on Antiquity and the classical heritage constitutes one of the main pillars of the philosophy of Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713). This article studies the meaning that the reference to Antiquity attained in his aesthetics and in his artistic theory. Given the extent of the subject, the article has two parts.The first examines Shaftesbury's interpretation of those issues belonging to the contemporary debate on ancients and moderns that have a special relevance to reconstruct his vision of the relation between ancient and modern culture, to understand his adherence to a classical conception of human knowledge, and to comprehend as well his interpretation of some artistic concepts of classical origin that achieved a prominent role in the aesthetics of the Enlightenment, as the notion of enthusiasm or the idea of the sublime. The second part analyzes the specific nature of Shaftesbury's classicism: the reasons of his defense of the adoption of the classical model in England at the early Eighteenth-century, the main characteristics of his artistic theory inspired in Antiquity and the classical tradition , and the philosophical, moral and political background that guides his conception of art.

Shaftesbury's major work Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times was one of the most influential English works in the eighteenth century. This paper focuses on his contributions to debates about persons and personal identity and shows that Shaftesbury regards metaphysical questions of personal identity as closely connected with normative questions of character development. I argue that he is willing to accept that persons are substances and that he takes their continued existence for granted. He sees the need to supplement metaphysical debates of personal identity and believes that we have to turn to the character that is realized by a substance if we want to understand who we are. For Shaftesbury, persons have a particular character, can act and govern themselves. I propose that Shaftesbury's approach to persons has a developmental dimension, which is meant to encourage personal development and improvement of character. The developmental dimension can be understood as an intellectual journey that invites us to search for our true self, to develop our character and to seek happiness, which ultimately involves understanding our place as persons in the order of the universe. I show that my developmental interpretation is preferable to other existing interpretations.

“It was heretofore the Wisdom of some wise Nations, to let People be Fools as much as they pleas’d, and never to punish seriously what deserv’d only to be laugh’d at.” This key phrase summarizes the idea behind one of the most hotly debated concepts of the eighteenth century, i.e. the famed test of ridicule. Shaftesbury’s Letter concerning Enthusiasm and Sensus Communis make ridicule and laughter appear as an “innocent Remedy” that can be applied to all sorts of what Shaftesbury regarded as cultural ‘evils’. These could range from harmless artistic failures to violent ‘distempers’ such as those of (in Shaftesbury’s opinion) the Tory zealots who practised religious persecution. It is still a common misconception that the ‘test of ridicule’ establishes laughter as a criterion of truth. It is more properly an enlightened reflection on the appropriate mental attitudes of those who are in search of truth. While the test acknowledges the importance and seriousness of such a quest, it also demands the readiness to test anyone’s, including a person’s own, preconceptions which Shaftesbury describes as “certain Idol-Notions, which we will never suffer to be unveil’d, or seen in open light” and, if necessary, to laugh at them.
The conversational tone of the Earl’s published writings covers to a certain extent the unease about the (ab)uses of laughter that is more evident in some of his unpublished manuscripts. Throughout his writing career, Shaftesbury was very much interested in the cultural uses of laughter; in fact, his politics of ridicule are nothing less than a detailed cultural critique. It is therefore important for him to delineate the proper province of laughter: “There is a great difference between seeking how to raise a Laugh from every thing; and seeking, in every thing, what justly may be laugh’d at.” For Shaftesbury, the disciplining of one’s disposition to laughter was an important aspect of an individual’s character training.
In his private exercises, based on what he regarded as the “Socratic Stoicism” of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, he devised an ‘anatomy’ or short cultural history of laughter which has hitherto not received the attention it deserves. Starting from the premise that “there [is] nothing more unsafe, or more difficult of management” than laughter, he attempted to find a way to turn it into a permanently disciplined “Passion wch may be employd […] against the Pomp & rediculouse solemnity of human affaires.” His aim was to promulgate a theory of decent laughter designed for a cultured caste of “well bred People, those of a finer Make, better Tast & raisd above the Vulgar.”
There are seeming inconsistencies of the Earl’s views on laughter which have already been investigated in some detail (e.g. by Richard B. Wolf), especially with regard to his concept of satire as opposed to what he says about ridicule. This will be an aspect of a lecture which will in addition examine the Earl’s theory of laughter as set forth throughout his published writings, its pictorial representation in the engravings devised by Shaftesbury himself for the second edition of Characteristicks, and the relation of these to his private Askêmata as well as to his unpublished Pathologia. The aim of the lecture is to illuminate all aspects of Shaftesbury’s attempt to exchange a “vulgar, sordid, profuse, horrid Laughter for that more reservd gentle kind” which was an integral part of his Whig utopia.

Para um adequado entendimento do gênero gótico, um mero estudo estrutural das obras literárias ofuscaria completamente a maneira pela qual se inserem no contexto britânico; o que torna necessário um compromisso com o contextualismo histórico e com a história das ideias na medida em que, a partir disso, é possível notar não apenas como o gótico se coloca como uma literatura subversiva e de recusa; mas, também, como o gênero se insere no contexto da época, com quais valores demonstrava ansiedade e como era visto pelos autores que protagonizaram a mobilização dos conceitos e ideais que marcaram o século XVIII. Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Mandeville, Shaftesbury e Addison (obras publicadas entre 1620-1711) fazem parte do hall de autores que influenciaram diretamente as discussões colocadas, de forma contundente, acerca do progresso científico, da civilidade, da polidez, do luxo, do comércio e da moral pelos autores contemporâneos ao nascimento do gênero gótico: Hume, Ferguson, Kames, Gregory, Chesterfield, Smith e Mary Wollstonecraft (mãe de Mary Shelley). Ciente da necessidade de uma investigação acurada dos ideais aos quais os romancistas góticos estavam comprometidos, faz se necessário dividir o estudo que se segue em duas partes: na primeira, estuda-se os ideais e o contexto britânico e, na segunda, há um estudo de algumas obras góticas (sem perder de vista o que foi estabelecido na primeira parte).

Frequently, when collecting several essays on a very broad topic, it is difficult to find a title that expresses both perspicuously and incisively the common thread running through the whole collection. is, however, is not the case with the present collection, since the editors have found an extremely effective formula to provide the reader with an accurate idea of what to expect not only from each essay, but also from the way they mutually interact. More specifically, the plural that characterizes the term " aesthetics " immediately suggests that the texts revolve around the different ways of conceiving the sensible dimension in Kant's thought. ese multiple meanings allude, on the one hand, to the inner articulation of sensibility , that is, to the way Kant redefines its meaning and role in the narrow domain of the theory of knowledge.

This paper aims to reconstruct Francis Hutcheson's thinking about liberty. Since he does not offer a detailed treatment of philosophical questions concerning liberty in his mature philosophical writings I turn to a textbook on metaphysics. We can assume that he prepared the textbook during the 1720s in Dublin. This textbook deserves more attention. First, it sheds light on Hutcheson's role as a teacher in Ireland and Scotland. Second, Hutcheson's contributions to metaphysical disputes are more original than sometimes assumed. To appreciate his independent thinking, I argue, it is helpful to take the intellectual debates in Ireland into consideration, including William King's defence of free will and discussions of Shaftesbury's views in Robert Molesworth's intellectual circle. Rather than taking a stance on the philosophical disputes about liberty, I argue that Hutcheson aims to shift the focus of the debates towards practical questions concerning control of desire, cultivation of habits, and character development.

Written by theologians, literary scholars, political theorists, classicists, and philosophers, the essays in Judgment and Action address the growing sense that certain key concepts in humanistic scholarship have become suspect, if not downright unintelligible, amid the current plethora of critical methods. These essays aim to reassert the normative force of judgment and action, two concepts at the very core of literary analysis, systematic theology, philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, and other disciplines.

Interpretation is essential to every humanistic discipline, and every interpretation is an act of judgment. Yet the work of interpretation and judgment has been called into question by contemporary methods in the humanities, which incline either toward contextual determination of meaning or toward the suspension of judgment altogether. Action is closely related to judgment and interpretation and like them, it has been rendered questionable. An action is not simply the performance of a deed but requires the deed’s intelligibility, which can be secured only through interpretation and judgment.

Organized into four broad themes—interiority/contemplation, ethics, politics/community, and aesthetics/image—the aim of this broad-ranging and insightful collection is to illuminate the histories of judgment and action, identify critical sites from which rethinking them may begin, clarify how they came to be challenged, and relocate them within a broader intellectual-historical trajectory that renders them intelligible.