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Shaftesbury on Locke

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Jason Aronson
Jason Aronson
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Type
Critical Note
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 53 , Issue 4 , December 1959 , pp. 1101 - 1104
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1959

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References

1 Rand, Benjamin (ed.), The Life, Unpublished Letters and Philosophical Regimen of Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co., 1900), pp. 329, 330, 332Google Scholar, hereinafter referred to as Letters. This letter, dated February 8, 1705, refers to the meeting of the First Earl with Locke in 1666.

2 Brett, R. L., The Third Earl of Shaftesbury: A Study in Eighteenth Century Literary Theory (London: Hutohinson's University Library, 1951), pp. 34 ff.Google Scholar

3 His works as known to the eighteenth century, were first published in the following order: (1) Inquiry Concerning Virtue, published without authority by John Tolland, 1699; (2) A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm, 1708; (3) The Moralists: A Philosophical Rhapsody, 1709; (4) Sensus Communis, an Essay upon the Freedom of Wit and Humour, 1709; (5) Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author, 1710; (6) Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, and Times, 1711, which contains the previous essays and also Miscellaneous Reflections; (7) Tablature of the Judgment of Hercules, 1713.

4 Moore, C. A., “Shaftesbury and the Ethical Poets in England, 1700–1760,” PMLA, Vol. 31 (1916), pp. 264–325CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 See Schlegel, Dorothy B., Shaftesbury and the French Deists (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1956)Google Scholar, ch. vii, “Rousseau, the Populariser of Shaftesbury's Philosophy,”

6 Sabine, for example, refers to “the confusions which abound below the surface of his superficially simple theory.” Sabine, George H., A History of Political Theory (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1950), p. 524Google Scholar.

7 That Shaftesbury was fully committed to the aims of the “Glorious Revolution” is to be seen frequently, for example, in passages such as the following, where he bestows the highest praise on the institutions established by the Whig Settlement: “My zeal for the Revolution, and for that principle which effected it, made me active for the support of the government” (Letters, p. 311); and “We have the notion of a public, and a constitution; how a legislature and executive are modelled. We … can reason justly on the balance of power and property …. By a balance of power and by a restraint of good laws and limitations [we] secure the public liberty.” Shaftesbury, , Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, etc., ed. Robertson, John M., 2 vols. (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1900), I, pp. 63, 73Google Scholar. Hereinafter cited as Characteristics.

8 There is a single reference in Shaftesbury's Second Characters (published posthumously), which will be cited below. But that book comes down to us more as a compilation of notes than in finished form, and so cannot be regarded as on the same plane with those works Shaftesbury guided through the press.

9 This appears to be the attitude of Basil Willey, who writes: “Shaftesbury adds, in the more sober tone of a disciple of Locke, that we shall best provide against human ambition, not by surrendering to a Leviathan, but by a ‘right Division and Balance of Power, and by the Restraint of good Laws and Limitations, which may secure the publick Liberty.’” The Eighteenth Century Background (London: Chatto and Windus, 1946), p. 68Google Scholar.

10 Letters, p. 416.

11 Letters of the Earl of Shaftesbury to a Student at the University (Printed first in the year 1716), pp. 44, 45. Hereinafter cited as Letters to a Student.

12 Ibid., p. 45.

13 Compare, for example, the following view: “The moralistic strain so significant with Locke is absent in Hobbes' writings.” Grimes, Alan, American Political Thought (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1955), p. 64Google Scholar; see also Vaughan, C. E., Studies in the History of Political Philosophy Before and After Rousseau (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1939), pp. 22, 23, 51–54, 130–133Google Scholar; and Gough, J. W., ed., The Second Treatise of Civil Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1946), pp. vii–xxxviGoogle Scholar, passim.

14 To illustrate: “[Apologists for Hobbes] are forced by mere shame to disavow his theories.” Vaughan, op. cit., p. 53.

15 Locke, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Bk. II, ch. xxviii, par. 7), enumerates three “laws,” viz., the divine law, the civil law, and the law of opinion or reputation, which he also calls the “philosophic” law (par. 10). Shaftesbury's criticism here is directed against the third of these which Locke describes as the law by which “men judge whether their actions are … virtues or vices.” Shaftesbury proceeds to criticize Locke's “law” as follows: “As if writing to the Italian or other good masters, or understanders of music, he had said that the law of harmony was opinion; or writing to the makers or scholars in statuary or architecture, he had said in general that the law of design or beauty in these designing arts had been opinion …. Had Mr. Locke been a virtuoso he would not have philosophized thus. For harmony is the beauty, the accord, the proportion of sounds; and harmony is harmony by nature, let particuar ears be over so bad, or let men judge ever so ill of music. So is architecture and its beauty the same, and founded in nature, let men's fancy be ever so Gothic … the same is the case of virtue and honesty.” Letters, p. 416.

16 Letters to a Student, p. 47.

17 Characteristics, I, p. 227Google Scholar.

18 Letters, pp. 345, 346, 347. This critique appears to be in tension with Shaftesbury's previous observation that for Locke virtue had “no other measure, law, or rule, than fashion or custom, etc.” But we must remember that in the passage of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding to which reference has already been made, Locke admits “the divine law … whether promulgated to [men] by the light of nature, or the voice of revelation.” Yet this divine law sanctions a mercenary morality.

19 Shaftesbury, , Second Characters; or the Language of Forms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914), pp. 104–105Google Scholar.

20 It should be understood that this observation applies to the principles of Locke's teaching; for, as has been shown above, Shaftesbury did agree with Locke on certain practical Whig policies.

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