Why lord shaftesbury is famous

As we will see, this leads to the crucial claims that every motive to action involves affection or passion [C 2. Shaftesbury strongly emphasizes the importance of motive, arguing that if creatures promote the good of the species only because they are forced to or only because promoting the good is a means to other ends, then they are not actually good themselves.

Goodness is something that is within the reach of all sensible creatures, not only humans but also non-human animals. A creature is good if its affections promote the well-being of the system of which it is a part, and non-human animals are just as capable of possessing this type of affection as humans. This special kind of affection is a second-order affection, an affection that has as its object another affection. We humans experience these second-order affections because we, unlike non-human animals, are conscious of our own passions.

Not only do we possess passions, but we also reflect on or become aware of the passions we have. And when we reflect on our own passions, we develop feelings about them.

Imagine you feel the desire to help a person in distress. In addition to simply feeling that desire, you become aware that you are feeling that desire. Or imagine you feel the desire to harm a person who has bested you in a fair competition. In addition to simply feeling the desire to harm, you become aware that you are feeling that desire.

These are the kinds of phenomena Shaftesbury has in mind when he writes that. So that, by means of this reflected Sense, there arises another kind of Affection towards those very Affections themselves, which have been already felt, and are now become the Subject of a new Liking or Dislike.

There is little evidence that he thinks the moral sense is a distinct psychological faculty in the way that Hutcheson did. The second-order feelings that the moral sense produces can themselves motivate to action, and people are virtuous if they act from those second-order feelings. In contrast, non-human animals, because they lack the powers of reflection necessary for consciousness of their own affections, do not possess a moral sense.

So non-human animals are incapable of achieving virtue C 2. Shaftesbury argues that because our sense of morality is a sentiment, it can be opposed only by another sentiment, and not by reason or belief.

Sense of Right and Wrong therefore being as natural to us as natural Affection itself, and being a first Principle in our Constitution and Make; there is no speculative Opinion, Persuasion or Belief, which is capable immediately or directly to exclude or destroy it… And this Affection being an original one of earliest rise in the Soul or affectionate Part; nothing beside contrary Affection, by frequent check and controul, can operate upon it, so as either to diminish it in part, or destroy it in the whole.

Shaftesbury does acknowledge that the sense of right and wrong requires the reflective capacity to conceptualize motives. But it is still affections that morality is based on. Reflection paves the way for the feeling of moral sentiment. He never states outright what Hume would explicitly argue for: that reason on its own is motivationally inert. But the Humean claim is implied by what Shaftesbury does say. Throughout the first version of the Inquiry , he attributes every instance of motivation to affection.

Affection remains that which motivates us to pursue that benefit. If I come to believe a particularly charismatic person is a great benefactor to humanity, I may then become motivated to emulate behavior of hers to which I would otherwise have been opposed.

If I come to believe that a particular group of people is trying to destroy humanity, I may become motivated to attack them in ways that would previously have offended my sense of right and wrong. Affection is the source of all motivational force. Belief on its own mounts no motivational push-back. These ideas are a clear influence on Hutcheson and Hume, who also hold that all motivation is sentimental and that therefore morality is based on sentiment.

One of the most intensely debated issues in Shaftesbury scholarship concerns the moral sense. The two main views can be called the constitutive interpretation and the representative interpretation. The constitutive interpretation holds that morality is constituted by the subjective affective responses of each human.

Sidgwick is often cited as a proponent of this interpretation. It is the feeling, not reason, which is the right moral judge; it is the emotions, according to the Inquiry, which are the right moral guide. Tuveson Tuveson also claims that Shaftesburean moral judgments do not represent anything in mind-independent reality. Schneewind Those in the representative camp may emphasize the influence on Shaftesbury of the Cambridge Platonists, whose rationalist moral theories included a clear commitment to the existence of moral properties independent of our reactions Cassirer —; Gill 77— The representative and constitutive camps can both cite passages that pose interpretative challenges to the other side.

In favor of the representative interpretation and challenging for the constitutive are claims Shaftesbury makes that seem to imply that moral properties are independent of human reactions. He maintains, for instance, that what is destructive of the human species can never be. Virtue of any kind, or in any sense; but must remain still horrid Depravity, notwithstanding any Fashion, Law, Custom, or Religion; which may be ill and vitious it-self , but can never alter the eternal Measures , and immutable independent Nature of Worth and Virtue.

As one of his characters puts it when speaking of the author of the Inquiry :. Shaftesbury contends that beauty is a mind-independent, objective property more on this below. But since aesthetic responses are representative of mind-independent reality, and our moral responses are similar or perhaps identical to our aesthetic responses, it follows that our moral responses are representative as well Schneewind —4; Carey , , and —4.

In favor of the constitutive interpretation and challenging for the representative are statements Shaftesbury makes that seem to imply that the basis for virtue is dependent only on human reactions and thus insensitive to any mind-independent fact Taylor —7; Den Uyl 90; Gill — He says, for instance, that our reason to be virtuous is impervious even to the supposition that we know nothing of the external world.

For let us carry Scepticism ever so far, let us doubt, if we can, of every thing about us; we cannot doubt of what passes within our-selves. Our Passions and Affections are known to us. Nor is it of any concern to our Argument, how these exterior Objects stand; whether they are Realitys, or mere Illusions; whether we wake or dream. For ill Dreams will be equally disturbing. In this Dream of Life, therefore, our Demonstrations have the same force; our Balance and Economy hold good, and our Obligation to Virtue is in every respect the same.

If there be no real Amiableness or Deformity in moral Acts, there is at least an imaginary one of full force. Commentators on either side of the representative-constitutive divide may try to show that passages that seem troublesome for their interpretation do not mean what the other side claims. Jaffro has argued that Shaftesbury consciously changed his mind, or at least decided that he should change how to express his views, moving from an early account that had subjectivist implications to a later account that was more objectivist Jaffro Another possible response to this interpretative issue is to hold that Shaftesbury is simply inconsistent, or that he is unaware of the implications of some of his own claims.

Kivy writes,. Kivy According to Darwall, Shaftesbury believes that the normative authority of morality leads to the view that the basis of morality is within each agent, which conflicts with interpretations that hold that the moral sense represents something external.

But Darwall also holds that Shaftesbury believes that there is a rationally necessary view of morality that each agent should come to, which conflicts with interpretations that hold that the moral sense produces subjective and contingent emotional experiences. Throughout his works, Shaftesbury attacks a view of human motivation that he associates with Hobbesian and voluntarism. Some commentators have thought that the view of human motivation Shaftesbury advances in these anti-Hobbesian and anti-voluntarist passages is ardently non-egoistic—i.

Still other commentators have claimed that Shaftesbury is inconsistent, opposing egoist views of human motivation in some passages and assuming them in other passages Martineau ; Wiley Those who interpret Shaftesbury as an anti-egoist point to passages in which he argues that theories that rely exclusively on selfish motivation cannot explain plainly observable human behavior.

In Wit and Humour , Shaftesbury attacks those who. In fact, Shaftesbury argues, careful observation reveals that humans are motivated by many non-selfish considerations. The Studiers of this Mechanism must have a very partial Eye, to overlook all other Motions besides [selfishness]. Their concern for. Relations , Friends , Countrymen , Laws , Politick Constitutions , the Beauty of Order and Government , and the Interest of Society and Mankind … naturally raise a stronger Affection than any which was grounded upon the narrow bottom of mere Self.

Indeed, even those tendencies that are most destructive are usually based in sociable, non-selfish concerns. War and social disruption are usually caused not by selfishness but by a powerful concern for party or clan.

In short, the very Spirit of Faction , for the greatest part, seems to be no other than the Abuse or Irregularity of that social Love , and common Affection , which is natural to Mankind. For the Opposite of Sociableness is Selfishness. And of all Characters, the thorow-selfish one is the least forward in taking Party.

But according to Shaftesbury such views either fail to explain what people actually do or collapse into tautology C 2. Against Hobbes himself, Shaftesbury presents a pleasantly ironic ad hominem argument. If Hobbes had truly been entirely concerned with his own self-interest, he would never have publicly advanced the view that people are motivated entirely by self-interest.

But Hobbes did not behave in this way. He tried to convince people of the selfishness of human beings precisely because he wanted to help humans beings, even though this conduct placed him at great peril.

His very advancement of the selfish thesis refutes it. According to Shaftesbury, both Hobbes and the voluntarists believed that the only motive humans have to be moral is that a powerful being will reward them for virtue and punish them for vice.

In an oft-cited letter, Shaftesbury places Locke in the same category as Hobbes and the voluntarists, condemning the lot of them for reducing all moral motivation to these selfish concerns. According to Shaftesbury, virtue consists not in the actions people perform, but in their motives for performing them. And the motive with which we identify virtue is concern for humanity, not selfishness. Shaftesbury emphasizes this point by drawing attention to the difference between knaves and saints.

We judge saints to be virtuous because we think they are motivated by something other than the selfishness of the knave. If we came to believe that the saints were motivated by self-interest as well e.

As Shaftesbury puts it,. If the Love of doing good, be not, of it-self, a good and right Inclination; I know not how there can possibly be such a thing as Goodness or Virtue. Shaftesbury maintains, further, that stressing reward and punishment is actually counterproductive to the promotion of virtue. This is because a stress on reward and punishment tends to crowd out or obliterate the intrinsic concern for the good of the species that is essential to true virtue.

He writes,. Men have not been contented to shew the natural Advantages of Honesty and Virtue. Stressing reward and punishment cannot make people more virtuous, and it may very well make them less so C 1. It is for this reason that Shaftesbury has one of his characters in The Moralists say that the author of the Inquiry. If he cannot do thus much, he reckons he does nothing. In his discussions of Hobbes and the voluntarists, then, Shaftesbury seems to be attacking the view that humans are motivated only by self-interest and, relatedly, that self-interest is the only reason for us to be moral.

A crucial text for the egoist reading is the beginning of Book 2 of the Inquiry , where Shaftesbury writes. It remains to inquiry, What Obligation there is to Virtue ; or what Reason to embrace it. As he sums up his argument in the conclusion of the Inquiry ,.

This performance in the Inquiry is the basis for interpretations that claim that Shaftesbury believes that the only salient answer that could be given to the question, Why be moral? How do egoistic interpretations handle the many texts in which Shaftesbury attacks selfish theories of morality and human nature? Some have come to the exasperated conclusion that Shaftesbury is simply inconsistent, sometimes assuming egoism sometimes opposing it Martineau ; Wiley The crucial contrast is between, on the one hand, the arbitrariness of the rewards and punishments of the voluntarist God and the Hobbesian sovereign and, on the other hand, the naturalness of the internal mental enjoyments that come from being virtuous—not the contrast between self-interested and non-self-interested motives.

According to Schneewind, in Book 2 of the Inquiry Shaftesbury is. Irwin argues that virtuous Shaftesburean agents have an immediate aversion to vice that is based on a kind of aesthetic disgust-reaction rather than a reflective calculation about what will benefit them in the long run Irwin Filonowicz argues that virtue and happiness are so closely identified in Shaftesbury that it distorts his view to claim that we seek one as a mere means for the other.

Shaftesbury is not trying to show. Virtue is experienced as being its own reward. Filonowicz On the eudaimonist interpretation of Shaftesbury, virtue benefits its possessor, but the person who possesses virtue does not do the right thing because she thinks it will make her happy. Indeed, a virtuous person will sacrifice what are typically considered benefits to self in order to live up to those values. Caring about other people is not merely a means to some distinct pleasurable experience.

Caring about other people for their own sakes is itself essential to, is constitutive of, the experience of living well. Virtue is intrinsically choice-worthy. Annas has shown the same combination of claims—that virtue consists of caring non-instrumentally about certain kinds of conduct that are objectively proper for human beings, and that the reason to be virtuous is that it will lead to the best life—is present in many eudaimonist views.

Hutcheson writes,. It may perhaps seem strange, that when in this Treatise Virtue is supposed disinterested ; yet so much Pains is taken, by a Comparison of our several Pleasures , to prove the Pleasures of Virtue to be the greatest we are capable of, and that consequently it is truest Interest to be virtuous. Hutcheson viii. Hutcheson goes on to maintain that while virtue does consist of truly non-selfish concern for humanity, it is still useful to show that virtue does not conflict with happiness, as that will prevent people from believing in a conflict between the two ends that would constitute a great obstacle to virtue.

It seems possible that Shaftesbury was anticipating this Hutchesonian thought a thought that Hutcheson attributes to Shaftesbury when arguing in Book 2 of the Inquiry for the coincidence of virtue and happiness. And he develops a psychological explanation for this agreement. Central to this explanation is his distinction between pleasures of the body and pleasures of the mind.

He then seeks to show that living virtuously is by far the best way to gain the crucially important mental pleasures C 2. One of the most famous claims in Characteristicks is that beauty and good are one and the same C 2. Many commentators have criticized this claim for being obscure, confused, or incoherent Brown , ; Martineau , ; Albee , ; Tiffany , ; Bernstein , ; Filonowicz , —2; Crisp , 83— See Gill See also Axelsson , Shaftesbury also suggests that we should be honest even in the dark i.

Let who will make it for you, as you fansy; I know it to be wrong. Whatever I have made hither to, has been true Work. This is Virtue! For is there not a Workmanship and a Truth in Actions? Here Shaftesbury points out that we readily accept the possibility of artists remaining committed to their art, regardless of the external rewards that may result from betraying it.

Some might think that connecting morality and beauty in this way minimizes or undermines the importance of morality. Shaftesbury is here describing a commitment to virtue that seems to be closer to traditional deontological views, in that it has a non-negotiable, overriding practical authority. Like a traditional deontologist, Shaftesbury thinks the virtuous person will do the right thing regardless of any other consequences that may result.

Moral reasons have a practical authority that is intrinsic to them, not the result of their being commanded or of their being instrumental to any other end.

But Shaftesbury differs from many traditional deontologists in the role he gives to sentiment. As I mentioned above, some commentators take Shaftesbury to be not only egoistic but also hedonistic, attributing to him the view that the ultimate practical justification is always pleasure for the agent Grote ; Martineau , ; Peach ; Trianosky ; see also Crisp , 84—5.

There are, however, numerous other places in Chararacteristicks where Shaftesbury explicitly rejects that pleasure is the true or ultimate measure of choice-worthiness. He holds that the truly virtuous person has a non-negotiable commitment to virtue that defies hedonistic weighing C 1.

Only some pleasures are really good, not all of them C 2. Perhaps the eudaimonist reading explained above accounts for the combination of his claims that the virtuous person acts for non-self-interested reasons and that the virtuous person has a more pleasurable life than the vicious.

Alternatively, the hedonistic interpretation might read the criticisms of pleasure as actually criticisms only of physical pleasures, not of mental pleasures. Another possibility is that Shaftesbury changed his mind.

In the Inquiry , which he wrote early in his career, he emphasized pleasure. In The Moralists , Common Sense , and Soliloquy , which he wrote later, he de-emphasized pleasure, indicating a move away from an early hedonistic view. Shaftesbury discusses self and identity throughout Characteristicks. There are different views of how those discussions relate to traditional philosophical questions about personal identity.

A person is a single thing, retaining an identity throughout the years. But that identity cannot consist of physical matter, as every particle of a person changes over time. Now where, I beseech you, will that same One be found at last, supposing it to lie in the Stuff it-self, or any part of it?

It seems, however, that Hume did learn something about personal identity from The Moralists. Of course Hume and Shaftesbury draw opposite conclusions, with Shaftesbury moving from the premise that there is no constant and invariable physical or mental item to the conclusion that personal identity must consist of something other than a physical or mental item, and Hume moving to the conclusion that there is no personal identity.

Thiel attributes to Shaftesbury the metaphysical position that the self, that which constitutes the identity of a person, is a simple immaterial substance Thiel —2. He was to be the ship's naturalist, the expert on plants and animals. In the Galapagos Islands Darwin noticed how the same species of birds, cut off from centuries on different islands, had developed in quite different ways. This and many other amazing discoveries led him to his theory of 'evolution by natural selection'.

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