Shaftesbury’s Re-imagining of the Passions

Abstract

The Third Earl of Shaftesbury is generally viewed as the key philosopher in eighteenth-century England to reiterate the classical idea that man’s virtue lay in recognizing the interconnectedness of all beings through his use of reason. In the face of a growing acceptance of self-interest as natural to man in the eighteenth century, Shaftesbury, through his writings, has been understood to have countered the view of man as naturally selfish by arguing that man through his reason can comprehend how all beings are organically linked, and desire the good of all. In this article, I focus on how Shaftesbury addressed a more particular problem – the idea of public good was now being seen as too abstract and remote to evoke the instinctive benevolence and virtue in man. In his time, the passions were increasingly understood as the prime mover or motivation for man’s benevolent actions, and reason was not adequate enough to move men in desiring public good, especially the welfare of people outside their own familiar circle. This article shows how Shaftesbury reworks the older idea of virtue based on reason, into a virtue that is interwoven with the passions, in order to answer the problem of how people can be motivated to desire public good. Shaftesbury refurbishes a notion of virtue based on reason, and seeks to make it coterminous with a natural affection towards the idea of public good.