Shaping Enlightenment Politics

Patrick Müller (ed.)

Shaping Enlightenment Politics

The Social and Political Impact
of the First and Third Earls of Shaftesbury

Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Edited with the Assistance of Christine Jackson-Holzberg

Cover illustration:

St Giles’s House and Gardens, Wimborne St Giles, Dorset.

Photograph copyright: Hugh Mayo, 2015. Courtesy of Lord Shaftesbury.

ISBN 978-3-631-67163-4 (Print)

E-ISBN 978-3-653-06536-7 (E-PDF)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-71053-1 (EPUB)

E-ISBN 978-3-631-71054-8 (MOBI)

DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-06536-7

© Peter Lang GmbH

Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften

Berlin 2018.

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About the editor

Patrick Müller studied English, German, and Philosophy in Münster (Germany) and Edinburgh (United Kingdom), receiving his PhD from Münster University. He worked for The Shaftesbury Project at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany) and has lectured and published widely on both eighteenth-century literature and contemporary fiction. He is currently teacher of English at the German Federal Office of Languages.

About the book

This volume investigates the impact the first and third Earls of Shaftesbury had on Enlightenment thought. The focus is on both their tangible actions on the political stage of the day and on the more general intellectual repercussions of what these men stood for in word and deed. As a result, Shaping Enlightenment Politics offers important re-evaluations of what two towering figures of the age had to contribute to much-contested topics such as slavery, the discourse of civic humanism, or party politics.

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

Acknowledgments

Initally (this time in due order), heartfelt thanks must go to Professor Hermann J. Real and his wife, Erika Choisi-Real, unceasing fountains of inspiration and warm-heartedness. Editing this collection has been an ordeal indeed (there’s no need to mince the matter), and there are several individuals whose generosity of mind and spirit helped me endure: the eternal CJH (the definition of true friendship); Dr Christine Hoidis-Fehler and Lieutenant Colonel Jens Fehler; my wonderful parents Ingrid and Heinz for, although pointing out (quite rightly so) that continuing to work on Shaftesbury might not be emotionally or financially rewarding, accepting the fact that intellectually it is (well, sort of…); Dr David Alvarez (onwards!). Thanks are due to Michael Rücker at Peter Lang for his patience.

Abbati, medico, patronoque intima pande. I would also like to express my gratitude to the German Research Foundation (DFG) for financial support of the conference at St Giles’s House. Moreover, to Professor Rudolf Freiburg and his team (Evelin Werner-Kretschmar and Barbara Gabel-Cunningham) at Friedrich Alexander University, Erlangen-Nürnberg, for generously funding and helping me finish this book.

Finally, as always: all remaining mistakes are the editor’s. Madness in great ones must not unwatch’d go.←7 | 8→ ←8 | 9→

Abbreviations

Nicholas Ashley-Cooper

Prefatory Address

Patrick Müller

Introduction. “I chose therefore my Party & am a Whigg”: The First and Third Earls of Shaftesbury as Political Icons

I. The First Earl of Shaftesbury

Nigel Smith

Whig Wit: Andrew Marvell and the Earls of Shaftesbury

Andrew Agha

Trade for Peace: A Complete Account of the First Earl of Shaftesbury’s Interest in Carolina’s Indian Trade

Mark Goldie

John Locke and the Reputation of the First Earl of Shaftesbury

II. The Third Earl of Shaftesbury in his Time

Jonathan Israel

Shaftesbury, an Early Voice of the Radical Enlightenment

Daniel Carey

Shaftesbury and Locke: A Tale of Three Letters

Patrick Müller

“An equal Commonwealth”: Lord Ashley and the Republican Project of the Late 1690s

Jacob Sider Jost

Party Politics in Characteristicks←9 | 10→

Laurent Jaffro

Psychological and Political Balances: The Third Earl of Shaftesbury’s Reading of James Harrington

Angela Taraborrelli

(Re)defining the Commonwealth: Shaftesbury’s Concept of Political Freedom

David Alvarez

Shaftesbury’s Non-Secular Cosmopolitanism

Lawrence E. Klein

Taste, the People and the Public according to the Third Earl of Shaftesbury

III. The Third Earl of Shaftesbury: Afterlife

William Molesworth

Art, Morality and Choice: The Third Earl of Shaftesbury and John Molesworth

Rebecca Anne Barr

“Moral Painting, by way of Dialogue”: Shaftesbury in The Cry

James Pratt

“Virtue Pointing to Her Rugged Mountain”: Shaftesbury in Early America

Roman Alexander Barton

Radicalising Sympathy: William Godwin’s Reading of Shaftesbury

Contributors←10 | 11→

Abbreviations

All references to Shaftesbury’s writings given within the text are to the Standard Edition: Complete Works, Correspondence and Posthumous Writings, eds Christine Jackson-Holzberg, Friedrich A. Uehlein, Patrick Müller, et al. (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog, 1981–2017). Arabic numerals in square brackets refer to page numbers in the 1714/15 edition of Characteristicks (unless otherwise indicated).

The Standard Edition (SE) volume numbers

for the individual treatises and texts are:

Soliloquy and A Letter concerning Enthusiasm SE I 1

Miscellaneous Reflections SE I 2

Sensus Communis and Instructions … from the ‘Virtuoso-Coppy-Book’ concerning the New Edition (1714) of ‘Characteristicks’ SE I 3

Notes to Characteristicks SE I 4

Second Characters consisting of, among others, A Letter concerning Design, and Plasticks SE I 5

The Moralists SE II 1

An Inquiry concerning Virtue SE II 2

Preface to Whichcote’s Select Sermons and Ainsworth Correspondence SE II 4

Chartae Socraticae SE II 5

Askêmata SE II 6

Letters

Quotations from the Earl’s correspondence are shown as found in the manuscripts and as the texts will appear in SE III 1–4.

The contributions in this book cite letters from the following repositories:

TNA: PRO The National Archives, Kew (formerly Public Record Office)

HRO Hampshire Record Office, Malmesbury Papers

Bodleian Library←11 | 12→ ←12 | 13→

Nicholas Ashley-Cooper,

12th Earl of Shaftesbury, Wimborne St Giles

Prefatory Address

Some of the most enjoyable time spent at St Giles’s House, apart from enjoying it with my family, is discovering its deep and wonderful history. My own journey has been immeasurably enriched by reading and learning about my ancestors. They have always been a source of great inspiration for me. Now, living at St Giles’s House with my family, the connection with them has become that much stronger and more important to me.

Therefore, the idea to host a three-day conference discussing and debating the work of the first and third Earls of Shaftesbury was something that appealed to me greatly. However, as the idea gathered momentum, it also became more ambitious, and securing the speakers from around the globe took a lot of organising and planning. In this regard, I am indebted to Patrick Müller, without whom the conference (and this book!) simply would not have happened.

It wasn’t until the day drew near that I actually felt certain it was going to happen. As we gathered there on a warm day in July, 2015, I could tell many had been of the same mindset. The atmosphere was one of real excitement and anticipation. The notion of these great men looking down on us as we discussed their lives, with some of the Earls’ books as the backdrop, added a sense of poignancy to our discussions, almost as if they were listening in.

This book collects the output from those few magical days, from some of the academics that took part, and brings them together for the reader to enjoy and reflect on. All of this research was presented for the first time at St Giles’s House. I am eternally grateful to everyone who contributed as it brought me closer to two of the most important figures in my family and added further to my understanding of their lives, which mean so much to me.