The title of Earl of Shaftesbury was created in 1672 for Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Baron Ashley, a prominent politician in the Cabal then dominating the policies of King Charles II.
Shaftesbury's view of aesthetic judgment was both sentimentalist and objectivist, in that he thought that correct moral judgment was based in human sentiments that reflected accurately the harmonious cosmic order (section 7).
Shaftesbury would eventually come to disagree with many aspects of Locke's philosophy (such as the latter's empiricism, his social contract theory, and what Shaftesbury perceived to be his psychological and ethical egoism), but Locke was clearly a crucially important influence on Shaftesbury's philosophical development, and the two men remained friends until Locke's death.
Shaftesbury repeatedly advances versions of the argument from Design for the existence of God, and his general teleological approach is deeply theistic (it could perhaps be said that his teleology and his religion were one and the same thing).
Feeds |
Contact