Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, third earl of

Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, third earl of (1671–1713), excluded by ill-health from active politics after 1702, devoted himself to intellectual pursuits, and in particular to moral and aesthetic philosophy. His principal writings are embodied in his Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, and Times (1711; rev. ed. 1714). Shaftesbury was influenced by Deism; he was at once a Platonist and a churchman, an opponent of the selfish theory of conduct advocated by Hobbes. Man has ‘affections’, Shaftesbury held, not only for himself but for the creatures about him. And there is no conflict between the self-regarding and social affections; for the individual's own good is included in the good of society. Moreover, man has a capacity for distinguishing right and wrong, the beauty or ugliness of actions and affections, and this he calls the ‘moral sense’. His influence is seen in the writing of Arbuckle, Akenside, and Fielding, and in the philosophy of Hutcheson and Turnbull.