scholarly journals Shaftesbury Reconsidered

Locke Studies ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 163-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Stuart-Buttle
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Complex Figure ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
History Of ◽  
Eighteenth Century Britain ◽  
Original Index ◽  
Moral Philosophers

Anthony Ashley Cooper, third earl of Shaftesbury, is a complex figure in the intellectual history of eighteenth-century Britain. He can easily appear as an anachronism, contemptuous or ignorant of the advances in learning underway in the age in which he lived. In the original index to the second edition of his Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1714), ‘Metaphysicks’ is followed by ‘necessary Knowledge of nothing knowable or known’. Under ‘Philosophers’ are the entries ‘See CLOWN’, and ‘Moral Philosophers of a modern sort, more ignorant and corrupt than the mere Vulgar’. One seeks an entry for ‘Newton, Isaac’ in vain; and whilst Bacon had the honour of being cited by Shaftesbury—once—it was only to establish that he had been fortunate to have ‘escap’d being call’d an ATHEIST’ by his contemporaries, an oversight Shaftesbury was eager to remedy. Rather than trouble himself with the productions of a modern age whose philosophy he considered to be ‘rotten’, Shaftesbury unabashedly proclaimed his preference for the Stoic moralists of classical antiquity. In his General Dictionary (1739), Thomas Birch noted that Shaftesbury ‘carried always with him’ the ‘moral works of Xenophon, Horace, the Commentaries and Enchridion of Epictetus as published by Arrian, and Marcus Antoninus’.

Projecting the Enlightenment

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Wokler ◽  
Christopher Brooke
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Intellectual Tradition ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Enlightenment Project ◽  
History Of

This chapter retraces Alasdair MacIntyre's own construal of the Enlightenment Project's trajectory in order to show how his interpretation of an intellectual tradition depends above all on his assessment of its impact. It argues that MacIntyre's Enlightenment Project is largely unreconstructed, unredeemed, and undiminished in its failure, even after substantial embellishment. His three principal works comprise an extraordinary indictment of the theoretical and practical legacy of eighteenth-century philosophy. His account projects the Enlightenment's implications and influence as they stem from its aims. He holds it to blame for some of the most sinister aspects of a morally vacuous civilization, cursed by the malediction of unlicenced Reason. His intellectual history of the period forms one of the mainsprings of his own philosophy.

Commerce, Virtue, and Politics: Adam Ferguson's Constitutionalism

1983 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 536-552 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary L. McDowell
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Political Thinking ◽  
Francis Hutcheson ◽  
History Of ◽  
Moral Philosophers

Adam Ferguson was one of several moral philosophers who contributed to the Scottish Enlightenment, a period aptly described as one of “remarkable efflorescence.” The works of Ferguson and his fellow Scotsmen — Adam Smith, David Hume, Dugald Stewart, Lord Kames, Francis Hutcheson and Thomas Reid — were widely distributed, seriously read, and vigorously debated during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The greatest contribution of this Scottish school to the history of political thinking was the refinement of the idea of commercial republicanism, the synthesis of modern notions of polity and economy.

VENUS ON THE SOFA: WOMEN, NEOCLASSICISM, AND THE EARLY AMERICAN REPUBLIC

2005 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
CAROLINE WINTERER
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
The Self ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Early American Republic ◽  
Early American ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
Early National ◽  
Mercy Otis Warren ◽  
History Of

What did early national Americans mean when they articulated fears of “luxury and effeminacy,” those twin sins of a republic that idolized the classical virtues of manly self-restraint? This essay argues that the fear of luxury and effeminacy circulated not just as airy metaphor but as palpable reality, specifically in the figure of the female recumbent on the sofa. The article traces separately the careers of Enlightenment Venus, who especially in her recumbent form embodied fears of passion in a republic built on reasoned consent, and the sofa, a piece of neoclassical furniture that rose to great popularity at this time and was envisioned as both effeminate and luxurious in fictional and nonfiction writing. The essay then joins the two figures of recumbent Venus and the sofa, showing how they were mutually enabling, and how they entered into early national conversations about labor and race. It concludes by examining how two educated American women, the self-described Roman matrons Mercy Otis Warren and Martha Bayard Smith, incorporated the image of the supine woman and her implied sofa into fictional writings about classical polities in danger. By knitting political ideologies, imaginative worlds, and neoclassical objects, the essay suggests a way for historians to flesh out the intellectual history of early national women, showing how they could participate in a conversation about modern politics and classical antiquity from which we have assumed they were largely disbarred.

Islam without Europe

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmad S. Dallal
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Religious Knowledge ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
European Colonization ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Ganges

Replete with a cast of giants in Islamic thought and philosophy, Ahmad S. Dallal’s pathbreaking intellectual history of the eighteenth-century Muslim world challenges stale views of this period as one of decline, stagnation, and the engendering of a widespread fundamentalism. Far from being moribund, Dallal argues, the eighteenth century--prior to systematic European encounters--was one of the most fertile eras in Islamic thought. Across vast Islamic territories, Dallal charts in rich detail not only how intellectuals rethought and reorganized religious knowledge but also the reception and impact of their ideas. From the banks of the Ganges to the shores of the Atlantic, commoners and elites alike embraced the appeals of Muslim thinkers who, while preserving classical styles of learning, advocated for general participation by Muslims in the definition of Islam. Dallal also uncovers the regional origins of most reform projects, showing how ideologies were forged in particular sociopolitical contexts. Reformists’ ventures were in large part successful--up until the beginnings of European colonization of the Muslim world. By the nineteenth century, the encounter with Europe changed Islamic discursive culture in significant ways into one that was largely articulated in reaction to the radical challenges of colonialism.

Ideology Hunting: The Case of James Harrington

1959 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 662-692 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith N. Shklar
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
English Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Political Theories ◽  
History Of

It is well known that each age writes history anew to serve its own purposes and that the history of political ideas is no exception to this rule. The precise nature of these changes in perspective, however, bears investigation. For not only can their study help us to understand the past; it may also lead us to a better understanding of our own intellectual situation. In this quest the political theories of the 17th century and particularly of the English Civil War are especially rewarding. It was in those memorable years that all the major issues of modern political theory were first stated, and with the most perfect clarity. As we have come to reject the optimism of the eighteenth century, and the crude positivism of the nineteenth, we tend more and more to return to our origins in search of a new start. This involves a good deal of reinterpretation, as the intensity with which the writings of Hobbes and Locke, for instance, are being reexamined in England and America testify. These philosophical giants have, however, by the force of their ideas been able to limit the scope of interpretive license. A provocative minor writer, such as Harrington, may for this reason be more revealing. The present study is therefore not only an effort to explain more soundly Harrington's own ideas, but also to treat him as an illustration of the mutations that the art of interpreting political ideas has undergone, and, perhaps to make some suggestions about the problems of writing intellectual history in general.

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