SOURCE: Arregui, Jorge V., and Pablo Arnau. “Shaftesbury: Father or Critic of Modern Aesthetics?” British Journal of Aesthetics 34, no. 4 (October 1994): 350-62.

[In the essay below, Arregui and Arnau view Shaftesbury not as the father of modern aesthetics, but as the first great critic of aesthetic modernity.]

Shaftesbury is usually considered the father of modern aesthetics and, consequently, only those aspects of his thought specially relevant to later aesthetics—the disinterested attitude, the moral and aesthetic sense, and the sublime—are studied.¹ In this sense, Stolnitz has stressed his importance in engendering the central concept of modern aesthetics: the disinterested attitude.² For Stolnitz, this notion—which is the corner-stone of the independent status acquired by aesthetics in modernity—is specifically modern and has its origin in Shaftesbury's speculations.³

Stolnitz remarks that Shaftesbury is not really in accordance with the concept of aesthetic attitude to which he gave rise; that his aesthetics seems to be ‘bound up with his high-level metaphysical principles, generally to its detriment’;⁴ and that he often denies that there is anything specific in aesthetic phenomena, identifying the aesthetic with other aspects of reality.⁵ Therefore, his aesthetics displays a tension between its two central poles. As a classical metaphysician, Shaftesbury had focused his aesthetics on a concept of beauty as a form of harmony which could only be appreciated by the intellect excluding material beauty; as a modern, Shaftesbury was to see aesthetics in terms of the disinterested attitude which established the existence of an aesthetic experience that was different from other experiences, and that deserved study in itself. The author of The Moralists would thus find himself in the unfortunate position of the conservative who foresees the revolutionary consequences of his own discovery. By shedding light on the distinctive nature of aesthetic experience, Shaftesbury proved himself to be a great thinker; but his achievement was limited, ‘partly because he is not a systematic thinker; partly because he has not been weaned away from the old ways of thinking in aesthetics’.⁶

Townsend has recently objected to some of Stolnitz's views. He admits that the modern concept of aesthetic attitude makes possible the independent status of aesthetics, but he re-examines both Shaftesbury's metaphysics and his concepts of taste and aesthetic attitude. For him, Stolnitz assimilates Shaftesbury to his posteriority; and to interpret him as a pre-romantic and/or pre-Kantian misleads us and conceals what is of greatest value in his thinking. Nevertheless, Townsend does not rehabilitate his metaphysics; he only points out that his neo-platonism is of a very specific kind, and that his metaphysics does not lack empirical content.⁷ On the other hand, Shaftesbury's sense of beauty does not admit an empiricist interpretation, because beauty and goodness are both mental, as opposed to being objects of the senses. In contrast with Hutcheson's position, Shaftesbury takes aesthetic taste from the realm of private experience to that of public experience; and in so far as for him immediate taste must be corrected through a rational criticism, Shaftesbury seems not to fall, at least immediately, under Wittgenstein's critique of private language. Besides, in Shaftesbury, disinterestedness does not constitute a special type of perception or of aesthetic experience.⁸

None the less, despite the objections to Stolnitz,⁹ the interpretation which considers Shaftesbury as a pre-Kantian or pre-romantic still prevails. Larthomas has recently developed a strongly Kantian reading of Shaftesbury according to which the continuity linking him to modern aesthetics is so strong that he can state that what had been in 1712 the mere germ of a new thought has become imperceptible to us because of its growth. The grain dies in what is born from it. Shaftesbury has vanished in the work of those who followed him.¹⁰ From this point of view, Larthomas presents a Kantian interpretation of Shaftesbury's concepts of moral feeling, sensus communis, harmony and natural teleology.

In this line of interpretation, Shaftesbury's interest lies in the concepts he introduces, which—ordered differently—in the following generation came to form modern aesthetics. Shaftesbury would be the ‘father’ of modernity in the strict sense, because without being modern himself, he engendered modern concepts. Or, in the words of Peter Kivy, ‘Shaftesbury is a transitional figure in the history of aesthetics: though he was the nominal founder of a new tradition, he had one foot planted firmly in the past, not only the past as represented by the Italian Renaissance, but that of classical antiquity as well’.¹¹

However, this reading of Shaftesbury misunderstands his actual thought and his place in the history of aesthetics: Shaftesbury is not the father of modern aesthetics, he is its first great critic. The elements which were later to be interpreted (or misinterpreted) by the Scottish School, and were to make up modern aesthetics, created in Shaftesbury a force field in the opposite direction.¹² In their original sense, they were used against the first characteristically modern views: those of Hobbes and Calvinist orthodoxy.

(A) THE MODERN REDUCTION OF AESTHETICS TO A DECORATIVE ACCESSORY IN A MECHANICAL WORLD

The independent status of modern aesthetics is a result of the concept of aesthetic attitude, but Shaftesbury's refusal to construct an independent aesthetics is not simply a product of his lack of system, still less that of a naïve classicism. He is openly opposing one of the key characteristics of modernity which was already present in its early stages. For example, in Miscellaneous Reflections he complains that ‘it has been thought convenient, in these latter Ages, to distinguish the Provinces of Wit and Wisdom, and set apart the agreeable from the useful …’.¹³ In The Moralists he states that ‘Nor can it otherwise happen in the Affairs of Life, whilst that which interests and engages Men as Good is thought different from that which they admire and praise as Honest—But with us (Philocles!) ‘tis better settled: since for our parts, we have already decreed “that Beauty and Good are still the same”.’¹⁴ And, finally, in Miscellaneous Reflections, he insists that ‘Beauty and Truth are plainly join'd with the notion of Utility and Convenience, even in the apprehension of every ingenious Artist, the Architect, the Statuary or the Painter’.¹⁵ To illustrate the importance of these criticisms against the independence of the aesthetics it is useful to consider in some detail the process by which aesthetics gained in modernity an autonomous status, bringing out some of the negative consequences of this change, especially the appearance of a widening gap between art and life.

Aesthetics can only acquire autonomy if its object becomes distinguished from the other dimensions of reality. Now, for the aesthetic object to appear as a dimension of reality segregated from the others, it is necessary to adopt an aesthetic attitude, that is, a way of viewing reality which consists of paying attention solely to the manner in which an object appears to our senses, isolating this dimension from all the others. The aesthetic attitude is therefore the exclusive attention to an object's mode of appearance, without regard to any of its other dimensions. Thus the object is removed from its normal place in the course of human life, and a break is made in the relationship between that object and what it was made for, so that it can be considered exclusively from the point of view of the way it appears to the senses.

On the other hand, an aesthetic object is just the set of properties which are relevant to the aesthetic attitude; it clearly requires some physical basis, because if it had none it would not appear to the senses, but the aesthetic object is not the physical reality. It is the physical reality seen within a particular perspective or described in a particular way. An aesthetic object is a physical reality described from an aesthetic point of view and, therefore, not all true descriptions of the physical reality are descriptions of the aesthetic object. Aesthetic objects are intentional.

The aesthetic attitude also forms the basis of the concept of aesthetic experience and perception. ‘Aesthetic experience’ is the name given to the characteristic experience which results when one adopts an aesthetic attitude, and which is qualitatively and phenomenologically different from any other experience or perception. Lastly, ‘aesthetic pleasure’ is the term used to describe the pleasure which is supposed to accompany this experience. Thus the concept of the aesthetic attitude serves as a basis for all the elements (aesthetic experience and perception, aesthetic object and pleasure) needed to build an autonomous aesthetics.

Stolnitz was right when he maintained that the aesthetic attitude is a specifically modern phenomenon, not only because it appears for the first time in modernity, but also because its appearance was conditioned by certain both philosophical and cultural factors. From the philosophical point of view, aesthetics gained its autonomy in the epistemological turn brought about by modern philosophy.¹⁶ From the sociological one, Woodfield has reflected on some of the cultural conditions which allowed the emergence of the aesthetic attitude.¹⁷ However, it is possible to take a wider view and analyse the arousal of the aesthetic attitude and the consequent autonomy of aesthetics as exemplifying the process of differentiation between the spheres of human life, which we know as the process of modernization.

As Dilthey pointed out, to a very great extent the course of history can be described as a process of increasing differentiation between the spheres of human life. If so-called primitive societies are characterized by what Marcel Mauss described as a complete social phenomenon, so that any given phenomenon is at once religious, political, economic, juridical, artistic, and so on, in modern western society these dimensions of human life have become autonomous. The historical tendency is for every area of human life to gain an increasing degree of independence, with the consequence that these areas then interrelate in ever-changing patterns. As far as each of these spheres is defined by its relationship with the others, there is considerable variation in their content.

The process by which economics has become in modernity an independent sphere of human life has been carefully studied by Dumont,¹⁸ but this process can be seen even more clearly in the emergence of an aesthetic point of view and, consequently, of an autonomous aesthetic realm. It is obvious that in pre-literate societies there exist neither purely artistic objects nor an aesthetic point of view, that is, we find no consideration of reality which deals solely with its aesthetic dimension. The categories ‘aesthetic object’ and ‘artistic point of view’ are the product of a particular historical process, they are not phenomena which arise once and for all out of human nature itself.

Gadamer has questioned the legitimacy of the aesthetic consciousness setting out from a study of the limits which beset ‘experiential art’. ‘Experiential art’ means both that art proceeds from an experience of which it is an expression, and that it is ordained towards the evocation of that experience. The concept of art is thus linked to a determinate experience, the aesthetic experience, which is somehow separate and distinct from the experiences which make up the general run of life. This notion of ‘aesthetic experience’ is characteristic of a specific historical moment, and prior to this period, art was not linked to it. When we look at a Romanesque Christ today, a specific aesthetic experience can be set off; but this was not the original means of relating to such a work. The artist did not purport to create ‘a work of art’ whose purpose was to prompt an aesthetic experience; on the contrary, he desired to fashion an object for religious veneration. The original attitude towards the Romanesque Christ was not that of aesthetic contemplation, but rather that of prayer, and therefore the experience out of which that work arose and towards which it was directed was not aesthetic but religious or, to be more exact, these two types of experience had not yet undergone a separation. Art and religion did not constitute two different spheres.

The formation of the aesthetic consciousness, and the autonomy of the artistic sphere, imply a break in the ties which bind art and beauty to the other dimensions of reality. ‘By disregarding everything in which a work is rooted (its original context of life, and the religious or secular function which gave it its significance), it becomes visible as the “pure work of art”.’¹⁹ What remains beyond the reach of the aesthetic consideration of the work of art are all the non-aesthetic moments inherent in it, such as its purpose, function, or the meaning of its content. The aesthetic consciousness addresses itself only to the aesthetic essence of that work of art.

Now, the process of differentiation between the spheres of human life entails a redefinition of their content. In this sense, Jacinto Choza has explained that the independence of art must be seen in the context of the development of modern science. The relationship between art, technology, science and philosophy is different in Antiquity and in Modernity. For Aristotle, art and technology flow together, while science is paired off with philosophy; for the former are both areas of technical skill, opposed to prudence on the one hand, and to the habits of theoretical understanding on the other. The development of art and technology is governed by technical interest, and they are directed towards things which could exist otherwise, and which are dependent on us. By contrast, science and philosophy are profoundly disinterested activities which centre on what is necessary, does not depend on us, and cannot be otherwise.

The Aristotelian view contrasts with the modern one: in so far as science is motivated by technical interest and addresses itself to things that can be otherwise, it approaches technology and distances itself from philosophy. Art, however, moves closer towards philosophy, as both are disinterested and concern themselves with what could not exist otherwise.²⁰ In as much as both reflect our conception of nature, art becomes linked with wisdom. But since philosophy and art are no longer related with science, they become deprived of cognitive value and are reduced to purely ‘subjective’ experiences. Whereas for Aristotle, knowing is seeing, and not transforming, for the first modern thinkers knowing is controlling, mastering and transforming. Thus where, for the former, contemplative knowledge was deeply disinterested, knowledge is now essentially interested, and contemplation lacks cognitive value.

In this way, as Gadamer shows, the abstraction performed by the aesthetic consciousness, the emergence of a specific aesthetic experience which is distinct and disconnected from the other experiences whose nexus constitutes human life, means that art, which is now understood as the art of beautiful appearances, is placed in opposition to both practical reality and truth, and that it is understood with this conflict in mind. ‘Instead of art and nature complementing each other, as has always seemed to be the case, they were contrasted as appearance and reality. Traditionally it is the purpose of “art”, which also embraces all the conscious transformation of nature for use by humans, to complete its supplementing and fulfilling activity within the areas given and left free by nature. And “Les beaux arts”, as long as they are seen in this framework, are a perfecting of reality and not an external masking, veiling or transfiguration of it. But if the contrast between reality and appearance determines the concept of art, this breaks up the inclusive framework of nature. Art becomes a standpoint of its own and establishes its own autonomous claim to supremacy.’²¹

In this way, the correlative processes of the increasing autonomy of art and of the development of the new science severs the link between art and truth—which is now monopolized by science—and between art and every utilitarian or pragmatic value—which is transferred to technology. In consequence, art is left with the exclusive role of the disinterested contemplation of beauty. Beauty can also be produced, and so art never loses its dimension of poesis, although beauty is produced with the sole purpose of being contemplated. A ‘work of art’ in the modern sense, an ‘aesthetic object’, serves only to be contemplated.

The progressive separation of the spheres of human life, and their reordering, involves a process in which art becomes ever more reflective and abstract, more distanced from ordinary, everyday life which is lived out in the area of what is useful. In mature modernity, art has become something highly intellectual, accessible only to the initiated; something to be explained by recourse to pedagogical techniques, and which no longer has anything to do with human life or truth. This progressive separation of art from life has two extraordinarily negative consequences. In the first place, art's autonomous status is balanced out by the loss of the aesthetic dimension in all the other areas of human life, the confinement of art and artistic creativity within the prison of the aesthetic experience, and the consequent loss of its social validity. Secondly, in the early years of the twentieth century, the separation between art and life set off a general crisis in the identity of art. Thus, the increasing independence of art has implied an anxious questioning of its meaning. This crisis in the identity of art has in turn two paradoxical consequences: on the one hand, modern artists display a gargantuan effort to return art to life. But on the other, in the throes of an identity crisis, art is increasingly its own object, is progressively becoming self-referential and opaque.

In the unfolding of avant-gardes—writes Jiménez—‘the denial of art is, on the whole, linked to a proposal of a real universalization of the creative abilities of man, to an attempt to get rid of the gap between creative activity and life, which the spiritualization of art and the idea of the artist as a genius and a demigod had been historically brewing ever since the Renaissance’. Thus behind the war cry of the historical vanguard movements lies the attempt to recover art for life, to make it into a call for a new society, a stimulus to awaken a new culture, by striving to bring it out of the museums and academies in order to turn it back into the everyday exercise of every individual's creative freedom.²² But as has often been indicated, the attempt to reconcile art to life meets with an obstacle within the avant-garde movements themselves, in the form of their self-referential opacity. ‘The bewilderment and uprooting which make art turn in on itself, to the extent of questioning its raison d'être, lead avant-garde art along the paths of linguistic experiments and fragmentation, watering down its purpose of sketching new forms of life, of becoming universal as creative experience of all men.’²³ Paradoxically, the modernist movements themselves, which spring from the attempt to bring art closer to life, have succeeded only in recreating the modern inaccessibility of art and facilitating its withdrawal into circles of the initiated. The survival of art in museums, only in museums, is the index of their failure.

Certainly, the autonomization of aesthetics has resulted in a spectacular flowering of art; but this independence of art from life has also led to its relegation to an unreal sphere. It is possible, given these premisses, to endeavour to pass judgement on reality; but in the long run, reality always wreaks its revenge in the form of disappointment and disillusionment. If art is only a ‘beautiful appearance’ which is seen in contrast to a rough, coarse, vulgar reality, its validity is no more lasting than that of a dream. A bitter awakening is inevitable.

Thus we can maintain that the consequences of the autonomous status of aesthetics, as a result of the aesthetic attitude, are ambivalent. It has often been stated that the products of modernity present a certain ambiguity, and that many times the goals which have in fact been reached are the opposite of those which had originally been intended. In this respect, the independence of aesthetics can be said to have brought about its trivialization. Conversion of the aesthetic realm into a sphere which is separate from human life implies that the most real and vital dimensions of existence are stripped of any aesthetic content. There no longer seems to be any place for considerations of an aesthetic nature, or concerning individual creativity in the real existence of men; the latter is governed exclusively along lines other than those of aesthetics, that is, by criteria of technical efficiency.

Again, the loss of the cognitive value of aesthetic contemplation tends to trivialize the latter. To the extent that knowledge is reduced to a positive science, in as much as the truth is identified with scientific objectivity, aesthetics is transferred to the realm of the subjective. What is real consists only of the factual, all that is the case, as Wittgenstein was later to declare. Under these conditions, aesthetics is reduced to a subjective, decorative accessory in a world which is understood in a mechanical fashion. The real world is for the early moderns the world described by Newton's mechanics, a world in black and white made up exclusively of moving atoms, in which there is no place for aesthetic fancies. Early modern thinkers thus established a profound dichotomy. On the one hand, positive science and truth, the objective and the real; on the other, aesthetics and meaning, the subjective and the unreal. What science affirms is genuine and objective, but is devoid of meaning; what aesthetics proclaims has meaning, but lacks truth and objectivity.

Not only the physical world is a mechanical one; the cultural world, that is made up by the socio-cultural institutions which we men have created, is also a mechanical universe which allows no scope for individual creativity or aesthetic considerations. The laws which govern human society, the socio-cultural constructs, are as mechanical and as resistant to meaning as those which rule the physical world. Culture is a world governed by a social mechanism which has no place for aesthetics or creativity. And, in a certain sense, as María Antonia Labrada has shown, the situation of the cultural world is worse than that of the natural one.²⁴ For when Kant, for example, attempts to reconcile the world of nature with that of freedom by teleological postulation (everything occurs as though physical nature existed in order for us to know it), he restricts his postulate to physical nature, leaving aside the reality of culture, the sphere of the socio-cultural institutions, which is genuinely the essential Lebenswelt in which human existence unfolds.

To sum up, the aesthetic attitude which renders possible the independent existence of aesthetics tends subsequently to turn it into a pure, ornamental complement to a life and a world which are understood in a mechanical sense. If aesthetics has nothing to do with everyday life, or with truth, if it is a sphere which is independent from the other dimensions of reality, if the beautiful or the aesthetic in general has nothing to do with what is true, good, useful or appropriate, aesthetics will ultimately fall prey to triviality and be reduced to a subjective decoration which cannot affect the organization of personal and social life.

(B) SHAFTESBURY AS CRITIC OF THE MODERN IN AESTHETICS

From this point of view, Shaftesbury does not fit the role even of an unwilling father to modern aesthetics. He is not an incoherent writer, or a philosophical Janus. Instead, he emerges as the first great critic of aesthetic modernity wholly conscious of the reduction of aesthetics to a subjective ornament in a world and a life which are understood mechanically.

No one has defended the value of art and beauty in human life as sincerely as Shaftesbury. The point is not, as it is usually claimed, that he is a classical thinker because of his inordinate adherence to the rules of artistic creativity. The central issue is his bestowal to art and beauty of an orientative function in personal and social life. ‘In early days, Poets were look'd upon as authentick Sages, for dictating Rules of Life, and teaching Manners and good Sense.’²⁵ For him, in Cassirer's words, the problems of aesthetics ‘were his own personal problems long before they became purely theoretical problems. Shaftesbury does not consider aesthetics exclusively, nor even predominantly, from the viewpoint of the work of art; on the contrary, he seeks and needs theory of beauty in order to answer the question of the true fashioning of character, of the law governing the structure of the inward personal world’.²⁶

Naturally, Shaftesbury cannot be said to be defending a kind of aestheticism à la Wilde, in which life imitates art; actually, he is a moralist. But he is particularly conscious of the human being as the ‘Architect of his own Life and Fortune’,²⁷ and that, therefore, man's own life is thus his first artificio, his first and fundamental work of art. Obviously, ‘work of art’ cannot be taken in the modern sense as meaning beautiful appearance. Shaftesbury is not Gide. Beauty and art are neither a mere addition or adjunct to human life, nor are they enclosed within a supposed ‘aesthetic experience’; they must have a directive role in man's own existence. ‘For—he rhetorically asks—is not a Workmanship and a Truth in Actions? Or is the Workmanship of this kind less becoming, or less worth our notice; that we shou'd not in this Case be as surely at least as the honest Artizan, who has no other Philosophy than what Nature and his Trade [have] taught him?’.²⁸

Now, Shaftesbury is also especially aware of two further points. If aesthetic considerations, beauty and art, are to have a directive role in human life, then perception of beauty must have cognitive value. If our perception of beauty is cognitively blind, if it does not enable us to know any real property, it cannot have an orientative function in human life. But, in turn, for our perception of beauty to have cognitive value, the world has truly to be beautiful or, in other words, the mechanistic view cannot be true. Shaftesbury is perfectly aware that if we allow a mechanistic approach, if we accept that the world is as Hobbes and Locke propose, then the die is cast as far as the fate of aesthetics is concerned.

His declaration in The Moralists that he is a realist, his thesis that beauty and goodness are real predicates, cannot be interpreted as a mere survival from classical metaphysics. To defend the role of art in human life, as he aims, means establishing on the one hand a new epistemology which will make the perception of beauty into real knowledge, and on the other hand an ontology which leaves room for beauty and goodness among the real properties of the world. These two issues form the centre from which his main philosophical interests radiate. Seen in this perspective, we cannot concur with Stolnitz in maintaining that ‘his metaphysics is the villain of the piece’, nor does it suffice to state as Townsend does that his metaphysics has an experiential content. His whole aesthetic approach depends on his metaphysics, on his thesis that physical nature is teleological, not mechanical. Shaftesbury incorporates moral harmony within natural harmony. If we were a little better, he says, we would see in ourselves ‘Beauty and Decorum here, as well as elsewhere in Nature; and the Order of the Moral World wou'd be equal that of the Natural. By this the Beauty of Virtue wou'd appear; and hence (as has been shewn) the Supreme and Sovereign Beauty, the Original of all that is Good or Amiable’.²⁹

For this reason his first and principal enemy is Hobbes's mechanicism, and he strongly depends on those thinkers who most vigorously maintained the teleology of nature, which cannot be separated from their ethics and aesthetics. In so far as beauty and goodness are not only real properties but can be known by us, Shaftesbury is opposed to all forms of moral theological positivism. The goodness of an action cannot consist exclusively in its conformity with a law, whether human or divine, as if the divine law were arbitrary as Locke had postulated. For Shaftesbury, things are not good because we are commanded to do them, or bad because they have been forbidden, but rather they are prohibited because they are bad and commanded because they are good.

Opposing teleological moral positivism means asserting once again the value of nature. Not only can he speak of the nature of things, but he can also maintain that actions are good or bad by nature. And for him, not only good and evil have their roots in nature and there is a natural capacity to know them, but also by nature we possess the ability to act morally well. It must be emphasized that he does not maintain that man is naturally good—in fact he insists repeatedly that virtue is difficult, and that it is hard to acquire good taste—³⁰ but rather that he is not naturally bad. Affirming the natural ability of human beings to act well implies a confrontation not only with Hobbes but also with Calvinist orthodoxy.

Asserting the role of aesthetics in man's life and trying to demonstrate the cognitive value of the perception of beauty also entails a break with early modern thought in its typical identification of positive science, truth, the objective and the real on the one hand, and the aesthetic, the apparent, the subjective and the unreal on the other. It is not simply a question of art and literature, for instance, having a cognitive value in so far as they enable us to get to know others and ourselves better;³¹ it means that we cannot admit in any way that all aesthetic questions are up to the individual's taste, or that all taste is subjective, infallible and incorrigible, precisely because it says nothing about reality, but simply expresses our subjective reactions. For him, the modern dichotomy of subjective and objective lacks validity, because he is not committed to a reduction of what is knowable and true to positive scientific knowledge. Precisely because taste tells us something about reality, because in this sense it is objective, it can err and require correction. Of course, the assertion that taste is fallible and liable to correction, in other words, that it can be educated, introduces the problem of authority in aesthetics.

On the other hand, the statement that the perception of beauty has cognitive value, the thesis that aesthetic properties are real, serves as ammunition to confront the crisis concerning the foundations of art criticism which had arisen since the querelle between classical and modern thinkers. According to Shaftesbury, the querelle is above all a crisis caused by a proliferation of those who make ‘their Humour alone the Rule of what is beautiful and agreeable, and having no Account to give of such their Humour or odd Fancy, reject the criticizing or examining Art, by which alone they are able to discover the true Beauty and Worth of every Object’.³² His thought can in a fair proportion be interpreted as a response to the question as to what are the foundations of art criticism.³³

Last of all, his criticism of the identification of knowledge and truth with positive science enables him to connect truth to life and thus to set out a concept of philosophy which may sometimes take on shades close to those of vitalism. Philosophy's role is to ‘teach us our-selves, keep us the self-same Persons, and so regulate our governing Fancies, Passions, and Humours, as to make us comprehensible to our-selves, and knowable by other Features than those of a bare Countenance’.³⁴ Given his vitalistic view, he levels harsh criticism at academic philosophy which is embroiled in derivative scholasticism, that is, the kind of philosophy which has severed its connections with the individual and social life of man. If he refuses to accept the isolation of art in a separate sphere of human life, he equally cannot permit such a status for philosophy.³⁵ In the last instance, ‘To philosophize in a just signification is but To carry Good-Breeding a step higher. For the Accomplishment of Breeding is, To learn whatever is decent in company, or beautiful in arts; and the sum of Philosophy is, To learn what is just in Society and beautiful in Nature’. ‘Tis not Wit merely, but a Temper that must form the Well-Bred Man. In the same manner, ‘tis a Head merely, but a Heart and Resolution that must complete the real philosopher. Both Characters aim at what is excellent, aspire to a just taste, and carry in view the Model of what is beautiful and becoming’.³⁶

Notes

1. See, for example, M. C. Beardsley, Aesthetics from classical Greece to the present (Alabama: The University of Alabama Press, 1966), 173-83.

2. See J. Stolnitz, ‘On the Significance of Lord Shaftesbury in Modern Aesthetic Theory’ in The Philosophical Quarterly 11 (1961), 97-113. The statement to which we refer can be found on p. 78. See also the same author's ‘On the Origins of “Aesthetic Disinterestedness”’ in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 10 (1961-2), 131-42; ‘“Beauty”: Some Stages in the History of an Idea’ in The Journal of the History of Ideas 22 (1961) 185-204; and ‘“The Aesthetic Attitude” in the Rise of Modern Aesthetics’ in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 36 (1977-78), 409-22.

3. See ‘On the Origins of “Aesthetic Attitude”’, 131-2.

4. ‘On the significance’, 98.

5. See Ibid., 101-4.

6. Ibid., 113.

7. See D. Townsend, ‘Shaftesbury's Aesthetic Theory’ in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 41 (1982-3) 207; and his ‘From Shaftesbury to Kant. The Development of the Concept of Aesthetic Experience’ in The Journal of the History of Ideas 48 (1987), 289.

8. See D. Townsend, ‘Shaftesbury's Aesthetic Theory’, 211-3. See also D. A. White, ‘The Metaphysics of Disinterestedness: Shaftesbury and Kant’ in Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 32 (1973-4), 239-48.

9. The most sweeping criticism of Stolnitz's view that the disinterested aesthetic attitude is the corner-stone of the independence of aesthetics in modern thought is that of G. Dickie, ‘Taste and Attitude: the Origin of the Aesthetic’ in his Art and the Aesthetic (Ithaca: Cornell U.P., 1976), 53-77; and his ‘Stolnitz's Attitude: Taste and Perception’ in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 43 (1984-5), 195-203. See also R. G. Saisselin, ‘Critical Reflections on the Origins of Modern Aesthetics’ in The British Journal of Aesthetics 4 (1964), 7-21.

10. See J. P. Larthomas, De Shaftesbury à Kant, Atélier National de Reproduction des Thèses, Université de Lille III, Lille 1985, VII. The same idea can be found in B. Willey, ‘The third Earl of Shaftesbury’ in The British Moralists (London: Chatto and Windus, 1964), 221.

11. P. Kivy, The Seventh Sense. A Study of F. Hutcheson's Aesthetics and its Influence in Eighteenth-Century Britain (New York: Burt Franklin and Co., 1976), 18.

12. The thesis that modernity in aesthetics can be situated within Hutcheson's empiricist interpretation of some of Shaftesbury's principles is explained in more detail in Jorge V. Arregui's introduction to the Spanish edition of Francis Hutcheson's Investigación sobre el orígen de nuestra idea de belleza (Madrid: Tecnos, 1992), pp. ix-xxxiii.

13. Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, Standard edition (Stuttgart: Frommann-Hoolzboog, 1989), I, 1, 26.

14. Shaftesbury, The Moralists. A Philosophical Rhapsody, Standard edition (Stuttgart: Frommann-Hoolzboog, 1981), III, 2, 346.

15. Miscellaneous Reflections, III, 2, 222.

16. On this point, see, for example, M. A. Labrada, Belleza y racionalidad: Kant y Hegel (Pamplona: Eunsa, 1990), 18-20 and the introductory study of Jorge V. Arregui, already cited, to F. Hutcheson, Una investigación sobre el origen de nuestra idea de belleza, xxiii-xxvii.

17. See R. Woodfield, ‘On the Emergence of Aesthetics’ in The British Journal of Aesthetics 18 (1978), 217-27.

18. See L. Dumont, From Mandeville to Marx. The Genesis and Triumph of Economic Ideology (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1977) and Essays on Individualism (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1986).

19. See H. G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 76.

20. See J. Choza, Lo satánico como fuente y como tema de la creación artística in his La realización del hombre en la cultura (Madrid: Rialp, 1992), 266-7.

21. H. G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 74.

22. See J. Jiménez, Imagenes del hombre. Fundamentos de Estética (Madrid: Tecnos, 1986), 68-9.

23. J. Jiménez, ibid., 70.

24. See M. A. Labrada, Sobre la razón poética (Pamplona: Eunsa, 1992), 15-33.

25. Shaftesbury, Soliloquy: or, Advice to an Author, I, 1, Standard edition (Stuttgart: Frommann-Hoolzboog, 1981), 42.

26. E. Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Princeton U.P., 1951), 313.

27. Shaftesbury, The Moralists, III, 2, 362.

28. Shaftesbury, Soliloquy, II, 3, 176.

29. Shaftesbury, The Moralists, II, 4, 176. See also Miscellaneous Reflections, IV, 2, Standard edition (Stuttgart: Frommann-Hoolzboog, 1981), 256.

30. ‘A legitimate and just Taste can be neither be begotten, made, conceiv'd or produc'd, without the antecedent Labour and Pains of Criticism’ (Miscellaneous Reflections, III, 2, 216). See also for example, Soliloquy, III, 2, 224-6.

31. Shaftesbury, Soliloquy, I, 3, 94.

32. Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, III, 2, 202.

33. A summary of the problem of critical authority in Shaftesbury's ideas can be found in Soliloquy, II, 2, 140-74; II, 3, 176-8. Miscellaneous Reflections, III, 2, 200-8; V, 1, 276-310.

34. Soliloquy, III, 1, 202. On Shaftesbury's concept of philosophy as self-knowledge and reflection on one's own life, see the first chapter of the third part of Soliloquy and the third section of the third part of The Moralists.

35. See, for example, Shaftesbury, Soliloquy, III, 1, 208-12; Miscellaneous Reflections, III, 1, 190 and following and Miscellaneous Reflections, IV, 2, 258-60.

36. Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, III, 1, 196-8.