Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, was an English Whig politician, philosopher, and writer, born at Exeter House in London on 26 February 1671. He lived through the years after the Glorious Revolution, served under William and Mary, and later withdrew from public office during Queen Anne’s reign. His life joined aristocratic politics, private scholarship, poor health, and a wide circle of thinkers in England and the Netherlands.

His childhood was shaped by an unusual education. At the age of three, he was placed under the formal guardianship of his grandfather, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury. John Locke, then medical attendant to the Ashley household, was entrusted with supervising his education. Ashley-Cooper was taught according to principles associated with Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education, with Latin and Greek taught conversationally by Elizabeth Birch. By the age of eleven, it was said, he could read both languages with ease. After his grandfather’s death, he attended Winchester College and then travelled on the continent with a Scottish tutor and two older companions.

After returning to England in 1689, Shaftesbury entered public life. He was returned to Parliament for Poole on 21 May 1695 and spoke for the Bill for Regulating Trials in Cases of Treason, which included a provision allowing those accused of treason or misprision of treason the help of counsel. Though a Whig, he was not strongly partisan. Poor health, especially asthma, forced him to leave Parliament at the dissolution of July 1698. He later succeeded his father as Earl of Shaftesbury and took an active Whig role in the House of Lords during the English general elections of January and November 1701. He was also Lord Proprietor of the English colony of Carolina in North America and of the Bahamas.

Much of the writing for which he is known was completed between 1705 and 1710. In 1711 he gathered several works in Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, first published anonymously in three volumes. Its contents included A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm, Sensus Communis: An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour, Soliloquy: or, Advice to an Author, Inquiry Concerning Virtue and Merit, and The Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody. With Inquiry Concerning Virtue and Merit, Shaftesbury became the founder of moral sense theory. His philosophical work was limited to ethics, religion, and aesthetics, including the concept of the sublime as an aesthetic quality.

Shaftesbury’s thinking grew in conversation with a broad set of associates. He knew figures from Locke’s circle, including Edward Clarke, Damaris Masham, and Walter Yonge, and in the Netherlands he met or was introduced to Benjamin Furly, Pierre Bayle, Jean Leclerc, Philipp van Limborch, and Pierre Des Maizeaux. He counted Robert Molesworth as a good friend and mentor, though his association with John Toland cooled after Toland published a draft of Inquiry concerning Virtue without permission. Illness led Shaftesbury to seek warmer air, and in 1711 he left for Italy, settling at Naples. He died at Chiaia in the Kingdom of Naples on 15 February 1713 (N.S.), and his body was brought back to England for burial at Wimborne St Giles, the family seat in Dorset.