Abstract

A Philosophy of Beauty: Shaftesbury on Nature, Virtue, and Art is an expert and deeply interesting exploration of the third Earl of Shaftesbury’s theory of beauty. Shaftesbury was an impressive figure, highly influential in his day, though eclipsed by later writers such as David Hume. Gill has done an excellent job of drawing out Shaftesbury’s views—looking not only at his publications but also at other manuscript materials such as Shaftesbury’s correspondence and diaries. I found Gill’s book informative and engaging, and I strongly recommend it to scholars who are interested in the sentimentalist project. One will come away not simply with a better understanding of Shaftesbury’s own views but with an appreciation of his influence and the way in which later scholarship was shaped by his work.Gill’s approach is semibiographical. He draws upon facts about Shaftesbury’s life to account for various features of his philosophical writings. This feature of the book contributed to the enjoyment I had in reading it. It was interesting to be able to see how Shaftesbury’s philosophy developed out of questions he was asking himself about how he ought to live. Shaftesbury had a strong sense of duty. He made many decisions over the course of his life that were centered on a desire to live up to family obligations and obligations to his country. He also had a more general sense that he should be doing what he could to improve the lives of other people. One might describe this as beneficence felt as a duty. For these reasons, Gill notes that it is very likely due to Shaftesbury’s ill-health that he decided to pursue philosophy. Otherwise, his strong sense of duty would have led him to take on more public-facing roles as a means of improving the lives of others.He felt that this task could only be accomplished if people actually read and took notice of his work. Gill argues that this is at least in part what led Shaftesbury to develop such a distinctive and flamboyant writing style. Shaftesbury’s major work in ethical theory was Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, published in 1711, and anyone taking a course on the British moralists would have read parts of the Characteristicks, particularly the sections on virtue, as those sections are the ones that quite obviously fit into the sentimentalist narrative on the nature of virtue and make for interesting comparisons with later writers on the same topic, Frances Hutcheson as well as Hume. But Shaftesbury’s other works which are important sources regarding his thoughts on beauty and virtue include The Moralists and An Inquiry concerning Virtue, both of which Gill makes extensive use of in his discussion of Shaftesbury’s considered views.Gill notes the many complaints about Shaftesbury’s writing style. Gill notes that Adam Smith, for example, viewed Shaftesbury as someone whose writing is a paradigm of stylistic failure, leading him “frequently into a dungeon of metaphorical obscurity” (Smith, quoted by Gill on p. 14). However, Shaftesbury had very well-considered views on aesthetics and on aesthetically valuable writing. I especially liked how Gill’s careful reading of both Shaftesbury and his critics is further illuminated by considering some of these works that are often ignored by philosophers working on the British moralists, such as Soliloquy; or, Advice to an Author, which Gill discusses in the fifth chapter.What do beauty, nature, and virtue have to do with each other? Those familiar with the sentimentalist projects of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries know that, for the sentimentalist, morality and aesthetics are closely connected if not identical. At bottom the idea is that virtue is a kind of moral beauty, analogous to the positive aesthetic characteristics we associate with natural objects and works of art. In the case of Shaftesbury himself, one of his more famous claims is that beauty and good are identical, “one and the same.” What Shaftesbury meant in this claim, as Gill notes, is that it is a life in pursuit of beauty that is the good life for human beings. Beauty comes in many forms, and in the first chapter of his book, Gill focuses on natural beauty. Some writers viewed nature as ugly and deformed. Some, like Locke, seemed to think that the value of the wilderness was entirely instrumental. One of Gill’s claims is that Shaftesbury was responsible for changing these attitudes toward nature. Shaftesbury saw beauty in wilderness landscapes. Gill argues that Shaftesbury was to some extent interested in natural beauty because it helped solve a problem that concerned him: there is a deeply emotional aspect to worship of God, and yet it is also the case that we ought to maintain our rationality—to the extent that even scripture should be subject to critical scrutiny. Our love of God is not threatened by rational inquiry. Nature and wilderness were created by God, and by using our rational capacities we can come to appreciate the beauty in even the most disgusting aspects of nature, such as excrement. Excrement is evidence of God’s beautiful design.There is also moral beauty. Moral beauty is extensively discussed in chapter 2 of Gill’s book. Moral beauty applies to our “mental children”—and by this Shaftesbury means features of our agency, such as our feelings, emotions, principles of action, determinations of the will, and so forth. These can be beautiful as well. We perceive this beauty via our moral sense, our sense of right and wrong, which arises out of our feeling of second-order sentiments about our first-order mental states or inclinations. Virtue involves being guided by these second-order sentiments.The second chapter lays out very quickly Shaftesbury’s views on virtue, but here Gill is mainly concerned with exploring a problem that bothered Shaftesbury on a personal level. Drawing on evidence from Shaftesbury’s diaries, as well his published works, Gill argues that we can see that he was very troubled by his failure to love humanity in general. He believed this to be a flaw. However, the failure to love humanity in general arose out of an understanding of the terrible things people do to each other. How can it be a flaw in one’s character to fail to love what is not worthy of love? Shaftesbury wants to show that we do possess fine qualities that warrant love. One prong of his argument is his criticism of Hobbesian egoism as bad moral psychology. Another prong appeals to our inherent sociality. Human beings have a strong desire to be with other human beings (this is an illustration of what Gill calls ‘the herding principle’). This desire underlies much prosocial behavior and demonstrates that moral beauty, or virtue, is certainly achievable by humans. However, if not properly cultivated it can lead to partiality; that is, it can lead to tribalism or caring more about some people than others. The underlying psychology appeals to the fact that we prefer to associate with those we are more in sympathy with. This leads us to exclude others, and even try to harm them. But our capacity to display moral beauty, to be virtuous, renders us the apt objects of love.In the third chapter Gill discusses art and artistic beauty, and this chapter serves as a prelude to the final two, which consider two different forms of artistic expression: painting and writing. Art is another way in which beauty is manifested in the world. Shaftesbury argued that art was an important part of the good human life, though as Gill notes he gave varying reasons for why this was the case. Sometimes he focused on the purely instrumental: appreciating a work of art can cause one to develop dispositions important to living a good human life, those dispositions properly instances of moral beauty. On this view, art would in principle be disposable at some point in a person’s development into a good human being. Once moral beauty is attained, one no longer needs to be spurred on through artistic appreciation. However, he sometimes argues that art is important in itself—that artistic beauty is an important component of the good life for its own sake, and not simply as a spur to moral development. Gill doesn’t believe that Shaftesbury can be made fully consistent on this issue, but he offers the following as the best charitable interpretation: appreciation of beauty is a final good, but moral beauty is a final good as well and is more significant. Thus, appreciation of beauty, while still a final good, should be sacrificed if it interferes with moral beauty.In the penultimate chapter, on painting, Gill focuses on Shaftesbury’s views regarding the category of art that is morally representational—that is, art that represents morally significant content. In this category he focuses on the genre of history painting—a prominent genre at the time Shaftesbury was writing, though not well represented in Britain at that time. Here he discusses an essay Shaftesbury wrote, A Notion of the Tablature, or Judgment of Hercules, in which Shaftesbury provides a description of a painting that he would later have painted by an Italian artist, Paolo de Matteis. Here, in going over the process of conceptualizing the painting that he would commission de Matteis to produce, various important features of composition are highlighted. But the important point of such painting is to convey a moral message. The choices that the artist makes should be guided by this norm. Gill writes that Shaftesbury believed that a well-executed history painting would be able to rouse virtue in its audience and discourage vice. Gill is doubtful. He also points out that Shaftesbury’s discussion of history painting highlights Shaftesbury’s “morally archaic” view of women. It is women who are often presented as spurs to vice in men.Writing, on Shaftesbury’s view, should also inspire one to virtue. Among those writers who fail in this task are the super speculative philosophers who mistakenly believe that abstruse philosophical speculations improve the lives of people. What they need to engage in, Shaftesbury writes, is soliloquy. Here we get an analogy with the exercise of moral agency. As a writer, one needs some critical distance, some critical “self-dissection,” to improve. The same for moral agents, who must subject their first-order mental states to critical scrutiny.In this book Gill has made a very powerful case for taking Shaftesbury’s work seriously beyond the standard topics of interest to the moral sentimentalists. Shaftesbury had a tremendous influence on many areas in philosophy—metaethics, virtue theory, aesthetics, and natural religion. Gill’s book does an excellent job of showing us how Shaftesbury’s philosophical thought permeated aspects of his day-to-day life and influenced more than the work of other, subsequent, philosophers. After reading this book I came away with a better understanding of Shaftesbury the human being, as well as Shaftesbury the philosopher.