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2 - Shaftesbury and Scottish Moral Sense Commercial Humanism: Inclinations Implanted in the Subject

Jose R. Torre
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Summary

'Tis impossible to suppose a mere sensible Creature originally so ill-constituted and unnatural, as that from the moment he comes to be try'd by sensible Objects, he shou'd have no one good Passion towards his Kind, no foundation either of Pity, Love, Kindness, or social Affection. 'Tis full as impossible to conceive, that a rational Creature coming first to be try'd by rational Objects, and receiving into his Mind the Images or representations of Justice, Generosity, gratitude, or other Virtue, shou'd have no Liking of these, or Dislike of their contrarys; but be found absolutely indifferent toward whatsoever is presented to him of this sort. A Soul, indeed, may as well be without Sense, as without admiration in the Things of which it has any knowledge.

Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, 3 vols (1711; Farnborough: Gregg, 1968), vol. 2: An Inquiry Concerning Virtue and Merit, book 1, part 3, section 1, p. 43.

Following the third Earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, and writing in Scotland's ‘age of improvement’, the Scottish Moral Sense philosophers, Francis Hutcheson, David Hume and Adam Smith, constructed an anthropocentric emotive epistemology in opposition to Locke's Calvinist empiricism.

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The Political Economy of Sentiment
Paper Credit and the Scottish Enlightenment in Early Republic Boston, 1780–1820
 , pp. 23 - 36
Publisher: Pickering & Chatto
First published in: 2014

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