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A philosophy of beauty : Shaftesbury on nature, virtue, and art

Gill, Michael B., author

Overview

\"At the turn of the eighteenth century, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713) placed beauty at the center of his worldview. It revolutionized Western philosophy. Thinkers such as Hume, Leibniz, Voltaire, Goethe, and Humboldt were all indebted to Shaftesbury's pioneering explorations of the experience of beauty and the role it can play in moral judgment, religious worship, and appreciation of the systems of nature. By the turn of the twentieth century, however, Shaftesbury's stature had greatly diminished, a result of his writing in a densely literary and narrative style out of step with the methodological approaches of later philosophers. This book rediscovers Shaftesbury's vibrant ideas of beauty. It explains how Shaftesbury developed those ideas, and why they remain compelling. The author intends to make several rather explicit and provocative claims: Shaftesbury was instrumental in the development of the idea that all of wild nature has beauty and intrinsic value; his religious views were more uncompromisingly rational than almost any contemporary, and they ushered in a more critical approach to the study of the Bible and religion in general; he advanced what was at the time the highly contentious claim that an atheist can be virtuous, which was one of the most significant development in secular ethical theory; he originated the sentimentalist view that moral judgment is based in affection, or moral sense, and he made significant strides in moral psychology; he engaged in serious philosophical discussion of what makes art successful, initiating the line of inquiry that would come to be called 'aesthetics'; and, finally, Shaftesbury was prophetic in identifying the dangers of partiality and what he saw as the difficulty of combining political activity in a highly charged partisan environment with impartial concern for humanity as a whole\"-- Provided by publisher.

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Subject: Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of, 1671-1713 Aesthetics. / Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of, 1671-1713. / Aesthetics Philosophy. / Art Philosophy. / Philosophy of nature. / PHILOSOPHY / Ethics & Moral Philosophy. / Aesthetics.
• ISBN: 9780691226613, 069122661X

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Call Number	Copies	Material	Location
B1388 GIL	1	BOOK	AUTOSTORE