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Notes
“I endeavoured to keep especially before my hearers the broad distinction between independent and dependent systems of Morality;—independent systems, which look upon moral goodness and rightness as in themselves sufficient and supreme ends of human action; and dependent systems, which make moral goodness and rightness derive their value and force from their subserviency to some other ulterior end;—as pleasure, or gain of some kind; or usefulness for some further purpose. … there has always been a strong body of moralists among us, who have asserted the independence of Morality;—speaking, with Cudworth, of Moral Truth as immutable; or, with Butler, of Conscience as, by its nature, the Sovereign of Desire” (1846, p. 2).
“Comparisons, such as are here employed, (the human body and the human species,) belong almost exclusively to those who maintain that morality is an end in itself. … Of the moralists of this school, in the period immediately, succeeding the publication of Locke’s Essay, Lord Shaftesbury may be considered as one of the best representatives” (1852, pp. 87–88).
“Shaftesbury maintained the independent and original nature of moral distinction. He calls himself a Moral Realist, as opposed to others who he says … are mere Nominal Moralists, making virtue nothing in itself a creature of Will only, or a mere name of Fashion. … the real fundamental notion of this evil [sc. vice] is the violation of man’s nature, as a system in which the parts have certain essential relations to each other, and to the whole” (1852, pp. 88–89).
“That all actions are naturally indifferent; that they have no note or character of good or ill in themselves; but at distinguished by mere fashion, law, or arbitrary decree.” (Cooper 1714 [Klein ed. 1999], p. 157) “He [sc. Hobbes] did his utmost to show us that ‘both in religion and morals we were imposed on by our governors’, that “there was nothing which by nature inclined us either way, nothing which naturally drew us to the love of what was without or beyond ourselves”…” (p. 42) Later references to Shaftesbury cite pages of Klein’s edition, indicated by ‘K’.
“For ‘tis notorious that the chief opposers of atheism write upon contrary principles to one another, so as in a manner to confute themselves. Some of them hold zealously for virtue, and are realists in the point. Others, one may say, are only nominal moralists, by making virtue nothing in itself, a creature of will only or a mere name of fashion” (K, p. 262).
“We begin surely at the wrong end when we would prove merit by favour, and order by a Deity. This our friend seeks to redress. For being, in respect of virtue, what you lately called a realist, he endeavours to show ‘that it is really something in itself, and in the nature of things; not arbitrary or factitious (if I may so speak); not constituted from without, or dependent on custom, fancy, or will; not even on the supreme will itself, which can no way govern it; but being necessarily good, is governed by it and ever uniform with it.’ … this I will venture to assert, ‘that whoever sincerely defends virtue, and is a realist in morality, must of necessity, in a manner, by the same scheme of reasoning, prove as very a realist in divinity’”(K, pp. 266–267).
This non-metaphysical interpretation of Shaftesbury is set out especially clearly by David Fate Norton (1968, pp. 713–724). In his view, Shaftesbury sets out to refute the scepticism that he ascribes to Locke and Hume, and this refutation requires only a proof that we have affections that are both natural and benevolent (p. 719). Norton’s interpretation of Shaftesbury is quite similar to Hutcheson’s interpretation; and so it is not surprising that Norton also regards Hutcheson as a moral realist. See n.20 below. Norton’s account of Shaftesbury’s philosophical aims has no place for the defence of the objectivity of moral properties.
Fowler (1882), ch. 3, discusses his conception of a moral sense in some detail, but he does not discuss Shaftesbury’s realism, and therefore does not discuss the relation between realism and belief in a moral sense. A similar view of Shaftesbury persuades Selby-Bigge to include him among the sentimentalists in his British Moralists (1897).
Thomas Burnet anticipates Shaftesbury’s use of ‘moral sense’; see Jerome Schneewind (1998, pp. 301–302); Tuveson (1947–1948, pp. 241–259). There is no direct evidence to show that Shaftesbury knew of Burnet’s use of the expression; see Tuveson, p. 255. Tuveson describes Shaftesbury’s Inquiry Concerning Virtue as “the first full-dress exposition of sentimentalism” (p. 249). I reject this description of Shaftesbury, for the reasons given in Sect. 7 below.
“… we call any creature worthy or virtuous, when it can have the notion of a public interest, and can attain the speculation or science of what is morally good or ill, admirable or blameable, right or wrong” (K, p. 173).
“Thus offence and injury are always known as punishable by every-one; and equal behaviour, which is therefore called merit, as rewardable and well-deserving from every-one. Of this even the wickedest creature living must have a sense. So that if there be any further meaning in this sense of right and wrong; if in reality there be any sense of this kind which an absolute wicked creature has not; it must consist in a real antipathy or aversion to injustice or wrong, and in a real affection or love towards equity and right, for its own sake, and on the account of its own natural beauty and worth” (K, p. 178).
“… there must in every rational creature be yet further conscience, namely, from sense of deformity in what is thus ill-deserving and unnatural and from a consequent shame or regret of incurring what is odious and moves aversion.” (K, p. 209)
“A man who in a passion happens to kill his companion relents immediately on the sight of what he has done… If, on the other side, we suppose him not to relent or suffer any real concern or shame; then either he has no sense of the deformity of the crime and injustice, no natural affection, and consequently no happiness or peace within: or if he has any sense of moral worth or goodness, it must be of a perplexed and contradictory kind.” (K, pp. 209–210) Shaftesbury’s use of ‘moral sense’ is discussed by Fowler (1882, p. 70), and by Isabel Rivers (2 vols: 1991, 2000; ii pp. 124–126) (who mentions the variations in Shaftesbury’s usage).
“No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human affections and passions discerned… than straight an inward eye distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable and admirable, apart from the deformed, the foul, the odious or the despicable. How is it possible therefore not to own that as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?… Even by this [sc. disagreement] it appears there is fitness and decency in actions since the fit and decent is in this controversy ever presupposed” (K, pp. 326–327).
See Rand (1900, pp. 214–220). This chapter discusses prolêpseis, translated as ‘natural concepts’. It begins with references to Epictetus on preconceptions.
“This moral sense of beauty in actions and affections may appear strange at first view. Some of our moralists themselves are offended at it in my Lord Shaftesbury; so much are they accustomed to deduce every approbation or aversion from rational views of private interest…” (Hutcheson 1725 [Leidhold 2004], Preface, 9).
“But may there not be a right or wrong State of our moral Sense, as there is in our other Senses, according as they represent their Objects to be as they really are, or represent them otherwise? So may not our moral Sense approve that which is vicious, and disapprove Virtue, as a sickly Palate may dislike grateful Food, or a vitiated Sight misrepresent Colours or Dimensions? Must we not know therefore antecedently what is morally Good or Evil by our Reason, before we can know that our moral Sense is right? To answer this, we must remember that of the sensible Ideas, some are allowed to be only Perceptions in our Minds, and not Images of any like external Quality, as Colours, Sounds, Tastes, Smells, Pleasure, Pain. … As to the purely sensible Ideas, we know they are altered by any Disorder in our Organs, and made different from what arise in us from the same Objects at other times. We do not denominate Objects from our Perceptions during the Disorder, but according to our ordinary Perceptions, or those of others in good Health: Yet no body imagines that therefore Colours, Sounds, Tastes, are not sensible Ideas. …. … Just so in our Ideas of Actions. … This Approbation cannot be supposed an Image of any thing external, more than the Pleasure of Harmony, of Taste, of Smell. But let none imagine, that calling the Ideas of Virtue and Vice Perceptions of a Sense, upon apprehending the Actions and Affections of another does diminish their Reality, more than the like Assertions concerning all Pleasure and Pain, Happiness or Misery” (Hutcheson 1728 [Peach, 1971], pp. 162–164).
“When we say one is obliged to an action, we either mean, (1) that the action is necessary to obtain happiness to the agent, or to avoid misery, or, (2) that every spectator, or he himself upon reflection, must approve his action, and disapprove his omitting it, if he considers fully all its circumstances. The former meaning of the word obligation presupposes selfish affections, and the sense of private happiness; the latter meaning includes the moral sense” (Hutcheson 1728 [Peach, 1971], p. 130).
“If by Obligation we understand a Determination, without regard to our own Interest, to approve Actions, and to perform them; which Determination shall also make us displeased with our selves, and uneasy upon having acted contrary to it; in this meaning of the word Obligation, there is naturally an Obligation upon all Men to Benevolence” (Hutcheson 1725, 7.1 [Leidhold 2004], p. 176).
“Now we shall find that all exciting reasons presuppose instincts and affections and the justifying presuppose a moral sense” (Hutcheson 1728 [Peach 1971], p. 121).
Michael Gill takes Shaftesbury’s position to be inconsistent in this way. See n. 25 below.
Whewell takes Hutcheson to defend Shaftesbury’s view, and so to uphold realism and independent morality. Norton (1982, pp. 62–66), agrees with Whewell verbally, but not in substance. Norton often speaks of Hutcheson’s being a realist about virtue, because Hutcheson rejects the reduction of moral virtue to self-interest: “To suppose … that Hutcheson was a moral subjectivist is to include him among that group of moral sceptics that he sought to refute, and contravenes fundamental aspects of his work” (p. 69). The ‘moral sceptics’ are Hobbes and Mandeville, Norton overlooks the fact that one might oppose their view while being subjectivist. See Winkler (1985, pp. 179–194). Norton’s interpretation of Hutcheson is refuted by Elizabeth Radcliffe (1986, pp. 407–421).
“Thus, as deriving virtue merely from natural affection, implies it to be of an arbitrary and changeable nature; our judging and approving of it by a moral sense implies the same: forasmuch as this sense, as well as that affection, might possibly have been quite contrary to what it is at present; or may be altered at any time hereafter” (Balguy 1734, p. 62, repr. in Selby-Bigge, British Moralists, § 538).
“Thus, we see, after all, that it is not merely what we call principle but a taste which governs men. They may think for certain, ‘This is right or that wrong’; they may believe, ‘This is a crime or that a sin’, ‘This punishable by man or that by God’; yet, if the savour of things lies cross to honesty, if the fancy be florid and the appetite high towards the subaltern beauties and lower order of worldly symmetries and proportions, the conduct will infallibly turn this latter way” (K, p. 413).
“… we call any creature worthy or virtuous, when it can have the notion of a public interest, and can attain the speculation or science of what is morally good or ill, admirable or blameable, right or wrong” (K, p. 173).
This account of the moral sense disagrees with Michael Gill (2006, pp. 98–99). Gill believes that Shaftesbury tries but fails to combine “the rationalist anti-voluntarism he inherited from Whichcote with the sentimentalist moral psychology he developed in the Inquiry. The anti-voluntarism led him to affirm the existence of an eternal and immutable system of value. … The sentimentalist moral psychology led him to claim that every moral judgment depends on the affections of the judge …” (p. 99). I do not believe that Gill’s second claim is justified, since it does not seem to me that Shaftesbury affirms the complete dependence that would make his view thoroughly sentimentalist. If he holds an indicative rather than a constitutive view of the moral sense, he does not face the conflict that Gill describes.
“… there have not wanted pretended philosophers in all ages who have asserted nothing to be good and evil, just and unjust, naturally and immutably; but that all these things were positive, arbitrary and factitious only” (Cudworth 1731, Bk. I, Ch. I, sec. 1). He proceeds to mention Hobbes. “For though the ancient fathers of the Christian Church were very abhorrent from this doctrine… it crept up afterward in the scholastic age, Ockham being among the first that maintained ‘nullum actum malum esse nisi quatenus a Deo prohibitum, et qui non possit fieri bonus, si a Deo praecipiatur; et e converso’” (Bk. I, Ch. I, sec. 5).
“… fashion, law, custom or religion … may be ill and vicious itself, but can never alter the eternal measures and immutable independent nature of worth and virtue” (K, p. 175).
“… there can be no excellence or wisdom in voluntarily rewarding what is neither estimable nor deserving. And if virtue be not really estimable in itself, I can see nothing estimable in following it for the sake of a bargain. If the love of doing good be not, of itself, a good and right inclination, I know not how there can possibly be such a thing as goodness or virtue. If the inclination be right, ‘tis a perverting of it, to apply it solely to the reward, and make us conceive such wonders of the grace and favour which is to attend virtue, when there is so little shown of the intrinsic worth or value of the thing itself” (K, p. 46).
“The more he engages in the love or admiration of any action or practice as great and glorious, which is in itself morally ill and vicious, the more contradiction and self-disapprobation he must incur” (K, p. 210).
“The only true and liberal service paid either to that supreme Being, or to any other superior, is that ‘which proceeds from an esteem or love of the person served, a sense of duty or gratitude, and a love of the dutiful and grateful part, as good and amiable in itself’” (K, p. 269).
“For if we may trust to what our reasoning has taught us, whatever in Nature is beautiful or charming is only the faint shadow of that first beauty. So that every real love depending on the mind, and being only the contemplation of beauty either as it really is in itself or as it appears imperfectly in the objects which strike the sense, how can the rational mind rest here, or be satisfied with the absurd enjoyment which reaches the sense alone ?” (K, p. 318)
“We seek the right and wrong; in things; we examine what is honourable, what shameful; and having at last determined, we dare not stand to our own judgment, and are ashamed to own there is really a shameful and an honourable. ‘Hear me’ (says one who pretends to value Philocles, and be valued by him), ‘there can be no such thing as real valuableness or worth; nothing; in itself estimable or amiable, odious or shameful. All is opinion. ‘Tis opinion which makes beauty, and unmakes it’” (K, pp. 327–328).
“For though he may intend to be virtuous, he is not become so for having only intended or aimed at it through love of the reward. But as soon as he is come to have any affection towards what is morally good, and can like or affect such good for its own sake, as good and amiable in itself, then is he in some degree good and virtuous, and not till then” (K, p. 188).
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Irwin, T.H. Shaftesbury’s place in the history of moral realism. Philos Stud 172, 865–882 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0299-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0299-7