Another project for modernity

Study highlights the works of Shaftesbury, a British thinker who took modern thought in a different direction from the Cartesian system

By José Tadeu Arantes

Agência FAPESP  –  Ironically commenting on the drastic break established by Descartes (1596-1650) between the body (the “extensive thing”) and the mind ( the “thinking thing”), Shaftesbury (1671-1713) wrote that the French philosopher “did not contemplate the man as a real man” but as a “watch or a common machine.” This brief affirmation could be considered a summary of an entire philosophical itinerary. 

 

In fact, Shaftesbury’s writings take modern thinking in an entirely different direction from the Cartesian system. It was not by accident that Leibniz (1646-1716) recognized how many Shaftesburian ideas had preceded his own conceptions, which were independently formulated.

 

To a certain extent, Shaftesbury was a dissonant voice in the symphony of modernity. He was on the margins of mainstream philosophical thought, and, from the 19th century, he fell into relative obscurity.

 

Recently, as yet another expression of the pluralism that characterizes contemporary culture, his writing is once again being examined by historians of philosophy.

 

The book Shaftesbury e a ideia de formação de um caráter moderno (Shaftesbury and the idea of formation of the modern character), by Luís Fernandes dos Santos Nascimento, a professor in the Department of Philosophy and Methodology of Sciences at Universidade Federal de São Carlos, is part of this process of rediscovery.

 

Presented originally as a doctoral thesis at the Universidade de São Paulo’s Department of Philosophy in 2006 and now published with FAPESP funding, Nascimento’s text has, above all, the merit of presenting Shaftesbury’s work to Brazilian readers. Because of circumstances that did not do justice to his valuable work, Shaftesbury was almost unknown outside the British intellectual establishment.

 

“Although little known today, Shaftesbury was well read during his day. Diderot translated his works into French. He maintained a long-distance exchange with Leibniz via the French translator of Locke’s works. Later, in Germany, echoes of his ideas could be heard in the writings of Kant, Goethe and Hegel, among others,” commented Nascimento.

 

Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, had a brief life, even for the standards of the day. He lived only to the age of 42, the victim of a respiratory disease that plagued him for years. Educated by John Locke (1632-1704), who was his grandfather’s secretary, he felt much affection for this illustrious tutor. However, this respect did not prevent him from becoming a radical critic of Locke’s empiricism and Descartes’ mechanism and Hobbes’ (1588-1679) egoism. 

 

In opposition to this triad, which defined the hegemonic stream of modernity, Shaftesbury revived several of the central themes of previous thought, conceiving all things as part of a great and harmonious cosmic order. To him, philosophy was not an arid intellectual activity of a speculative nature but a practical discipline destined to make people more virtuous, sociable and happy.

 

“Shaftesbury was an avid reader of classical philosophers, especially the three major disciples of Socrates (Plato, Xenophon and Aristophanes) and the two Stoics (Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius). But he was perfectly aware that he lived in another time and called himself modern,” commented Nascimento.

 

In place of systematic exposition, which, in his opinion, limited freedom of thought, Shaftesbury considered dialogue to be the best medium for presenting philosophical ideas.

 

“However, he knew the difficulty of writing a dialogue in the modern world, characterized by a split between erudite discussion and trivial day-to-day conversation. For this reason, he worked the hardest on stylistic elaboration, approximating philosophical text to literary narrative,” explained Nascimento.

 

Paradoxically, the dialogical structure, in contrast to the totalitarian bias of the modern hegemonic dialogue, was one of the factors that led to Shaftesbury’s intellectual ostracism. It is an auspicious sign of the times that we can once again be interested in this type of reading.