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		Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times
		In Three Volumes, With Illustrations By Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury Foreword by Douglas Den Uyl
		Table of Contents Publication Date: March 2001 5.75 x 9.5. 815 pages. Foreword, note on the text, Shaftesbury's index, index to this edition.

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This new Liberty Fund edition of Characteristicks presents the complete 1732 text of this classic work of philosophy and political theory. Also included are faithful reproductions of the stirring engravings that Shaftesbury created to facilitate the reader's consideration of his meditations on the interrelationships among truth, goodness, beauty, virtue, liberty, responsibility, society, and the state. Click here to view a sample art card.

The grandson of a founder and leader of the English Whigs, and tutored by John Locke, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713), wrote one of the most intellectually influential works in English of the eighteenth century. This was the three-volume Characteristicks, originally published in 1711, but revised in 1714 to accommodate the engravings of illustrations that Shaftesbury himself executed to aid the reader's consideration of his reflections on virtue as a kind of rationally achieved harmony among the affections.

Widely regarded as the first exponent of the view that ethics derives, not from reason alone, but from "sentiment," Shaftesbury criticizes not only Locke but, especially, Hobbes for the dim view that "the state of nature" is "a war of all against all." To the contrary, Shaftesbury argued that human nature responds most fully to representations of the good, the true, and the beautiful, and that human beings naturally desire society. In all of these reflections, he provides a large scope for the exercise of individual liberty and responsibility.

Douglas Den Uyl has for many years been a Professor of Philosophy at Bellarmine College, Louisville, and is Vice President of Educational Programs for Liberty Fund, Inc.

Additional Testimonials

The Liberty Fund offers common readers and scholars alike an affordable version of the sixth, corrected, edition. Brief editorial comments by Douglas Den Uyl emphasize the richness and diversity of the text, advising the reader not to approach Characteristicks ‘predisposed to a certain framework or perspective. . . .The work’s messages are perhaps multiple and not driven home with the same transparency of purpose and objective as writings of later times’. Foreign language extracts have been translated and inserted into the page. Otherwise, the book takes its recognisable eighteenth century form, a three-volume, illustrated set, including two late pieces on the plastic arts. Pagination of the sixth edition, which remained constant for much of the eighteenth century, is carefully noted, allowing readers to make use of Shaftesbury’s own cross-references, index, and emblematic designs keyed to specific passages.

Why select the sixth instead of the second edition? Between 1711 and 1713, Shaftesbury designed and commissioned a series of frontispieces for each of the works compiled in Characteristicks. These marvelous engravings were included in the posthumous second edition. Shaftesbury placed increasing emphasis on the visual and plastic arts as he neared the end of his life, and used the frontispieces to highlight the continuity of arguments amidst a doctrinally diverse and formally amorphous collection. The page numbers etched into pedestals and frames functioned like a visual index. The Liberty Fund holds that Shaftesbury’s aesthetic views offer a key to his entire philosophy. Their edition consequently reproduces the images with all the clarity and depth of the originals. . .”

Essays in Criticism
January 2004