Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Shaftesbury's Ethical Principle of Adaptation to Universal Harmony: Thesis for Ph; D
A. The aim of this thesis will be expository and critical. Its justification lies in the fact that there is need in English of a succinct, clear statement of Shaftesbury's ethical teaching from a comparative critical standpoint. This is especially true with reference to students of ethics to whom other lan guages than the English are not familiar. Besides, there is not at present in any language a presentation of the subject after the manner to be pursued here.
An appreciation of Shaftesbury must be determined by a comparison of his ethical teaching with that of Hobbes. This is not the usual course. As a rule presentations and discus sions of our author take him in and by himself with only incidental reference to Hobbes. This manner of treatment is acceptable if our aim is the expression of a judgment from our standpoint. And yet even this is Open to serious objec tion. It is unfair to judge a writer of the beginning of the eighteenth century by the more advanced standard and cul ture of the commencement of the twentieth century. We must estimate an author in his historical setting, and more particularly with reference to some standard of his time. Such a criterion in ethical teaching in Shaftesbury's day was furnished by Hobbes from whom subsequent English ethical speculation took its rise.
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