Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, Etc

Forced by ill-health to abandon politics for literature, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, became the most remarkable figure in the literary history of his time. He was attacked as a deist by Christian apologists for the religious scepticism expressed so clearly in Characterisitics (first published in 1711). Philosophically, he rejected the teachings of Locke, and was much influenced by the Cambridge Platonists. Besides Cudworth and Whichcote, he revered Plato whom he tried to emulate in some of his writings. He influenced in various ways all the chief ethical writers of the century, particularly the continental thinkers. Leibnitz, on reading Characteristics, declared it to anticipate much of his (as yet unpublished) Theodicy, 'but more agreeably turned'. The Shaftesbury Collection includes not only all the works published in Shaftesbury's lifetime but all his significant writings published subsequently, including his letters and philosophical notebooks. Most of the material has been out of print for many years.