"At the turn of the eighteenth century, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713) placed beauty at the center of his worldview. It revolutionized Western philosophy. Thinkers such as Hume, Leibniz, Voltaire, Goethe, and Humboldt were all indebted to Shaftesburys pioneering explorations of the experience of beauty and the role it can play in moral judgment, religious worship, and appreciation of the systems of nature. By the turn of the twentieth century, however, Shaftesburys stature had greatly diminished, a result of his writing in a densely literary and narrative style out of step with the methodological approaches of later philosophers. This book rediscovers Shaftesburys vibrant ideas of beauty. It explains how Shaftesbury developed those ideas, and why they remain compelling. The author intends to make several rather explicit and provocative claims: Shaftesbury was instrumental in the development of the idea that all of wild nature has beauty and intrinsic value; his religious views were more uncompromisingly rational than almost any contemporary, and they ushered in a more critical approach to the study of the Bible and religion in general; he advanced what was at the time the highly contentious claim that an atheist can be virtuous, which was one of the most significant development in secular ethical theory; he originated the sentimentalist view that moral judgment is based in affection, or moral sense, and he made significant strides in moral psychology; he engaged in serious philosophical discussion of what makes art successful, initiating the line of inquiry that would come to be called aesthetics; and, finally, Shaftesbury was prophetic in identifying the dangers of partiality and what he saw as the difficulty of combining political activity in a highly charged partisan environment with impartial concern for humanity as a whole"--An engaging account of how Shaftesbury revolutionized Western philosophy. At the turn of the eighteenth century, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713), developed the first comprehensive philosophy of beauty to be written in English.

It revolutionized Western philosophy. In A Philosophy of Beauty, Michael Gill presents an engaging account of how Shaftesburys thought profoundly shaped modern ideas of nature, religion, morality, and art--and why, despite its long neglect, it remains compelling today. Before Shaftesburys magnum opus, Charactersticks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711), it was common to see wilderness as ugly, to associate religion with fear and morality with unpleasant restriction, and to dismiss art as trivial or even corrupting. But Shaftesbury argued that nature, religion, virtue, and art can all be truly beautiful, and that cherishing and cultivating beauty is what makes life worth living. And, as Gill shows, this view had a huge impact on the development of natural religion, moral sense theory, aesthetics, and environmentalism. Combining captivating historical details and flashes of humor, A Philosophy of Beauty not only rediscovers and illuminates a fascinating philosopher but also offers an inspiring reflection about the role beauty can play in our lives.