Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times: Volume II - Hardcover

Cooper, Anthony Ashley III; Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper; Earl Of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198123779 ISBN 13: 9780198123774

Publisher: OUP Oxford, 1999

Synopsis

Shaftesbury's Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times is a collection of treatises on interconnected themes in moral philosophy, aesthetics, literature, and politics. It was immensely influential on eighteenth-century British taste and manners, literature, and thought, and also on the Continental Enlightenment. The author was a Whig, a Stoic, and a theist, whose commitment to political liberty and civic virtue shaped all of his other concerns, from the role of the arts in a free state to the nature of the beautiful and the good.

This is the first new edition of Shaftesbury's Characteristicks as a coherent collection for almost a century. A substantial Introduction discusses Shaftesbury's works and ideas in the context of his times, and traces the reception and influence of his writings through the eighteenth century and beyond. A full and scholarly commentary is provided, as well as a complete textual apparatus. The very thorough Index is Shaftesbury's own.

The text is essentially that of the first edition of 1711, as marked up with changes by Shaftesbury himself in preparation for the posthumous second edition of 1714; and the striking emblematic engravings he commissioned especially for the second edition are incorporated.

About this edition

• Publisher: OUP Oxford
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0198123779
• ISBN 13: 9780198123774
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 404