Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, (born Feb. 26, 1671, London, Eng.—died Feb. 15, 1713, Naples [Italy]), English politician and philosopher, grandson of the famous 1st earl and one of the principal English Deists.
His early education was directed by John Locke, and he attended Winchester College. He entered Parliament in 1695 and, succeeding as 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury in 1699, attended Parliament regularly in the House of Lords for the remainder of William III’s reign. He pursued an independent policy in the House of Lords as well as in the House of Commons. In July 1702 he retired from public life.
Shaftesbury’s philosophy owed something to the Cambridge Platonists, who had stressed the existence in man of a natural moral sense. Shaftesbury advanced this concept against both the orthodox Christian doctrine of the Fall and against the premise that the state of nature was a state of unavoidable warfare.
Shaftesbury’s Neoplatonism, his contention that what man sees of beauty or truth is only a shadow of absolute beauty or truth, dominated his attitude to religion and to the arts. During his lifetime his fame as a writer was comparatively slight, for he published little before 1711; in that year appeared his Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, in which his chief works were assembled. The effect of this book was immediate and was felt on the European continent as well as in England; indeed, English Deism was transmitted to Germany almost entirely through translations of his writings. Alexander Pope, Joseph Butler, Francis Hutcheson, Mark Akenside, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Immanuel Kant were among those who were to some degree affected by Shaftesbury.