SOURCE: Davidson, James W. “Criticism and Self-Knowledge in Shaftesbury's Soliloquy.” Enlightenment Essays 5, no. 2 (summer 1974): 50-61.

In the essay below, Davidson examines Shaftesbury's ideas about self-examination, criticism of society, and the control of the irrational.

In the second treatise of the Characteristics, An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour, Shaftesbury proposes that criticism of self and society, regulated by the standard of taste—“common sense”—be initiated through literature. If poets are “to ridicule folly, and recommend wisdom and virtue (if possibly they can) in a way of pleasantry and mirth,” then they must acquire “knowledge of our passions in their very seeds, the measuring well the growth and progress of enthusiasm, and the judging rightly of its natural force, and what command it has over our very senses” (Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, ed John M. Robertson with an introduction by Stanley Grean, 2 Vols. in...