SOURCE: Markley, Robert. “Style as Philosophical Structure: The Contexts of Shaftesbury's Characteristicks.” In The Philosopher as Writer: The Eighteenth Century, edited by Robert Ginsberg, pp. 140-54. Selinsgrove, Pa: Susquehanna University Press, 1987.

In the following essay, Markley argues that Shaftesbury's work is important not only for its ideas but because it shows the interaction of philosophical and stylistic concerns.

Shaftesbury has traditionally proved a difficult writer for both literary critics and philosophers. Most of his commentators have taken his self-proclaimed status as a “philosopher” as both the beginning and logical conclusion of their attempts to interpret his work: Shaftesbury is located within the historical traditions of philosophic thought and his “ideas” examined and explicated as disinterested contributions to the history of knowledge. These efforts, however, have led most of his critics to neglect a good portion of his writing, concentrating (albeit understandably) on the Inquiry Concerning Virtue and the...