Cooper, Anthony Ashley. Earl of Shaftesbury - Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times – 1711 – rare first edition Contemporary decorated calf leather HARD COVER The leather spine is very nicely restored. The pages are clean. 3 volumes, 8vo (5 x 7.5 inches); pp. iv, [4], 364; 443; [4], 344, [88] (index, ads "Books Printed for, and Sold by William Taylor, at the Ship in Paternoster-Row").  Most of the works for which Shaftesbury is known were completed in the period 1705 to 1710. He collected a number of those and other works in Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (first edition 1711, anonymous, 3 vols.) Contents of the Characteristicks This listing refers to the first edition. The later editions saw changes. Volume I The opening piece is A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm, advocating religious toleration, published anonymously in 1708. It was based on a letter sent to John Somers, 1st Baron Somers of September 1707. At this time repression of the French Camisards was topical. The second treatise is Sensus Communis: An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour, first published in 1709. The third part is Soliloquy: or, Advice to an Author, from 1710. Volume II It opens with Inquiry Concerning Virtue and Merit, based on a work from 1699. With this treatise, Shaftesbury became the founder of moral sense theory. It is accompanied by The Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody, from 1709. Shaftesbury himself regarded it as the most ambitious of his treatises. The main object of The Moralists is to propound a system of natural theology, for theodicy. Shaftesbury believed in one God whose characteristic attribute is universal benevolence; in the moral government of the universe; and in a future state of man making up for the present life. Volume III Entitled Miscellaneous Reflections, this consisted of previously unpublished works. From his stay at Naples there was A Notion of the Historical Draught or Tablature of the Judgment of Hercules.) Shaftesbury, a follower of the political and educational philosopher John Locke, did more than any of his contemporaries to establish ethics and aesthetics as central areas of philosophical inquiry. On man as a social creature, Shaftesbury argued that the egoist and the extreme altruist are both imperfect. People, to contribute to the happiness of the whole, must fit in. He rejected the idea that humankind is naturally selfish; and the idea that altruism necessarily cuts across self-interest. Thomas Jefferson found this general and social approach attractive.