Papers by Christian Maurer
This paper contrasts Frankfurt’s characterisation of self-love as disinterested with the predomin... more This paper contrasts Frankfurt’s characterisation of self-love as disinterested with the predominant 18th-century view on self-love as interested. two senses of the term ‘interest’ are distinguished to discuss two fundamentally different readings of the claim that self-love promotes the agent’s interest. This allows characterising two approaches to self-love, which are found in Hutcheson’s and in butler’s writings. Hutcheson sees self-love as a source of hedonistic motives, which can be calm or passionate. butler sees it as a general affection of rational beings in the sense of a kind of love of one’s real nature.
Intellectual History Review
This chapter focuses on a prominent theme of the debates in theology and philosophy that characte... more This chapter focuses on a prominent theme of the debates in theology and philosophy that characterise the period leading into the Enlightenment, namely on doctrinal issues concerning human nature in general and the passion of self-love in particular. It investigates the rather poorly explored but well documented conflict between Archibald Campbell (1691–1756) and the Committee for Purity of Doctrine of the Church of Scotland, highlighting certain similarities with Genevan developments regarding the conception of orthodoxy. From a doctrinal point of view, the debates on the moral status of human nature reveal significant characteristics of the tensions between conservative Calvinist orthodoxy and certain currents of early eighteenth-century moral philosophy and theology. In both Scotland and Geneva of the period, moral philosophy and moral theology witness efforts to rehabilitate postlapsarian human nature. The Calvinist doctrines of predestination, of total depravity stemming from original sin, and of dependence on unmerited divine grace are opposed or attenuated, and an overall more optimistic view of human nature is put forward. Such efforts had already been made in the seventeenth century, for example by Arminian theologians, and led to a reaction in the form of more rigid conceptions of orthodoxy. To begin with a Scottish impression, a look at the Westminster Confession of Faith’s description of postlapsarian human nature shall set the stage. The Confession of Faith is the elaborate result of the Assembly of Divines at Westminster, lasting from 1643 to 1648. It bears the marks of a conservative Calvinist reaction to the controversies on Arminian doctrines concerning original sin, predestination, grace, and salvation – topics that had already been dealt with in the Synod of Dort (1618–1619). Together with the Longer and Shorter Catechisms and the Scriptures, the Confession of Faith turned into one of the pillars of conservative Scottish Presbyterian orthodoxy, which deeply marked the early decades of the eighteenth century. Later in the century, and in difference to Geneva and other protestant areas in Europe, subscription to the Confession of Faith remained mandatory for university professors and ministers in Scotland, yet the strict conception of orthodoxy based on the Confession of Faith got increasingly marginalised during the Enlightenment. As far as human nature is concerned, the Confession of Faith insists emphatically on the Calvinist doctrines of original sin and the Fall, predestination and divine grace. Famously, human beings in the postlapsarian state of corruption are described as “wholly defiled in all the Faculties and Parts of Soul and Body,” and as “utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all Good, and wholly inclined to all Evil.” Without the influence of unmerited divine grace, they are unable to perform anything but sinful actions. An essential aspect of this corruption that emerged into one
History of European Ideas, 2015
Summary This article discusses Archibald Campbell's (1691–1756) early writings on religion, a... more Summary This article discusses Archibald Campbell's (1691–1756) early writings on religion, and the reactions they provoked from conservative orthodox Presbyterians. Purportedly against the Deist Matthew Tindal, Campbell crucially argued for two claims, namely (i) for the reality of immutable moral laws of nature, and (ii) for the incapacity of natural reason, or the light of nature, to discover the fundamental truths of religion, in particular the existence and perfections of God, and the immortality of the soul. In an episode that had its peak in 1735 and 1736, a Committee for Purity of Doctrine of the Church of Scotland scrutinised Campbell's writings. It attacked the second claim as contradicting Calvinist doctrines concerning the universal guilt of mankind after the Fall, and the first claim as contradicting doctrines concerning justification and salvation, and as supporting Deism. The study of this episode reveals new aspects of how the struggle to define orthodoxy crystallised in philosophical and theological debates in Scotland at the dawn of the Enlightenment, and before the rise of the Moderates.
Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 2012
This paper discusses the accounts of self-cultivation and self-denial of Archibald Campbell (1691... more This paper discusses the accounts of self-cultivation and self-denial of Archibald Campbell (1691–1756). It analyses how he attempts to make room for moral self-improvement and for the control of the passions in a thoroughly egoistic psychological framework, and with a theory of moral motivation that focuses on a specific kind of self-love, namely the desire for esteem. Campbell's views are analysed in the context of his criticisms of both Francis Hutcheson's benevolence-based moral philosophy and of Bernard Mandeville's version of an egoistic psychology. The paper explores the key role of Campbell's distinction between true and mistaken self-love, and it discusses how his account of self-cultivation reflects both his optimistic view of human nature as being naturally disposed to virtue and his moral rehabilitation of self-love – two points on which he is in conflict with the period's orthodox Calvinism.
History of European Ideas, 2013
The present article is an edition of the Pathologia (1706), a Latin manuscript on the passions by... more The present article is an edition of the Pathologia (1706), a Latin manuscript on the passions by Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713). There are two parts, i) an introduction with commentary (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2012.679795), and ii) an edition of the Latin text with an English translation (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2012.679796) . The Pathologia treats of a series of topics concerning moral
History of European Ideas, 2013
The present article is an edition of the Pathologia (1706), a Latin manuscript on the passions by... more The present article is an edition of the Pathologia (1706), a Latin manuscript on the passions by Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713). There are two parts, i) an introduction with commentary (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2012.679795), and ii) an edition of the Latin text with an English translation (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2012.679796) . The Pathologia treats of a series of topics concerning moral psychology, ethics and philology, presenting a reconstruction of the Stoic theory of the emotions that is closely modelled on Cicero and Diogenes Lærtius. It contains a most detailed typology of the passions and affections as well as an analysis of a series of psychological connections, for example between admiration and pride. On the basis of his reconstruction of Stoic moral psychology and ethics, Shaftesbury argues that in one of his phases, Horace should be interpreted as a Stoic rather than as an Epicurean. The translation and the commentary draw attention to the relations between the Pathologia and Shaftesbury's English writings, most importantly Miscellaneous Reflections and the Inquiry Concerning Virtue, or Merit, which sheds light on several features of Shaftesbury's relation to Stoicism.
Global Intellectual History
This article is an introduction to a special issue on 'Contexts of Religious Tolerance: New Persp... more This article is an introduction to a special issue on 'Contexts of Religious Tolerance: New Perspectives from Early Modern Britain and Beyond', which contains essays on the contributions to the debates on tolerance by non-canonical philosophers and theologians, mainly from seventeenth-and eighteenth-century Scotland and England.
Books by Christian Maurer
Edinburgh University Press, 2019
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Papers by Christian Maurer
Books by Christian Maurer