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PART I: Reading Shaftesbury's

Pathologia: An Illustration and Defence
of the Stoic Account of the Emotions
a b
Christian Maurer & Laurent Jaffro
a
Department of Philosophy, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
b
Department of Philosophy, University of Paris 1 Panthéon-
Sorbonne, France

Version of record first published: 18 Jul 2012

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Pathologia: An Illustration and Defence of the Stoic Account of the Emotions, History of European
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 HISTORY OF EUROPEAN IDEAS
2012, 1–14, iFirst article

PART I

Reading Shaftesbury’s Pathologia: An Illustration and Defence of the

Stoic Account of the Emotions

A N I NTRODUCTION BY C HRISTIAN M AURER 1 * AND L AURENT JAFFRO 2

1
Department of Philosophy, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
2
Department of Philosophy, University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France
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Summary
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, and ii) an edition
of the Latin text with an English translation. The Pathologia treats of a series of
topics concerning moral psychology, ethics and philology, presenting a recon-
struction 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.

Keywords: Shaftesbury; Stoicism; emotions; passions; moral psychology; Horace;

Cicero.

Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2
2. History of the Manuscripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2
3. The Stoic Theory of Emotions: Terminological and Philosophical Issues . . .5
4. Continuities and Gaps between the Pathologia and Characteristicks . . . . . .8
4.1. Virtue, the Public Good and Pity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .8
4.2. Beauty. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.3. Laughter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.4. Admiratio and contemplatio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
4.5. On the Correction from odium malevolens to pudor odiosus . . . . . . . . 13
5. Synopsis of the Manuscript Pathologia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

*Corresponding author. E-mail: christian.maurer@unifr.ch

History of European Ideas ISSN 0191-6599 print/ISSN 1873-541X online 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandfonline.com
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2012.679795
 2 C. Maurer & L. Jaffro

1. Introduction
In 1706, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713) penned
a Latin manuscript entitled Pathologia, sive Explicatio Affectuum humanorum,
secundum Doctrinam Socraticorum (‘A Theory of the Passions, or an Explanation
of the Human Affections, according to the Doctrine of the Socratics’). It treats of a
series of topics from moral psychology, ethics and philology, and contains a
reconstruction of the Stoic theory of the emotions, which is closely modelled on
the classical accounts in the fourth book of Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations and the
seventh book of Diogenes Lærtius’s Lives of the Philosophers. The Pathologia presents
a most detailed typology of the perturbationes and the constantiæ, or the passions and
affections, as well as observations on virtue, beauty, laughter and on systematic
connections between different passions, for example between admiration and pride.
On the basis of his reconstruction of Stoic moral psychology and ethics, Shaftesbury
argues that Horace, in the last of the three phases of his life, is best interpreted as a
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Stoic, not as an Epicurean.

In the present introduction, as well as in the English translation, we draw
attention to the historical and philosophical context of the Pathologia. We discuss the
Latin Pathologia in connection with Shaftesbury’s English writings, most importantly
Miscellaneous Reflections (1711) and An Inquiry Concerning Virtue, or Merit (1699/
1711), which are both parts of Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times
(1711). This sheds light on important features of Shaftesbury’s understanding and
adoption of Stoic principles. After a brief description of the history of the
manuscripts, we highlight important features of the Stoic theory of emotions and
its influence on Shaftesbury, and discuss the question of the Pathologia’s position
with respect to Characteristicks. After an analysis of selected topics of mainly
philosophical interest, we provide a synopsis of the manuscript.

2. History of the Manuscripts

The Pathologia is part of a story, the protagonists of which are Shaftesbury, John
Locke’s translator Pierre Coste, and Horace. In 1705, after Locke’s death, and before
going to Chipley for many years in the service of Edward Clarke, Pierre Coste was
hosted by Shaftesbury for six months in the family seat at St Giles.1 In 1706, after
Coste’s departure, they carried on their philosophical conversation through a
remarkable correspondence, of which until recently little seemed to have survived:
only a few letters preserved in the Public Record Office (PRO) were edited.2 The
retrospective conversion of the manual catalogues at the Hampshire County Record
Office (HRO) have now made accessible forty-two letters from Coste to Shaftesbury

1
For more historical context, see James Dybikowski, ‘Letters from Solitude: Pierre Coste’s Correspon-
dence with the Third Earl of Shaftesbury’, in Les réseaux de correspondance à l’âge classique (XVIe-XVIIIe
siècle), edited by Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire, Jens Häseler and Anthony McKenna (Saint-Etienne, 2006),
109–33.
2
See The Life, Unpublished Letters, and Philosophical Regimen of Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, edited by
Benjamin Rand (London, 1900). See also the more extensive and reliable edition in Anthony Ashley Co-
oper, Earl of Shaftesbury, and Le Refuge Français. Correspondence, edited by Rex A. Barrell (Lewiston, NY,
1989).
 Reading Shaftesbury’s Pathologia 3

in total, as well as numerous drafts and notebooks by the third Earl, including several
copies of a ‘Chronology of Horace’, all among the Harris Papers in the HRO.3 This is
a testimony to James ‘Hermes’ Harris’s interest in his uncle’s work on Horace.4 Most
interesting in this context is an allograph copy of the Pathologia (HRO 9M73/G272),
which complements the autograph copy preserved in the Shaftesbury Papers (PRO
30/24/26/7).
During the summer and autumn of 1706, Shaftesbury’s and Coste’s letters discuss
the chronology of Horace’s intellectual career. In a letter of July 1706, Coste tells
Shaftesbury about his project of annotating Tarteron’s French translation of Horace.5
This gives them the opportunity of discussing Shaftesbury’s views about the evolution
of Horace’s philosophical commitments. On 01 October 1706, Shaftesbury writes to
Coste that he ‘divides’ Horace’s life ‘into three principal states or periods’.6 The first
period is ‘his original, free, republican state’, during which Horace’s patron is Brutus
and his philosophy is ‘the old genuine academic, or, as Cicero says, in reality the
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downright Stoic’—the philosophy of the Roman senators and commonwealthmen, in

whom the Old Whigs, Shaftesbury among them, liked to see their forerunners.
Shaftesbury pays significant attention to the genealogy of philosophy in Horace’s
Epistles.7 On the one hand, there is Socrates’s legacy that runs from Plato and
Aristotle to the Stoics, and on the other hand, there is Democritus’s legacy through
the Cyrenaics and the Epicureans. During the second stage of Horace’s intellectual
and political career, when his patron is Mæcenas, he abandons Stoicism and becomes
an Epicurean, which fits his being a courtier. It is what Shaftesbury calls ‘his
debauched, slavish, courtly state’. The third stage, then, is Horace’s ‘returning,
recovering state’, where he becomes a Stoic again. Naturam expellas furca—you may
drive out nature with a pitchfork, she will ever hurry back.8
Shaftesbury could not fail to be stimulated by his correspondence with Coste.
Closely connected to the ‘Chronology of Horace’, the Pathologia focuses on the third
and final stage in Horace’s career. One important aim of the manuscript is to clarify
Horace’s philosophical evolution, and for that purpose it draws on Cicero’s Tusculan
Disputations and Diogenes Lærtius’s Lives of the Philosophers. Shaftesbury is
convinced that in order to understand Horace, and especially his third period, one
needs to look at the Stoic conception of the passions. The reason why Shaftesbury
chooses to write in Latin, which is quite unusual for him, is obvious: it allows him to
use Cicero’s terminology and to discuss its relevance for our understanding of
Horace.

3
We wish to thank Delphine Soulard for communicating to us her detailed description of these docu-
ments. On the context, see also John Milton, ‘Pierre Coste, John Locke, and the Third Earl of Shaftes-
bury’, in Studies on Locke: Sources, Contemporaries, and Legacy, edited by Sarah Hutton and Paul
Schuurman (Dordrecht, 2008), 195–223.
4
See Laurent Jaffro, ‘“De bon lieu”: Pierre Coste, James Harris, et la dissémination de l’interprétation
shaftesburienne d’Horace’, La Lettre Clandestine, 15 (2007), 47–60.
5
Pierre Coste to Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, 08 July 1706, in the Hampshire
County Record Office (HRO) 9M73/G255/5. The project was to succeed: see Horace, Œuvres d’Horace,
traduites en françois par le P. Tarteron de la Compagnie de Jésus. Avec des remarques critiques sur la
traduction, revised fourth edition, 2 vols, (Amsterdam, 1710).
6
Barrell, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, and Le Refuge Français, 163 and following.
7
See Horace, Epistles, I. 1. 16.
8
Horace, Epistles, I. 10. 24.
 4 C. Maurer & L. Jaffro

In a passage of the second book of Shaftesbury’s Askêmata, dated January

1706–1707 and written at St Giles, Shaftesbury quotes from the Pathologia and
mentions that this is what he had written ‘the other day’ ‘at North-Hall’:
See wt Thou wrot’st Thy self the other day, in thy short but very advantageouse
Retiremt at North-Hall viz: the Pathologia, at ye End … ‘Jocositas vero, sive
Risus magnus, effusus, non cohibilis, Lætitia est de Turpi externo et alieno,
tanquam Bono nobis […] Ex Invidentia ergo & Odio profiscitur Risus talis; &
est Malitiæ seu Malignitatis Species’.9
From this self-quotation, we learn the following points: Firstly, the Pathologia
was written probably by the beginning of November 1706. We know that in
November, Shaftesbury left the manor house at North-Hall, near Hampstead, where
he was staying while waiting for the opening of Parliament.10 Mention of ‘the other
day’ and of a ‘short’ retirement rule out a longer interval. Neither of the two now
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available manuscripts—PRO 30/24/26/7 and HRO 9M73/G272—are dated, yet

textual traces suggest the anteriority of the PRO manuscript.11 An important
number of autograph corrections in PRO consistently appear as allograph in HRO,
and a significant number of expressions crossed out in PRO do not appear in HRO.
Furthermore, there are some autograph corrections and additions to HRO that are
absent from PRO, which suggests that Shaftesbury continued to work with HRO
after its completion by his secretary.12 In addition, certain passages in PRO suggest
corrections to PRO posterior to the completion of HRO.13
Secondly, we learn from the self-quotation in Askêmata that Shaftesbury
considers the Pathologia not as a merely philological work in which he would
only set out the Stoic conception of the passions without subscribing to it. The
Stoic account is a very important background of Shaftesbury’s philosophy as well as
of Horace’s. The context of the section in Askêmata about the use of laughter, in
which the reference to the Pathologia appears, makes clear that Shaftesbury was
then looking for a solution to the problem of how to manage ‘ridicule’ in social,
courtly circumstances. The solution lay in the distinction between two sorts of
laughter:
How happy woud it be therefore, to exchange this vulgar sordid, profuse, horrid
Laughter for that more reserv’d, gentle kind, wch hardly is to be calld Laughter

9
Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Askêmata, in PRO 30/24/27/10, page 376 in Shaf-
tesbury’s pagination. The text follows the HRO allograph manuscript, which is evident from its using the
expression ‘ex invidentia ergo’ instead of ‘ex malevolentia ergo’.
10
Robert Voitle, The Third Earl of Shaftesbury, 1671–1713 (Baton Rouge, 1984), 254–58. According to
Voitle, Shaftesbury was probably hosted there by the third Earl of Gainsborough, with whom he had a
family connection. Shaftesbury’s cousin, Dorothy Manners, of the house of Rutland, wife of Gainsbor-
ough, was later to succeed in marrying her daughter to the fourth Earl of Shaftesbury, aged fourteen.
11
This does however not exclude the possibility that other manuscripts existed anterior to both PRO and
HRO.
12
Compare for example the consistent change in HRO from allograph odium malevolens (correctly copied
from PRO) to autograph pudor odiosus; see Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury,
Pathologia, edited and translated by Laurent Jaffro, Christian Maurer and Alain Petit, this issue, 5 and
following. This autograph modification reappears below in HRO.
13
Most importantly, HRO allograph reads vitæ hujus operisque et laboris, whereas PRO has operisque
crossed out and replaced by cursusque; see Shaftesbury, Pathologia, this issue, 8). The subsequent expre-
ssions quasi scripti alicujus vel Picturæ and manus ultima imposita are copied from PRO to HRO and
supposedly later crossed out in PRO only.
 Reading Shaftesbury’s Pathologia 5

or wch at least is of another Species? How happy to exchange this miescheivous

insulting petulant Species for that benign courteouse & kind? this rustick
barbarouse immane; for that civil polite humane? … the noisy boisterouse
turbulent loud: for the still peaceful serene mild ….14
In the next lines, Shaftesbury mentions ‘Socrates’s Laugh with Apollodorus in the
Prison’ as an instance of the ‘gentle kind’. Socratic irony embodies the discreet
hilaritas, whereas jocositas, based on an awareness of our superiority, is the only kind
of laughter Hobbes discusses in Elements of Law.15 It will be shown below that
Shaftesbury’s interest in a Stoic conceptualisation of laughter is closely connected
with his hesitations about the role of wit and humour in the critique of religion. Let
us first make some more general comments.
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3. The Stoic Theory of Emotions: Terminological and Philosophical Issues

Stoicism in general, and Stoic theories of the emotions in particular, have recently
attracted a considerable amount of interest on the part of scholars working on the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This is partly due to the insight that studying
the reception of classical authors by early modern and Enlightenment philosophers
tells us a lot about the latter.16 The integration of different elements of classical
Stoicism into different versions of Neostoicism and related positions creates a
landscape of great diversity, the complete map of which still has to be drawn.17 On
this landscape, Shaftesbury’s Pathologia occupies the place of a most interesting early
eighteenth-century study of the Stoic theory of the emotions, which helps to clarify
features of Shaftesbury’s own relation to Stoicism.
The manuscript’s title, Pathologia, indicates that it presents a theory of the pathê,
a term Cicero translates into Latin with perturbationes, and which is aptly rendered
with the English term ‘passions’.18 The subtitle indicates that one of the main goals of
the manuscript is an Explicatio Affectuum humanorum. The Latin term affectûs can
be translated with the English term ‘affections’. These two terms, ‘passions’ and
‘affections’, are most important for the period’s philosophy of the emotions.19 Both
are frequently used in a generic sense referring to all emotions (more often so the
term ‘passions’). Yet the term ‘passions’ is also often used in a specific sense
designating violent emotions in particular, and the term ‘affections’ to designate calm
emotions in particular.

14
Shaftesbury, Askêmata, in PRO 30/24/27/10, page 374 in Shaftesbury’s pagination.
15
Thomas Hobbes, The Elements of Law Natural and Politic, edited by J. C. A. Gaskin (Oxford, 2008), I.
xi. 13, 54 and following.
16
See for example the following books, just to mention a couple: Jacqueline Lagrée, Le néostoı̈cisme. Une
philosophie par gros temps (Paris, 2010); Margaret Graver, Stoicism and Emotion (Chicago, 2007). See also
several contributions to the following edited volume and journal special issue: Hellenistic and Early Mo-
dern Philosophy, edited by Jon Miller and Brad Inwood (Cambridge, 2003); The Place of the Ancients in the
Moral Philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment, edited by James A. Harris (The Journal of Scottish Phi-
losophy, 8 (2010)). A similar phenomenon can be stated concerning the study of the reception of Epicu-
reanism and other classical philosophical systems.
17
On the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see for example Lagrée, Le néostoı̈cisme, 19 and following.
18
See Marcus Tullius Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, IV. v.
19
We use the term ‘emotions’ in a generic sense, covering both violent emotions or ‘passions’ (in a specific
sense) and calm emotions or ‘affections’ (in a specific sense). These are usually treated as different from
mere affects or impulses, which do not involve representations of objects or states of affairs as good or ill.
 6 C. Maurer & L. Jaffro

The distinction between violent and calm emotions—which is sometimes

conceived as a distinction in kind, sometimes as a distinction in degree—is of great
import throughout the philosophical tradition, and especially for British moralists,
such as Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Butler, Hume and Reid.20 Violent emotions or
passions (in the specific sense) are often associated with bodily disturbances and are
conceived as having a strong tendency to conflict with reason and morality—they are
states which the person ‘passively’ undergoes without being able to exert any direct
control over them. Calm emotions or affections (in the specific sense), by contrast, are
frequently associated with states of an immaterial soul. They are informed by reality
and can be revised by reason and judgement. According to the Stoics, there are four
basic violent emotions, or perturbationes—having as their object things represented as
good or ill and as present or future—but only three basic calm emotions, or
constantiæ: the wise will never feel an emotion caused by a present ill, since they know
to avoid truly ill things and do not erroneously represent things as ill that are in reality
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indifferent.21 The underlying Stoic moral ontology, which Shaftesbury introduces at

the very beginning of the Pathologia, distinguishes between truly good and ill things
on the one hand, which are internal, in our power, or eph’ hêmin, namely virtue and
vice, and indifferent things on the other hand, which are external or not in our power
and happen to be erroneously represented as good or ill.22
According to the Stoics, emotions consist in implicit opinions that ascribe values
to objects or events. For instance, we fear some absent or future object or event that
we believe to be ill. A well-trained philosopher would be able to make those opinions
explicit through self-discourse, and would keep only the few true opinions that are
adequate to their objects.23 For instance, the wise person would enjoy only what he or
she truly judges to be good—namely that which is actually good and is recognised as
such: virtue. But then the wise person would not feel a disordered or perturbed
pleasure; rather, she or he would develop a constant joy or disposition to
contentment. Most people, however, are ‘fools’ who do not examine their confused
opinions, but blindly follow them as if they were reliable markers of value.
In both the Pathologia and his English writings, Shaftesbury sticks to the
cognitivist conception of the emotions on which the Stoic classification is based:
emotions are beliefs, true or erroneous. Other British moralists draw on the Stoic
account while subscribing to an anti-cognitivist reading: Hutcheson and Hume pay
attention to the distinctions between types of emotions or passions and tend to leave
aside the Stoic conception of emotions as implicit judgements. Nevertheless, Cicero’s
significance remains considerable: James Fieser has highlighted that Hutcheson and
Hume adopt the Stoic account of the four basic passions as formulated by Cicero in
his Tusculan Disputations IV.24 Furthermore, Cicero’s significance for Hutcheson and
Hume, as well as for other moralists such as Butler and Reid, is obvious: the
distinctions these philosophers draw between calm and violent emotions echo
Cicero’s contrast between perturbationes and constantiæ. In any case, Shaftesbury’s

20
See for example James Fieser, ‘Hume’s Classification of the Passions and its Precursors’, Hume Studies,
18 (1992), 1–17 (6).
21
Shaftesbury, Pathologia, this issue, 3 and following. See also Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, book IV and
Diogenes Lærtius, The Lives of the Philosophers, book VII.
22
Shaftesbury, Pathologia, this issue, 1 and following.
23
For the Stoics, reason is identical with internal discourse or logos.
24
Fieser, ‘Hume’s Classification’, 2, 7.
 Reading Shaftesbury’s Pathologia 7

manuscript in particular confirms the significance of Cicero’s account of the Stoic

classification of the passions for the British moralists.
The Pathologia consistently uses the Latin terms constantiæ (which we translate as
‘constant dispositions’) and perturbationes (‘perturbations’) to designate calm and
violent emotions respectively. In the English writings of Shaftesbury, however, the
terms ‘affections’ and ‘passions’ are used in different senses, and not only in the
specific one.25 Furthermore, Shaftesbury sometimes seems to rely on a distinction in
degree between calm and violent emotions (most clearly in the Inquiry), and
sometimes on a distinction in kind (most clearly in Miscellaneous Reflections) that
is more closely connected to Stoic moral ontology. In order to reach an appropriate
understanding of the Pathologia and its relation to Shaftesbury’s other writings, such
terminological aspects as well as certain psychological and philosophical claims
should be discussed in their most important contexts. As to terminological issues,
these contexts are firstly the main sources of the Pathologia, Cicero’s Tusculan
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Disputations and Diogenes Lærtius’s Lives of Philosophers, and secondly the

manuscript’s relation to Shaftesbury’s other writings.
Firstly, regarding the main sources of the Pathologia: the manuscript heavily
draws on Cicero’s discussions of the Stoic theory and classification of the emotions in
Tusculan Disputations, book IV, which includes the fundamental distinction between
perturbationes and constantiæ, and on Diogenes Lærtius’s Lives of Philosophers, book
VII, where the distinction between pathê and eupatheiai is discussed.26 Besides
presenting a more systematic fine-grained typology of the emotions than Cicero,
Shaftesbury adds two small elements. Firstly, he speaks of both violent and calm
emotions with the generic terms motus animi and affectûs—the latter term is not used
by Cicero.27 Secondly, before introducing the Stoic distinction between constantiæ
and perturbationes, and in the context of his discussion of Stoic moral ontology,
Shaftesbury lists four generic or primitive Motus sive Affectus not mentioned as such
by Cicero: appetitio, aversatio, gaudium, dolor.28 These are also systematically
introduced in Miscellany IV, Chapter 1: ‘The Affections, of which I am conscious,
are either Grief, or Joy; Desire, or Aversion’.29
Secondly, as to the comparison of the Pathologia with Shaftesbury’s English
writings, it must be noted that in the latter, Shaftesbury is less consistent in his usage
of terminology. On the one hand, he adopts the widespread tendency to use the
English terms ‘passions’ and ‘affections’ in a generic sense, referring to both calm and
violent emotions. On the other hand, he also uses the common way of marking the
distinction between calm and violent emotions by using the term ‘affections’ for calm
emotions in particular, and the term ‘passions’ for violent emotions in particular.
In Miscellaneous Reflections, for example, he uses the term ‘affections’ in both the
generic and the specific sense. Violent emotions are rather termed ‘passions’, but

25
See Laurent Jaffro, ‘La question du sens moral et le lexique stoı̈cien’, in Shaftesbury. Philosophie et
politesse, edited by Fabienne Brugère and Michel Malherbe (Paris, 2000), 61–78 (68–71).
26
See Lærtius, Lives of Philosophers, book VII, 110, 116. On classifications of the passions in classical
Stoicism, see Graver, Stoicism and Emotion, 53–59.
27
Shaftesbury, Pathologia, this issue, 1 and following.
28
Shaftesbury, Pathologia, this issue, 2.
29
Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections on the preceding Treatises,
and other Critical Subjects, in Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, edited by Douglas Den
Uyl, 3 vols (Indianapolis, 2001), III, 1–209 (119). This terminology informs our translation—except for the
English term ‘grief’, which we use to translate the Latin ægritudo, ‘pain’ being used as a translation for dolor.
 8 C. Maurer & L. Jaffro

occasionally also ‘affections’.30 In the Inquiry, he uses the term ‘affections’ in a

generic sense (and occasionally also the term ‘passions’).31 From a systematic
perspective, it is important to note that the Inquiry relies on a distinction in degree
between calm and violent emotions, not on a distinction in kind grounded on Stoic
moral ontology as developed in the Pathologia and to some extent suggested in
Miscellaneous Reflections. This has consequences for the respective treatment of the
notion of virtue, as will be discussed below. In the Inquiry, calm emotions are rather
termed ‘affections’ (that is ‘affections’ in their natural degree), and violent emotions
are rather termed ‘passions’ (or ‘affections’ in an unnaturally strong or excessive
degree).32

4. Continuities and Gaps between the Pathologia and Characteristicks

After these general considerations, let us concentrate on some more particular points
concerning the relation of the Pathologia to Shaftesbury’s other writings. Asking
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whether the philosophy set out in Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times
and the principles of the Pathologia are compatible might be considered a misleading
question, since the 1706 Latin manuscript does not directly present Shaftesbury’s own
thought, but reconstructs the Stoic doctrine of the passions in order to clarify Horace’s
intellectual career. One might argue that these very different projects—the one
philosophical, the other philological—cannot be compared. However, the philosophy
of Characteristicks draws a lot on Stoicism, and especially on Stoic moral psychology.
Also, the discussion about hilaritas and jocositas and the question of wit and humour—
one of the major topics of the first volume of Characteristicks—are interrelated.
Moreover, philology and philosophy are always intimately connected for Shaftesbury. It
should also be stressed that the Pathologia was composed a few months before A Letter
concerning Enthusiasm (written in 1707, published in 1711), that is at the start of the
most intense period in Shaftesbury’s literary career. Shaftesbury gets back to the
Pathologia when he prepares his Miscellaneous Reflections for the third volume of
Characteristicks. For these reasons it makes sense to survey the continuities and also the
gaps between the manuscript and the published work.

4.1. Virtue, the Public Good and Pity

From the point of view of moral philosophy, certain elements of the Pathologia seem to
conflict with the principles in other writings of Shaftesbury, especially the Inquiry.
Besides different ways of drawing a distinction between calm and violent emotions,
namely a distinction in kind in the Pathologia and a distinction in degree in the Inquiry,
an important connected point concerns the conception of virtue. However, there are
close parallels between Pathologia and Miscellany IV.1.33 This displays some tensions
between the Stoic principles sketched out in the Pathologia and Shaftesbury’s own
philosophy, and it reflects Shaftesbury’s complex relationship with Stoicism.
The problem concerning the conception of virtue crystallises in the notion of the
public good. The Inquiry strongly emphasises its importance for both natural

30
Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, in Characteristicks, III, 119 and following, 121 and following.
31
Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, An Inquiry Concerning Virtue, or Merit, in
Characteristicks, II, 1–100 (50 and following).
32
Compare with the discussion in Shaftesbury, Inquiry, in Characteristicks, II, 80 and following.
33
Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, in Characteristicks, III, 119 and following. This passage looks
almost like a translation from the Pathologia.
 Reading Shaftesbury’s Pathologia 9

goodness and moral virtue. Rational and non-rational creatures are naturally good
‘When in general, all the Affections or Passions are suited to the publick Good, or
good of the Species’.34 A rational creature is morally virtuous if in addition to having
its first-order affections in their natural degree it possesses ‘the Notion of a public
Interest, and can attain the Speculation or Science of what is morally good or ill,
admirable or blameable, right or wrong’.35 The Stoic conception of virtue in the
Pathologia, however, stresses the importance of a strict distinction between internal
and external things—external things not being in our power, ouk eph’ hêmin, and thus
in reality indifferent. Accordingly, the cultivation of virtue recommended in the
Pathologia places great emphasis on the avoidance of erroneous representations of
external things as truly good or ill, the goal being the avoidance of perturbationes and
the strengthening of constantiæ.
Such ideas appear in the background of Miscellany IV, which Shaftesbury intends
to be an ‘Apology’ or illustration of the theses of the Inquiry.36 Partly based on the
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Stoic moral psychology sketched out in the Pathologia, Shaftesbury discusses a series
of traditional Stoic examples of passions such as fear of death and desire for material
possessions. These are caused by erroneous fancies of ‘suppos’d Evil’ and of ‘outward
Subjects’ as ‘excellent in them-selves’, which are again connected to admiration.37
Reflecting the distinctions between internal and external things, Shaftesbury
recommends for the ‘working upon his own Mind’38 that
if instead of placing Worth or Excellence in these outward Subjects, we place it,
where it is truest, in the Affections or Sentiments, in the governing Part and
inward Character; we have then the full Enjoyment of it within our power.39
Both the Pathologia and Miscellaneous Reflections focus on the examples of material
possessions, honour and life as cases of external things that are typically misrepresented
as truly good or evil, thus provoking violent emotions or passions. However, according
to the strict distinction between internal and external things in the Pathologia, the public
good and the happiness of others must also be classified as external, since they are not
in our power, that is ouk eph’ hêmin. From that point of view, it seems an implicit
consequence that we ought not to represent the public good as truly good, since the
corresponding desires could be frustrated. Yet this claim is obviously in fundamental
conflict with the Inquiry’s conception of virtue, according to which acting to promote
the public good and desiring the public good is essential to being a virtuous creature.
In spite of his strong reliance on Stoicism, Shaftesbury refrains from taking the
underlying principles of the Pathologia to such extremes in Miscellany IV. Rather, he
recommends to ‘join the Opinion of Good to the Possessions of the Mind’, in
particular to ‘the Affections themselves’40 whilst regularly praising the ‘social or
natural Affections, which our Author considers as essential to the Health, Wholeness
or Integrity of the particular Creature’.41 This suggests that even if Miscellaneous
Reflections is to some extent influenced by the Pathologia, Shaftesbury thinks that

34
Shaftesbury, Inquiry, in Characteristicks, II, 15.
35
Shaftesbury, Inquiry, in Characteristicks, II, 18.
36
Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, in Characteristicks, III, 117.
37
Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, in Characteristicks, III, 120 and following.
38
Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, in Characteristicks, III, 122.
39
Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, in Characteristicks, III, 121.
40
Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, in Characteristicks, III, 121.
41
Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, in Characteristicks, III, 135.
 10 C. Maurer & L. Jaffro

having one’s affections in their natural state (as discussed in the Inquiry’s teleological
conception of human nature) is a true good and, as he says, a possession of the
mind.42 In contrast to the focus on avoiding perturbationes and strengthening
constantiæ that marks the Pathologia, the emphasis on the natural state of the
affections marking Miscellaneous Reflections involves the agent’s dependence on an
external good, namely the public good, which is the object of the natural affections.
This may mark a difference with stricter versions of Stoicism.43
However, within Stoicism, there may be a possibility of accounting for the
difference of emphasis between the Pathologia and the Inquiry: the latter focuses on
emotions only insofar as they are involved in social behaviour, whereas the former
does not pay much attention to the problems of action, but focuses on self-control.
Thus, we may say that the Pathologia tackles emotions from the angle of moral
psychology only, whilst the Inquiry is mainly interested in social duties or ‘offices’.
The two aspects can be seen as complementary.
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A similar question may be raised concerning Shaftesbury’s views of the emotion

of pity. In the Inquiry and Sensus Communis, pity is treated as an example of a natural
affection, its reality demonstrating that the selfish hypothesis held by Epicureans and
Augustinians is false.44 In its natural degree, experiencing the emotion of pity when
observing others in distress is part of what it is to be virtuous, yet like any other
affection it becomes morally problematic if in an excessive degree.45 In the
Pathologia, on the other hand, Shaftesbury discusses the Stoic treatment of
misericordia or commiseratio as a vice:
For instance mercy or commiseration, although it is a perturbation and a
miserable grief, is commonly reckoned among the virtues. But by the Stoics it is
reckoned among the vices and illnesses. For it contains in itself, they say, the
very seeds of other vices, and it shares the same cause with all other
perturbations.46
According to the Stoics, this emotion—arising upon the view of others in distress—
must be classified as perturbatio, since it is based on an erroneous representation of
external things—the state of others—as truly ill. It has psychologically and morally
problematic consequences, since it engenders admiration, pride, ambition, envy,
jealousy, malevolence. The Inquiry’s treatment of pity as a part of virtue is very different
from this Stoic view, and Shaftesbury seems to refrain from subscribing to the latter.

4.2. Beauty
The Stoic conception of beauty is a disjunctive view: when we say that X is beautiful,
then we mean either that it is a ‘true’ or ‘real’ beautiful thing, and then it is the same
as the moral good; or that it is something different from the moral good, and then it

42
Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, in Characteristicks, III, 122.
43
See Christian Maurer, ‘Hutcheson’s Relation to Stoicism in the Light of His Moral Psychology’, The
Journal of Scottish Philosophy, 8 (2010), 33–49 for an account of how Hutcheson deals with a very similar
problem and rejects certain stricter versions of Stoicism. On pity, see further Lagrée, Le néostoı̈cisme, 136
and following.
44
Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury, Sensus Communis, an Essay on the Freedom of Wit
and Humour in a Letter to a Friend, in Characteristicks, I, 37–93 (74); Shaftesbury, Inquiry, in
Characteristicks, II, 16.
45
Shaftesbury, Inquiry, in Characteristicks, II, 16.
46
Shaftesbury, Pathologia, this issue, 8 and following.
 Reading Shaftesbury’s Pathologia 11

must be a false beauty. In the Pathologia, the aesthetic experience, that is the
experience of the beauty of sensible objects, seems to be disparaged. According to
that cognitive conception of beauty that subordinates it to moral goodness, a
judgement that ascribes beauty to an object is true if and only if the object is really
beautiful, that is if and only if the object is morally good. All judgements that ascribe
beauty to sensible objects that are not morally good are false. That claim, quite
difficult to accept, seems to rule out philosophical aesthetics as a discipline distinct
from moral philosophy or, more precisely, from the professional ethics of the Stoic
philosopher.
This does not fit the well-known picture of Shaftesbury as a founder of modern
aesthetics. However, in Characteristicks, Shaftesbury does not see any difficulty in
identifying his own views on the matter with those of the Stoics. In a note on the
beautiful in the third Miscellany, Shaftesbury contrasts the ‘vulgar Admiration’ of
‘outward Things’ with our love of ‘intrinsick and real Beauty’. In a feigned Stoic
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soliloquy, he considers that ‘all Embellishments are affected, besides the true’.47 In
this important note, Shaftesbury refers to The Moralists, part III, section 2:
whatever in Nature is beautiful or charming, is only the faint Shadow of that
First Beauty. So that every real Love depending on the Mind, and being only
the Contemplation of Beauty, either as it really is in it-self, or as it appears
imperfectly in the Objects which strike the Sense; how can the rational Mind
rest here, or be satisfy’d with the absurd Enjoyment which reaches the Sense
alone?48
The Platonic view of a scale of beauties is compatible, for Shaftesbury, with the Stoic
critique of outward and false beauties. Moreover, the fact that in the Pathologia
Shaftesbury ‘duplicates’ the table of moral passions and dispositions with a table of
their aesthetic counterparts suggests that he is well aware that, although aesthetic
categories are closely dependent on moral categories, they deserve to be dealt with
separately. This opens up the possibility of an epistemological distinction between the
moral and the aesthetic approaches. In the Pathologia, the beautiful is sharply divided
into the objects of ‘admiration’, which is a passion, on the one hand, and the objects
of the virtue of ‘contemplation’ on the other hand. However, the true (moral)
beauties philosophers contemplate may be expressed through sensible forms. There is
room for aesthetics as a vehicle of morality.

4.3. Laughter
If we compare what we find in the last paragraphs of the Pathologia with what
Shaftesbury writes about laughter in A Letter concerning Enthusiasm (1708)49 and
Sensus Communis: An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour (1709), we discover
that Shaftesbury has changed his mind in the space of a few months on whether,
firstly, laughter is or is not a passion (or the facial expression of a passion) and
whether, secondly, laughter may be used as a philosophical tool against religious

47
Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, in Characteristicks, III, 111–14.
48
Shaftesbury, The Moralists, a Philosophical Rhapsody, in Characteristicks, II, 101–247 (220 and follo-
wing).
49
The Letter was written in September 1707. Shaftesbury ridicules the London ‘French Prophets’ and,
through them, primitive Christianity. On the context, see Michael Heyd, ‘Be Sober and Reasonable’: The
Critique of Enthusiasm in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries (Leiden, 1995).
 12 C. Maurer & L. Jaffro

‘enthusiasm’. Here and there, Shaftesbury makes several distinctions that look
similar but are not perfectly coextensive. The distinction between jocositas and
hilaritas is similar to the distinction between ridicule and good-humour that we find
in the later essays, insofar as ridicule, like jocositas, is a kind of hate or contempt,
contrasted with the more positive and gentle hilaritas which we translate as ‘mirth’.
However, there are important differences. Good-humour in Characteristicks is a
disposition rather than a response, and even a good disposition: it is not a passion,
but a virtue. As a practical disposition, it contributes to governing the action of
ridicule (especially when employed against religion) and also the passion of laughter.
The good-humoured man, like the Aristotelian phronimos, knows well how to laugh,
when to laugh, and with whom to laugh. In the Pathologia, hilaritas is treated as a
passion, a kind of ‘admiration’, which, like all passions, should be avoided by the
philosopher; jocositas (which we translate with ‘mockery’, and which consists in
ridiculing other people) should be absolutely avoided. Both types of laughter are
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passions because they are related to an imagined, not to a true, good or ill. So
Shaftesbury’s views about laughter have changed between January 1707 (when he
refers to the Pathologia in the section of the Askêmata mentioned above) and
September 1707 (when he writes A Letter concerning Enthusiasm). The Pathologia
rules out the possibility of a rational use of jocositas to ridicule fanatics and zealots.
However, it should be noticed that in the section on laughter in Askêmata, hilaritas,
albeit a passion, is eulogised as akin to Socratic irony, which is the disposition we
should cultivate in a social context.

4.4. Admiratio and contemplatio

Throughout the Pathologia, and partly in Miscellaneous Reflections, admiratio is
depicted as a most problematic passion. Shaftesbury himself is far less critical in
other writings, for example in the Inquiry, where admiration is associated with love
and esteem as reactions to virtue, beauty and the order of the universe. Other
eighteenth-century philosophers, for example Hutcheson, Hume and Smith, have less
negative or even positive views of admiration. According to the Stoic view
summarised in the Pathologia, admiratio ‘is the greatest cause of all vices, and that
which increases and strengthens them’, since it has external things as its object and
engenders a series of morally and psychologically problematic passions, such as
arrogance and ambition.50 This very critical view informs Miscellaneous Reflections,
where admiration is associated with erroneous representations of external things as
excellent in themselves, misplaced fancies and passions that lead to misery.51 To avoid
these consequences, Shaftesbury in Miscellaneous Reflections strongly suggests
avoiding admiration and in general ‘to make those Fancys themselves the Objects
of my Aversion which justly deserve it; by being the Cause of a wrong Estimation and
Measure of Good and Ill, and consequently, the Cause of my Unhappiness and
Disturbance’.52
We understand why ‘admiration’ is always bad: it is a perturbation. Parallel to
admiration, but on the right side, we find ‘contemplation’. Since it is a constant
disposition, the object of which is a real beauty (in the forms of nature or of art), we

50
Shaftesbury, Pathologia, this issue, 5 and following.
51
Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, in Characteristicks, III, 121, 123 note.
52
Shaftesbury, Miscellaneous Reflections, in Characteristicks, III, 123.
 Reading Shaftesbury’s Pathologia 13

expect it to be always good. Now Shaftesbury intriguingly says that it is ‘dangerous

for the beginner’. Why? Here again he draws on the Roman Stoics. Epictetus, in the
Enchiridion (chapter 7), insists that beginners ought to partly use aversion (limiting it
to the objects and events we have the power to avoid) and completely suppress desire
(even limited to objects that lie in our power). We quote from George Stanhope’s
1694 translation:
Let your Aversions then be taken off from all Things out of your own Power,
and transferred to such Things as are contrary to Nature within your own
Power. And as for Desires, lay them, for the present, wholly aside: for if you fix
them upon Things out of your Power, you are sure to be unsuccessful; and if
you would restrain them to fit and proper Objects, such as come within it, yet
this is not come to your turn yet. Let your Mind therefore go no farther than to
mere Tendencies and Propensions, to moderate and use these gently, gradually,
and cautiously.53
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In a sense, it is more dangerous to think that X is good and should be obtained than
to think that X is bad and should be avoided. The point is not that an imaginary
ugliness will not harm as much as an imaginary beauty. Yet for the beginner, who is
always at risk of stopping making efforts, even a real beauty is dangerous to
contemplate. Shaftesbury paraphrases Epictetus: ‘The beginning is not to be found in
contemplation or in desire of virtue and beauty, but in restraint and sedation of the
contrary desires. For virtue arises from aversion and flight’.54 As Simplicius puts it:
The Aversions are allowed in Young Beginners, because the Method of their
Cures require it; and the first step towards a Reformation, is by growing into a
Dislike of Vice, to put themselves into a Condition of receiving Vertuous
Principles and Good Instructions.55

4.5. On the Correction from odium malevolens to pudor odiosus

An interesting autograph change in HRO invites an explanation: Shaftesbury
consistently crosses out the expression odium malevolens and replaces it with the
expression pudor odiosus. This change may be explained as follows: Odium malevolens
is the wanting of ill to someone else based on hatred, which does not necessarily
involve a bad opinion of oneself. This bad opinion of oneself is, however,
characteristic for the passion of pudor odiosus, which is introduced in the table of
different passions consequent upon the agent’s admiration of external goods when
comparing him or herself with others.

5. Synopsis of the Manuscript Pathologia56

0. The detailed title indicates the main theme of the Pathologia, namely a
reconstruction and discussion of the Stoic theory of the passions with the goal of
understanding Horace’s third philosophical phase.

53
Epictetus and Simplicius, Epictetus His Morals, with Simplicius His Comment, edited and translated by
George Stanhope (London, 1694), 67.
54
Shaftesbury, Pathologia, this issue, 7.
55
Stanhope, Epictetus, 77.
56
The numbers refer to thematic sections in our Latin edition and English translation.
 14 C. Maurer & L. Jaffro

1. The fundamental elements of Stoic moral psychology and moral ontology are
introduced. The first part treats of general features of the relation between the
emotions and their objects, the second part deals with the central distinction between
perturbationes (passions) and constantiæ (affections).
2. In view of this distinction, a series of psychological connections between the
basic emotions are discussed.
3. The first table of the emotions opposes the four Stoic perturbationes and the
three Stoic constantiæ from the angle of the distinction between good and ill.
4. The second table opposes perturbationes and constantiæ from the angle of the
distinction between the beautiful and the ugly, applied to ourselves.
5. The third table does the same from the angle of the distinction between the
beautiful and the ugly, applied to external things.
6. This is followed by a discussion of the origins and the psychological
interconnections of vicious dispositions arising from admiration—a passion that
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ultimately ties us to external things. There is a strong focus on pride.

7. The fourth table displays four vicious dispositions arising from admiration.
8. The analysis of vicious dispositions is continued, the focus being on varieties of
hatred. Shaftesbury makes several philological points concerning the reading of
Horace.
9. The psychological analysis is continued with respect to the consequences of the
discussed vicious dispositions, and enriched with a series of quotes from Horace.
According to Shaftesbury, these suggest that in his third phase, Horace adhered once
more to Stoicism.
10. Again supplemented by a series of quotes from Horace, Shaftesbury gives a
sketch of the Stoic approach to the curing of the passions, focusing on admiration.
11. He discusses the Stoic paradoxical view of mercy or commiseration as a vice
and adds a series of quotes from Horace on admiration, and on the place of virtue in
the good life.
12. Shaftesbury concludes the Pathologia with a series of philological remarks,
arguing that Horace’s position with regard to mockery in the passages examined can
only be understood in the Stoic framework.

Acknowledgements
We wish to thank Alexander Broadie, Richard Glauser, James A. Harris, Thomas E.
Jones, Ralph MacLean, Joanna Patsalidou, Philip Reimann, Delphine Soulard,
Richard Whatmore, participants of workshops and seminars on the British Moralists
in Paris (2011), Neuchâtel (2006 and 2011), Fribourg (2012), an anonymous referee,
and our colleagues at the Research Centre Philosophies et rationalités (PHIER) in
Clermont-Ferrand for insightful comments, linguistic support and most patient
benevolentia.