I. Works: Aesthetics
Shaftesbury (1671-1713) is one of the leading and most influential writers of the European Enlightenment. With his wide circle of friends and partners in discourse – figures such as Locke, Bayle, Le Clerc, and Toland – he belonged to the intellectual avant-garde of his day. His works became the subject of lively and itself fruitful discussion in Britain (Mandeville, Berkeley, Hutcheson, Hume, Joseph Butler), in France (Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau), and in Germany (Leibniz, Oetinger, Hamann, Kant, Lessing, Mendelssohn, Wieland, Merck, Herder, Goethe, and Schiller). – The Standard Edition encompasses all writings submitted to the press by Shaftesbury himself (including the original printed versions of texts he would later publish again in revised form), works and letters which did not appear until after his death, as well as previously unpublished writings, notes, and correspondence found among his papers. These are all presented together with connected textual material in the form of a critical edition. Also shown are the engravings used in eighteenth-century editions of ›Characteristicks‹, these having been designed by Shaftesbury himself as emblematic illustrations. The final volumes (English commentary) will be rounded off with a general index to the entire Standard Edition.
