Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of 1671-1713
English philosopher, politician and essayist

He was born in London, and his early education was supervised by John Locke before he attended Winchester College. He was Whig MP for Poole (1698-99). After he succeeded as 3rd Earl in 1699 he regularly attended the House of Lords until ill health forced him to abandon politics for literature (1702). He moved to Naples in 1711 and died there. He wrote essays on a wide range of philosophical and cultural topics, collected under the title Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (3 vols, 1711). He is usually regarded as one of the principal English deists, and he argued (both against orthodox Christianity and against Thomas Hobbes) that we possess a natural 'moral sense' and natural affections directed to the good of the species and in harmony with the larger cosmic order. He was more highly regarded abroad than at home, and Gottfried Leibniz, Voltaire, Diderot and Gotthold Lessing were among those attracted by his work. He was the grandson of the 1st Earl of Shaftesbury.

Bibliography: R L Brett, The Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1951)