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  5. Shaftesbury on Persons, Personal Identity and Character Development
 
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Shaftesbury on Persons, Personal Identity and Character Development

Author(s)
Boeker, Ruth  
Uri
http://hdl.handle.net/10197/11862
Date Issued
2018-01
Date Available
2021-01-22T09:49:50Z
Abstract
Shaftesbury's major work Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times was one of the most influential English works in the eighteenth century. This paper focuses on his contributions to debates about persons and personal identity and shows that Shaftesbury regards metaphysical questions of personal identity as closely connected with normative questions of character development. I argue that he is willing to accept that persons are substances and that he takes their continued existence for granted. He sees the need to supplement metaphysical debates of personal identity and believes that we have to turn to the character that is realized by a substance if we want to understand who we are. For Shaftesbury, persons have a particular character, can act and govern themselves. I propose that Shaftesbury's approach to persons has a developmental dimension, which is meant to encourage personal development and improvement of character. The developmental dimension can be understood as an intellectual journey that invites us to search for our true self, to develop our character and to seek happiness, which ultimately involves understanding our place as persons in the order of the universe. I show that my developmental interpretation is preferable to other existing interpretations.
Type of Material
Journal Article
Publisher
Wiley
Journal
Philosophy Compass
Volume
13
Issue
1
Copyright (Published Version)
2017 The Author, Philosophy Compass and Wiley
Subjects

Third Earl of Shaftes...

Person

Personal identity

Moral self

Charachter

Happiness

Substance

DOI
10.1111/phc3.12471
Language
English
Status of Item
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1747-9991
This item is made available under a Creative Commons License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ie/
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Boeker Shaftesbury on Persons Personal Identity and Character Development penultimate version.pdf

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190.97 KB

Format

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Owning collection
Philosophy Research Collection

Item descriptive metadata is released under a CC-0 (public domain) license: https://creativecommons.org/public-domain/cc0/.
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