Boeker, RuthRuthBoeker2025-09-302025-09-302024 Walte2024-04-03Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophiehttp://hdl.handle.net/10197/29105Michael B. Gill’s A Philosophy of Beauty: Shaftesbury on Nature, Virtue, and Art focuses on Shaftesbury’s thinking about nature, religion, morality, and art. This beautifully and engagingly written book is insightful for scholars and general readers alike, and invites readers to explore the philosophical issues that arise from Shaftesbury’s philosophy. Gill not only shows how Shaftesbury’s ideas were revolutionary at the turn of the eighteenth century but also how they remain relevant today. Shaftesbury’s major work, Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, was one of the most influential books published during the first half of the eighteenth century. According to Gill, “[i]t played a momentous role in turning European thought away from the negative and toward the positive—in nature, religion, morality, and art” (1). Although Characteristicks serves as a major source, Gill also engages with numerous other published and unpublished writings by Shaftesbury. A Philosophy of Beauty is divided into five chapters which focus respectively on nature and God, virtue, art, painting, and writing.enThis is a non-final version of an article published in final form in: Boeker, Ruth. "Gill, Michael B. A Philosophy of Beauty: Shaftesbury on Nature, Virtue, and Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press 2022, 238 pp." Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1515/agph-2024-0001PhilosophyBeautyShaftesburyShaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of, 1671-1713Review106366066410.1515/agph-2024-00012024-04-23https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ie/