Political Aesthetics : Addison and Shaftesbury on Taste, Morals and Society

Providing a gateway to a new history of modern aesthetics, this book challenges conventional views of how art's significance developed in society.

The 18th century is often said to have involved a radical transformation in the concept of art: from the understanding that it has a practical purpose to the modern belief that it is intrinsically valuable. By exploring the ground between these notions of art's function, Karl Axelsson reveals how scholars of culture made taste, morals and a politically stable society integral to their claims about the experience of nature and art.

Focusing on writings by two of the most prolific men of letters in the 18th century, Joseph Addison (1672–1719) and the third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713), Axelsson contests the conviction that modern aesthetic autonomy reoriented the criticism and philosophy originally prompted by these two key figures in the history of aesthetics.

By re-examining the political relevance of Addison and Shaftesbury's theories of taste, Axelsson shows that first and foremost they sought to fortify a natural link between aesthetic experience and modern political society.

“Axelsson's Political Aesthetics: Addison and Shaftesbury on Taste, Morals, and Society is a comprehensive and penetrating account of the aesthetics of Addison and Shaftesbury. It offers a wealth of philosophical insight and valuable scholarship on Addison and Shaftesbury in particular and on the history of aesthetics in general. Axelsson shows that Addison and Shaftesbury developed a rich and important view that took aesthetic value to be neither entirely instrumental nor entirely autonomous, a view on which taste becomes an integral moral part of the basis of society.” —Michael Gill, Professor of Philosophy, University of Arizona, US

“In this admirably intense engagement, Axelsson questions both content and method in philosophical history. He shows how Addison, Shaftesbury and other writers argued the intrinsic connection between, on one hand, the experience of beauty, taste and art and, on the other, politics, religion and morals. Thus, he points toward a new history of eighteenth-century British aesthetics, more persuasive than one organised to explain Kant.” —Lawrence Klein, Emeritus Fellow, Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, UK