ABSTRACT
Chapter Three concerns two critics of Shaftesbury’s allegedly unrealistic faith in the widespread actuality of strict altruism – ‘allegedly’ since (as shown in Chapter 2) sympathetic behaviour always entailed for Shaftesbury some estimate of private advantage. Now Mandeville, relies in his discussion of pity on sympathetic natural sentiment satisfied by other-regarding conduct – implying in effect a Shaftesbury-like moral sense. Because of the personal satisfaction derived from being endowed by nature with other-regarding sentiment Mandeville regards such conduct as ethically neutral, ethical conduct requiring no personal advantage whatsoever. And yet he approaches Shaftesbury when he admits that the other-regarding act reflecting pity bears ‘the greatest Resemblance to Virtue’ – even that ‘without a considerable mixture of it the Society could hardly subsist’, conceding a great deal to Shaftesbury by blunting the rigorist perception of virtue. As for John Brown, I demonstrate his keen appreciation of Shaftesbury’s ethical utilitarianism entailing concern for the public good, confirming Halévy’s position that ‘[s]ince the principle of sympathy can … be regarded as a special form of the principle of utility, the eighteenth-century moralists – such as John Brown – who are responsible for the “moral sense” theory may in many cases be already considered “utilitarians”’.
