Shaftesbury started his literary career in 1698 with an edition of Whichcote’s sermons. At the same time he worked on An Inquiry Concerning Virtue and his ‘Crudities’, which were incorporated after August 1698 in the Askêmata manuscripts. In this paper I argue that Shaftesbury’s critique of John Locke is based on central ideas from Whichcote’s sermons. In his examination of Locke’s epistemology and moral philosophy he uses Whichcote’s arguments, concepts and keywords. Locke’s rejection of the ‘innate ideas’ reduces man to (...) an abstract being, ‘absolutely indifferent towards whatever is presented to him’. In opposition to this reduction he posits Whichcote’s Connatural Notions, ‘the principles of which Man doth consist, in his very first Make’, i.e. the categorial form of human feeling, discernment, understanding and judgment. These connatural principles include the idea of good and evil, i.e. the foundation of a non-legalistic, autonomous morality. (shrink)

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Schon unter rein historischem Aspekt muß es verwundern, daß die deutsche philosophische Forschung das Werk des englischen Dichters, Literaturkritikers und Philosophen Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) nahezu aus den Augen verlor: Der Begründer der englischen Romantik und scharfe Kritiker des Empirismus seiner Landsleute stand in unmittelbarem Dialog mit den literarischen und philosophischen Exponenten des deutschen Idealismus und vertrat in seinem literarischen und essayistischen Werk eine unmittelbar aus der Auseinandersetzung mit Kant, Fichte und insbesondere Schelling hervorgegangene phil...