The Idea of Pleasure in Anglican Religious Culture, 1650-1733

我的论文《圣公会宗教文化中的快乐观念，1650-1733》提出了一种新的理解，即正统的圣公会牧师和作家如何在1650-1733年间重塑了快乐的道德地位的共同观念。英国国教思想家们提出了一系列关于快乐的理性秩序的创新伦理论证。在这样做的过程中，他们试图将人类的颠覆性胃口引向好的目的。通过提升世俗生活中理性的、宗教的快乐，这些神职人员的目的是证明宗教的不信仰者、无神论者、自然神论者和罪人的真正利益在于虔诚的目的和服从神职人员和君主制的权威。这种快乐的道德语言的恢复解决了当前历史学对英国国教道德哲学的哲学内容的忽视，这种道德哲学经常被视为直接可归结为托马主义和亚里士多德主义的各种“主义”。将这些重大的伦理转变置于正统的宗教话语中，反过来又揭示了18世纪初围绕奢侈品和商业的辩论中的利害关系。因为这些辩论主要不是关于为了快乐而消费在道德上是否可以接受的问题。相反，他们围绕着是否存在理性的快乐等级，谴责奢侈与尘世和永恒生活的真正快乐背道而驰。通过将约翰·洛克与1660年后牛津大学公共演说家罗伯特·南和1686年后牛津主教塞缪尔·帕克的伦理思想进行比较，可以说明这种快乐语言的概念轨迹。在间歇期，洛克和南方卷入了圣公会对激情问题的共同对抗：这是一种理论，即道德错误和社会冲突源于破坏理性正常运作的激情。保皇派对英国内战的一个突出解释是，它源于清教徒不守规矩的激情。因此，在17世纪50年代，英国国教的老一辈作家为这种道德困境寻求了新的伦理答案，从成熟的伊壁鸠鲁主义到在亚里士多德框架内对快乐的理性秩序进行估价。在复辟之后，洛克和南方参与了圣公会对人类享乐主义本质的更广泛的回应，优先讨论关于快乐的理性秩序的争论-这是一种哲学主张，经常取代关于人类动机和善的非享乐主义概念。1665年后，洛克和帕克一起使用这些常见的假设来证明一个激进的结论是正确的：善可以归结为快乐，自然法的义务在很大程度上可以来自上帝施加奖惩的力量。因此，洛克道德观念的转变过程反映了一种圣公会道德快乐语言中的哲学运动，从南方的温和立场到帕克的激进立场。这种快乐语言最简约的方面的发展共鸣反映在对洛克的《关于人类理解的文章》(1689)的接受中。因为这篇文章的道德教义甚至引起了英国国教东正教的支柱，如切斯特高级教堂主教弗朗西斯·加斯特雷尔的积极回应。17世纪末和18世纪初围绕奢侈品的争论进一步说明了这些伦理思想的影响力越来越大。因为奢侈品的反对者和捍卫者通常都承认，愉快的消费在道德上是合法的；他们在奢侈品是否会干扰更令人愉悦的追求上存在分歧。正是这种观点支持了乔治·伯克利主教在《阿尔西弗龙》(1733)中对伯纳德·曼德维尔在《蜜蜂的寓言》(1723)中著名的奢侈辩护的批评。

My thesis-The Idea of Pleasure in Anglican Religious Culture, 1650-1733-presents a new understanding of how orthodox Anglican clergymen and writers remoulded common notions of the moral status of pleasure between 1650 and 1733. For Anglican thinkers developed a series of innovative ethical arguments about the rational order of pleasure. In doing so, they sought to direct humanity's disruptive appetites towards good ends. By exalting the rational, religious pleasures of the earthly life, these clergymen aimed to demonstrate that the true interests of religious nonconformists, atheists, deists and sinners lay in godly ends and obedience to clerical and monarchical authority. The recovery of this moral language of pleasure addresses the current historiographical neglect of the philosophical content of Anglican moral philosophy, which is often treated as straightforwardly reducible to the various 'isms' of Thomism and Aristotelianism. Situating these significant ethical shifts within orthodox religious discourse in turn reveals what was at stake in the early eighteenth century debates around luxury and commerce. For these debates were not primarily about whether it was morally acceptable to pursue consumption for the sake of pleasure. Rather, they centred around whether there was a rational hierarchy of pleasures accessible to reason, which condemned luxury as antithetical to the true joys of both earthly and eternal life.The conceptual trajectory of this language of pleasure is illustrated by comparing John Locke's developing ethical ideas with those of Robert South, Public Orator of the University of Oxford after 1660, and Samuel Parker, Bishop of Oxford after 1686. During the Interregnum, Locke and South were involved in a common Anglican confrontation with the problem of the passions: the theory that moral error and social conflict derived from the passions disrupting the proper functioning of reason. A prominent Royalist explanation for the English Civil War was that it arose from the unruly passions of the Puritans. Consequently, in the 1650s, an older generation of Anglican writers had sought new ethical answers to this moral predicament, varying from a fully-fledged Epicureanism to a valorisation of the rational order of pleasure within an Aristotelian framework. After the Restoration, Locke and South participated in a wider Anglican response to humanity's hedonistic nature by prioritising arguments about the rational order of pleasure-a philosophical claim which often superseded non-hedonic notions of human motivation and goodness. After 1665, Locke, along with Parker, used these common assumptions to justify a radical conclusion: that goodness was reducible to pleasure, and that the obligation of natural law could largely be derived from God's power of imposing rewards and punishments. Thus, the course of Locke's shifting moral ideas reflected a philosophical movement within an Anglican moral language of pleasure, from South's moderate position to Parker's radical stance.The developing resonance of even the most reductionist aspects of this language of pleasure was reflected in the reception of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689). For the moral doctrines of the Essay evoked positive responses from even such pillars of Anglican orthodoxy as Francis Gastrell, the high church Bishop of Chester. The increasing influence of these ethical ideas was further illustrated by the late seventeenth and early eighteenth-century debates around luxury. For both opponents and defenders of luxury often accepted that pleasant consumption was morally licit; they were divided over whether luxury interfered with more delightful pursuits. It was precisely this argument that underpinned Bishop George Berkeley's critique in Alciphron (1733) of Bernard Mandevillle's famous defence of luxury in the Fable of the Bees (1723).