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Anthony Ashley Cooper, third earl of Shaftesbury Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times. Edited by Lawrence Klein Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. xxxvii + 490 pages
Shaftesbury's Characteristicks in its original form, with its abundance of learned notes in Greek and Latin, presents a daunting prospect to the modern student. Most of its eighteenth-century readers were cultivated to a degree beyond even the comprehension of readers today, who can no more decipher a note in the ancient languages than they can fly. Why should they be reminded of this handicap?
So (it may be argued) a modern edition of the Characteristicks fit for such an audience should be made more accommodating by rendering its Greek and Latin passages and notes into English, not at the foot of the page or in a commentary at the back, but in the passages and notes themselves; and not in square brackets there, but in place of Shaftesbury's words in the body of the text. It does not really matter for a student readership that the words in those passages are no longer the words of Shaftesbury's text; they convey the meaning of Shaftesbury's text. It is the meaning that is wanted by the modern student of philosophy or history, and it is quicker to get the meaning from the no-longer-original passages or notes directly than to look it up at the foot of the page or in the back of the book. It is also a lot more economical for the publisher. This "replacement" technique is the one adopted by Lawrence Klein in his Cambridge edition, titled Characteristics, and it has the "justification" I have given it because it is directed to a student readership, as is the case with all the Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy series to which this one belongs, and to the procedures of which it had to conform. It does not produce an authoritative text, but that is not its purpose. Horses for courses. It is patently absurd to imagine that every student edition should conform to the textual principles of a Fredson Bowers. Something is lost but there is a distinct gain in accessibility.
The debit side of the account, it might be thought, would be less if it were...