Patrick Müller studied English, German, and Philosophy in Münster (Germany) and Edinburgh (United Kingdom), receiving his PhD from Münster University. He worked for The Shaftesbury Project at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany) and has lectured and published widely on both eighteenth-century literature and contemporary fiction. He is currently teacher of English at the German Federal Office of Languages.

• Contents: Nicholas Ashley-Cooper: Prefatory Address – Patrick Müller: Reading Shaftesbury in the Twenty-First Century – Karl Axelsson: A Realised Disposition: Shaftesbury on the Natural Affections and Taste – Mark-Georg Dehrmann: Transition: «Pedagogy of the Eye» in Shaftesbury’s Second Characters – Andrea Gatti: The Aesthetic Mind: Stoic Influences on Shaftesbury’s Theory of Beauty – Yu Liu: The Surprising Passion for Wild Nature: The True Innovation of Shaftesbury’s Aesthetics – Suzannah Fleming: The Third Earl of Shaftesbury: Practical Gardener and Husbandman – James Pratt: Shaftesbury and Gribelin: Anatomy of a Collaboration – Isabella Woldt: Hercules at the Crossroads: Shaftesbury’s Concept of Freedom, Neuroscience, and Compatibilism – Laurent Jaffro: Cyrus’ Strategy: Shaftesbury on Human Frailty and the Will – Michael B. Gill: Shaftesbury on Politeness, Honesty, and Virtue – Angela Taraborrelli: The Cosmopolitanism of Lord Shaftesbury – Daniel Carey: Locke, Shaftesbury, and Bayle and the Problem of Universal Consent – Karen Collis: «The advancement of all antient and polite Learning»: Education and Criticism in Characteristicks – Patrick Müller: «The able Designer, who feigns in behalf of Truth»: Shaftesbury’s Philosophical Poetics – Lori Branch: Between Suspicion and Enchantment: Reading Shaftesbury’s Private Writings – Luisa Simonutti: Dissidents and Réfugiés Reading Shaftesbury – Paola Zanardi: Elegance and Sublimity: The Influence of Shaftesbury on Hume’s Essays – Lawrence E. Klein: Reading Shaftesbury in the Eighteenth Century.