Abstract
The attempt to influence public opinion on the subject of taste constitutes a primary aim in Joseph Addison's (1672-1719) and Richard Steele's (1672-1729) essay-periodicals, The Tatler (1709-1711), The Spectator (1711-1712, 1714), and The Guardian (1713). Addison and Steele emphasize the need for a progressive culture of education, where human nature is continuously refined and improved, and where man is expected to cultivate his nature and his judgement of taste as part of a process of personal self-fulfilment. However, along with such beliefs, Addison and Steele explore a less recognized trait where nature (human nature as well as the chain of being) is much less dynamic and where education and the cultivation of taste are regarded as reprehensible unless they reproduce a predetermined order of nature. By occasionally calling attention to such a trait, Addison and Steele appear to wish to lend balance to the discourse on education and taste, and to reduce the risk implicit in a too radical cultivation of taste and nature, namely, the threat of a blurred concept of the chain of being and a certain indistinctness between diverse social groups. 
Highlights
The attempt to influence public opinion on the subject of taste constitutes a primary aim in Joseph Addison’s (1672–1719) and Richard Steele’s (1672–1729) essay-periodicals, The Tatler (1709–1711), The Spectator (1711–1712, 1714), and The Guardian (1713)
What Colour of Excuse can there be for the Contempt with which we treat this Part of our Species; That we should not put them upon the common foot of Humanity, that we should only set an insignificant Fine upon the Man who murders them; nay, that we should, as much as in us lies, cut them off from the Prospects of Happiness in another World as well as in this, and deny them that which we look upon as the proper Means for attaining it
They give mean Interpretations and base Motives to the worthiest Actions: They resolve Virtue and Vice into Constitution
Summary
I 1700-talets brittiska essätidskrifter mötte läsaren för första gången en dagsaktuell kulturkritik. Kr.) berättas det om hur det delfiska oraklet uppmanar Cicero att låta naturen vara guide i livet.[11] Oraklets råd om naturen är ständigt närvarande i essätidskrifterna och utgör ett lika obestridligt som mångbottnat axiom under 1700-talet: å ena sidan fyllt av utvecklingsoptimism, å andra sidan präglat av begränsningar och bestraffningar för det självförverkligande som inte bekräftar en vedertagen livpraxis.[12] Jag närmar mig idéerna om naturen utifrån två begrepp.[13] Förutom att naturen i vardagligt tal refererar till den yttre, icke-mänskliga naturen, så berör jag naturen som begrepp för de etablerade normer och värderingar (mänsklig natur) som en människa ansågs bära inom sig, samt naturen som en övergripande föreställning om människans position i universum, den ”totality of being” som den amerikanske idéhistorikern Arthur O. På så sätt förmår de också reducera den eventuella radikalitet som riskerar att bli konsekvensen av kultiverandet av smakomdömet och idén om den mänskliga naturens oinskränkta bildningspotential
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