Abstract: Shaftesbury inherits the Neo-Platonist doctrine of "inward form" and develops his own moral philosophy and aesthetic discourse centering on emotions and Bildung, which also defends the value of human community by "divine order". Shaftesbury's philosophy of "character" shows the earliest recognition of individualism and touches the issue of the cultivation of "gentlemen" and "civil philosophy", in which aesthetic activities and emotional cultivation are important. The combination of anthropology and theology in the views of moral and aesthetic Bildung forms his unique natural theology based on humanism. When the human ethical world is increasingly separated by postmodernism and deconstructionism today, Shaftesbury's thinking about moral sense and emotional capacity just shows one of the origins of modern moral philosophy, and also provides us with an old while innovative path to the reflection on the declining tradition of Bildung.

Key words: inward form, Bildung, enthusiasm, moral sense, aesthetics