Locke, Science, and Politics 9781107041141, 2013023224

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Locke, Science, and Politics

In this ground-breaking book, Steven Forde argues that John Locke’s devotion to modern science deeply shaped his moral and political philosophy. Beginning with an account of the classical approach to natural and moral philosophy, and of the medieval scholasticism that took these forward into early modernity, Forde explores why the modern scientific project of Francis Bacon, Pierre Gassendi, Robert Boyle, and others required the rejection of the classical approach. Locke fully subscribed to this rejection, and took it upon himself to provide a foundation for a compatible morality and politics. Forde shows that Locke’s theory of moral “mixed modes” owes much to Pufendorf, and is tailored to accommodate science. The theory requires a divine legislator, which in turn makes natural law the foundation of morality, rather than individual natural right. Forde shows the ways that Locke’s approach modified his individualism, and colored his philosophy of property, politics, and education. steven forde is Professor of Political Science at the University of North Texas.

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Locke, Science, and Politics steven forde University of North Texas

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University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107041141  C Steven Forde 2013

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2013 Printed in the United Kingdom by CPI Group Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Forde, Steven, 1954– Locke, science and politics / Steven Forde. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-107-04114-1 (hardback) 1. Locke, John, 1632–1704. 2. Science – Moral and ethical aspects. 4. Political science – Philosophy. I. Title. JC153.L87F66 2013 320.01 – dc23 2013023224

3. Natural law.

ISBN 978-1-107-04114-1 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction

page vi 1

1 Science and morality

14

2 Locke’s moral epistemology

72

3 The paradoxes of Locke’s moral and political teaching

136

4 Conclusion: Some Thoughts Concerning Education and Lockean happiness

198

References

243

Index

254

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the National Endowment for the Humanities, with whose assistance this project was begun. I would also like to thank the University of North Texas for a sabbatical leave that helped me to bring it to a successful conclusion. Portions of this book were published earlier. I gratefully acknowledge permissions granted by the publishers of each of these essays to reprint the material here: “The Charitable John Locke,” The Review of Politics 71:3 (2009). “‘Mixed Modes’ in John Locke’s Moral and Political Philosophy,” The Review of Politics 73:4 (2011). “Natural Law, Theology, and Morality in Locke,” American Journal of Political Science 45:2 (2001). “What Does Locke Expect Us to Know?” The Review of Politics 68:2 (2006).

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Introduction

The John Locke portrayed in these pages is not the John Locke I thought I would find when I first embarked on this project. I initially believed that Locke was more or less straightforwardly a follower of Thomas Hobbes, despite the care he takes to appear not to be. That is, I took it that he bases his moral argument squarely on individual selfinterest, on individual right derived from self-interest, rather than law and duty based on the common interest. I presumed that this was the foundation of a wholly secular edifice, that Locke’s appeals to divine sanction for his system were disingenuous, a rhetorical necessity for one who wanted to advance a new philosophy of government that in fact undermined the old, theologically based theories. Locke certainly is more Hobbesian than many have recognized, and does go to some lengths to conceal that kinship. Self-interest plays a pivotal role in his moral and political philosophy, and in that respect Locke is closer to Hobbes than to Thomas Aquinas or Richard Hooker, for example. But, over the course of my studies of Locke, I have been led to the conclusion that individual rights are not the bedrock or foundation of his philosophy. Rather, the foundation is natural law, natural law moreover that exists, and can only exist, as divine command. Strangely, perhaps, I have come to these conclusions partly by taking seriously Locke’s devotion to modern science, and his self-appointed role as the moral philosopher of the scientific movement. There is no need to explain the importance of John Locke, or the importance of studying and understanding him, in our age. Locke is perhaps the principal founder of liberalism – the philosophy of individual liberty, religious toleration, and limited government – on which all free government rests today. What needs explaining is the publication of another book on Locke, one of the most thoroughly studied philosophers of all time. The literature on Locke is truly vast, and continually growing. Any new treatment of Locke must bear the burden of 1 Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. UCL, Institute of Education, on 01 Apr 2017 at 02:49:43, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139644587.001

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demonstrating that it can add something novel and significant to this growing mountain of verbiage. My opening statement was the beginning of such a demonstration. In what follows here, I will outline the basic argument of this book, by way of justifying the time that readers might devote to it. It has long been appreciated that Locke was an avid follower of, and advocate for, the new natural science. The profound mark that that science made on Locke’s own work has not, I believe, been sufficiently traced. The new science had been launched by Francis Bacon early in Locke’s century, was a significant intellectual force in Locke’s own day, and became absolutely hegemonic with the work of Isaac Newton toward the end of Locke’s life. Locke knew, and had some correspondence with, Newton, but he was particularly close to Robert Boyle, one of the major scientific virtuosi of his own generation. All three were members of the Royal Society, dedicated to advancing the new science. Boyle’s atomic or “corpuscular” theory has an explicit presence in Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, but the influence of the new science on that work goes much deeper. Since the Essay is Locke’s foundational work of philosophy, including moral philosophy, this profoundly affects every other aspect of Locke’s thought. My first claim to novelty in this book is to argue for the influence of modern science on Locke’s philosophy, and to explore the ways this influence is felt not only in Locke’s epistemology, but in his moral and political philosophy as well. In order perform this task properly, I have found it necessary to provide a brief sketch of previous philosophic and scientific thought, from Plato and Aristotle, to medieval Scholastics and nominalists, to the first fathers of modern science. Only against this backdrop does the full meaning of important portions of Locke’s argument come into view. This is the project of Chapter 1. My aim here is not to provide complete or novel interpretations of the authors under discussion, but to describe their thought in ways that will illuminate Locke’s writings. One feature of Locke’s Essay in particular puzzled me when I first began to study it closely: Why does the normally dispassionate Locke display such vituperative animosity toward Scholasticism, which, we presume in retrospect, was in his day merely the dying remnant of a medieval school of thought? Locke’s assault begins before the work itself, in the “Epistle to the Reader.” Locke there blasts the “learned but frivolous use of uncouth, affected, or unintelligible terms,” terms

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Introduction

3

which have “so long passed for mysteries of science,” but are nothing but “the covers of ignorance.”1 He tells us that the first task of the Essay is “to break in upon the sanctuary of vanity and ignorance,” and clear away the “rubbish” therein that opposes the advancement of true learning (xvii, xvi). Scholasticism, the purveyor of these unintelligible terms and rubbish, was a philosophical (and theological) school rooted ultimately in Aristotle, but modified in many ways from the Aristotelian original. The vehemence of Locke’s opposition to it shows not only that Scholasticism of some form was very much alive in Locke’s day, but that he takes it to be profoundly antithetical to his own view, and to the foundations of modern science as he sees them. It is my contention that we can properly understand Locke’s philosophical foundations only by seeing the specific ways he takes them to be incompatible with the teaching of Scholasticism, or the ways in which his approach is a reaction against Scholasticism. This in turn requires us to gain some understanding of Scholasticism, particularly as it existed in Locke’s day. A good part of the first chapter of this book is devoted to exploring the roots and development of Scholasticism, with special attention to those aspects of it that Locke takes to be incompatible with his own philosophy and with modern science. Locke’s attacks give us glimpses of his opponent, but he never pauses to outline the Scholastic argument in any detail. Fortunately, his friend and ally, Robert Boyle, is more forthcoming. Boyle wrote numerous polemics against the “Schools,” or the “Modern Aristotelians,” on behalf of the new science. I have found Boyle’s works invaluable in uncovering the intellectual foil to Locke’s philosophy: Scholasticism as it existed in Locke’s day. This Scholasticism differed from medieval Scholasticism – and a fortiori from Aristotle – in some respects that are very relevant to Locke’s and Boyle’s opposition. But since all Scholasticism descended from Aristotle, and maintained throughout its history the key features of Aristotelian cosmology and moral theory, I have also found it necessary to go back to Aristotle to fill out the portrait. Scholasticism, even in Locke’s day, shared with Aristotle the view that the world is naturally divided into kinds or “species.” Those species, 1

John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1995), pp. xvi–xvii. Where possible, citations to this work will be given in the text, by book, chapter, and paragraph number.

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moreover, are accounted for by the existence of immaterial “forms,” and brought into being (in part) by formal causes. Horses or trees are brought into being with the guidance of the forms of “horse” and “tree,” for (the argument goes), their being as horses and trees cannot be fully accounted for by material alone. And so too with the other beings: the immaterial forms collectively constitute the template for the ordered world we perceive, ordered into species or kinds. In its fundamentals, Aristotle adopted this theory from Plato. Scholasticism in turn adopted these fundamentals, only stipulating that God was the creator of the world and of the forms. This addition may not have altered the theory fundamentally from a philosophic (or scientific) point of view, but it greatly complicated the task of anyone undertaking to oppose it in Locke’s day. True science, on the Aristotelian and Scholastic view of things, consists of knowledge not of particular things – individual horses or trees – but of the forms. Particulars are fleeting, while the forms are permanent, and “truth” can pertain only to the permanent. The project of science then becomes the pursuit of the forms. Since the forms can be grasped only by intellect, this science cannot be fundamentally empirical, even if it begins with empirical facts. It must be the province of philosophers who deal with the intelligible and non-empirical. In practice, however, by the lights of Locke and Boyle, it authorized learned doctors, in the name of “science,” to wrangle endlessly over the natures of the invisible forms, deploying unintelligible jargon, all but losing touch with empirical reality itself. In its Scholastic form, it also authorized them to brand anyone challenging this system as an atheist. This is what Locke and Boyle see as the massive obstacle to the pursuit of knowledge in their day. The new science, as Locke, Boyle, and their colleagues understand it, finds the visible world to consist only of matter and material causes. In its militant opposition to Scholasticism, this science banishes all immaterial or “occult” causes from nature, for the admission of any such causes might provide an opening to the return of the unintelligible jargon. This caused some awkwardness when Newton proposed his theory of gravitation, for gravitation very much seems to be an invisible, non-material, cause. Leibniz, for one, charged Newton with inviting a return to the “Kingdom of Darkness” with such a theory. Locke accepted the theory, but confessed (in the polemics surrounding the Essay) that its nature was baffling.

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Introduction

5

Locke is much more forthcoming in the Essay about the nature of species, another key problem for the new science. Explaining the existence of species or kinds of things in nature was the great strength of the old theory – perhaps even its raison d’ˆetre. The signature problem of the anti-Aristotelians then is this: once we do away with formal causes and reduce all to matter and motion, how do we explain species, the fact that nature seems to be divided into regular kinds of things? Locke was not the first defender of the new science to wrestle with this problem, but one of the first to tackle it at a genuinely philosophical level. Without mincing words, he takes the position that species do not exist. But this is an assertion that can easily be misunderstood. Locke does not mean that there is no order or regularity in nature – this would make science of any kind impossible. What he means is that species have no existence as species – they are not immaterial forms separate from the particulars, as Aristotle and the Scholastics argued. The only things that exist, according to Locke, are particulars. Universals (such as “horse” or “tree”) are pure products of the mind. In more traditional terms, Locke is a “nominalist.” We divide the world into kinds of things for our own convenience; the precise divisions could perhaps be done quite differently. If our interests or purposes shift, our species divisions could shift with them. All the while, we would be employing divisions wholly suitable to our purposes, since our fundamental purpose is useful knowledge, not the contemplation of nature’s ghostly template. The one thing we must never do is mistake our species concepts for true or objective entities. Whether this is a fully consistent view of nature, or adequate to the epistemological purposes to which Locke and the modern science that follows him put it, is one issue we will have to confront in the pages that follow. One reason I have pursued this theme with such care is that we devotees of the ancients are sometimes too inclined, I fear, to dismiss the modern assault on them as ill-grounded or unnecessary, to believe that we can return to them without much ado. On Locke’s immediate horizon, meanwhile, a more pressing problem looms. It is one thing to deny species as a scientific or epistemological matter. It is an entirely different thing to follow the implications of this denial into the realm of morality. “Species,” in the Aristotelian and Scholastic theory, grounded not only knowledge, but morality as well. The form of each type of thing was also conceived of as its perfection. The purpose of each individual in a species was to fulfill its

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proper form so far as possible. An adult horse is a more perfect, more completely realized, expression of the form than a foal. This is the “teleology” of the Aristotelian and the Scholastic theory. In the case of human beings and the human form, the perfection in question was also conceived of as normative or moral. It is our purpose or our duty as individual humans to attain to the perfection implicit in the human form. In destroying the foundations of Scholasticism, Locke simultaneously destroys the old basis for morality. He could not avoid destroying the old basis for morality. This explains much of the controversy aroused by his argument in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding. By his theory, our species concept “man” is as much a mental construct, is just as arbitrary, as every other such concept. The precise way in which we define “man” reflects the state of our knowledge of ourselves, as well as the purposes for which we are using it at the moment. Locke does not shy away from this argument, or its consequences. “Man” is a principal example in the Essay of an arbitrary or wholly mental species construct. While clearing away the rubbish that lies in the way to the advancement of science, then, Locke creates for himself an additional, monumental task, the task of finding some new and fundamentally different basis for morality. Locke believes he has found such a basis, and he presents it in some detail in the Essay. His novel moral theory is the principal subject of the second chapter of this book. The theory revolves around something Locke calls “mixed modes,” a category of concepts that according to Locke includes all our moral ideas. The theory of mixed modes has raised questions, if not outright consternation, from Locke’s day to this. To begin with, Locke insists that mixed modes are mental constructs, and like our species concepts, they are creations of our own, not products of nature. Locke emphasizes the point: mixed modes are “arbitrary” creations, more arbitrary in fact than our species concepts, referring to nothing that exists in nature (Essay 2.31.3). The consternation arises from the fact that Locke simultaneously claims that he is in this way grounding morality more solidly than it has been grounded before. Indeed, morality can now become a “demonstrative science” for the first time, Locke tells us. In the Essay itself, Locke’s moral argument rests on an “eternal law and nature of things” (2.21.56). And of course, he is known today as a champion of absolute, non-arbitrary moral standards, such as individual rights and

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Introduction

7

natural law. These standards are capable of holding human beings, and governments, to account. Among the greatest puzzles of Locke interpretation are, how Locke understands “mixed modes” to be a solid grounding for morality, and how it relates to the morality he champions in works such as the Second Treatise of Government. The theory of mixed modes can best be understood, I believe, as a modified version of a theory proposed by Samuel Pufendorf. Pufendorf, a German philosopher of Locke’s generation, argued that all moral concepts were creations of intellect, which he dubbed “moral modes.” These modes do not inhere in any object; they are not inherent in nature at all, we might say. Rather, moral modes are imposed on nature by intelligent agents. Pufendorf instances property, which he takes to be a creation of human agreement. To designate something as “my property” refers to no quality of the object itself; if I transfer ownership, nothing in the object changes. We have created the institution of property, and imposed or superimposed it on certain objects. One great advantage of this approach, Pufendorf says, is that it allows morality to attain to certainty, to become the subject of rational demonstration. The reason is precisely the unreal character of moral modes. The fact that morality deals entirely with ideas, mental constructions, allows it to become a true demonstrative science, like mathematics. Locke is not a follower of Pufendorf in every respect – it suffices to mention the matter of property – but his treatment of the “mixed modes” of morality agrees with Pufendorf on all the other points mentioned, including the analogy to mathematics and the consequent promise of demonstrative certainty (Essay 4.4.6–7). Aristotelian and Scholastic philosophy offered the possibility of certainty, but it could come only from a direct intellectual grasp of forms. The new science cuts off that avenue. The new science is empirical, and empirically rooted knowledge, Locke asserts, can never attain to certainty. The high degree of probability it can attain to is enough, in his view, to sustain the project of modern, technological science. It is not enough, however, to ground morality, making Pufendorf’s new approach to morals a godsend. If morality is no longer inherent in nature, part of the structure of the world as it were, the proposal that it is rooted in pure mental constructs seems an elegant way of grounding it anew. It has the obvious problem, though, that free mental constructs, “arbitrary” mental

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constructs as Locke designates them, would seem to support only a completely relativistic morality, that is, no morality at all in the traditional sense. Pufendorf solves this problem in perhaps the only way it can be solved – by having recourse to God. If morality consists of modes imposed on nature by intelligence, all morality takes the form of command or law. The only intelligence capable of imposing such a law on nature as a whole is God. Pufendorf continues to speak of “natural law,” but it no longer means a law inherent in nature, as it formerly did. In reality, natural law is divine law. Again, Locke follows Pufendorf in every one of these claims. As I mentioned at the outset, this was not the conclusion I expected to reach when I first undertook this study of Locke. I presumed that Locke’s references to divine legislation were rhetorical cover for a thoroughly secular moral theory. This presumption was based mostly on readings of the Second Treatise of Government, which makes minimal, and seemingly superfluous, appeals to a divine warrant for justice. In the Essay, which develops much more thoroughly the basis of Locke’s moral philosophy, Locke makes explicit and unambiguous statements about the need for a divine legislator. I have found no way to discount or dismiss these statements. Moreover, the theory of mixed modes cannot ground any absolute or objective morality in the absence of such a legislator. This has led me to a reinterpretation of the Second Treatise. That reinterpretation, and an exploration of the grounds of Locke’s political philosophy proper, is the subject of Chapter 3. Interpreters have long argued about the relationship between the Essay and Locke’s other works, particularly the Second Treatise of Government. Some have argued that the Essay and the Second Treatise are incompatible, since, to begin with, the Essay makes moral concepts “arbitrary,” while the Second Treatise relies on natural law. I believe this contradiction may be resolved in the manner just stated, but there are other tensions or apparent tensions between the works. While the Second Treatise makes individual right a focal point of morality, the Essay says virtually nothing about the existence of individual rights, presenting instead a morality of duty under law. The relation between the two works on this point is complex, even paradoxical. Though the Essay speaks almost entirely of duty, its morality is in some respects less demanding than the rights argument of the Second Treatise. The Essay lays down the fundamental principle that rational consciousness is necessarily

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Introduction

9

concerned with its own happiness. Any law laid upon such a creature must be compatible with its personal happiness, then, if compliance is to be reasonably expected. Accordingly, Locke asserts in the Essay that the moral law is the law that conduces to our happiness, and our fundamental duty is to pursue our own happiness properly. The rights argument of the Second Treatise, meanwhile, imposes on us other duties – at a minimum, the duty of respecting the rights of others. Such a duty seems difficult to reconcile with the argument of the Essay. For may not respecting the property and other rights of others occasionally require some sacrifice of my own interest and happiness? If the duty of the Essay seems in this respect to be less demanding than the natural law of the Second Treatise, it seems more demanding in proposing a standard of rationality that we must live up to. It is our duty to exercise rational discernment in our pursuit of happiness, pursuing it only after having gone through a “fair examination” concerning where our true happiness lies (Essay 2.21.48). This indeed is a “perfection of our nature” (ibid.). The Essay gives us numerous examples of individuals who have fallen short, who have failed to perform this moral duty. This would seem necessarily to create a difference of rank between those who perform the duty adequately and those who do not, calling into question Locke’s fundamental principle of human equality. Though the language of rational perfection is less prominent in the Second Treatise, the same problem is visible there. Those who violate the law of nature, even in the state of nature, Locke notoriously says, may be treated like irrational beasts (§§10–11). Similarly, children have no rights until they attain the use of rationality (§§55, 57, 58). It would seem that equality must be earned, once again threatening the principle of human equality. Since equality is a fundamental principle not only for Locke, but also for the liberal culture he helped to create and which we inhabit, it is important that we sort this out if we can. Apart from all other difficulties, the rights morality of the Second Treatise and the duty morality of the Essay would seem to be philosophically very different, perhaps incompatible, moral approaches. They would indeed be incompatible, I believe, if individual right were the true root of morality in the Second Treatise. I have come to the conclusion, however, that it is not, that even in the Second Treatise, natural law is prior to individual natural right. The fundamental principle of natural law, as Locke says numerous times in that work, is “the

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preservation of all mankind.” The priority of this principle is clearest in the chapter on “paternal power” and the family, and in parallel passages in the First Treatise of Government. Parental duties spring not from any prior right, of the child or anyone else, but from natural-law duty rooted in the preservation of mankind. On closer inspection, I argue, even the famous property right of the Second Treatise, seemingly the most individualistic and interest-based of moral principles, proves to be derivative from the higher-level, “communal” principle of the preservation of mankind. Yet rights are clearly important to Locke’s political philosophy. If they are merely derivative from a communal principle, are they not precarious, subject to suspension whenever the common good might require it? I compare Locke’s doctrine of property to those of some of his predecessors – Thomas Aquinas, Hugo Grotius, and Samuel Pufendorf – to pinpoint Locke’s novelty. That novelty lies partly in the much higher status Locke accords to the property right, and to individual right generally. Even though property, and the other rights, are ultimately grounded in the general good, and even though this does restrict the rights in some important ways, Locke is at pains to demonstrate that natural law, and its divine legislator, mandate much higher respect for individual rights than Grotius or Pufendorf, for example, thought. Although those two pioneered a “new natural law” that brought individual rights much more to the fore, they allowed the rights to be overridden in certain circumstances, countenancing slavery and absolutism, for example. Locke disallowed both of these, and made certain key rights inalienable. For that reason, he is properly seen as the apostle of individual right in the modern sense, even if that right is not the bedrock of his moral philosophy. The view that individual right, rather than natural law, is the bedrock of Locke’s moral argument seems to be most strongly supported by Locke’s approach in the Second Treatise of Government. Locke’s political philosophy in particular, or his philosophy of government, does indeed give individual right pride of place. We must understand, though, that this reflects the limited purposes he assigns to government – the protection of property, broadly construed as “life, liberty and estate.” The limited nature of government dictates that it operate within a limited moral horizon. Reading the Second Treatise of Government in isolation can give a false impression of Locke’s moral philosophy, of his own moral horizon. It is unfortunate, in a sense, that

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Introduction

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the Second Treatise is the most widely read of Locke’s works today, almost to the exclusion of any other work. Once we see that the Second Treatise, by design, rests on a truncated version of Locke’s moral philosophy, we are in a position to reassess the teaching of that work, and its relation to Locke’s other works. We may find that natural law, and morality itself, are more extensive than the versions of them on view in the Second Treatise. Some “communal” elements of the natural law, excluded from politics for very good reason, may nonetheless be central to morality as Locke views it. “Charity” is an example of a virtue conspicuously absent from the Second Treatise, but endorsed by Locke elsewhere (in the First Treatise, for example). I devote a significant portion of Chapter 3 to a discussion of this dilemma, and what it shows us about Locke’s moral teaching in general. I argue that Locke (like many of his predecessors) has what we could call a “two tiered” moral theory. The first tier is lower and more solid, consisting of “hard” rights and duties such as the right of property and the duty to respect the property of others. This, by and large, defines “justice” and the realm of politics. The second tier includes such virtues as charity and what earlier thinkers called “imperfect duties” in general. Locke never gives a systematic account of this part of the moral realm, so it is difficult to define its contours with precision. It is also difficult to say exactly how such virtues are related in Locke’s mind, how conflicts between charity and justice, for example, are to be resolved. I hope that my analysis will at least clarify this issue. Among the still unresolved problems in Locke, then, we have the precise scope and nature of his morality, and the way that he reconciles any burdensome aspects of that morality with personal happiness. My concluding chapter, Chapter 4, attempts to resolve these issues by looking at Some Thoughts Concerning Education.2 This work provides an educational curriculum for a pupil, including moral education. The work is illuminating because of the light it sheds on Locke’s view of morality as a whole. It provides an image of the well-formed character, as Locke conceives it, and of the type of happiness this character experiences. The product of this education will presumably also be a good 2

John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, in Thoughts Concerning Education and Of the Conduct of the Understanding, ed. Ruth Grant and Nathan Tarcov (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996), pp. 1–161.

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citizen in the liberal order that Locke is founding, shedding light on Locke’s understanding of that order. Perhaps the most striking thing about the moral teaching of the work is its reticence about “rights.” While Locke does reiterate the principle from the Second Treatise that we all have a “duty” to advance the “preservation of all mankind,” he says very little about the rights that were matched with that duty in the earlier work. The part of his education that deals with property, for example, is more concerned to inculcate liberality, and emphatically to forestall “covetousness,” than to anchor a solid notion of property (§110). Locke seems more concerned to avoid the vices to which a purely “possessive individualism” might lead, than to foster acquisitiveness as a virtue. Liberality is closely akin to civility, a virtue or trait that Locke takes great pains to develop in his education. It is not too much to say that civility is the culmination of the work’s moral curriculum, along with the trait or collection of traits Locke calls “Good Breeding.” Locke describes civility as a “sweetness of mind,” based on “respect and good will to all people” (§66). We could almost say that it is a kind of sociability, sociability based on unaffected warmth toward others rather than anything like a Hobbesian calculation of interest. Good breeding is the ability to express this regard for others gracefully, within the social conventions of one’s time and place. The civil, wellbred individual, in Locke’s account, will be well received everywhere he goes. He will be pleasing to all, and, just as importantly, he will gain pleasure from pleasing others, just as he learned, as a child, to gain pleasure from liberality. Locke reminds us that individual happiness is our goal, that virtue itself is to be prized only as it conduces to our happiness (§143); civility makes the life of other-regarding virtue the happy life as well. For the pupil who undergoes this education, at least, civility, good breeding, and the life of happy sociability thus seem to resolve the tension between the other-regarding focus of Locke’s natural law, and the “hedonism” of his moral psychology. Is this resolution intended by Locke to provide a model for liberal citizens more widely? Will it suffice to reconcile the otherwise burdensome aspects of morality with individual happiness, across an entire society? I conclude this book with a comparison of Locke and Benjamin Franklin, Locke’s American disciple. Like Locke, Franklin may be regarded as one of the founders of the liberal society that took shape in America during the

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colonial era. Like Locke, he undertook an educational project, though one of much wider scope. Exploring Franklin’s teaching, and his art of teaching, will help us, I believe, to understand Locke’s purposes as a philosopher and educator. I make one final remark about my procedure in laying out my interpretation of Locke. The mountain of secondary literature on Locke, which I alluded to earlier, contains extensive commentary on every one of the issues I will be raising. I will allude to, and make use of, this literature where appropriate, but only insofar as it is directly pertinent to the point at hand. Books on Locke can easily devolve into running commentaries on other commentators, or internecine polemics, at the expense of developing a clear line of argument on Locke himself. I have tried to develop the clear line instead. Locke specialists will recognize on which side of the various controversies my argument lies.

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Science and morality

At the opening of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke tells us that human beings are capable of the knowledge we need to direct our lives properly, including, above all, moral knowledge. He makes this statement by way of reassurance, for, as he tells us, the Essay was born in his reflection that the human mind is unable to answer many of the questions traditionally put to it by philosophy (Essay, p. xiv, 1.1.5). We know from another source that the doubts in question were primarily moral and religious in character.1 Skepticism of a sort is amply represented in the pages that follow. Locke will essentially wipe away the traditional foundations of knowledge, including moral knowledge. He will argue that we cannot know the “essence” or “substance” of things in the way earlier philosophers believed, or settle many of the exalted metaphysical questions with which they occupied themselves (e.g., 1.1.5; 2.23.2; 2.31.3, 6; 3.6.4, 24). Our knowledge of the external world comes only from empirical observation, and empirical knowledge is not capable of achieving certainty.2 Yet, as Locke insists here at the beginning, his Essay is intended as an antidote to the complete skepticism that could follow from the collapse of the old epistemology. His goal is twofold: to ground the new empirical science of nature, and to ground moral knowledge. Neither of these can be grounded in the old way, he believes, but they can be grounded in an entirely novel manner. Locke initially describes his purpose quite modestly, as clearing away the “rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge” (p. xvi). We cannot 1

2

This is the report of Locke’s friend James Tyrell, who was present at the discussion. See Paul A. Rahe, Republics Ancient & Modern, Volume II: New Modes & Orders in Early Modern Political Thought (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), p. 79. The claim that empirically based knowledge cannot attain to certainty is one of the most prominent in the Essay. See, e.g., “Introduction,” pp. 2, 3; 4.2.14; 4.3.12, 26; 4.12.10; 4.14; 4.15.

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understand the Essay Concerning Human Understanding properly unless we take this destructive purpose seriously. Among the most significant forms of rubbish Locke targets are the very claims to knowledge made by the previous tradition. The broad tradition of Scholasticism, rooted in Aristotle and enshrined in pulpit and university to Locke’s day, substituted “uncouth, affected, or unintelligible terms” for the ingenuous pursuit of truth. It represented a “hindrance of true knowledge” rather than an avenue to it (pp. xvi–xvii). Yet, since this tradition represented a complete system, including a distinctive view of mind and of man’s relation to the world, clearing away this “rubbish” is a more grave project than Locke’s dismissive language makes it seem. To paraphrase Locke’s postmortem of Robert Filmer’s doctrine at the beginning of the Second Treatise of Government, the clearing away of the rubbish will lead to intellectual anarchy unless some new original of knowledge can be found.3 The original that Locke finds is more modest than its classical predecessors, but also, he believes, more secure. It has this advantage as well: whereas the earlier approach fostered dogma and authoritarianism in the intellectual realm, Locke’s alternative is in principle universally accessible, even “democratic.” Perhaps above all, it promises results that will be useful to mankind. Locke makes no claim to being engaged in this task alone. As a clearer of rubbish, he says, he is but an “under-labourer” to “masterbuilders” such as Boyle, Huygens, and Newton (p. xvi). This is unduly modest – unless we consider, perhaps, that foundation-builders too may be described as “under-labourers.” For Locke’s task in the Essay is nothing less than the development of a philosophical system that will account for and support the edifice that those master builders have begun, the edifice of modern natural science.4 Today, the Essay is read primarily as a free-standing work of epistemology, or as background to the political philosophy of Locke’s other works. Such a reading risks obscuring part of Locke’s intent, and masks one of the large problems of the work. In order to serve its purpose, the epistemology 3

4

John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, in Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge University Press, 1989), §1. Where possible, citations to this work will be given in the text, by paragraph number. See also Essay 1.4.22. See John W. Yolton, Locke and the Compass of Human Understanding: A Selective Commentary on the ‘Essay’ (Cambridge University Press, 1970), Ch. 2 and p. 75.

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of the Essay will have to support both modern natural science, and morality. As our age is acutely aware, the intellectual scaffolding of modern science, which limits itself to empirically verifiable theories, and interprets the world in terms of matter and motion, does not readily support a moral theory. It is certainly not hospitable to the older type of moral theory, which went out with Locke’s rubbish. Most of the controversy surrounding the Essay in Locke’s own time – and there was plenty of it – had to do with the perception that it constituted a direct attack on morality, on religion, on the very possibility of meaningful knowledge. The older theory, rooted in medieval Scholasticism, and ultimately Aristotelianism, depended on formal and final causes. Both science and morality, in its understanding, were grounded in these. Science consisted of the direct intellectual grasp of the natural forms or species or kinds that collectively form the template for the world. These forms were intelligible entities or “intellectual substances” that accounted for the particulars that fell under them. Indeed, they were a cause of these particulars – the “formal causes” of Aristotelian physics and metaphysics. True and certain knowledge was knowledge of these forms. True understanding of “man” or “horse” depended upon understanding the form of man or horse, the model on which all particular men and horses were constructed. Moral knowledge came from the same root. The form or species or essence of “man,” together with the way that form fit into the larger, cosmic whole, constituted the ground of morality. The purpose, and duty, of individual men was to work toward the perfection implicit in the form of man. The metaphysics of form imbued the human world, along with the cosmos as a whole, with purpose. It was inherently teleological. In the Christianized, Scholastic version of this view, the forms came from the mind and hand of God, and signaled his providential rule over the whole. It was a delicate operation, therefore, for Locke and the new science to replace this view with something radically different. It was certainly more than a simple task of supplanting “uncouth, affected, or unintelligible terms.” The new science was resolutely empirical, inductive, and non-teleological. Francis Bacon, its principal founder, spoke of “formal causes,” but his irony was palpable; he was putting new wine in old bottles, to mask his innovation.5 There are no immaterial forms 5

Francis Bacon, The New Organon, ed. Fulton Anderson (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960), 1.51, 2.2. See also Richard Kennington, On Modern

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that order nature into species or kinds, he held. Rather, all natural phenomena are to be explained by the behavior of the infinitesimally small particles of matter, their laws of motion and interaction. Bacon’s successors, men like Pierre Gassendi, Robert Boyle, and John Locke, set out to explain the order of nature along these lines. By Locke’s day, the scientific movement had settled on a modest view of its own potential for generating knowledge, more modest probably than Bacon himself had envisaged.6 Locke is only following the scientific consensus of his day when he maintains that empirical investigation can yield only probable knowledge. For this reason, he concedes, it is not “science” at all, in the old sense.7 Still, it is “sufficient to govern all our concernments” (1.1.5; 4.16), solid enough for the mastery of nature that Bacon foresaw. But it is not a solid enough foundation, in Locke’s own view, for morality. Purely empirical investigation, in any case, can never yield moral insight. Thus opens a gulf between scientific and moral knowledge that is typical of modern thought. Bereft of formal and final causes, scientific epistemology cannot possibly ground morality in the old way. There are no immaterial forms; nature has no teleological structure. The species have no special status, scientifically speaking; in fact it becomes unclear whether there are species or kinds in the new understanding of things. Locke argues that there are not: species concepts are of our own making, he insists, and do not correspond to any template or form according to which nature produces things (3.3.11). He does not flinch from the consequences of this view: the species concept “man” itself is a construct of our minds (3.6.22; 3.10.21). If this is true, morality obviously cannot derive from an Aristotelian “form” of man, or from any perfection deriving from such a form. Yet, Locke strongly defends the existence of morality in the Essay, and in other works. He builds an entire political philosophy on “natural law” and natural right – that is, on objective and

6

7

Origins: Essays in Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Pamela Kraus and Frank Hunt (New York: Lexington Books, 2004), pp. 22, 26. Barbara J. Shapiro, Probability and Certainty in Seventeenth-Century England: A Study of the Relationships between Natural Science, Religion, History, Law, and Literature (Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 18, 38, 70. See also James Tully, A Discourse on Property: John Locke and His Adversaries (Cambridge University Press, 1980) pp. 21–23. Essay, 4.3.26; 4.12.10. Locke in these passages names this endeavor “experimental philosophy” and “natural philosophy,” rather than “science.” I will generally refer to it as modern natural science, or simply science, following the contemporary idiom.

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universal moral principles. In the Essay, he identifies moral principles as “mixed modes.” Like species concepts, mixed modes are constructs of the mind. Locke emphasizes, with surprising vehemence, that mixed modes are constructed “very arbitrarily,” patterned on no “real existence” to be found anywhere (3.5.3; 2.3.1–2; 2.22.8; 2.31.3; 3.5.3). Moral knowledge, he says, unlike empirical-scientific knowledge, is capable of complete, “demonstrative” certainty, precisely because its concepts are pure mental constructs (e.g., 3.11.16; 4.3.18–20; 4.4; 4.12.8). One of the greatest challenges of Lockean interpretation is to ascertain how Locke understands his theory to have vindicated moral knowledge, and how (or whether) this theory is compatible with the moral-political teaching found in the Second Treatise of Government and elsewhere. This complex of questions cannot be addressed adequately without engaging the epistemology of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding in some depth. The argument of Essay cannot be understood, in turn, without some grasp of its antecedents, from Plato and Aristotle to the scientific virtuosi of the seventeenth century. These set the stage, and defined many of the controversies, that make the argument of the Essay intelligible. They are the subject of this first chapter.

Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition Neo-Aristotelian Scholasticism was the source of the “uncouth, affected, or unintelligible” language that Locke targets in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The scientific assault on “the Schools” had been going on for most of a century by the time Locke published his Essay, but the old philosophy retained such a hold on the universities, the churches, and on English and European culture generally, that in Locke’s own day, Robert Boyle was still able to call it, acerbically, the “vulgarly received notion of nature.”8 It remained a formidable obstacle to the new empirical science, obstinately blocking, in Boyle’s view, the true advancement of learning.

8

Boyle’s A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature (ed. Edward B. Davis and Michael Hunter [Cambridge University Press, 1996]) was first published in 1686, though parts of it had been written earlier. Compare Bacon, New Organon, 1.18, and Edward B. Davis and Michael Hunter, “Introduction,” in Boyle, Free Enquiry, p. xv.

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Ironically, the old epistemology, rooted in Plato, developed by Aristotle, and taken forward by Christian Scholasticism, had argued that it was advancing knowledge, and was doing so in the only way that true knowledge could be advanced. Aristotle, in particular, had confronted arguments similar to those later made by the Baconian empiricists, weighed them, and rejected them. Many men who were far from stupid or na¨ıve, over the course of many centuries, devoted their lives to advancing knowledge in the way he had marked out. Theirs was not a path to be dismissed lightly. Even more ironically, in light of the scientific challenge, the classical approach to knowledge was resolutely empirical at its root. Its ultimate source was Socrates’s turn away from airy abstractions to a more common-sense approach to reality, as reflected in ordinary human speech. Following this approach, his student Plato propounded the theory of the “ideas” or “forms.” The forms, he hypothesized, are purely intellectual, non-material entities that account for the world as we see it. They are the patterns or templates for the concrete objects we encounter in experience. The trees we see, and the animals, are produced by nature according to the “form” of tree, or dog, or deer. This may seem a highly abstract or metaphysical theory, but that is the opposite of its intent. Plato is attempting to answer two simple questions, in the simplest way possible. The questions are: What accounts for the order we observe in nature? And what accounts for our ability to grasp this order, our knowledge of the world around us? The simplest hypothesis to account for the orderliness of nature would seem to be that nature is governed by certain patterns, that it constructs individual things in accordance with a template. Heraclitus’s claim that nature is simply chaos or flux does not accord with our experience of the world. Rather, the concrete particulars we see are divided into species or kinds of things – tree, dog, deer. There is variation among the individuals in a species, of course, but they share certain essential traits that place them in that species. If then nature produces particular things according to patterns, as seems to be the case, those patterns must be separate from the particulars, and they must in some sense be the cause of those particulars coming into being in the way they do. The patterns cannot themselves be concrete particulars; the particulars have to be regarded in some sense as “copies” of the patterns. It makes sense to call these patterns “forms,” to reflect the empirical, even visual, root of the theory. The word that Plato

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uses, εἶδος, means “form” in the sense of the shape or appearance of a thing, the way it looks to us. Difficulties will arise if we try to explain just how these forms bring particulars into being, but in principle this theory will account for order in nature. Our second question concerns the human mind’s ability to grasp that order, to explain and ground our knowledge of nature. We need an “epistemology.” Begin with the supposition that there is order in nature, and that we recognize that order. This is no more than common sense: there are trees; we recognize them as trees. Certain things follow from this commonsensical view. First, the act of “recognition” is the act of placing the particular thing in its proper category or species. When we land in a foreign country, we immediately recognize which of the objects presented to our senses are trees. How can this happen? Again, the simplest explanation would seem to be that we have a mental grasp of that same form or pattern by which nature produces these objects. We compare individual objects to the store of patterns in our minds, and this is what allows us to recognize them as members of their species. We may put it more broadly: this mental grasp alone is what allows us to make sense of the world. If each object in our experience appeared to us as a sui generis individual, unrelated to any other individual and not belonging to any species, our experience would be simply chaotic. It would be Heraclitean. It would overwhelm us. If nature produced things idiosyncratically and without patterns, knowledge of nature could only consist in knowledge of each object in all its particularity. We could never hope to understand more than a small fraction of nature’s production. Our understanding of some parts would be of no assistance in understanding the rest. And our knowledge of the parts we did encounter would become useless upon the perishing of the particular objects to which our knowledge referred. If this is not the situation we find ourselves in, it is because nature produces things in accordance with patterns or forms, and our minds can grasp these forms, as entities separate from the concrete individuals of a species. This, at least, was what Socrates proposed. Even if we begin with no more than experience of concrete particulars, our minds have an ability to penetrate behind that experience, to grasp the forms themselves. Raw experience presents us with idiosyncratic objects (each individual is distinct in some way); it is our minds that grasp the patterns that make sense of them, that bring order to potential chaos.

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If forms govern nature in this way, meaningful knowledge of nature can only be knowledge of those forms. Being knowledgeable about trees is not being acquainted with each individual of the species, but knowing the pattern, the essential traits of trees as trees. This allows one to understand each individual as a member of the species, and to understand for example whether an individual tree is healthy or deficient, by comparing it with the form. Similarly, true knowledge of nature is not knowledge of concrete particulars, but knowledge of the forms or patterns that account for those particulars. For among other things, knowledge and truth would seem to be permanent and unchanging, while concrete particulars are perishable and transitory. Finally, if nature is truly an ordered whole, a cosmos, knowledge of it would necessarily culminate in knowledge of that order, that is, knowledge of how all its parts fit together into a coherent whole. If that whole is ordered toward some purpose or end, knowledge of that end would be the crowning achievement of human science. These are the basic outlines of the philosophy proposed by Socrates and Plato, and carried forward in a distinctive way by Aristotle. It would be rash to suppose that all of this was proposed by them as dogma or “doctrine,” or even that none of it was proposed ironically or rhetorically. But any irony was largely lost on the medieval scholars who labored on their distinctive, Christianized version of this tradition, Scholasticism. From their hands the tradition was bequeathed in turn to early modern Europe, where it eventually provoked the furious backlash of Locke, his predecessors, and successors. This backlash was shaped in key respects by the distinctively Aristotelian version of the Socratic philosophy, since this is the version that inspired the Scholastics. Aristotle developed some of the fundamental Socratic insights in much greater detail than had Plato. In particular, he set himself to working out a science of natural phenomena based on the basic Socratic epistemology. He began by disagreeing with Plato about the precise status of the forms. Plato had hypothesized that the forms have a real existence apart from the concrete world, and in fact were more real than the concrete world. They were permanent, while the particulars were fleeting. Aristotle, however, denied that the forms had any real existence apart from the particulars that embody them.9 The particulars are prior; only they have being in the fullest sense. Still, 9

Aristotle, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, ed. and trans. Joe Sachs (Santa Fe, NM: Green Lion Press, 1999), B 3–4; Z 16.

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Aristotle agrees that the forms are different from the particulars, and so must have independent being, if only in an attenuated or “secondary” sense (Metaphysics Δ 8; Λ 3). As Plato had argued, they are somehow the cause of the particulars. They constitute a type of cause, the “formal cause.”10 The form “man” has no existence apart from concrete individual men; yet it is something apart from them, and it accounts for their being “men,” rather than something else. It is permanent, while they are fleeting. Aristotle claims that Socrates devised the notion of forms because he had been persuaded by Heraclitus that the material world is always in flux. It was Socrates’s belief, he says, that in order for there to be knowledge – and morality – something permanent had to be postulated, which could impose a kind of order on the chaos (Metaphysics, M 4). Aristotle himself prefers to argue, somewhat paradoxically, that forms are necessary to account for change (Metaphysics, B 4; Physics 1.7). There are two different ways in which objects can change. A particular object (say, a man) may change greatly over the course of its existence, while also remaining the same. A man’s body displays great change in material composition over time; new matter replaces old. Over his lifetime, very little of the original matter may remain, yet he remains a man. There is change, but not change in kind. What accounts for the continuity, if not the persistence of the form?11 If we define “man” only in terms of material configuration, it seems to Aristotle that this persistence cannot be explained. Not all change is of this type. Some changes do not affect objects’ form (the man grows), but others do (the man dies). These are changes of kind. The difference between the two types of change is not material, but formal. “Generation” and “corruption” in the unqualified sense refer to the coming to being and passing away of the form in a given object. Natural processes cannot be reduced to material causes alone, however important these may be. Aristotle is fully aware that one might attempt a purely material account of these things; some of his own predecessors had made such attempts, which he discusses at length.12 10 11

12

Aristotle, Aristotle’s Physics: A Guided Study, trans. Joe Sachs (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 1.9, 2.13. Aristotle, Physics 1.9; Charlotte Witt, Substance and Essence in Aristotle: An Interpretation of Metaphysics VII–IX (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1989), p. 66. Aristotle is at some pains to explain and justify his opposition to those of his predecessors who espoused purely materialist explanations of the world and its

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He finds that they all fail, and necessarily so, for they cannot account for the order of nature, or for the fact that there is qualitative as well as quantitative change.13 Bacon will accuse Aristotle of falsely applying the model of purposive human activity to nature, and there are undeniable parallels.14 Human art produces things according to a form in the artisan’s mind; Aristotelian nature produces things according to intelligible forms. The key difference between the two kinds of production, in Aristotle’s view, is that only things with a natural form are true beings or “substances.” They have a “thinghood” that gives them their being, together with a natural tendency to persist over time.15 Creations of human art do not. The natural tendency of a tree is to persist and thrive; the natural tendency of a house, as every homeowner knows, is only to fall apart.16 We may go further: only objects with a form or thinghood have “natures” in the true sense of the word (Physics 2.1, 6). Random or chance combinations of materials, such as piles of rocks (or mountain ranges?) do not. The material elements, such as fire, are “according to nature,” they have natural or intrinsic properties, but they do not have “natures” in the specific sense at issue here (Physics 2.1). Things

13 14 15

16

objects. His argument, whose outlines I have just sketched, is found in Physics 1.7, Metaphysics Δ 5, H 2. See also Witt, Substance and Essence, pp. 90–94. Aristotle, Physics Bk. 1; see also Sachs’s commentary on Bk. 1, and David Ross, Aristotle (London: Methuen, 1971), p. 81. Bacon, New Organon, 1.48, 1.65, 2.2; cf. Kennington, On Modern Origins, Ch. 1. The Greek word is oὐσία, “being.” It has traditionally been translated “substance,” in which guise it formed one of the anchors of Scholasticism. Joe Sachs gives a strong argument for preferring the translation “thinghood,” reflecting Aristotle’s concern with explaining the unity and durability of natural objects (Sachs, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, pp. lviii–lix). See also Witt, Substance and Essence. There are important disagreements about the nuances of Aristotle’s theory of forms, essences, and the like. For the most part, they do not affect the broad points I wish to make about Aristotle. An exception is David Bolotin’s fascinating proposal, in An Approach to Aristotle’s Physics, With Particular Attention to the Role of His Manner of Writing (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998), that major portions of Aristotle’s teaching in the Physics are not intended seriously by him, but are advanced only to shelter natural philosophy from political attacks based on its allegedly radical or subversive tendencies. Bolotin calls into question the sincerity of Aristotle’s teachings on forms and formal causes, natural teleology, and geocentrism, among other things. My presentation will hew to a relatively traditional interpretation of Aristotle, if only because it was the traditional Aristotle that Locke and the modern movement confronted. I owe this priceless example to Sachs (Metaphysics, p. 159n8).

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with natures are compounds, combinations of elements constructed in accordance with forms, whose unity or coherence as wholes – whose being or thinghood – is due to those forms (Physics 2.4). These natures are different from the mere sum of the objects’ material elements: the wholes are greater than (or at least different from) the mere sum of their material parts. The same matter may compose a man or a pig; the difference between them lies elsewhere, in their form. In this understanding of nature, the form of each thing also represents a perfection toward which it tends. In that sense, Aristotle’s theory of form is inherently “teleological.”17 There is a natural tendency in each substance to achieve or fulfill its form, a tendency that may or may not be realized. If a thing completely fulfills its form, it will exist in its perfect or healthy state, but this does not always happen. In the classic example, an acorn’s nature is to become a mature and healthy oak tree; this is its form, which exists only in potential in the acorn. The tree’s processes of growth and subsistence are directed by this form as its end. Individual specimens display differences, despite their shared form, and some come closer to exemplifying the perfection of the form than do others. The explanation Aristotle and the Scholastic tradition gave of this was the influence of matter. Substances are compounded of form and matter. Since the form is necessarily the same in each specimen, matter must be the principle of individuation or differentiation;18 even, we might say, of imperfection. It is as if matter resists the influence of form, even as it can be seen as longing to take on form (Physics 1.9). Knowledge in the full sense is the grasp of what is permanent and unchanging. True knowledge, therefore, is knowledge of the forms or essences of things, and of necessary relations among these essences (as well as certain permanent material realities, such as matter and the 17

18

Ross, Aristotle, p. 71; Witt, Substance and Essence, p. 100. This is distinct from the sense in which there may be a teleology above the forms themselves, that is, a whole or cosmos in which each being contributes to the purpose or good of that whole. On matter as the principle of individuation, see Metaphysics Δ 6; Z 8, 10; X 3; Λ 8; Aquinas, Summa Theologica (www.newadvent.org/summa/), 1.1.47.2; 2.1.50. Witt, Substance and Essence (pp. 176–78), argues that, for Aristotle, form is individual (each specimen has a separate or individual “copy” of the form, though apparently all copies are identical). Matter then causes “differentiation,” not “individuation.” For our purposes, the difference is minimal.

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configuration of the heavens: Ross, Aristotle, p. 154). There are things that are true, but that could be otherwise; of these, Aristotle follows Plato in saying there can only be “opinion.”19 All matters of empirical observation, of what we might call brute facts, fall into this category. A grasp of particulars can never be “knowledge,” though it may be “true” (Post An 1.33; Metaphysics B 4). The tree outside my window is forty years old; even if true, this is classified as “opinion” in Aristotle’s scheme. How then do we gain true knowledge? Paradoxically, perhaps, Aristotle insists that we always begin with sense experience (Post An 2.19). Somehow, we must get beyond it or behind it, to a grasp of the forms and permanent realities that will alone allow us to understand the world. Since this is a point on which Locke and the later empiricists took sharp issue with Aristotle, it is important to understand the process that leads from mere perception to knowledge for Aristotle. At the conclusion of the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle outlines, at least hypothetically, a process by which this happens.20 We begin with “perception.” Memory allows us to retain and collect perceptions. Many perceptions regarding the same thing constitute “experience,” a kind of ordered grasp of these perceptions. This in turn constitutes or enables a grasp of the universal behind the multitude of perceptions (2.19). The universal, in a sense, is contained or is implicit in the perception itself (2.19). We do not have an innate or preexisting cognition of the universals, but our minds are so constituted that they can become aware of the universal through the prompting, as we might call it, of sense experience. We begin with sense, but at some point make a mental leap beyond it, to a direct, intellectual grasp of the universal, of the form. As Aristotle says in De Anima, mind must have a special capacity to receive objects of knowledge, like the senses have a capacity to receive sensation.21 19

20

21

Plato, The Republic of Plato, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1991), 476d–480a, 533b–534a; Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, ed. and trans. Jonathan Barnes (Oxford University Press, 1975), 1.33. See also Ian Hacking, The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas About Probability, Induction, and Statistical Inference (Cambridge University Press, 2006), Ch. 3. For an account of some of the difficulties and ambiguities in this passage, see Barnes’s notes in the cited edition of the Posterior Analytics, pp. 248–60. See also Aristotle, Metaphysics A.1–3. Aristotle, De Anima (http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/soul.html), 3.4. See also John Yolton, Perceptual Acquaintance from Descartes to Reid (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), “Introduction.”

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We begin with experience, but Aristotle’s point is that empiricism by itself cannot yield knowledge, and that the human mind in the very process of experiencing the world moves beyond perception in the direction of knowledge. Accumulated perceptual experience with a particular species of thing leads the mind eventually to grasp the species in its own nature, the form on account of which each of the individual specimens is what it is. This grasp is not perceptual; it is qualitatively different from sense perception. It is more than the sum of experiences one has had with individuals of this species. I have experience with many individual human beings. This leads me eventually to grasp – intellectually, not empirically – the form of man. Once I have this, I know which traits constitute the essence of a human being. I can distinguish these from the many traits that individual human beings have that are not essential to their humanity – “accidental” rather than “essential” traits, as the tradition glossed it. Perception or sense experience by itself can never yield this kind of knowledge. On the same basis, I can recognize which individual human specimens are more perfect, are better exemplars of the human form, and which are inferior. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics spell out in some detail the implications of Aristotle’s view of the human form.

Medieval Aristotelians, Scholastic and anti-Scholastic: Aquinas and Ockham Thomas Aquinas achieved the synthesis of Aristotelianism and Christian theology that defined the Scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages (and beyond). That synthesis gained a dominant position shortly after Aquinas wrote his magisterial works, but it was not without respected and influential challengers. The medieval nominalists, headed by William of Ockham, attacked Scholastic Aristotelianism in ways that strikingly foreshadow some of the arguments of Locke and the new science. The debate between these two medieval schools can help us understand the position of the scientific anti-Aristotelians of early modernity. Aquinas’s synthesis of Aristotle and Christianity required some key modifications of Aristotle, of course, but regarding many of the issues of concern to us, Aristotle’s philosophy was kept remarkably intact.22 22

´ See Etienne Gilson, L’esprit de la philosophie m´edi´evale (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1948), pp. 71–75, 346–48.

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Aquinas takes Aristotle’s works to have demonstrated that unassisted human reason can attain a relatively thorough understanding of nature. Aquinas echoes Aristotle’s criticism of the ancient atomist Democritus for believing that the differentiation of things can be explained by matter alone (Summa 1.47.1; cf. Aristotle Metaphysics H 2). Natural objects are compounded of matter and form. The forms are not sensible, they are grasped only by intellect (Summa 1.45.2, 1.47.1, 1.67.3, 1.75.4). Aquinas agrees with Aristotle that intellection of the forms nonetheless begins with sense experience. There is an aspect of human mind, the “agent intellect,” that can illuminate or draw the intelligible forms out of sense experience.23 Although the soul has vegetative, sensitive, appetitive, and locomotive powers, in addition to the intellectual, Aquinas holds that intellect is the distinguishing element of the human soul, and so constitutes the human form (Summa 1.76.1, 1.76.4, 1.78.1, 1.79.1; cf. Aristotle de Anima 2.3). This is not to say that human beings are defined only by this form; human beings are essentially body as well as soul. As the lowest of the intellectual creatures, we do not grasp the forms directly, but need bodies so that we can approach the forms through our senses (Summa 1.76). The possession of bodies of course has other fateful consequences for us as well. For Aquinas, the forms are creations of God, or more precisely, are part of the divine mind or essence (Summa 1.1.14.4, 1.1.15.1). Matter is a creation of God. The world is not eternal, as Aristotle had maintained (Physics 1.7–9, 8.1). Rather, God miraculously created it ex nihilo. Though the forms are inherent in nature – allowing unassisted reason to become aware of them – God stands behind all. Individual creatures do not always attain the ends or perfections implicit in their divinely given natures or forms; evil is one consequence of this 23

Summa 1.79.3, 1.55.2, 1.78.4, 1.79.9. The “agent intellect” (intellectus agens) is a concept that post-Aristotelian Peripatetics and later Arabic commentators drew out of some scanty hints in Aristotle (the passages at the end of the Posterior Analytics discussed in the previous section, but also and especially De Anima 3.5). As Aquinas explains it, agent intellect must be postulated because Aristotle, unlike Plato, did not hold that the forms existed separately, in some intelligible realm; they had to be actively drawn out from concrete experiences by some faculty of mind (Summa 1.79.3). See Z. Kuksewicz, “The Potential and the Agent Intellect,” in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, ed. Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg (Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 595–601.

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failure (Summa 1.48.1, 1.55.2). Aquinas emphatically does not subscribe to the argument some might draw from Aristotle, that this represents matter thwarting divinely created form. Decay and material corruption of terrestrial objects are rather a necessary part of the divine plan, and serve the good of the whole (Summa 1.48). God deliberately made creatures who could and would fail of the goodness implicit in their forms. Rational creatures (human beings and angels) form a special category of these; their failure is willful and thus culpable (Summa 1.48.2, 5, 6; 1.64). Among the natural endowments of the human soul is a trait Aquinas calls “synderesis.” Synderesis is an innate practical inclination possessed by all men – a “natural habit,” in Scholastic terminology (1.79.12). Closely related to conscience, it impels us toward the good and inhibits us from evil (1.79.12, 13). The critical element, for our purposes, is that Aquinas follows Aristotle and Plato in holding that the forms or species are real entities – all three are “realists,” as modern philosophical terminology has it. The species are templates according to which nature is organized, patterns with ontological status. Plato gave them the highest ontological status, Aristotle a lesser status, but in either case, individual horses, for example, are horses by virtue of a universal entity, the form or idea of horse. Natural philosophy, in this view of things, aspires to grasp the forms that stand behind material objects. “Empirical” investigation of those objects is merely a means. Scholastic realism was opposed on all these issues by a “nominalist” tradition. Pure nominalism holds that universals, such as species concepts, have no ontological status. They are nothing but names (nomina). They are concepts by which we organize our experience, but they have no existence outside of our minds. Christian Europe learned of the nominalist/realist dichotomy with its first glimpse of Aristotle. Boethius’s sixth-century translation of Porphyry’s Isagoge, an introduction to Aristotle’s logic, was standard in the medieval curriculum from a very early date. In this text, Porphyry lays out realism and nominalism as opposed positions, without deciding between them. Nominalist ideas found occasional proponents from that time on.24 24

See Porphyry, Isagoge, trans. and notes by Edward W. Warren (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1975). Peter Abelard (d. 1142) espoused a moderate version of nominalism.

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William of Ockham made this argument in its most elaborate and influential form, in specific contradistinction to the thought of Aquinas.25 Ockham’s approach became known as the via moderna, in contrast to the classical/Scholastic via antiqua. This approach anticipates some of the ideas developed by Locke and the early natural scientists, in ways that illuminate dilemmas faced by the later thinkers. Ockham denies, as will Locke, that we have any innate ideas.26 He denies, as will Locke and modern science, that intelligible forms stand behind and account for the order of nature. These facts together raise serious questions concerning what we can know. The mind cannot ascend, as Plato and Aristotle and Aquinas had it, from sensory particulars to an intellectual realm that lies behind and causes the orderliness of the material realm. The result, for Ockham as for Locke, is “empiricism”: our grasp of the material world comes solely from sense perception, and cannot in any fundamental way get beyond sense perception.27 Sensory “intuitions” of particular objects, along with introspective knowledge of ourselves, are the sole materials from which our knowledge arises.28 Using this experience, we fashion universal concepts, which we then use to organize our experience. If these universals are only names, however, corresponding to nothing real, they would seem to be less than useless as tools of science. If we divide the world into species or kinds of things, but our species concepts are arbitrary, and do not correspond to the true pattern by which reality is structured, they would seem to lead us away from knowledge, not toward it. 25

26

27

28

Aquinas died in 1274, Ockham was born about 1288. Duns Scotus is more often the explicit target of Ockham’s nominalist attack. A good account of the nominalist strain of thought (and the whole landscape of medieval intellectual life) may be found in the relevant portions of Frederick Copleston, S.J., A History of Philosophy, Volume III: Late Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy (New York: Doubleday, 1993). William of Ockham, Quodlibetal Questions Volumes 1 and 2: Quodlibets 1–7, trans. Alfred J. Freddoso and Francis E. Kelley (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), Quodlibet 1.13, 14. Quodlibet 1.13, 14. There is an exception, obviously, for knowledge vouchsafed us by revelation. See Copleston, History, p. 68; Heiko A. Oberman, “Via Antiqua and Via Moderna: Late Medieval Prolegomena to Early Reformation Thought,” Journal of the History of Ideas 48:1 (1987): 23–40 (pp. 26–29); Michael Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity (University of Chicago Press, 2008), p. 23. Quodlibet 1.13, 14. See Copleston, History, pp. 64, 68. Ockham is always careful to add that God can cause direct intuitions in our minds, but these appear to be rare exceptions (e.g., Quodlibet 5.5, 6.6).

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The single idea for which William of Ockham is best known today is his “razor.” Though he himself never used the term, Ockham’s razor is a tool of logic, holding that, among competing explanations for a given phenomenon, the simplest is to be preferred. Extraneous or superfluous principles are to be cut away. What is not so well known is that the Aristotelian–Thomistic forms were among the first victims of this razor. If observed phenomena can be explained without recourse to such forms, the forms should be dispensed with. To frame the argument in empiricist terms, Ockham’s claim is that formal causes are not observable in nature. All that we see can be explained without recourse to such causes (cf. Quodlibet 2.1). They should therefore be dispensed with. Modern students of the philosophy of science are quick to point out that Ockham’s razor carries no necessary metaphysical implications. The fact that we can observe no formal or final causes, and are able to explain and even manipulate the world as we see it without recourse to them, does not prove that there are no such causes, or even that they are not at work in the very phenomena we are observing. The motions of the planets might be perfectly described by Newtonian physics, while also being part of some larger, purposive plan. Ockham’s razor strongly predisposes the human mind to conclude that what it has lopped off does not exist, but this is a logical fallacy. Ockham, however, does want to make the stronger, metaphysical claim, for theological reasons. He accepts that nature is directed by a final cause, but only as an article of faith. Natural reason, he insists, cannot prove this.29 The forms and formal causes, however, are not only unprovable, but are an affront to divine power and freedom. Forms or ideas, seen as the rational template for reality, imply that God was constrained in the creation of the world, that the world could only be brought forth according to one pattern.30 In Ockham’s view, only “voluntarism,” the notion that unconstrained divine will stands behind creation, can be reconciled with sound theology. Voluntarism and nominalism are sides of a coin for Ockham: divine will displaces metaphysical forms, since the existence of forms is incompatible with the freedom of that will. Aquinas’s attempted reconciliation of the problem, that the forms are ideas in the divine mind, part of God’s 29 30

Quodlibet 4.1, 2; 7.14. Unassisted reason cannot prove that God is the cause of natural phenomena, though it may be “probable” (Quodlibet 2.1, 3.4). Quodlibet 6.1; Copleston, History, p. 49; Michael Allen Gillespie, Nihilism Before Nietzsche (University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 16–17.

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nature, and hence not a true limitation upon him, did not appease Ockham, for it still entailed that God was constrained in creation.31 The Scholastic position implies even more strongly that God’s actions are constrained after creation is complete, by the alleged matrix of forms. In a sense, it implies that God’s relation to present-day creation is distant, or at least mediated. Once created, nature continues in a foreordained pattern. Finally, it implies that man occupies a privileged place, through his ability to penetrate the secrets of creation by his reason. From Ockham’s perspective, these claims are tantamount to blasphemy. His vindication of divine power and freedom means, however, that we cannot hope to understand the world by penetrating to rationally intelligible forms behind it. God created the world freely and without regard to forms or patterns. Every object in it is particular and sui generis; or rather, there are no genera. True knowledge, knowledge such as God has, is knowledge of each and every particular, in its particularity.32 Our minds are incapable of such knowledge. We resort to universals or species names because we cannot grasp the world in all its diversity and nuance, that is, as it actually exists. Species or categories are a way of simplifying experience so that our minds can encompass it. We do not want to do away with universals, as they are necessary to us. But we must recognize that this necessity stems from our limitations, that these universals always involve distortion or oversimplification. In resorting to universals, we sacrifice the richness of the particular for the sake of comprehension. We are wise to minimize their use – hence the razor. As to the universals that we do find useful or necessary, we must always bear in mind that they denote nothing outside the mind.33 They certainly do not represent an objectively existing template of reality. These are all fair conclusions from nominalist theory, and Ockham embraces them all, in one way or another. He does not always embrace them, however, in the way we might expect. In his logical works, for 31 32 33

Aquinas Summa 1.12.8, 1.14.4; Copleston, History, pp. 49, 58; Gilson, Philosophie m´edi´evale, pp. 314–15. Quodlibet 4.3, 5. These facts together should guard us against misconceiving the ideal of “parsimony” beloved of Ockham’s fans (or, more properly, his razor’s fans) among contemporary social scientists. Parsimony is not a virtue properly speaking; it is only a way of minimizing the vice inherent in all human “theory-building.”

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example, he routinely makes use of species terms, as if they referred to something real or true, rather than being mere names. Our minds develop species concepts, he tells us, by “abstracting” from a number of individuals (Quodlibet 1.13). Not only are these concepts based on true resemblances among the individuals, but Ockham more or less takes it for granted that they correspond to real kinds of things. We are not mistaken to differentiate between human beings and donkeys, to use a favorite example of his, and to place both species under the genus “animal” (Quodlibet 3.8). Even more strikingly, Ockham asserts that the “intellective soul” is a defining characteristic of the human species, as a species. That is, it is part of a species definition that captures the “essence” of the species, its “total nature” (Quodlibet 5.15, 19; 2.10). On the basis of such definitions, Ockham says, it is possible to distinguish between intrinsic and accidental qualities of things, to identify the defining traits of a species.34 Ockham is even willing to speak of the “form” of a thing, as opposed to its matter (I Summa Logicae 42; Quodlibet 5.18; cf. 4.5). Universals themselves, though they exist only in the mind, can be qualified as “true,” and even “real,” as opposed to chimeras that exist in the mind but do not correspond to reality (Quodlibet 3.4, 4.35). These positions appear to be perilously close to the Aristotelian– Thomist views from which Ockham is dissenting. Evidently, for Ockham, nominalism does not entail the radical consequences we associate with it. To say that species concepts have no substantial existence, that they exist only in the mind, is not necessarily to say that they are arbitrary, or that they do not correspond to reality. In the first instance, it is only to make a specific objection to the way that others have construed those universals.35 The Scholastics have taken universals or forms to be independently existing entities, “formal causes.” Ockham agrees that every individual human being is created in accordance with a “form,” though this form has no ontological status. All human forms share certain key traits, such as rationality, or the ability to laugh, but 34

35

William of Ockham, Ockham’s Theory of Terms: Part I of the Summa Logicae, trans. Michael J. Loux (University of Notre Dame Press, 1974), I Summa Logicae 25, 26, 29. Copleston argues that Ockham and his followers would better be called “terminists” than nominalists, on the grounds that their concern was more the proper use of terms in logic than the metaphysical infrastructure (History, pp. 11–12, 122).

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each human form is also separate and unique.36 All individual human forms have things in common, but this does not entail that there is a separate, universal “human form.”37 Ockham believes that this position, rather than the position of the Scholastics, is the true position of Aristotle.38 He can cite Aristotle in support of this claim, as we already know. Yet Aristotle concluded that the universal must have at least a qualified sort of being, in order for this to be the case (Metaphysics Δ 8; Λ 3). Ockham’s theology might make the difference here. If the objects around us are to be understood simply as products of nature, Aristotle’s “realist” conclusion is doubtless sound. If there is a God capable of creating every object sui generis, it may not be. Ockham reconciles nominalism and his liberal use of species concepts with the aid of a distinction between God’s “ordinate” and his “absolute” power. God’s absolute power consists in the fact that he was free to create the world in radically different ways. The creation we are living in, however, is ordered in a particular way. In our world, God manifests “ordinate” power, remaining within the ambits of this created order. He may suspend its rules at any time, to be sure, but he does so only rarely.39 For all intents and purposes, then, we may rely on the stability of the current order as we find it. We may find regularities in it that are real, species concepts that are true to the ordinate power of God. Scripture tells us, after all, that God created things in kinds (Genesis 1:20–27). We must understand this as free divine choice, not entailing the real or substantial existence of universals. Since the order of nature is fundamentally factitious, we cannot grasp it by intuitive leap to some intelligible realm of forms. We may grasp the species that God has created, by abstracting from our empirical observations, but our grasp can never receive the final seal of intelligible certainty promised by the via antiqua. Inevitably, it remains somewhat conditional. Ockham does not make this point explicitly, 36 37 38 39

I Summa Logicae 17, 29; Quodlibet 5.18. I Summa Logicae 29; II Summa Logicae 2; cf. Quodlibet 4.3, 5. See, e.g., Quodlibet 4.27, 6.16; I Summa Logicae 15, 43; II Summa Logicae 2. See also Gillespie, Nihilism Before Nietzsche, p. 13. It is possible to argue that Ockham’s God never acts but by ordinate power, in the sense that even his miraculous interventions are planned or foreordained; see David W. Clark, “William of Ockham on Right Reason,” Speculum 48:1 (1973): 13–36 (p. 32). Ockham himself claims that all is done by God’s absolute power, inasmuch as the order of creation is itself a product of God’s absolute power (Quodlibet 6.1). See also Gillespie, Theological Origins, Ch. 1.

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but he does concede for example that reason cannot truly prove a rational soul to exist in man, much less that it is the “essence” of the species (Quodlibet 1.10). If we rely on faith, as Ockham bids us, this is not an insurmountable difficulty. It becomes a graver problem for later generations of empiricists. The problem becomes most visible when we recall that the older moral philosophy depended upon the existence of form. The human form was the source of man’s end or “final cause.” It gave him a model of moral perfection that was an obligation to him. Ockham’s nominalism and voluntarism remove this foundation for morality. This aspect of Ockham’s theology represented a greater flash point than the rest of his theory of universals, for obvious reasons. It may not matter much that God could have created a world with different species or physical laws. But could he create a world in which moral rules were fundamentally different? Where murder was praiseworthy, forgiveness a sin? Are the Ten Commandments dictates of an objective morality that could not be otherwise, or products of arbitrary divine fiat? Either answer to this question is fraught with theological peril. Ockham vindicates divine power and freedom, as he sees it, by choosing the voluntarist alternative. When he says God could have created a radically different world, that includes the moral world. God could have ordained adultery not to be a crime, Ockham famously asserts; he could even have commanded us to hate him.40 In this creation, though, God has condemned adultery and murder, and commanded love of himself. To that extent, voluntarism solves the problem it has created. Other problems arise, however, concerning the possibility of gaining knowledge of the moral law. We cannot understand morality by penetrating to objective principles that lie behind it, for there are none. Revelation may solve this problem for believers, but for everyone else (and, truth be told, for believers too), it is important to establish some rational path to moral knowledge. Ockham finds such a path, grounded in God’s ordinate power. Given the order of this creation, including our own natures as rational creatures, we can arrive at some understanding of moral law. We need only presume that creation represents a coherent order or cosmos. On this supposition, Ockham is able to second the Thomistic argument that Aristotle drew 40

Clark, “Right Reason,” p. 24, citing Ockham II Sententiae 19 O.

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sound moral conclusions employing natural reason alone (Quodlibet 2.14). It need not be surprising, then, that Ockham’s moral philosophy differs much less than one might think from that of his predecessors. He is willing to speak of “right reason” and “natural law,” and even to develop rather extended arguments on the basis of those concepts. Though they rest on very different grounds from those the Scholastics supposed, their content is remarkably similar, and even the way we learn of their content. Ockham’s theory supports a kind of inferential moral philosophy, even a natural theology. His view of things may alert us more than other views to the possibility of arbitrary divine interventions, but otherwise it will support a fairly conventional natural-law teaching. Ockham concludes, for example, that people have a right to certain liberties, from “God and nature.”41 They may hold property, and have a duty to respect the property of others.42 Peoples collectively have a God-given authority to erect governments over themselves. This power is not mediated through the church or the Pope in any way.43 Ockham’s clashes with Pope John XXII on these matters were more likely the cause of his excommunication than was his nominalist theology. He sided with the Emperor against the Pope’s claims of temporal power, and he favored the Franciscan position on apostolic poverty in defiance of an explicit papal edict. When one is willing to proclaim, in writing, that the sitting Pope’s views on these matters are “heretical,” one is unlikely to garner papal favor.44 41

42

43 44

William of Ockham, A Short Discourse on the Tyrannical Government Over Things Divine and Human, but Especially Over the Empire and Those Subject to the Empire, Usurped by Some Who Are Called Highest Pontiff, trans. John Kilcullen, ed. Arthur Stephen McGrade (Cambridge University Press, 1992), 2.17. Tyrannical Government, 2.24; William of Ockham, The Dialogue, 3.2.3.6, trans. Francis Oakley, in Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, ed. Ralph Lerner and Muhsin Mahdi (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972), pp. 492–506. The right of private property has come into being only after the Fall (Tyrannical Government 3.7; The Dialogue, 3.2.3.6). See also Gillespie, Theological Origins, pp. 25–26. Tyrannical Government, 3.8, 11, 14. Tyrannical Government, 2.3, 3.14. Ockham was excommunicated in 1328, officially for leaving Avignon, the papal seat, without permission. The cited texts were written after Ockham’s excommunication, but he was known for embracing these views beforehand.

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We are not necessarily interested in Ockham’s position on any of these issues. I mention them only to show that a nominalist metaphysics and a voluntarist theology may result in a set of moral and political teachings that closely resemble teachings derived from more conventional foundations. This insight may be of use as we approach Locke. Ockham chose his principles for philosophical and theological reasons, not because they would lead to particular political (or ecclesiastical-political) conclusions; nonetheless, he is perfectly entitled to draw these conclusions from those principles. The striking parallels between Ockham’s principles and those of the later scientific tradition raise interesting questions. Does a non-realist, nominalist metaphysics lead necessarily to an empiricist natural philosophy?45 Aristotelian and Scholastic science began with sensory knowledge, but at the critical juncture transcended it in favor of an intuitive grasp of the intelligible forms. If the natural order does not derive from intelligible forms, this path to knowledge is obviously foreclosed, and we would seem to be limited to whatever insight we can glean from experience. Such knowledge would not qualify as “knowledge” in the old understanding. What epistemological status can it have, and in particular, can it attain to certainty? Finally, and perhaps most fatefully, must any moral theory formed against such a background rest ultimately on divine will or legislation? In the old theory, morality was part of the structure of nature, via the teleology of forms. How can morality be supported in their absence?

The modern revolt: Francis Bacon However much William of Ockham and the medieval via moderna anticipated modern developments, it was Francis Bacon who launched the decisive attack on Aristotelian Scholasticism that led, by a direct line, to modern science and to Locke. Like the followers of the old via moderna, Bacon rejected the notion that science consisted of a grasp of forms that constitute the template of reality. Like them, he held that nothing exists other than particulars. Like them, he concluded 45

See M. B. Foster, “Christian Theology and Modern Science of Nature (I),” Mind 44:176 (1935): 439–66; “Christian Theology and Modern Science of Nature (II),” Mind 45:177 (1936): 1–27; Gillespie, Theological Origins, pp. 35–41.

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that knowledge of the world could never transcend empirical senseknowledge. Unlike them, indeed in complete opposition to their spirit, he conceived a sweeping plan for the mastery of nature by human power, rooted in a new empirical science. The purpose of this power and this mastery would be the material benefit of man. Despite his rejection of Aristotelian forms, Bacon’s science, and his plan, obviously presume that nature proceeds regularly. The regularity is accounted for not by forms, but by bare matter, motion, and their laws. “For forms are figments of the human mind, unless you will call those laws of action forms” (New Organon, 1.51; cf. 2.2, 5). We cannot hope to arrive at knowledge of nature by intuition or any kind of direct connection between our minds and nature. To the contrary, our only hope is to devise a method that accounts for the fact that our minds are in many respects unsuited to grasp reality. One reason that Aristotle failed to achieve true science, according to Bacon, was that he incautiously drew sweeping conclusions from few cases. The Peripatetics and their medieval followers were guilty, Bacon charges, of flying to the grandest generalizations, from scanty empirical observation.46 Once these generalizations became fixed, anointed as “forms” supposedly grasped by direct intellectual intuition, science proceeded by deduction from them, with little further consultation of empirical reality (Advancement 2.13.3–4). Aristotle’s science, as Bacon puts it, was corrupted by his “logic” (New Organon 1.54, 63). A “logic,” in this usage, is not merely a mode of reasoning, but a claim that this mode of reasoning reflects the structure of reality, that it uncovers permanent relations among real objects.47 Bacon entitles his key work the “New Organon,” advertising it as a replacement for Aristotle’s “Organon,” the label traditionally given to Aristotle’s works on logic.48 Aristotle’s purely deductive and “syllogistic” science 46

47

48

New Organon, “The Great Instauration” §8; 1.19, 62, 104, 125; Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, ed. G. W. Kitchin (Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2001), 2.7.5–6. See Gillespie, Nihilism Before Nietzsche, p. 18; Peter Schouls, Reasoned Freedom: John Locke and the Enlightenment (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 18; Michael Davis, Ancient Tragedy and the Origins of Modern Science (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), p. 54. Aristotle’s “Organon” is traditionally held to include the Categories, Prior Analytics, De Interpretatione, Posterior Analytics, Sophistical Refutations, and Topics. The Greek word organon means “tool” or “instrument.”

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was, in Bacon’s view, inevitably dogmatic and sterile (New Organon, “Preface”; Advancement 2.14.2). Under its influence, “science” consisted for centuries of little more than wrangling over the meaning of preconceived and ill-grounded concepts. Observations contrary to the accepted principles were explained away by over-subtle distinctions, or discounted as “nature failing to achieve its intended end” (New Organon 1.25). This produced what was essentially a non-falsifiable body of dogma. Far from advancing learning, it constituted, in Bacon’s view, one of the greatest hindrances to it. Aristotle’s approach had been premised on a specific view of the world, and of the place of human intellect within that world. His procedure, even as Bacon describes that procedure, makes eminent sense given that view. If the world is structured in accordance with certain categories or forms, if empirical observation can give us a preliminary grasp of those forms but true understanding must ultimately leap over observation to a direct intellection of the forms, we might use observation or induction to begin with, but we would ultimately graduate from it to true science. From that point on, our procedure would be essentially deductive. Our purpose, moreover, would not primarily be useful knowledge, but understanding for its own sake and as a higher avocation of our nature. For only the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake befits our status as intellectual beings, with a special and direct access to the grounding of reality. In Christianized Scholastic form, this pursuit would be grounded ultimately in desire for knowledge of God, and reflective of our status as creatures made in the image of God. Bacon’s attack overturns this chain of reasoning at almost every point. First, there are no forms for us to fly to, away from the world of material reality. There is no intelligible template of reality to which we have direct or privileged access. Bacon accuses Aristotle and the Aristotelians of having “reverence for the first notions of the mind” (New Organon, “Instauration” §11). Aristotle would not object to this formulation, if by those notions we mean the intimations of form that the mind receives even in sense perception, for these notions reflect the mind’s fundamental attunement to the order of things. Bacon’s view, quite to the contrary, is that our minds are rather ill-adapted to the grasp of reality. “The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding,” Bacon warns (New Organon 1.10). If the mind is a mirror of reality, it is an “uneven

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mirror,” distorting reality in its own image, even as it reflects it (New Organon, “Instauration” §14, 1.41). The path to knowledge therefore must begin with an honest assessment of the defects of the human mind, in hopes of devising correctives. Bacon carries out this diagnosis under the rubric of “idols” of the mind, of which he finds four (1.39– 68). Two of them, the “idols of the marketplace,” which are false notions embodied in language, and the “idols of the theater,” rooted in cultural traditions, are not intrinsic to the mind, or not primarily so (1.59–67). The antidote to these would be rather straightforward, in conception if not in practice. The “idols of the cave” are misconceptions peculiar to the individual, some from nature and some from education or other factors (1.53–57). The “idols of the tribe,” however, are intrinsic defects of the human mind. It is Bacon’s account of these that distances him most radically from Aristotle. The human mind is prone to abstraction, falsely giving substance to things that have none. “Forms” in the traditional sense are a product of this human intellectual vice (1.51; cf. Advancement 2.8.1). Aristotle’s fundamental error was not an idiosyncrasy of his; it reflected an endemic but false tendency of the human mind. Furthermore, says Bacon, once the mind fastens upon a notion, it tends to ignore contrary evidence, embracing only instances that confirm it (New Organon 1.46, 49). Indeed, the mind is more open to positive proofs of anything, rather than contrary examples (1.46). The human mind is naturally credulous. It is also constitutionally disinclined to accept that the fundamental principles of nature are merely “positive,” not grounded in any deeper purpose or reality. It invents “final causes” to reassure itself that there is some reason why things are the way they are (1.48). These ideas clearly represent an assault not only on the Aristotelian view of things, but on certain Christian interpretations as well. Our acquaintance with William of Ockham will prevent us from overstating the conflict with Christianity, which Bacon is at pains to conceal in any case. His argument does suggest, however, that elements of religious thinking per se are attributable to weaknesses of the human mind (cf. Advancement 2.14.9). Once we recognize these weaknesses, we are left with the challenge of overcoming them. This is the task of Bacon’s new method. From the outset, he admonishes, the mind must be prevented from taking “its own course”; it must be “guided at every step” (New Organon, “Instauration” §3; cf. §5; 1.9, 37). We will begin by painstakingly accumulating empirical data, or “natural

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history.” We must resist the ever-present temptation to draw sweeping conclusions from limited observation. We will ignore those who say that close attention to commonplace or even distasteful phenomena is beneath our dignity, or the dignity of the human mind (New Organon 1.119–21, 124, 129). After sufficient observation, we may cautiously begin to generalize concerning the regularities we find. We will ascend step by step to gradually higher levels of generalization. We will be alert at every stage to disconfirming evidence. The generalizations we ultimately make will be generalizations that are true to nature, and that may be used to master nature. We may hope that science will eventually come to a full understanding of the “summary law of nature,” the fundamental principles that explain all.49 The new scientific project requires correcting not only the defects of our minds, but also of our senses. Unfortunately, says Bacon, much of the uncertainty of human understanding comes from the “dullness, incompetency, and deceptions of the senses” (New Organon 1.50; 1.69). To the extent that the new science is “empirical” in a way that the older science was not, this problem strikes at its root. Bacon holds that the defects of the senses are not irremediable – he takes issue with skeptics who find them hopelessly mendacious (1.37) – but we must take care to assist and correct them. As with our minds, it appears, our senses are not terribly well suited to grasping the external world. For this, there are a host of reasons. Distance obscures or distorts; very swift motion, or very slow, escapes our detection. The senses are incapable of registering the “subtlety” of bodies, or the minuteness of their parts (“Instauration” §12; 1.10, 50). The last problem alludes to Bacon’s embrace of a version of the atomist hypothesis. Atomism henceforth became the basis of science; this is the view of physical nature adopted by Galileo, Pierre Gassendi, Robert Boyle, and many in the Royal Society, the view on which Locke premises many of his epistemological arguments in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding.50 For all these thinkers, science 49

50

Bacon, Advancement 1.1.3, 2.7.6; New Organon “Instauration” §29; 1.116; Francis Bacon, The Wisdom of the Ancients, in Bacon’s Essays and Wisdom of the Ancients, trans. anon. (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1884; available at www.archive.org/details/baconsessayswisd00bacoiala), “Cupid” (pp. 366–70). In the New Organon, Bacon denies that he is an atomist, on the grounds that atomism entails belief in a vacuum, and in the unchangeableness of matter

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based on atomism holds the promise of unlocking the secrets of nature. It also, of course, places the real workings of nature fundamentally beyond our senses. The look or form of a thing, the starting-point of classical science, reveals very little of its true nature, under the atomist hypothesis. That nature is to be accounted for by the way its minute particles combine and interact. Bacon took it to be a novel advantage of his science that it would investigate the “latent composition” and “latent processes” of nature, based on the invisible constituents of nature, and their behavior (New Organon 2.5–7). In his book Of The Wisdom of the Ancients, Bacon glosses the ancient myth of Cupid as “the Atom”; atoms, he there says, are the primitive first entity of nature. They owe their existence to no prior cause (p. 367). That is, one cannot ask why they exist, or how they came into being. These atoms have a natural motion; atoms in motion, he concludes, form the first seeds of all things (p. 367). Science based on atoms is reductionist, obviously, but it is not necessarily simple. According to Bacon, an object’s qualities are not merely the sum of the traits of its minute constituents. He criticizes the ancient atomist Democritus (whom he otherwise praises highly) for failing to appreciate the role that natural atomic motion plays in explaining the behavior of compound structures, and for failing to appreciate the independent role that structure plays in compound beings (New Organon 1.57, 2.7; Wisdom, “Cupid,” pp. 368–69). Bacon surmised that heat, for example, consisted of motion at the atomic level, and could alter the characteristics of an entity even when all its other elements remained the same (New Organon 2.20). He also held that a structure of multiple atoms could take on characteristics that none of the component atoms had by themselves (1.57). These factors obviously complicate the task of using atoms as an explanation of the nature or behavior of visible objects, and Bacon did not believe that he was very close to possessing any such explanation (New Organon, “Instauration” §29; 2.5). (2.8). In his earlier work The Wisdom of the Ancients, he seems to accept a vacuum (“Cupid, or an Atom,” p. 370). In both cases, though, he does believe in infinitesimal particles of some type, whose activity accounts for the phenomena of nature. On the prevalence of atomism in the science of Locke’s century, see Shapiro, Probability and Certainty, Ch. 2; Catherine Wilson, Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

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It becomes a question, indeed, what it means to speak of the “nature” of a compound being in this new scheme, that is, its nature as a whole and separate thing. It can have no such nature in the Aristotelian sense; its “thinghood” is nothing in itself, but is merely the sum of its minute parts, however complex the summing. It is even more difficult to speak of the nature of a class of things. If we grant that there are different kinds of atoms, each with distinctive properties, we might call these natural “kinds” or species, but this will leave us very far from an explanation of the regularities we observe in nature, the species of tree, dog, man, and the rest. “Form” in the Baconian sense has some difficulty accounting for form in the Aristotelian sense. We might put the matter in the following way. The laws of matter and motion, as Bacon (and contemporary science) conceives them, may account for all the animate and inanimate species in the world, but they could support a great many more as well. What accounts for the species we see, for matter forming this particular assortment of complex objects, as opposed to the many others it could form? And why do these particular species or kinds persist, always reappearing or reproducing themselves? The Aristotelian and Scholastic theory was devised to explain precisely this; it is not clear how the Baconian approach will explain it. At any rate, Bacon and his successors, including especially Boyle and Locke, have reason to be concerned with the problem of species, as they visibly are. Why is the world organized the way it is? In the modern scientific view, the question might be addressed at two levels. First, why do the fundamental building-blocks of matter have the properties they do? To this, no answer can be given, unless it is “chance.”51 As Bacon said, the fundamental properties are merely “positive.” They are simply givens, with no reason or purpose behind them. It is one of the follies of the human mind to seek an explanation beyond this, a “why,” but there is none (New Organon 1.48; Wisdom, “Cupid”). The question reappears though at a higher level, the level of visible nature. What accounts for the species into which complex or compound objects are divided? Bacon rejects the Aristotelian answer, but ventures no 51

Some have recently suggested a scientific “anthropic principle,” according to which the universe necessarily has the fundamental characteristics it does, to allow for the development of life, or even intelligent life. See John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford University Press, 1986). This is not the scientific consensus, however.

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hypothesis of his own, except in mythic terms. In The Wisdom of the Ancients, he proposes, in the guise of interpreting the myth of Coelum (“or Origins”), that in the beginning, matter produced a riot of randomly or badly composed compounds. Only after time was a “fabric” established that could sustain itself; Jupiter’s age is the age of stability in the productions of nature.52 In his explication of the myth of Proteus (“or Matter”), Bacon says that the species were not present at the origin, but were produced at “midday.” Matter is Protean, it may take many shapes; but since the time when the species were fixed, it produces these only, and not others. According to this hypothesis, the species, which Aristotle and his followers have attributed to eternal forms, are not coeval with matter. They are not the only species nature has produced or can produce. They are the species according to which nature is organized in the present age. In the present age, the “fabric” of nature is stable; but this particular fabric is not foreordained by the nature of things. There are no species at all in the Aristotelian sense, as Bacon also signaled by calling his first set of idols “idols of the tribe,” rather than of the human “species.” Among these idols is the tribal tendency to find permanent “species” where none exist. We would have to go further and say that, for Bacon, there are no “beings” in the full-blooded Aristotelian sense – compound entities whose “thinghood” is not reducible to matter, but derives from intelligible form (Physics 2.1, 6). Still, the species we find today are real, in the sense that they constitute a fabric by which nature is currently organized. It is difficult to gauge how seriously Bacon intends these speculations. To any who are concerned, he declares them to be false in any case, since Christians know the order and fabric of the world to be ordained by God (Wisdom, “Coelum”). Nonetheless, they dovetail quite well with elements of Bacon’s scientific thought. Bacon 52

Wisdom, pp. 358–59. This account may owe something to the view Aristotle ascribes to Empedocles – that nature first joined parts at random, producing many monsters that could not survive. The beings that were able to survive presumably perpetuated themselves. Nature thus generated the species we see today by a kind of natural selection out of primal chaos. Aristotle objects that this does not explain why the monstrous productions no longer appear, and more fundamentally, that chance and material necessity by themselves cannot explain the order of nature (Aristotle, Physics 2.8; Empedocles, frs. 57–62 [in The Presocratic Philosophers, ed. G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield, Cambridge University Press, 1984]; Witt, Substance and Essence, pp. 89–93).

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often makes use of a distinction between nature in its “ordinary” or “regular” course, and a deeper, more hidden nature. The first seems to represent primarily nature in its species and activities as we find them today. The second has to do with underlying nature, “her fundamental and universal laws which constitute forms” (New Organon 2.5). While knowledge of the first confers a certain power over nature, knowledge of the second, Bacon says, would multiply that power immensely (New Organon 2.5). The former gives us physics, and the power of “mechanics,” but the latter, which Bacon calls “metaphysics,” would confer a power he refers to as “magic” (2.9; cf. Advancement 2.7.1, 2.8.3). Some of his descriptions of this power are redolent of alchemy. If one could learn how nature produces the forms or “simple natures” such as weight, ductility, insolubility, yellowness, and others, one could “superinduce” these forms on base matter and transform it into gold (New Organon 2.5; cf. 2.4, 17; Advancement 2.7.6). This would be extremely difficult, Bacon allows, but it is an example of the power to be gained if one could get to natural processes more fundamental than those at work in the “ordinary course of nature.” This level of knowledge would allow us to manipulate the species themselves, or transform them into other species. In The Wisdom of the Ancients, Bacon intimates that some “Minister of Nature” could summon enough force to bring matter back to its original Protean character, as it was before the present age of Jupiter (“Proteus,” p. 362). If we could thus pierce the fabric of nature, as it were, it could redound immensely to our benefit. It would also confirm that the species we find in the world are not intrinsic to nature. To get us started on the project of discovering the “forms” that lie at nature’s deepest level, Bacon sketches a program in the last part of the New Organon for the investigation of one of the simple natures or forms, heat (2.11ff.). The experiments Bacon outlines concerning heat, and the tables of findings he proposes to aid in digesting them, served as a model for the investigators who came after him, but they are only the beginning of the long climb of science. Its end point, in principle, is a near-total, “magical” mastery over nature. Bacon does not unambiguously promise such mastery; he may even overstate the prospects for it, to ease the acceptance of his overall project (cf. New Organon 1.92). What he is serious about, though, is the intellectual scaffolding on which the project rests. That scaffolding promises real fruits, from a real advancement of learning. Bacon’s empiricism, his

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inductivism, coupled with a method that corrects the defects of the senses and the mind, will lead us, in his view, to a true grasp of nature, a demonstrable knowledge that deserves the name of certainty (Advancement 2.14.12; Organon, Preface §§2, 6; 1.67). Its fruits will stand as one sign of its certainty (Organon 1.73).

Pierre Gassendi, Robert Boyle, and the post-Baconian project Bacon knew that his project would require the labor of many hands, and many minds. He lobbied assiduously for royal patronage to fund the necessary research, but with little success. It was only later in the seventeenth century that the science envisaged by Bacon became a real and widespread undertaking. With the formation of the Royal Society in 1660, the Baconian project was institutionalized. The project thus institutionalized was not in every detail the one that Bacon had outlined. Nor had it succeeded in silencing all its critics. When Thomas Sprat, one of the Society’s founders, was commissioned to write a history (and apology) of the young Royal Society, there issued forth, in 1667, a tome of over four hundred pages. The florid poem at the beginning of the work, by collaborator Abraham Cowley, is a paean to Bacon – who, “like Moses, led us forth at last” – and to his followers, the Royal Society. Sprat, in the text, has the leisure to quarrel with some parts of Bacon’s bequest. The activities and the inspiration of the Society are thoroughly Baconian in nature. The purpose of all its researches is the benefit of mankind.53 Its approach is resolutely empirical, not disdaining the “drudgery of observation,” whose neglect marred Greek science (p. 7). It does not turn its back on even the meanest phenomena, observed in any quarter of the globe (pp. 76, 90). It is necessarily, and proudly, a collective endeavor (p. 20). Hence its acolytes must be humble rather than proud, collegial rather than competitive, ingenuous, simple, and sincere (pp. 33, 112–14). For these reasons, says Sprat, it is more suited to the English mind and temper than to any other.54

53

54

Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society, ed. Jackson I. Cope and Harold Whitmore Jones (St. Louis: Washington University Studies, 1958), pp. 3, 34, 352. Sprat, History, pp. 113–14. This may be a swipe at the Cartesians as much as an expression of English chauvinism.

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The Royal Society’s approach to natural history, Sprat intimates, has made an improvement on that of Bacon. In a rare, but gentle, critique, Sprat says Bacon may have been too indiscriminating in his history, not properly digesting his empirical observations before drawing general conclusions.55 Sprat’s account of the scientific project injects a note of caution that may separate his approach, and that of the Royal Society, from Bacon’s. The Royal Society, he says, are careful to present their findings not as “unalterable Demonstrations,” but merely as “present appearances.”56 Pierre Gassendi had already done his part to inject this element of caution or skepticism into empirical science. A French writer, Gassendi was an early supporter of Bacon, and helped introduce Baconian ideas to the Continent. He engaged in a long and at times acrimonious polemic with Descartes. Gassendi’s skepticism was strongest in his early work, Exercises Against the Aristotelians. This book appeared a mere four years after Bacon’s New Organon, in 1624. It was published anonymously in Grenoble, perhaps because certain anti-Aristotelian atomists had been denounced and imprisoned in Paris.57 Gassendi does not explicitly embrace atomism in the work, but he does accuse the Aristotelians of propounding hollow concepts and meaningless distinctions that hinder learning rather than advancing it. Gassendi sides explicitly with the nominalists: there are no “forms,” or any kind of existing universals. Universals are mere inventions of our minds.58 Sense is the root of such knowledge as we have. It is solid enough for our purposes – I “know” I am sitting and not standing, at home and not at the market, says Gassendi – but the senses, as the ancient skeptics demonstrated, are incapable of true certainty (pp. 69–70, 86– 87). We can know (in a qualified sense) what our senses teach us of 55 56

57 58

Sprat, History, p. 36; cf. Shapiro, Probability and Certainty, pp. 38–39. Sprat, History, p. 108. These remarks are directed more pointedly at Descartes and the Cartesians, who were thought reckless and dogmatic in their theorizing. Sprat’s praise of the English temperament may also be aimed across the Channel. See Maurice Cranston, John Locke: A Biography (New York: Longmans, Green & Co, 1957), p. 265; Hacking, Emergence of Probability, p. 45; Schouls, Reasoned Freedom, pp. 13–14; Shapiro, Probability and Certainty, pp. 38–43, 64. Craig B. Brush, “Editor’s Introduction,” in The Selected Works of Pierre Gassendi, ed. and trans. Brush (New York: Johnson Reprint, 1972), p. 12. Pierre Gassendi, Exercises Against the Aristotelians (in The Selected Works of Pierre Gassendi, ed. and trans. Craig B. Brush [New York: Johnson Reprint, 1972], pp. 15–108), pp. 43, 56.

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objects, but we can never know the inner workings of things, or the necessary connections among them, or their necessary causes, things that Aristotelian science had promised (pp. 33, 85, 97). We can never know what constitutes the “essence” of anything, not even the most mundane objects. We cannot know the essence of a horse, much less of ourselves, that is, of mankind or of rational nature (pp. 71–72). Engagement with Baconian experimental science eventually softened Gassendi’s skepticism. Like his contemporary Galileo, he became a champion of the atomic hypothesis advanced by Bacon. He also championed the heliocentric theory of Galileo. Gassendi’s best-known contribution to experimental science was carried out on behalf of the Galilean hypothesis, his famous ship-mast experiment. Nearly one hundred years of controversy had already raged over Copernicus’s heliocentric theory. At issue was much more than a redrawn map of the solar system; large swaths of the preexisting science were threatened by it. Aristotelian theory held that heavy objects fall downward because they seek their natural place, the center – the center of the cosmos, which is earth. Heliocentrism would require a new explanation of this simple, and universal, phenomenon. Or rather, and even more disturbingly, it uncovered an entirely new phenomenon that needed explaining, “gravity.” Aristotelian science also held that by nature, objects are at rest. Falling to earth is a natural motion, but it presupposes an earlier, unnatural or violent motion, by which an object has been removed from its proper place. If the earth were rotating, as heliocentrism requires, Aristotelianism suggested that an object dropped from a height would fall some distance to the side, as it remained at rest in its lateral plane while the earth rotated under it. For nearly a century after Copernicus, learned doctors wrangled over how this object would fall. It was Pierre Gassendi who, in October 1640, finally settled the matter by climbing the mast of a moving ship and dropping a ball. The ball was observed to follow the motion of the ship in its fall, landing at the base of the same mast.59 59

Accounts of this experiment, and the controversy surrounding the philosophical problem of motion generally, may be found in Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of Modern Science 1300–1800 (New York: Free Press, 1965), Ch. 1 and pp. 41, 96; Brush, “Introduction,” pp. 116–17; Pierre Gassendi and Oliver Thill, The Life of Copernicus (1473–1543): The Man Who Did Not Change the World (Fairfax, VA: Xulon Press, 2002), pp. 305–7. Giordano Bruno, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo were among

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This may be a commentary on the state of scientific investigation in Gassendi’s age, but for Gassendi, it was also a demonstration of how secrets of nature might be uncovered by indirection. His experiment uses the ship’s motion as a proxy for the earth’s motion, allowing inference back to one of the largest issues besetting science. By similar means, he worked out key parts of the new theory of motion. He asserted that no motion is “unnatural,” and was the first to publish an accurate account of inertia.60 These are key building-blocks of the theory that was destined to replace Aristotelianism. He explored the nature of gravity, with limited success (not surprising, since gravitation remains a mystery today). Gassendi hypothesized that gravity was akin to magnetism (another mysterious phenomenon). He imagined a chain of atoms strung between objects thus attracted, perhaps with hook-like structures that allowed them to draw the objects together (De Motu 1.11–14). His difficulties in explaining these phenomena were partly self-inflicted, as he insisted that motion could only be imparted by one object to another by some direct physical link or contact. He was not alone: the belief that all phenomena in nature must be accounted for by physical, even mechanical principles, was shared by many of the early scientists (and their followers, such as Hobbes). To some degree, this was an imperative for them, derived from their opposition to the old, Scholastic and Aristotelian theory. Unless all natural phenomena could be explained physically or mechanically, unless all immaterial or “occult” causes could be excluded, the old philosophy, with its obscurantist jargon and ghostly, unverifiable explanations, might regain a foothold.61

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those who argued over how an object would fall, with Galileo describing the very experiment Gassendi carried out. Gassendi describes his conclusions in De Motu (Selected Works, pp. 119–50), pp. 120–26. Descartes had formulated the laws of inertia earlier, but withheld them from publication after the arraignment of Galileo: see Brush, “Introduction,” p. 115. Most of Gassendi’s theory of motion is seen in his treatise De Motu. When Newton proposed his theory of gravitation, involving action at a distance by a power whose cause and nature Newton confessed he did not know, he was accused by Leibniz of risking a return to the “Kingdom of Darkness” (Hacking, Emergence of Probability, pp. 172–73). The Cartesians accused him of resorting to “occult” influences of the type excluded by the new science. See Isaac Newton, Principia (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy [Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica Great Books of the Western World, 1952], Vol. XXXIV, pp. 1–372), “Definition VIII,” p. 9; “General Scholium,” pp. 371–72. On the Cartesian charge, see Butterfield, Origins,

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The perspective that Gassendi bequeathed to subsequent science is a qualified skepticism. Experiment and inference warrant a conviction that the atomist hypothesis embodies the truth regarding nature, but it remains a hypothesis. Elements of that hypothesis (such as gravitation by hooked atoms) are more speculative than others. We will never attain complete, certain knowledge of the innermost workings of nature – Bacon’s projected culmination will always elude us, it seems. But, Gassendi insists, we can attain solid enough knowledge to produce a science worthy of the name. What Gassendi does, in a sense, is carve out a new epistemological category: things that cannot be “known” with the certainty promised by the old philosophy, but can still qualify as “knowledge.” We cannot “prove” these things in a way that satisfies the old philosophers, but they would be satisfied only with direct intellection of immaterial forms. We can never claim absolute certainty – our theories always remain theories – but by a method of combined observation and inference, we can verify them to the point where they cannot reasonably be disputed.62 We can infer, to use a favorite example of Gassendi, that our skin has microscopic pores, though we cannot directly observe them (Syntagma, pp. 333, 347). If this is not “knowledge” in the old sense, we are warranted in adjusting our definition of knowledge.63 Among the subjects on which Gassendi challenged Descartes was the origin and nature of mathematical or geometrical ideas. Descartes argued that such ideas are innate, on the ground that they refer to things that do not exist in the material world. A true triangle is not to be found in the world of sense experience; the idea of a triangle is clear and distinct in a way that is not true of ideas derived from this experience. For Descartes, this opened up the possibility of a science that is demonstrative, that yields certainty of the type offered

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p. 169. The Newtonian theory of gravity opposed the Cartesian theory of vortices as an explanation of celestial motion (see Principia, p. 369; Butterfield, Origins, p. 160). Locke, in his extended polemic with Edward Stillingfleet over the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, emphasizes the mysterious nature of gravity (reprinted with the Essay in the Prometheus edition [New York, 1995], which is a reprint of the Routledge and Sons edition [London, 1910]), pp. 463–64. Gassendi, Syntagma (Selected Works, pp. 284–434), p. 346. Hacking, Emergence of Probability, Ch. 5 and Shapiro, Probability and Certainty, give a detailed account of the emergence of this new understanding of knowledge.

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by geometry. The basis of this science would be a mental reconstruction of experience on a mathematical template.64 For decades, the Cartesian approach vied for supremacy with the more skeptical, probabilistic approach of Gassendi and of the Royal Society as described by Thomas Sprat. The critics of Descartes accused him of being insufficiently grounded in empirical observation, of making sweeping claims based on hasty abstraction and generalization. In short, they accused him of falling prey to some of the vices of Aristotelian Scholasticism.65 One problem that empiricists like Gassendi confronted was explaining observed phenomena on the basis of their atomic theory. Atomism proposes, after all, that visible objects are made up of imperceptible particles that bear little resemblance to the objects themselves. Following suggestions of Galileo, Gassendi devised an explanation for this. Anaxagoras, he says, made the mistake of supposing that the elementary particles had to have all the qualities found in their composites, such as color, heat, taste, and odor.66 Proper inference should lead us to the conclusion instead that atoms have only three intrinsic qualities: size, shape, and weight (Syntagma, p. 425). They are not Aristotelian prime matter, bereft of qualities, or bare Cartesian extension; but 64

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Ren´e Descartes, Discourse on the Method (A Bilingual Edition, ed. and trans. George Heffernan [University of Notre Dame Press, 1994]), Parts Two and Four (pp. 26–39, 50–61); Rules for the Direction of the Mind (in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch [Cambridge University Press, 1985] – hereafter CSM I, pp. 7–78), Rule Twelve; Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch ([Cambridge University Press, 1985], hereafter CSM II, pp. 1–62), Third and Fifth Meditations (pp. 24–36, 44–49); “Comments on a Certain Broadsheet” (CSM I, pp. 294–311), pp. 303–309. See also Michael Ayers, Locke: Epistemology and Ontology, 2 vols. (New York: Routledge, 1991), Vol. I, pp. 33–35; Gillespie, Nihilism Before Nietzsche, pp. 40–51; Gillespie, Theological Origins, pp. 171, 190–91, 197–204; Kennington, On Modern Origins, pp. 174, 183; Shapiro, Probability and Certainty, p. 39. As mentioned above, Pierre Gassendi had a public, and extensive, polemic with Descartes (see Selected Works, pp. 157–278). Locke himself rarely mentions Descartes, or any other thinker, in the Essay, though some of his arguments clearly target the Cartesians. See also Butterfield, Origins, Ch. 6, p. 160; Cranston, John Locke, pp. 75–76, 102, 265; Shapiro, Probability and Certainty, pp. 39, 64; Schouls, Reasoned Freedom, pp. 5–19; Tully, Discourse on Property, pp. 21–23. Gassendi, Syntagma, p. 424. Galileo made similar suggestions in The Assayer (in The Essential Galileo, ed. and trans. Maurice A. Finocchiaro [Indianapolis: Hackett, 2008], pp. 179–89), pp. 185–89.

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neither do they have all the qualities found in objects made from them. Qualities of compound objects, such as color or odor, are byproducts of the physical properties possessed by combinations of atoms, which are different from the properties possessed by single atoms. These qualities, which Boyle and Locke will call “secondary qualities” to distinguish them from the “primary qualities” inherent in atoms, do not arise from the presence of the Aristotelian or Scholastic form. They arise from the purely physical attributes of combinations of atoms. Robert Boyle took this basic approach to the atomic theory and developed it systematically, with the aid of extensive experimental research. Boyle was a close friend and correspondent of Locke. In some sense, he was Locke’s scientific mentor and model. Boyle’s science is imprinted deeply on those portions of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding dealing with scientific matters. Boyle’s writings are instructive to readers of Locke not only because they clarify some finer points in those passages, but because Boyle’s extensive polemics against the Scholastics highlights the contrast between his science (Locke’s science) and theirs. If we want to know what precisely was the “rubbish” that Locke wished to throw out, Boyle’s writings are an invaluable resource. There are two works in which Boyle particularly outlines the differences between his own view of nature and that of the “Modern Aristotelians” or the “Modern Schools”: Considerations and Experiments concerning the Origin of Forms and Qualities, and A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature.67 The subject of the first, as its title suggests, is the Aristotelian, or neo-Aristotelian, theory of forms, and Boyle’s scientific replacement for it. The second work deals with wider issues of the organization of nature as a whole. Aristotle created a comprehensive, and coherent, framework for understanding the physical world, but he did not fully articulate the relations among the parts, or the processes by which nature operates. This led to certain problems for those who tried to develop his science in the ensuing centuries. His theory holds that forms or essences govern natural processes so as to produce the complex objects in their species, as we find them. But how exactly does form exert its influence? 67

Boyle, Free Enquiry; Robert Boyle, Considerations and Experiments concerning the Origin of Forms and Qualities, in The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, esq, epitomized by Richard Boulton, Early English Books Online, facsimile of 1699 edition. See esp. Book I, Ch. 1.

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If the form of oak causes an acorn to develop properly, how does this happen? Can this process be seen, or described, in step-by-step detail? The four elements provide the material for this development, but how do they interact with form? Earth is cold and dry by nature, according to Aristotle, while water is cold and wet, air is hot and wet, and fire is hot and dry.68 Aristotle’s derivation of the elements appears to be premised on the primacy of “the hot,” “the cold,” “the wet,” and “the dry,” as determinants of things of the world.69 This, together with his indications that one element may be transformed into another by a change of one or more of these qualities,70 led many to conclude that Aristotle believed there to be a materia prima underlying the four elements – matter without qualities, but able to take on the four fundamental qualities to produce the elements. This was taken to imply in turn that the qualities themselves are non-material entities superadded to blank matter. They are forms, or akin to forms.71 Following inferences such as these, later thinkers – Boyle’s “new Aristotelians” – attempted to give their theory greater explanatory power by multiplying the number of forms. If it is too vague to say that the growth of an acorn is explained by the form of the oak tree, it may help to break that form down into parts, sub-forms or particular forms. An oak tree has hardness, height, heft, a certain color, and so on. It is a given combination of these that makes up the general 68

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Aristotle, Generation and Corruption (at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/gener corr.html), II.3; G. E. R. Lloyd, Early Greek Science: Thales to Aristotle (London: Chatto & Windus, 1970), p. 107; Peter Alexander, Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles: Locke and Boyle on the External World (Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 27. See Aristotle, Physics I.7; Generation and Corruption II.2. See Aristotle, Physics I.4, Aristotle, On the Heavens (at http://classics.mit.edu/ Aristotle/heavens.html), IV.4–5; Alexander, Ideas, Qualities, pp. 85, 46; Bolotin, Approach, pp. 93, 131; Lloyd, Early Greek Science, pp. 107–108; Ross, Aristotle, pp. 64–65, 106. It has been suggested that Aristotle did not intend “forms” and “matter” to be combined into a single science. Forms are a theme in his logical works, where the elements do not appear, while the physical elements are enlisted in the empirical works, which make less use of forms (See Alexander, Ideas, Qualities, p. 40; Lloyd, Early Greek Science, 101–103; Ross, Aristotle, pp. 105–108, 167–78). Are these largely separate ways of analyzing the world? This cannot be entirely true; material and formal causes must interact in some intelligible way, if both operate in the natural world (see e.g. Physics II.1–2, Metaphysics Z 8). This difficulty may tell for Bolotin’s view (Approach) that the forms are not seriously intended by Aristotle, and are largely dispensed with in his actual scientific works.

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form of an oak tree. If we understand the growth of the oak tree as the gradual appearance of the various particular forms, we will have something closer to detailed and explanatory science. We will also have assimilated “forms” with “qualities.” Scholastic naturalists eventually created a theory in which virtually every particular quality had become its own form. Shapes were forms (sphere, cube); colors were forms; heft or taste could be forms, as could motion and rest.72 All these forms were supposed to be added to or superinduced upon materia prima to produce the objects of nature. The species forms of compound beings consisted of a definite collection of these “subordinate forms” (Boyle, Forms and Qualities 4). This is the theory that Boyle and Bacon and Locke confronted, against which they directed most of their polemics. They faced another set of opponents, though, whose presence complicated their rhetorical task. The Alchemists, or Spagyrists, or “Chymists,” as Boyle prefers to call them, operated on the basis of a theory analogous to the neoAristotelians, but claimed that their science was based upon empiricism and experiment. This made it essential for scientists like Boyle to distinguish themselves from these other laborers in the experimental vein, and to discredit their claims. In The Sceptical Chymist, which for a long time was Boyle’s best-known work, he undertakes a systematic refutation. The Chymists held that there were three elements, or fundamental principles of nature. These were sulphur, mercury, and salt, and, like the Aristotelian elements, each had intrinsic qualities or powers – volatility, liquidity, oiliness, solidity, acidity, particular colors, and so on. These tria prima were understood by some to be the building-blocks of the four Aristotelian elements, amalgamating the two theories.73 Like the manifold neo-Aristotelian 72

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Alexander, Ideas, Qualities, pp. 40–43; Marie Boas, Robert Boyle and Seventeenth-Century Chemistry (Cambridge University Press, 1958), p. 77. See also Boyle, Forms and Qualities, Bk. 1, Ch. 4; Ayers, Epistemology and Ontology, Vol. I, pp. 29–31. See Jan W. Wojcik, Robert Boyle and the Limits of Reason (Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 129–35; Butterfield, Origins, p. 85. The chymists were a very diverse group. My sketch of their theory represents views that were common to many or most of them. Different thinkers held to different descriptions of the elements, and different views on the nature of those qualities, from the philosophical to the spiritual or magical. Many were heavily influenced by the Hermetic tradition. For more complete depictions of the alchemical tradition, see Alexander, Ideas, Qualities, Ch. 1; Boas,

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forms-cum-qualities, they were understood as ideal, even immaterial entities, rather than material elements in the ordinary sense. Pure sulphur or mercury are never found in nature, the spagyrists held; substances bear these names due to a certain preponderance of the element in question. The project of alchemy was to find methods by which certain qualities could be removed or extracted from underlying matter, and certain others could be superinduced upon it, transforming one material into another. To modern minds, the chymists’ project seems a superlatively strange combination of the ideal or the immaterial, and the empirical. Yet, if one had a quasi-Aristotelian view of forms, and a quasi-Baconian aspiration to master nature, it made a certain sense.74 For on this view, true mastery of nature could be achieved only by commanding form, not matter. Matter, after all, is little more than the receptacle of form, or the medium for its expression. Materia prima is a featureless substrate, able to take on any form or quality. Even the four basic elements may be transformed into one another by a change or transfer of qualities. Relying on this model of material nature, the master chymist should be able to separate form from matter, allowing the transformation of one physical substance into another. If one further assimilated forms to spiritual forces or supernatural entities, as some chymists did, their art could take on the air of magic.75 In any case, their art opened up the possibility of chrysopoeia: the superinducing of yellowness, density, ductility, and other forms upon base metal could transform it into gold. Not all the chymists were obsessed with this particular transformation – many were more interested in medical applications76 – but all shared a common approach. They believed that fire was the instrument by which the desired resolution and recomposition could be achieved, and were famous for laboring over their furnaces in pursuit of the secrets of nature. “Sooty empirics,” Boyle

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Seventeenth-Century Chemistry, pp. 52–106; Hacking, Emergence of Probability, Ch. 5; Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981), Ch. 1; Wilson, Epicureanism, pp. 52–53. I do not argue for any direct connection between the Baconian, or even the Aristotelian theories and alchemy. The origins of alchemy are usually traced to Paracelsus, who lived a century before Bacon (dying in 1541). His theories may have been influenced by or borrowed from Islamic thinkers, who may have been influenced by Aristotle in turn. See the citations in the preceding note. Wojcik, Limits of Reason, pp. 130 and n25, 135; Alexander, Ideas, Qualities, pp. 16–17. Alexander, Ideas, Qualities, p. 16; Hacking, Emergence of Probability, p. 40.

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called them.77 To Boyle and the other members of the Royal Society, it was as important to distinguish their science from alchemy as from neo-Aristotelianism. Boyle was careful to point out that his own hypothesis did not exclude the possibility of transforming base matter into gold.78 We have already seen Bacon hold out the same possibility, and of course modern nuclear physics suggests it is possible (if not economically profitable) to perform the transformation. But for Boyle, as for modern physics, any such transformation would be purely a matter of physical change, not involving immaterial influences such as “forms.” This general point is the theme of Boyle’s book, Considerations and Experiments concerning the Origin of Forms and Qualities. All the qualities ascribed to immaterial forms by the neo-Aristotelians (and the chymists) are to be understood, Boyle argues, on purely material and mechanical principles, as products of “corpuscles” and their combinations. Boyle is careful to present his theory as no more than a hypothesis, like Gassendi and in accordance with the spirit that Sprat found in the Royal Society.79 Boyle may call his theory “corpuscular” rather than “atomic” to avoid the atheistic associations of ancient atomism. Still, he is willing to speak of “modern atomists,” apparently including himself, as of ancient “corpuscularians.”80 Unlike “atomism” in the strict sense, his theory does not depend on the “corpuscles” being utterly indivisible. 77 78

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Robert Boyle, The Sceptical Chymist (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1937), p. 22; Alexander, Ideas, Qualities, p. 23; cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, V.440. Boas, Seventeenth-Century Chemistry, p. 105. According to Boas, Boyle at one point used his influence to have laws passed against the chemical manufacture of gold (p. 102). Did he believe he was close to discovering such a process? Some have recently argued that Boyle was closer to the alchemists than has been thought (see Wojcik, Limits of Reason, pp. 133–35). Boyle, Forms and Qualities, p. 1; Wojcik, Limits of Reason, pp. 172, 179. Boyle was a founding member of the Royal Society. Boyle, Forms and Qualities, pp. 8, 15 531; cf. Free Enquiry, pp. 121, 122, 34, 63. On Boyle’s motives for using the term “corpuscle,” see Davis and Hunter, “Introduction,” to Boyle, Free Enquiry, p. xii; Margaret J. Osler, “Baptizing Epicurean Atomism: Pierre Gassendi on the Immortality of the Soul,” in Religion, Science, and Worldview: Essays in Honor of Richard S. Westfall, ed. Margaret J. Osler and Paul Lawrence Farber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 163–83 (p. 165). Wojcik argues that Boyle chose the term because it was neutral regarding some of the disputes among the diverse schools of Epicureans and Cartesians in his own day (Wojcik, Limits of Reason, pp. 182–83).

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Indeed, he posits that some probably are composite.81 Boyle’s corpuscles coexist with vacuum; this is one thing that separates his theory from that of Descartes, as well as the Aristotelians.82 Boyle hypothesizes that matter is essentially one, in all its forms; the corpuscles are all made of the same stuff. This is not Aristotelian materia prima: its essence includes solidity, and it always exists in some determinate size and shape (Forms and Qualities, pp. 2–3). It is size and shape that distinguish corpuscles from one another. These qualities, along with motion or rest, are the only “essential traits” of matter (Forms and Qualities, p. 3). Their physical configuration dictates what Boyle calls the texture of corpuscles (Chymist, p. 201; Forms and Qualities, pp. 7, 12). Texture accounts for the behavior and distinctive characteristics of different corpuscles. Combinations of corpuscles have textures of their own, caused by the textures of the individual corpuscles, but perhaps very different from them (Forms and Qualities, pp. 14, 22). The “form” of a body, Boyle pointedly says, is a consequence of this kind of texture, not of any metaphysical or immaterial influence (Forms and Qualities, pp. 12, 28–36). A change in the form of an object is to be explained entirely by changes in its physical components, the qualities, arrangement, and motion of those components. When an object changes color, or becomes liquid, this is not the supervention of a new Aristotelian form, but merely a physical change in the body.

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Boyle, Forms and Qualities, p. 2. The ancient theory was based on the notion that “atoms” could not be divided, atomon being the Greek word for “uncuttable.” The atomic theory arose in response to the question or dilemma, “can one divide matter indefinitely, or will one arrive ultimately at some tiny indivisible particle?” See Kirk, Raven, and Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, pp. 406–409. Boyle allows that some corpuscles are divisible, though not in the ordinary course of nature, and hence that “atomism” is not strictly the correct term for his theory (Sceptical Chymist, pp. 30–31, 96; Forms and Qualities, p. 12; Robert Boyle, The Christian Virtuoso: Shewing, That by being addicted to Experimental Philosophy, a Man is rather Assisted, than Indisposed, to be a Good Christian [London: Edward Jones, 1690], p. 4). The existence of vacuum was a key controversy in seventeenth-century science and philosophy. Since Descartes defined matter as simple extension, little more than a mathematical abstraction, vacuum itself would seem to be “matter.” The Cartesians held that any apparent vacuum was filled with ultra-fine particles. As with the ancient atomists, Boyle argues that vacuum must exist in order to make motion possible. See Descartes, Principles of Philosophy (CSM I, pp. 177–291), CSM II, pp. 10–11; Boyle, Free Enquiry, pp. 120–22; Boas, Seventeenth-Century Chemistry, pp. 79–81.

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This is the heart of Boyle’s rebuttal of the neo-Aristotelians. “The Controversie betwixt us and the Schools is this,” he says, “Whether the Forms of Natural Bodies be educed out of the Power of the Matter, and whether they be Substantial Entities distinct from Matter?” (Forms and Qualities, p. 48). Like Bacon and Gassendi, Boyle offers a materialist explanation. As in the case of the earlier thinkers, this entails that the true nature of physical objects is not evident to our senses, indeed is beyond their reach. The form of a thing in the ancient sense of its “look” is radically separate from its form in the scientific sense; the form we see is a highly misleading clue to an object’s true nature. What our senses grasp are certain indirect consequences of the real physical attributes of objects. Boyle follows Galileo and Gassendi (as Locke would follow Boyle) in speaking of “primary” and “secondary” qualities of things. The secondary qualities do not inhere in the objects themselves, but are only consequences of the way an object’s real or primary qualities happen to impinge on our senses (Forms and Qualities, p. 9). This is true of color, says Boyle, and of taste and odor (Forms and Qualities, p. 3). Gold is not “yellow” (much less is it infused with the form of “yellow”); it appears yellow to us only because of the way its corpuscular texture reflects light, and the way that reflection is registered by our eyes (Forms and Qualities, p. 9). The primary qualities, on the other hand – size, shape, and solidity – really do inhere in the corpuscles. But these are no more Aristotelian forms than are the secondary qualities. Boyle calls these qualities “Modes of Matter,” explicitly to distinguish them from such forms (Forms and Qualities, pp. 3, 4, 17). To call these qualities “modes of matter” is to say two things: first, that they are modifications of a single underlying material or stuff; and second, that they are purely physical or material variations, not influences of metaphysical forms.83 It is to say that these variations are quantitative, we might say, rather than changes in kind. Indeed, we may go so far as to say that there is no such thing as a change in kind in Boyle’s material nature. This 83

Boyle did not pioneer this use of “mode,” nor its anti-Aristotelian purpose. Descartes uses the term, as does the “Port Royal Logic,” whose first edition appeared five years before Boyle’s Origin of Forms and Qualities (1662 vs. 1667). See Descartes, Principles of Philosophy (in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, CSM I, pp. 177–291), 1.53–61; Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, Logic or the Art of Thinking, ed. and trans. Jill Vance Buroker (Cambridge University Press, 1996), commonly known as the “Port-Royal Logic.”

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is true of compound or complex substances as well as the corpuscles themselves (Forms and Qualities, pp. 13–14). When a mass of clay is molded into a ball, its spherical shape is a new mode given to its matter, not the supervention of a new Aristotelian form. The same is true of the much more complex chemical processes that Boyle devoted his career to investigating. Matter, such as clay, can change modes without undergoing any fundamental, much less metaphysical, transformation. The corpuscles themselves, we might say, are oblivious to or unaffected by this change of mode. Boyle devotes a fair amount of energy to establishing, for example, that water is not “cold” by nature, that cold and hot are nothing more than modes of its existence. The neo-Aristotelians held that, while water could obviously be heated, this process took it out of its natural condition, to which it inexorably tended (or even “had an appetite”) to return. If it did not, if it took on the form of heat, it was transformed into air, which is hot and wet rather than cold and wet.84 The truth, as Boyle sees it, is much more prosaic: water feels cool to the skin because of the way its corpuscular texture happens to interact with the human sense of touch (Forms and Qualities, pp. 32–33, Free Enquiry, pp. 84–85). The Aristotelian hypothesis reveals the pitfalls of empiricism pursued without the necessary rational controls. Boyle’s replacement of “form” with “mode” seems to separate him from Bacon, as well as from the Scholastics. Bacon assaulted the Scholastics’ concept of form, but his own notion of form may share something with theirs. When he speaks of the “form of heat,” for example, it seems to be more than a simple mode of matter in Boyle’s sense. We recall that Bacon gives knowledge of the “forms” of heat, or of color, density, gravity, and so on, the name “metaphysics,” regarded as a higher level of science than physics. Physics deals with material and efficient causes, he tells us in the Advancement of Learning, while metaphysics deals with formal and final causes (2.7.2–7). It is difficult to know exactly how Bacon intends these concepts, especially since he tells us that he sometimes adopts ancient terminology to mask his novelty (Advancement 2.7.2; New Organon 2.2). But his suggestion that mastery of these forms would bring quasi-“magical” powers, akin to those promised by the alchemists, seems to be predicated on a certain 84

Again, this interpretation was suggested by some remarks of Aristotle. See the citations in note 68, above.

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autonomy of form. If “forms” such as heaviness and yellowness can, as forms, be infused in matter to produce gold, even if only in principle (Advancement 2.7.5; 2.8.1; New Organon 2.4, 5, 17), we seem to be dealing with a different sense of “form” than that employed by Boyle. If this is correct, Boyle’s reduction of all forms to mere “modes of matter” distinguishes his view from Bacon’s.85 Boyle is solidly in Bacon’s camp when it comes to identifying, and publicizing, the intellectual miscarriages of Scholasticism. This is the major theme of A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature. The somewhat combative title of the work indicates that Boyle takes himself, more than fifty years after Bacon, still to be defending a minority viewpoint. It also reflects the belief, which Boyle shares with Bacon, that the Scholastic–Aristotelian viewpoint is in accord with certain universal, though mistaken, tendencies of the human mind.86 Boyle says that the human soul, an independent being, tends to see other things as independent beings (Free Enquiry, p. 9). The vulgar error Boyle is most concerned with in this work is the view that “nature” is a being, an intelligent agent. This is reflected, says Boyle, in the recognizably Aristotelian position that “nature does nothing in vain,” as well as derivative positions such as “nature always does what is best, by the most efficient means,” “nature is the curer of disease,” “nature never misses her goal,” “nature abhors a vacuum,” and so on (Free Enquiry, pp. 31ff.). Boyle’s target in this work is broader than the neo-Aristotelians. His contemporaries the “Cambridge Platonists” had developed a comparable account of nature as an independent force, whose creative “plastic power” was seen in the order of the world.87 They, like the neo-Aristotelians, traced this order ultimately to God, but Boyle takes issue with their shared approach on theological grounds: it derogates 85

86 87

This would have to be reconciled with Bacon’s statement that by “form” he means only the most fundamental laws of nature. Heat is a “form” that may easily be transferred from one physical object to another, or induced in any object, once we understand its form. Does Bacon believe weight, malleability, color, and other properties, to be similarly transferable “forms”? This would indeed be quasi-magical. Boyle, Free Enquiry, p. 9. See also Boyle, Christian Virtuoso, p. 5. See Davis and Hunter, “Introduction” to Free Enquiry, pp xxi–xxii; Shapiro, Probability and Certainty, pp. 88–89; Wojcik, Limits of Reason, pp. 126–29. The “plastic” power in nature was one of Ralph Cudworth’s signature ideas. See The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London: Richard Royston, 1678 [Facsimile reprint, London: Garland Publishing, 1978]), pp. 147–71.

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from the authority of God by making nature an independent agent (Free Enquiry, pp. 9, 27–30). He goes so far as to suggest that, though Aristotle’s intentions were the best, his theory has been used by the “Enemy of God” for his nefarious purposes (Free Enquiry, p. 12). The “modern Aristotelians,” Boyle says, have futilely tried to combine Christian theology and the Aristotelian view of nature (Free Enquiry, p. 13), a critique that could be extended to the neo-Platonism of the Cambridge school. According to the neo-Aristotelians, Boyle says, nature is ordered in accordance with a template of forms; it orders itself in accordance with these forms. Aristotle may not have conceived of nature as a purposive being, but Boyle charges that his successors drew that conclusion. They spoke of “appetites” in natural objects to seek their places – fire above and earth below – or to achieve the perfection of their forms (Free Enquiry, pp. 64–67). As Christians, they made nature merely God’s “vicegerent” in its purposive activity (Free Enquiry, p. 13), but Boyle charges that this still assigns to nature a theologically unacceptable role. Their view verges on pantheism: if nature is not God, it is a subaltern deity, carrying out God’s plan. A good portion of A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature is devoted to challenging specific elements of the neo-Aristotelian position, using empirical evidence. If heavy objects fall because they have an appetite to go to the center of the earth, why do they often bounce upward after hitting the ground (p. 67)? Why does the pendulum swing freely past its low point (p. 68)? More gravely, how do we account for fires, earthquakes, plagues, and other apparent disruptions in the course of nature (p. 68)? If nature does nothing in vain, proceeds inerrantly, and so on, how do we explain such aberrations? We “often” see nature thus miss her mark, according to Boyle (p. 114). He mentions one traditional explanation for such phenomena – that matter is recalcitrant to the power of form – but is not persuaded by it (p. 78). Boyle takes his new science to have shown the inadequacy of all explanations grounded in nature’s plastic power or Aristotelian form. The new science is the true theme of this work, along with the way its view of nature differs from the neo-Aristotelian (and Aristotelian) view. An oak tree grows, an acorn falls. Neo-Aristotelians speak of the form of oak being actualized in growth, and a heavy object’s appetite to fall. Each seeks its proper place or condition in the order of nature. Boyle agrees that nature is ordered, but holds that the order is derived

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from purely material and mechanical principles. Nature is a “cosmical mechanism,” a “great automaton” moving in accordance with the “Mechanical Hypothesis” (Free Enquiry, pp. 39, 40, 160; cf. Forms and Qualities, p. 16). Oak trees, and indeed all composite objects, are mere combinations of the basic corpuscles, whose growth comes from the addition of more corpuscles. This growth is governed by “catholic” laws of motion, the same that govern all corpuscular action (Free Enquiry, p. 23; Chymist, p. 201). The tendency of heavy objects to fall, meanwhile, is due only to their relative weight, or “specific gravity” in comparison to the medium in which they find themselves (Forms and Qualities, p. 42). Acorns are heavier than air, hence they fall. They are lighter than water, hence they float.88 This approach has decisive advantages over the Aristotelian approach, Boyle believes. But he has yet to confront the problem that besets Baconian science in general, the problem of the species. Whatever its weaknesses, the strength of the Aristotelian theory was in accounting for the species. Indeed, this was virtually its raison d’ˆetre. Moreover, Aristotle’s theory seemed to accord with the teaching of the Bible, so long as God is made the creator of the forms by which nature is organized. Did not the Bible state that God fashioned the species during creation – birds, fishes, creeping things, and all the animals, each “according to its kind” (Genesis 1:20–27)? Might not dispensing with forms, as the new science did, then be tantamount to expelling God from nature? It is not clear that Bacon ultimately acquits himself (or wishes to acquit himself) of this charge. Boyle responds to it first by reassuring us that God is indeed the author of nature. He is responsible for the order of nature, not through the creation of forms, but 88

Boyle, Free Enquiry, p. 82. Furthermore, air is heavier at ground level than at altitude, due to compression and the weight of the atmosphere above. The elastic properties of gases are the discovery for which Boyle is most famous today. See Forms and Qualities, pp. 306–92. David Bolotin argues that Aristotle too subscribed to this view, but gave a contrary appearance for rhetorical reasons (Approach, pp. 126–38). Of course, invoking “gravity,” in the absence of any explanation of what it is, seems little better than the neo-Aristotelian “appetite to fall.” We have already noted Gassendi’s improbable explanation of gravitation. Even Newton, whose Principia Mathematica appeared after Gassendi and Boyle (Boyle’s Vulgar Notion appeared in 1686, near the end of his life, Newton’s Principia in 1687), only describes the laws of gravity, not its nature (see Principia, Definition VIII, pp. 7–8; and “General Scholium,” p. 371). See also Butterfield, Origins, Ch. 8.

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the creation of matter, of the properties of that matter, and the laws of its behavior. He is the creator of the great “cosmical mechanism” of nature (Free Enquiry, p. 37). Bacon had denied that any explanation could be given for the fundamental properties and laws of things; they are “positive.” Boyle, by contrast, finds it “probable” that God at first “did so guide and overrule the motions” of matter as to create the orderly frame of the world (Free Enquiry, pp. 39, 40), that by “skillful guidance of the motions of the small parts of universal matter,” he turned primal chaos into the “orderly and beautiful world” we see.89 These descriptions curiously suggest a process whereby the original properties and behavior of a preexisting matter needed to be overridden by God. Boyle makes God the first mover, as did Gassendi and Descartes – if motion is inherent in the atoms, as Bacon and Lucretius had maintained, it is much easier to argue that nature is independent of God.90 Boyle explains elsewhere that the laws of motion do not necessarily inhere in the material world, but were superimposed on nature by divine will (Christian Virtuoso, pp. 36–37). He adds, in yet another work, that the laws of nature themselves require God’s “perpetual Concourse to be Upheld.”91 If we integrate this into a single statement (something Boyle never did, to my knowledge), it would be something like the following. Nature, in its ordinary course, operates by purely mechanical laws, which as such can be grasped by empirical science. These laws allow science 89

90

91

Boyle, Sceptical Chymist, p. 200; cf. Boyle, Forms and Qualities, pp. 2, 36. Modern science would seem to have followed Bacon’s lead. Or rather perhaps, the laws of nature are treated simply as givens, while any question concerning their origin is taken to be outside the purview of science. This would be because science is deemed incapable of answering it, not necessarily because it is irrelevant to the concerns of science. The hypothesis of the “anthropic principle” might provide an exception. See note 51, above. Gassendi, Syntagma, pp. 399–401; Descartes, Principles II.36. Cudworth made the problem of motion and its laws a key point of his attack on the “Mechanick” philosophy (True Intellectual System, pp. 151, 667, 687). Lucretius made the motion of the atoms primeval (De Rerum Natura [at www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3atext%3a1999.02.0130], I.1021–28; II.62–79). Conceiving of “energy” as a separate thing, in the manner of contemporary science, perhaps alters one’s understanding of matter and motion in a way that mitigates this difficulty. Robert Boyle, A Disquisition About the Final Causes of Natural Things: Wherein it is Inquir’d, Whether, And (if at all) With what Cautions, a Naturalist should admit Them? (London: John Taylor, 1688), p. 96; cf. Boyle, Free Enquiry, p. 25.

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to predict the course of nature, yet “the ordinary course of nature” is not something intrinsic to nature, but something imposed on brute nature by God. Moreover, the “laws” of nature must be constantly upheld by the same supernatural being. His influence is invisible, since it merely keeps nature operating in its predictable, mechanical course. Boyle holds that God can and does intervene periodically. He might add to or take from the total amount of motion in the universe (Final Causes, pp. 396–97), and of course there have been miracles, which science will make it easier to identify (Free Enquiry, p. 14; cf. Final Causes, p. 96). But, for all intents and purposes, science may ignore God’s role, and grasp the workings of nature on the basis of mechanical second causes alone.92 God is the essential first cause of nature, but is only the remote cause of natural phenomena. This will reassure us regarding God’s ultimate responsibility for the order of nature, but we still lack an explanation for the individual species. Bereft of Aristotelian or Scholastic forms, how can the new science account for the birds, the fishes, and creeping things? Bacon suggested a messy process of natural selection, whereby the species of the present world apparently arose. Gassendi, whom Boyle credits with “baptizing” Epicurean atomism, argued that in the beginning God created the “seeds” from which the species sprang.93 These seeds consist, apparently, of a divinely imparted impulse in certain types of atoms to combine in certain ways, allowing for the continual reproduction of their species.94 Boyle adopts a similar approach when he speaks in The Sceptical Chymist of God creating the “seeds” of things. In the passage where he attributes the “orderly and beautiful world” we see to divine guidance of originally chaotic matter, he adds that we should suppose that God also did “contrive the bodies of animals and plants, and the seeds of those things whose kinds were to be propagated” (p. 200). For “an architectonick principle or power” must be 92 93 94

Compare Boyle, Forms and Qualities, p. 3, Boyle, Free Enquiry, pp. 59, 148; Gassendi, Syntagma, p. 412. Gassendi, Syntagma, p. 401; see Wojcik, Limits of Reason, p. 97; Osler, “Baptizing Epicurean Atomism.” Gassendi, Syntagma, p. 401. In the case of animals, this principle took the form of a sentient and vegetative anima or soul, mortal and material in nature, that was passed from generation to generation at conception (Osler, “Baptizing Epicurean Atomism,” pp. 170–71). In the case of life forms generated spontaneously in rotting organic material, it was presumably an impetus in the matter itself.

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enlisted to explain the operation of nature in the propagation of the species. How this is to work if the order of nature is now a product of pure mechanism, with little or no divine intervention, is not entirely clear. Matter, motion, and rest are the three principles of the world “as it now is,” Boyle says; but those principles suffice only on the supposition that “the present fabrick of the universe, and especially the seeds of things, together with the establisht course of nature,” are already in place (Chymist, p. 200).95 We might read this as a response, even a rebuke, to Bacon’s godless account of the rise of the fabric of nature. An unbaptized Epicurean, on the other hand, might accuse Boyle (and Gassendi) of taking an easy way out, grasping at the convenient hypothesis that God “seeded” nature with species. Boyle (and Gassendi) defend themselves with the reflection that, even if the basic characteristics of matter and laws of motion were merely “positive,” they do not by themselves seem adequate to explain the complex and exquisitely balanced species of nature. As the passages just reviewed indicate, what Boyle thinks his science is farthest from explaining are the seeds of things, that is, the species. Do the organizing principles in these seeds command matter so as to perpetuate themselves? Do certain types of matter have ingrained tendencies toward certain types of forms? It is difficult even to state these questions without suggesting an Aristotelian answer. Boyle simply stipulates that God has fashioned certain parcels of matter to reproduce the species. An outside observer might be justified in wondering whether this brings him closer than he might like to the “vulgar notion of nature” he repudiates. Perhaps we should not demand too much from Boyle and the early naturalists; the mechanism by which species perpetuate themselves remained a puzzle for modern science until the discovery of genetics. It was a puzzle even to Darwin.96 Boyle struggles with it, producing 95

96

Boyle repeated these arguments, in essentially the same form, some twentyseven years later in A Disquisition About the Final Causes (published in 1688 – the Sceptical Chymist was first published in 1661), pp. 91–92, 233–34. For a more complete presentation of many of the issues here, see Wilson, Epicureanism, especially Chs. 3 and 9. This is curiously close to what David Bolotin suggests is Aristotle’s true account of the species, as originating in some almost mysterious way from “seeds” (Approach, pp. 19–24). See Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection (in Darwin, The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection and The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex [Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica / Great Books of the Western World, 1952], 1–251), pp. 11, 65.

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an answer (or perhaps a range of answers) that did not entirely satisfy Locke. On the one hand, he refers species to divinely fashioned seeds. If this is correct, the species are ordained by God, and it seems that we should speak of them as real patterns or templates of nature, in something like the Aristotelian fashion. We should also be able to speak of a true essence for each species. Yet, Boyle also asserts that “species” is just a word we use to describe things that share certain traits, whose corpuscles combine to form a specific texture (Forms and Qualities, pp. 12, 15). The characteristics by which we sort things into species are then a matter of convention, or “common consent” (Forms and Qualities, pp. 12, 53, 55, 57). That is, the traits we identify as essential to a given species are not really “essential” to it, they are only signs we settle on as markers for that species. Locke will call this the “nominal essence” of a species (Essay Concerning Human Understanding 3.6). It is not far from this to the nominalist position that species have no essential characteristics, because they are mere creations of our mental and linguistic filing system. Locke will be willing to make this argument, but Boyle pulls back. Not only would it run afoul of the account of Genesis – Adam may have named the species, but this does not make him a nominalist (Genesis 2:19) – it runs afoul of nature itself. Whatever Heraclitus may have held, it is hard to deny that nature is divided into kinds of things. If this is so, any science of nature worthy of the name must be able to identify these kinds, and define their characteristics. Gold, lead, human being – these are kinds of things, naturally separated from other kinds of things by certain distinctive characteristics. Boyle’s own work relies heavily on the existence of species, from the characteristics of chemical elements and compounds, to the species of plants and animals. God contrived the bodies of the animals, he says repeatedly, including their individual parts, such as the pupil within the eye that marvelously adapts to differing conditions of light (Free Enquiry, pp. 69, 128; Final Causes, p. 160). These arguments from intelligent design suppose a god who is involved with species creation at a very detailed level. Boyle’s position on the species (which, again, he never put in so many words, to my knowledge) would seem to be that, though the species have real being and real essences, we (our science) have not grasped them completely. We do not know for certain which are their essential, defining traits; indeed, some of our species divisions may

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be completely false. Boyle wrote at length (multi-volume length) of the proofs of God’s existence and providence in the intricate order of nature, including the parts of animals. These even indicate that nature is directed by final causes. But, in his treatise devoted thematically to final causes, Boyle cautions against jumping to conclusions regarding the final cause or purpose of anything in particular (Final Causes, pp. 43, 105, 130, 236). Our limited grasp may not afford us certainty that we have understood the purposes of things. A similar point may be made regarding our grasp of the species. The species exist, then, though we may see them only darkly. There remains a large gulf, however, between the species as conceived by Boyle’s science, and as conceived by Aristotelian science. Aristotelian forms represented the intrinsic structure of nature. They were nature, more truly in a sense than matter itself. Boyle’s nature is matter and motion. Like the general laws of motion, species must be thought of as imposed upon nature from without. In Boyle’s new terminology, the species are only modes of matter. Individuals of species are certain configurations of matter, held in a certain shape, for the time being. What is traditionally called the “nature” of a thing is only the confluence of effects produced by its constituent particles, its “mechanism” (Forms and Qualities, p. 37). As a result, Boyle is reluctant to speak of the “nature” of a thing at all. He would prefer to speak of a thing’s “constitution” or “individual mechanism” (Free Enquiry, pp. 23, 37). A thing has a given corpuscular composition, a texture. Is that a nature? This is a problem we noted in Bacon. If the qualities of a tree, for example, are reducible to the qualities of its corpuscles (and qualities that result from the interaction of those corpuscles), does the tree itself have a nature, as a being or a whole? Is it a being or a whole, rather than a mere agglomeration of separate and separable beings? Boyle avoids saying that it is. It would bring him perilously close to the intellectual terrain of Aristotle and his forms (Forms and Qualities, p. 12). Boyle avoids that terrain, as do his scientific colleagues, but doing so creates problems for him. One of these might be put in the form of a question: On the corpuscular view of nature, is it ever possible to say that something is “unnatural”? Aristotle had said that motion away from an object’s proper place is unnatural; the new science sees all motion as equally natural. Aristotle held that when a tree, for example, fails to develop according to its form, the stunted or deformed result

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is somehow unnatural. The new science cannot see any existing being as unnatural, inasmuch as all are equally made of corpuscles, acting in accordance with the same laws of motion and compounding (Free Enquiry, p. 87; Forms and Qualities, p. 59). Yet, something is clearly wrong with the deformed tree. What account do we give of this? Boyle’s science, on the one hand, and his commitment to species, even divinely ordained species, on the other, point in opposite directions. The problem becomes most evident in Boyle’s treatment of natural disasters and “monsters.” Boyle makes prominent use of these in his battle against the neo-Aristotelians. If nature is a wise being, who does nothing in vain, uses the best means to the best end, and so on, how do we explain these manifest miscarriages? What of plagues, floods, and similar natural disasters (Free Enquiry, pp. 14, 68)? What of monsters, malformed offspring of every species, including even human beings (Free Enquiry, pp. 78, 114)? If nature is an agent, these show that, far from being wise and efficient, it “often” performs quite “bunglingly” (Free Enquiry, pp. 114, 78). One might of course put the question to Boyle, whether these are not reproaches to divine providence in his system. In A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature, Boyle mentions this difficulty, only to say that dealing with it is not part of his present topic (pp. 70–71). It never seems to have been part of his topic.97 He is caught on the horns of a dilemma. By his scientific hypothesis, it would seem that there can be no “monsters” – a stunted tree is just as “natural” as a beautifully formed one. There is no motion of matter that falls outside of the “catholic and (almost, if not more than almost) mechanical laws” of nature (Free Enquiry, p. 87). The distinction between “natural” and “artificial” has no meaning; all effects are produced by the same natural causes (Forms and Qualities, p. 59). Yet there are species, even (by his own hypothesis) divinely created species. We can and do speak of “monsters” and deformed growths; Boyle relies on them to rebut the neo-Aristotelian hypothesis. 97

The closest he comes, so far as I have found, is to say that the overall design of nature serves the common good, not the particular. Individual creatures might be expendable, for the good of the whole (Free Enquiry, pp. 70, 75, 161; Final Causes, pp. 215–21). He applies this even to human beings, but only in passing and without explanation (Free Enquiry, p. 25). He does suggest that God uses natural disasters to punish sinful man (Free Enquiry, p. 71). Again, Boyle explicitly rejects the hypothesis that the recalcitrance of matter explains these miscarriages (Free Enquiry, p. 78).

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One could put the disparate parts of Boyle’s system together into something like the following comprehensive view of nature. Nature in its pristine form, brute matter in motion, does not arrange itself into any kind of order. In order to explain the cosmos, we need to postulate a divine intervention, imposing on matter the regular behavior we observe in it. Once this order is imposed upon, or ingrained in, matter, the cosmos operates mechanically. We must appeal to divine intercession again for the visible species, which the basic orderliness of matter does not explain. The species then are divinely sown in the material of the world. But since these seeds operate from the ground up, as it were, through the behavior of atoms, rather than as architectonic principles orchestrating things from above or outside the mechanical process, their production is much less regular. We see monsters and other miscarriages of the process, frequently. This is not Boyle’s comprehensive view of nature, or if it is, he conceals it well. It seems to me to tie his fundamental ideas together better than do his explicit statements. It does make of divine providence a rather slipshod affair, while at the same time moving us in the direction of neo-Aristotelianism. I propose it primarily to shed light on the issues with which we are dealing here, and as a propaedeutic to Locke. Locke leaves open the possibility of this view of things, more than does Boyle, if only because he speculates less on the ultimate origins of the order of nature and of the species. He is at least as cognizant of miscarriages and monsters, and more ready to turn those phenomena not only against Scholasticism but against the very concept of species itself. We would not dwell on the problem of species at such length, except that it represents an important fault line for the new science. It is a principal battlefront in the conflict between the old and the new science, one that shows the disjunction between those sciences most clearly. It explains why Locke, who assigned himself the task of providing a comprehensive philosophy for the new science, dwells on the problem at such length, including an otherwise puzzling concentration on the phenomenon of “monsters.” The problem, from his point of view, is both ontological – What status do the species have? – and epistemological – What can we know about them, and what do we need to know about them for the advancement of knowledge? Boyle does not satisfactorily answer these questions, but seems to embrace each horn

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of his dilemma alternately. Perhaps we could put his problem this way. If the species are not intrinsic to nature, but patterns imposed upon it from outside, the phenomenon of “monsters” could be viewed in two different lights. From the point of view of nature or of the corpuscles, of brute matter in motion, all things that exist are equally natural. There can be no such thing as monsters. From the point of view of species, whatever their origin, the opposite is true. But can these two views comfortably coexist? This scientific and epistemological problem is large enough. There is another consequence of the battle between the Aristotelians and the new scientists that looms potentially larger. The old theory of forms grounded not only the natural species, but human morality. The forms were teleological, in the sense that each being had the natural purpose of fulfilling its form. In the case of human beings, that purpose became a moral imperative. That imperative exists only because there is a human form; we can come to know that imperative only by plumbing the human form. We must learn to distinguish which characteristics are essential to humanity and which are not, and to rank the essential characteristics in importance and dignity. The theory of forms allowed morality to be built into nature, so to speak, by the same means that the species were built into nature. Expelling forms from nature then has more portentous consequences than the merely scientific. This is a major reason that Boyle, Sprat, and the new scientists generally, often found themselves on the defensive. “Natural law” was the post-Aristotelian name for the moral order linked to forms. As Boyle encapsulates the old position, it viewed the nature or form of each thing as a “law” given to it.98 Regarding nonhuman nature, he objects that it is nonsense to speak of “laws” for irrational objects, and explains his view that God likely impressed on nature the regularities we now observe. The physical laws of nature are not intrinsic to nature but imposed from outside. Are we to think of the moral law in the same way? Boyle wrote extensively on theological subjects, mostly to establish that the new science was not atheistic, and in fact led its true practitioners to piety. But beyond expatiating 98

Boyle, Free Enquiry, p. 24. Thomas Aquinas, of course, limited “natural law” to rational creatures, the “eternal law” given by God to govern the whole (Summa 2.1.91.2, 2.1.94).

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endlessly on the intricate marvels of nature that indicate intelligent design, he has virtually nothing to say about morality, either regarding its origin or its content. He simply relies on the presumptive validity of Christian morality and the Christian revelation. Regarding the disputes over the interpretation of revelation that were raging about him, Boyle has little to say, except to hint that true Christianity requires allegiance to a relatively minimal set of beliefs, and that it is more concerned with moral behavior than the intricacies of doctrine. He does say that Christianity requires no beliefs to which reason may not attain.99 This is ambiguous, however, as Boyle maintains that reason enlightened by Scripture may “attain to” many truths that are beyond unassisted reason.100 On what this means specifically for our understanding of revelation and morality, Boyle has remarkably little to say. Doubtless he is wary of becoming embroiled in controversies that could only hinder the acceptance of his new science. This is the point at which we may end our investigation of Boyle, for this is the point at which Locke ceased to be guided by him. Locke took upon himself the twin task of clearing up the epistemological issues besetting the new science, including the problem of species, and of devising a moral theory that was compatible with it and its antiAristotelianism. Concerning scientific epistemology, Locke conceded the inability of an empirical science to achieve certainty, but he found, or thought he found, a sufficient basis for scientific knowledge. Concerning morality, he was not willing simply to slough off the question on revelation. To the contrary, he found it necessary to raise the most profound questions concerning revelation, in part because the moral teaching to which his reasoning led him differed in key respects from all traditional interpretations of revelation. The epistemological basis of 99 100

Robert Boyle, The Excellency of Theology Compar’d with Natural Philosophy (London: Herringman, 1674), pp. 77, 139. That is, once enlightened by Scriptural principles, we may reason our way to other truths beyond the reach of unassisted reason. See Robert Boyle, Some Considerations About the Reconcileableness of Reason and Religion (London: Herringman, 1675), pp. 9–11, 74–75, 88–89; Excellency of Theology, p. 5; Robert Boyle, Reflections upon a Theological Distinction. According to which, ’tis said, That some Articles of Faith are Above Reason, but not Against Reason (London: Edw Jones/John Taylor, 1690), pp. 5–6, 14–15. Boyle argues that Christianity does not require us to believe anything against reason, though it may contain some things above reason. Readers of Locke will recognize this position, and its difficulties. For an extended account of the relation of reason and revelation in Boyle, see Wojcik, Limits of Reason.

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this morality is fundamentally different from that of empirical-scientific knowledge. Though our knowledge of it is empirically rooted, Locke claims that it can achieve a demonstrative certainty akin to mathematics. In all of this, Locke was responding to controversies with very long histories. We now have enough knowledge of those controversies to confront Locke’s teaching.

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In Book Three of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke distinguishes two ways of understanding species. One supposes a certain number of essences, which serve as patterns for all natural beings, and account for those beings’ belonging to one species or another (3.3.17; cf. 4.4.13). This we recognize as the Aristotelian and Scholastic view. “The other and more rational opinion,” Locke says, belongs to those who look on all natural things to have a real but unknown constitution of their insensible parts, from which flow those sensible qualities which serve us to distinguish them one from another, according as we have occasion to rank them into sorts under common denominations. (3.3.17)

The “more rational” view rests on the corpuscular theory of nature (“insensible parts”), and issues in what looks like a nominalist view of species (“according as we have occasion to rank”). We will examine these parts of Locke’s theory shortly. Here, Locke brings to bear a single argument against the Scholastic position. “The frequent productions of monsters, in all the species of animals,” he continues, along with “changelings, and other strange issues of human birth, carry with them difficulties not possible to consist with” the Scholastic hypothesis (ibid.). In a passage somewhat further on, Locke seems to reject even the argument for natural regularity made on behalf of species by his predecessors Gassendi and Boyle. They, as we recall, attributed the persistence of species to “seeds.” Locke here ventures that tracing the animal species to sexual generation and those of plants to seeds is insufficient (3.6.16). For, apart from the fact that this would explain only the species of living things, it would not account for monsters and changelings (3.6.23). Locke seems to go beyond his predecessors in questioning whether nature produces things by any sort of regularity at all. Even if the Scholastic argument were correct, Locke continues, and nature did produce things according to unchanging essences or 72 Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. UCL, Institute of Education, on 01 Apr 2017 at 02:53:36, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139644587.003

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substantial forms, we could not build a science on such essences, for we have no way of discovering them (3.3.17). The Scholastic and Aristotelian promise was that reason could transcend empiricism, grasp the forms, and discover thereby the essences of natural objects, indeed the master template of nature itself. But if the centuries-long course of Aristotelianism proved anything, according to Locke and the modern scientists, it is that this path was an intellectual blind alley. Were the Aristotelians ever able to say for certain which are the “essential” characteristics of a single piece of gold, and which “accidental”? If we found a piece of metal with all the familiar characteristics of gold but one, could they tell us for certain whether it was gold? They cannot tell us whether water and ice have different essences.1 They cannot tell us, Locke asserts, whether monsters constitute separate species, or which human changelings share in the human essence, and which do not (3.6.17, 22). Human intellect will be forever incapable of making such determinations. To begin with, we will never achieve certain knowledge of the “real constitution” of any natural object, which is rooted in its corpuscular “insensible parts.” We will never know for certain which qualities of objects are intrinsically linked, and which appear together by coincidence (4.3.25). More to the point, there are no species, in the sense of a class of things brought into being according to a pattern, each of which shares certain “essential” traits by virtue of being a member of that species. This is what Locke takes monsters and comparable phenomena to prove. We make use of species concepts, for this is the only way our knowledge can advance (3.3.4; 3.11.25; 4.12.7). These concepts, however, are of our own devising. Locke accepts the nominalist premise, “general and universal are creatures of the understanding,” the only things existing being particulars (3.3.11). We sort things into species, give these species names, and designate their defining characteristics. This is sufficient for the purposes of advancing useful knowledge, but it is not an insight into any cosmic order (2.32.6; 3.3.4, 20; 4.12.5; 4.17.6). 1

Locke uses this example at 3.6.13, and Robert Boyle had ridiculed the neo-Aristotelians for wrangling over this question in Forms and Qualities, pp. 49, 57–58. See also Locke, Essay 2.31.6; 4.6.4–5. Gold is one of Locke’s favorite examples of a substance whose essence we do not know, perhaps because of the alchemists’ fascination with it. If so, his discussions of gold represent a running critique of the “Chymists” as well as the Scholastics. See, among many other references to gold in the Essay, 3.8.2; 3.9.13; 3.10.17; 4.3.9–10, 25.

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Our species concept “man” is as much a creature of our thoughts as the others. Modern empirical science is as incapable as Aristotelianism of determining which traits might be “essential” to mankind. Whether a given “natural” is to be considered human or not depends upon how we define the category of humanity, which depends in turn on the purposes for which we are making the distinction. Nature does not give us guidance in this, or not enough (3.6.22). Nature’s guidance is even more meager in moral affairs. Locke identifies moral principles as “mixed modes,” concepts that are not grounded in nature, but, like species concepts, are constructs of the mind. These constructs, moreover, are fashioned “very arbitrarily,” without reference to any pattern in nature (3.5.3; 2.3.1–2; 2.22.8; 2.31.3; 3.5.3). Locke systematically removes every possible prop for morality in nature. Humanity is not the expression of an Aristotelian “form,” a form that might give us a natural perfection and thereby anchor moral duty. We are endowed with no innate moral ideas, which were a pillar of many moral theories in Locke’s day.2 We are not endowed with a “conscience,” an innate sense of right and wrong. We must reason our way to correct moral ideas.3 Locke’s almost macabre fascination with 2

3

Most of the First Book of the Essay is an extended attack on innate ideas, explicitly including innate moral ideas (1.3). Richard Hooker had held that there are no innate ideas, but that reason nonetheless gains an intuitive grasp of first principles (The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity 1.6.1; 1.8.5, in The Folger Library Edition of the Works of Richard Hooker, ed. W. Speed Hill, ed., Vol. I [Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1977]). The “Cambridge Platonists” argued for either innate ideas or an intuitive grasp of moral and other principles. See Nathaniel Culverwell, An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature, ed. Robert A. Greene and Hugh McCallum (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2001), Chs. 7, 11; John Smith, “The True Way or Method of Attaining to Divine Knowledge,” in The Cambridge Platonists, ed. C. A. Patrides (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), pp. 128–144; Ralph Cudworth, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, ed. Sarah Hutton (Cambridge University Press, 1996), Bk. 4. Damaris Masham, daughter of Ralph Cudworth and longtime intimate of Locke, urged in opposition to Locke that reason might come to an intuitive grasp of moral and other principles, even if knowledge of these was not innate. Locke was persuaded by none of these arguments. For the importance of innate ideas to moral theory in the seventeenth century, see John Marshall, John Locke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility (Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 30–31, 292; Shapiro, Probability and Certainty, pp. 87–91, 101–102, 106; Samuel Zinaich, Jr., John Locke’s Moral Revolution: From Natural Law to Moral Relativism (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2006), p. 80. Locke, Essay 1.3.12; 3.21.46–48, et al.; Locke, Second Treatise §6.

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the barbarism that human beings, and indeed entire cultures, have displayed puts a point on it.4 There are moral monstrosities, just as there are monsters of nature. They show us that, like the species, morality is not ingrained in nature. But we are getting ahead of ourselves. We need to begin at the beginning.

Qualities and substances Book One of Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding is devoted primarily to an attack on the “received doctrine” that there are innate notions in the human mind, including especially moral ideas (2.1.1).5 In part, that critique echoes his critique of Scholastic form: theories of innate moral ideas were built on unverifiable claims regarding the content of those ideas, claims that were asserted and defended dogmatically (“no one will be so wicked as to deny”). The result was a philosophy, and an education, based on little more than appeals to authority, clothed in unintelligible jargon. In contrast, Locke believed, famously, that the mind begins as a tabula rasa. Or better, perhaps, a camera obscura – a dark room, into which light can enter only through the portals of sense (2.11.17; 1.2). “All those sublime thoughts which tower above the clouds, and reach as high as heaven itself, take their rise and footing here,” he says, in sensation (1.1.24). Sensation gives rise to ideas in our minds, simple ideas such as “white” and “hard.” Once ideas appear in the mind, its internal operations – manipulation of those ideas, and reflection on its own working – constitute an important additional source of knowledge. But our minds can never escape or transcend the basic materials on which its operations are founded. In all its subsequent speculations, says Locke, the mind “stirs not one jot beyond those ideas which sense or reflection have offered for its contemplation” (2.1.24; cf. 2.1.23–4; 2.11.15–17; 2.12.8). This rules out not only innate ideas, but any possibility of transcending sense in the direction of Aristotelian forms or species. Our minds cannot soar 4

5

Locke, First Treatise §58. The extended discussion of barbarities in Essay 1.3.9–13 is explicitly designed to show that moral ideas are not innate. See also Locke’s early work, Questions concerning the Law of Nature, trans. Robert Horwitz, Jenny Strauss Clay, and Diskin Clay (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), Questions IV, VII. The appetites, and a desire for happiness and aversion to misery, are “innate practical principles” (1.3.3, 1.3.13), but apparently are not “ideas.”

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to a realm of pure intelligibles that exist on some different plane. Our entire mental universe, including ideas seemingly far beyond experience, is constructed in camera, as it were, using elements acquired only from (internal and external) experience. Lockean “empiricism” teaches, paradoxically, that we do not have direct access to reality. We begin with sensory information, but we do not know how objects stimulate the senses, nor how the senses transmit their reports to our minds (1.1.2; 2.8.11–14; 2.24.29; 2.32.14; 4.4.4; 4.11). These reports cause our minds to conceive ideas, and these ideas are the beginning of all our mental activity. This activity is then two, uncertain, removes from reality. “The mind knows not things immediately, but only by the intervention of the ideas it has of them”: this might be called the foundational claim or insight of Lockean epistemology. Human knowledge is limited to “the view the mind has of its own ideas”; this is “the utmost light and greatest certainty we, with our faculties and in our way of knowledge, are capable of” (4.2.1). Locke did not pioneer this approach to knowledge. Earlier authors had argued that “ideas,” rather than external reality per se, are all that our minds have to do with. Descartes was one of these, Hobbes was another, as were the Cartesian authors of the celebrated “Port Royal Logic.”6 The anti-Aristotelianism of this approach is complete. Ideas are purely mental entities. Some of them are raised by sense experience, others are free creations of mind. Some of them correspond to real objects (we presume), and some do not. In no case do they represent 6

Descartes, Discourse on the Method, part 4; Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (CSM II), “Third Meditation”; Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Edwin Curley (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994), Chs. 1–5; Thomas Hobbes, Human Nature, in The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, Vol. IV (London: John Bohn, 1840), pp. 3–8. The “Port-Royal Logic,” written by Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole, championing the theory of ideas among other things, was immensely influential for over a century after its initial publication in 1662. On this point, see especially Part One. This is not to say, of course, that Locke’s account of ideas is the same as that of his predecessors. For a detailed account of this movement, see Ayers, Epistemology and Ontology, Vol. I, Ch. 3 and pp. 293–5. John Yolton argues that Locke’s theory of ideas does not open a gulf between reality and mind (Perceptual Acquaintance, pp. 88–115). I would maintain that it does, at least for the purposes of my argument, or in contrast to the classical view. See Peter Myers, Our Only Star and Compass: Locke and the Struggle for Political Rationality (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), p. 109.

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an intuitive grasp of an intelligible realm of forms that constitute the architecture or superstructure of reality. We are closed up within these minds of ours; sensations enter through a glass of unknown transparency. All of our knowledge consists of the ideas stirred by those sensations, the mental operations we can perform on those ideas, and reflection on those operations. The last type of knowledge is clearly introspective, but in a sense, all our knowledge is introspective for Locke. We never deal with objects; we deal only with ideas of objects, among other kinds of ideas (cf. 4.20.2). Far from offering communion with supersensory reality, as did the Platonic ideas, “ideas” in this understanding signify our inability to touch any reality directly, except the reality of our interior, mental life. When Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester, complained in his attacks on Locke’s Essay that the newly fashionable “way of ideas” threatened all knowledge and morality, the charge was not without plausibility.7 This approach will inevitably focus our attention on human consciousness, its character, its capacities, and its limits. But its first question must concern the reliability of the senses, which are the ultimate source of all our ideas about external reality. Skepticism had, from the ancient world to Locke’s day, made the deceptiveness of the senses a cornerstone of its doubts about the status of human knowledge. The skeptical challenge to the senses was taken with the utmost seriousness by the new science, for obvious reasons. Francis Bacon and Pierre Gassendi acknowledged that the senses can deceive, but argued that method, along with technical help, could remedy the defect.8 Descartes had posed the question in its most extreme form, doubting the very existence of the external world. Locke agrees with Descartes that we cannot reasonably doubt our own existence, but denies as well that we can meaningfully doubt external reality. It is not 7

8

The edition of the Essay cited in the References transcribes some of Stillingfleet’s objections, and Locke’s replies. For the objection to the “way of ideas,” see p. 5. On the more general point, see Yolton, Perceptual Acquaintance, “Introduction.” Bacon, New Organon, “Instauration” 11, 13; 1.16; 1.50. Gassendi’s early skepticism was supplanted by a more Baconian outlook, as discussed in the previous chapter. See Gassendi, Exercises Against the Aristotelians 2.5.1; 2.6.2; Syntagma 2.5. Shapiro (Probability and Certainty, p. 22) remarks that skepticism had made a stronger impression in France than in England during this period, due partly to the influence of Montaigne and Descartes, but its voice was heard in England as well.

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reasonable, or even psychologically possible, to deny its existence, he claims.9 Our mind is not capable, according to Locke, of creating on its own the simple ideas it has of the world; these must “necessarily” be the product of external realities.10 Elsewhere he says, somewhat more modestly, that though we do not have ironclad certainty that the world exists, it is so near to certainty as to be “past doubting,” worthy of the name of “knowledge” (4.2.14; cf. 4.11.2–3). To one who argues all is a dream, Locke asks derisively whether he would rather dream of being in a fire, or actually be in it (4.2.14). We may thus assure ourselves that the senses do not deceive us concerning the existence of an external world, but we still need to gauge the accuracy of their reports. The first distinction we need to make, according to Locke, is between “primary” and “secondary” qualities. Primary qualities include solidity, extension, and shape. Here, Locke tells us, our senses reveal to us attributes that really do inhere in objects (2.8.15). Secondary qualities, by contrast, do not exist in the objects. An object’s color, for example, or its smell, or taste, is not intrinsic to the object, but an adventitious effect of the way some other attribute of the object impinges on one of our senses (2.8.19–22; 2.32.14). What that underlying attribute is, we do not know; all we know is the impression it produces on us. Locke supposes that, if we could perceive the minutest particles making up gold, for example, they would no longer appear yellow (2.23.11; cf. 4.3.11). This initial distinction is borrowed by Locke from Robert Boyle, his friend and scientific model, whose “corpuscular” hypothesis entailed these consequences.11 While our ideas of the primary qualities of bodies “are resemblances of them, and their patterns do really exist in the bodies themselves,” says Locke, our ideas of secondary qualities “have no resemblance of them at all” (2.8.15). Even in the most primitive 9

10 11

Locke, Essay 4.11.3; 2.14.3; 2.23.15, 28–9; cf. “Questions Concerning the Law of Nature,” Question 4, p. 159. Descartes’s view may not be as different from Locke’s as is usually supposed. Descartes allows a “moral certainty” that externals exist, and concedes that it is “extravagant” to doubt them, though his method requires him to do so (Discourse on the Method, 4.7; cf. Meditations, Meditation 6). The difference between the two might better be traced to Locke’s abandonment of certainty as the standard for knowledge, as explained later in this chapter. Locke, Essay 2.2.2; 4.4.4. Descartes makes the same argument in Meditations, Meditation 3. See the discussion of Boyle in Chapter 1. On Locke’s debt to Boyle, see Peter R. Anstey, “Locke, Bacon and Natural History,” Early Science and Medicine 7:1 (2002): 65–92 (pp. 73–91); Alexander, Ideas, Qualities.

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operations of sense, then, we are sometimes perceiving real qualities, and sometimes “appearances” that are not real qualities. We must make corresponding judgments concerning the ideas we conceive on the basis of these sensations. Things become murkier still when we move from the “simple ideas” elicited directly by sense, to the universe of ideas that our minds fashion from these rudiments. In the reception of simple ideas, such as “yellow, white, heat, cold, soft, hard, bitter, sweet,” the mind is essentially passive (2.1.3). These simple ideas are always “adequate,” according to Locke, because, even in the case of secondary qualities, they merely signify that some external quality is having the effect in question on our senses. The (non-yellow) qualities of gold that cause it to appear yellow to us will always arouse the sensation “yellow” in our eyes, and the corresponding ideas in our minds (2.8.8; 2.30.2). Since we do not know, and may never know, the actual mechanism by which external objects arouse sensation in us, or how these create ideas in our minds, we may need ultimately to enlist God as guarantor of the regularity and reliability of this transmission.12 But within these caveats, Locke holds that we may rely upon the simple ideas of experience. “Complex ideas,” compounded of simple ideas, require active involvement of the mind. Few realize, Locke says, that many of our ideas of the external world are not given by sense, but created or assembled by the mind. Our senses give us the simple ideas of “brown,” “hard,” “rough,” “cylindrical”; our minds create the complex idea, “tree trunk,” out of these materials. It is one of the discoveries of “empiricism” that our senses do not inform us of the basic objects of the material world. That is, our senses provide information regarding objects, but do not inform us that they are singular objects.13 Locke does not doubt that “substances,” individual concrete objects, exist. Bundles of qualities do appear together regularly in our experience; there really are tree trunks (2.2; 2.30.5; 3.6.28). Our ideas of substances, moreover, are properly judged on how well they correspond to the objects themselves (2.30.5; 2.31.2; 4.11; 4.3.12; 4.12.9; 4.15.4). Empirical investigation can yield ever-more perfect ideas about 12 13

Locke, Essay 2.30.5; 2.31.2; 4.4.3–4; 4.11. Descartes also needed God to warrant our knowledge of externals (Discourse on the Method, Part 4). The same conclusion was reached by the later empiricist, David Hume (A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge [Oxford University Press, 1965], 1.6).

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external substances, perfect enough to support the Baconian project of mastering nature (3.11.24; 4.9; 4.12.9–11). But we must not imagine that we will ever have fully adequate ideas of them. For one thing, the conception we have of any object will never include more than a very small proportion of its innumerable attributes. Our senses register only a limited range of any object’s qualities, Locke reminds us (2.31.6, 8). They perceive nothing, for example, of its corpuscular composition. There are probably “a thousand” changes that take place in bodies under our eyes, Locke says, that we never perceive (2.23.9). If our senses were more acute than they are, the world might look very different to us (2.23.9–12). If we had other senses, as Locke speculates that intelligent beings elsewhere in the universe might have, we might perceive attributes of objects of which we have no conception now (2.2.3). Magnetism, for example, is essential to the explanation of some natural phenomena, but our senses report nothing of it. How many other such qualities or forces might there be, of which we have no inkling (cf. 2.23.9)? As Bacon said, “the subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding” (New Organon 1.10). Our senses are perfectly adequate to our purposes, as Locke repeatedly assures us (Essay 2.23.12; 4.20.3; 1.1.5), but they are radically imperfect instruments for revealing the external world in its true or full nature. Locke enlists these arguments in partial rebuttal of the Aristotelian and Scholastic view of species. The premise of this view was that imperishable forms account for the species or kinds according to which nature is organized. If this were true, it would not necessarily matter that our senses had not grasped every material quality of an object; knowledge of the object would depend ultimately on moving beyond the senses to the object’s intelligible form. The species form, not its material being, defined the object’s “essence.” Locke does not deny that things have essences, but redefines the term in a radically different way. The “real essence” of a thing, he stipulates, is merely its “constitution,” the complete sum of its material attributes. These attributes derive ultimately from the minute particles of which the thing is made, in more or less the way Boyle described.14 In total they are very different from the object’s “look” or appearance to us, which was the foundation 14

Locke, Essay 3.3.15. On Boyle’s view, see the discussion in the previous chapter.

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of Aristotelian form. Moreover, every object has a unique essence, an essence that is born and perishes with the object – and, we might add, potentially changes from moment to moment (3.3; 3.6.2, 6). We may either say that every attribute is essential to an object, or that none is; through persistence and change, it is always nothing more or less than what it is.15 Since we will never know most of the attributes of any object, we will never know the real essence of anything – not of a pebble, Locke admonishes, and certainly not of a human being (2.23.35; 2.31.3; 3.31.6; 4.3.11). Can we, on this view of things, even speak any more of pebbles or human beings, as species or kinds of things? Locke’s argument parallels the argument of William of Ockham.16 Like Ockham, Locke holds that all existence is particular. Universals, such as species, have no existence except as ideas in the mind. And yet, we use species concepts fruitfully, concepts our minds construct by abstraction from many particulars. Locke argues that such concepts are necessary to the advancement of our knowledge. Yet, they refer to nothing that exists; they are wholly “creatures of the understanding.” We know something of the way that Locke’s predecessors in the Baconian tradition dealt, or attempted to deal with, the problem of species. Let us now look at Locke’s argument.

There is no such thing as snow Snowflakes exist. We have all seen them. Each one is unique, we are told, though our senses are incapable of distinguishing them. Most of us follow our forebears in putting them all indiscriminately under the mental category of “snow.” Locke’s argument is that this category is a mental construct, with no real existence. Snowflakes exist, but “snow,” as a universal category, does not. But what, exactly, does this mean? Locke adopts the nominalist premise that all existence is particular (3.3.1; 2.27.3; 4.9). Nothing that is not a particular thing has 15

16

This point is somewhat garbled in the Essay, since Locke speaks alternately as if every attribute is essential, and none is, without explicitly clarifying the point. See 3.317; 3.6.4; 2.27.28. His confession is apt that he probably should have simply dropped the term “essence” from this part of the discussion (3.6.6). See also Ayers, Epistemology and Ontology, Vol. II, pp. 39–42; Yolton, Compass of Human Understanding, p. 30. See the discussion of William of Ockham in Chapter 1.

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any existence. Universals, terms or ideas that apply to more than one particular, are creations of our minds. We take a vast array of disparate objects, and place them under the universal category “snow.” This is not a “form” according to which nature summons individual snowflakes into being. Since it is a category of our devising, we are free to define it, redefine it, or subdivide it in any number of ways. Let us suppose, as urban legend has it, that the Inuit language has more than a dozen different words for “snow.” Now, it is undeniable that there are different kinds of snow (wet and heavy, dry and powdery). It is undeniable that these are different “by nature.” Are they then separate “natural species”? Do they have different “essences”? From Locke’s point of view, to ask the question is already to see how pointless it is. Examples of the same type could be multiplied endlessly. Does Pluto properly come under the species “planet”? Are “tropical depression” and “hurricane” separate species? (Does either of them refer to a being?) Are violet “light” and ultra-violet “radiation” separate species? Like types of snow, Locke would say, we may divide up any of these phenomena or we may not, depending upon our needs or purposes. Skiers and Inuits and children building snowmen need to know what type of snow they are dealing with. The rest of us do perfectly well with our catch-all category “snow.” Scientists drilling ice cores in Antarctica may need to develop entirely novel typologies of snow, based perhaps on the presence of isotopes beyond our sensory grasp. Their typology will be based on real distinctions among types of snowflakes, but it will not reveal entities with distinct Aristotelian essences. The scientists will need to generalize about the qualities and behavior of their different species of snow, and they may thus advance knowledge in significant ways, never worrying (or even considering) that they are all the while referring to things that do not exist. Individual samples of snow exist; the general categories under which we bring them are mental artifacts with no separate existence. They are the “workmanship of the understanding,” as Locke puts it, made for its own purposes (3.3.4). To say that we have knowledge of these things is not to say that we have grasped the metaphysical template of forms that accounts for them, as the Aristotelians supposed. It is only to say that we have grasped something of the different modes in which matter may exist, and the regularities observed by matter in those modes.17 17

See the discussion of Robert Boyle in Chapter 1 for a more complete treatment of these issues.

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We must emphasize the importance of this distinction, but we should not carry it too far. In a sense, Locke (like William of Ockham) is saying less than it seems he is saying, when he denies the reality of species. He is not saying, in “postmodern” fashion, that the categories we impose on the world are merely conventional, with little or no basis in reality. His account of the rise of general or universal terms contains no such drama. Human beings notice resemblances among objects; following a “natural tendency of the mind” toward knowledge, they fashion general terms gathering things into kinds, which allows them “with assurance” to apply insights across the general group (2.32.6). Locke’s account takes for granted, without even a comment, that generalizations made on the basis of such mentally constructed species may be valid.18 This is because nature does make things alike.19 If our generalizations do not bear fruit, we may adjust our hypotheses, or our species concepts. If new questions or concerns arise, we may divide nature up differently, for these new purposes. Locke frees us (and our science) to construct categories that are flexible and useful, without wrangling in Scholastic fashion over the “reality” of those categories. Which species a given sample of snow belongs to depends upon which typology we are employing at the moment, which depends on the traits that are of interest to us at that moment. The same sample could for other purposes, but equally legitimately, be placed in a different species. It goes without saying that nothing in the sample itself will have changed. This all makes perfect sense, and it may well induce us to jettison the very notion of species along with the rest of the Scholastic rubbish. There are potential problems, however, that come to sight if we follow Locke’s treatment of “essence.” The “real essence” of a thing, as Locke has told us, is the complete sum of that thing’s attributes, and is unique to that thing. When we gather things together into species, Locke 18

19

That is, of course, so long as the generalizations are made with the requisite care. See “Of the Conduct of the Understanding” (in The Works of John Locke [London: Routledge Thoemmes, 1997, facsimile reprint of the 1794 T. Longman edition], Vol. II, pp. 321–401), p. 350. The story of how Locke actually understands science to proceed in detail, the role of hypothesis, and so on, has been debated. For accounts of this, see Anstey, “Locke, Bacon and Natural History”; Yolton, Compass of Human Understanding, Chs. 2 and 3. Locke, Essay 3.3.12; 3.6.30, 36, 37, 51. This seems somewhat at odds with Locke’s emphasis on “monsters,” noted at the beginning of this chapter. Apparently, Locke takes monsters to refute Scholastic notions of species, but not the overall regularity of nature.

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says, we assign that species a “nominal essence,” the traits we use to identify it (3.3.15; 3.6.2). While ideas of individual substances refer to things that exist (snowflakes), our ideas of universals refer to nothing that exists (snow). Somewhat paradoxically, this means that our ideas of real objects are necessarily inadequate (we do not know all the attributes of the object), while our ideas of species are completely adequate (they refer to nothing but the mental concept: 3.6). “Snow” signifies only those attributes we assign as the defining characteristics of the species, its “nominal essence.” A species concept, moreover, may be constituted by any non-contradictory set of ideas put together by the mind. “Centaur” and “mermaid” are species concepts fully as adequate as “man” and “horse” (2.32.3–4; 3.3.19; 4.6.9). “Snow” refers to traits that are found together in reality, but the defining traits of the species are only those traits we choose to designate as such.20 We speak in a proper sense of the “essential” and “non-essential” traits of an object only after we have put them into a species, and only on the basis of the nominal essence we have assigned that species (3.6.4). The “essential” traits of a given sample of snow will change when we place it in a different category, without the snow having changed in any way. That is to say, an “essential” trait, while a trait that does in fact characterize an object, is “essential” to it only by virtue of a species concept imposed upon it by human beings. This in itself may pose no great problem. We understand how species concepts can be both arbitrary and empirically grounded. Pluto may be classed as a planet or not, without dire consequences. The Inuit are likewise welcome to their snows. But are all species concepts equally arbitrary, and equally inconsequential? Liquid water and snow, for example, are divided by a “phase change,” in modern scientific terminology, a natural divide greater than that between powdery and heavy snow. The difference here seems closer to being “essential,” further from being merely parochial and linguistic. The same would seem to be true of the element gold, though Locke uses it as a prime example of a species whose real essence is unknown, and whose 20

Of course, difficulties will arise if we use our species words inconsistently, place incompatible qualities within our species concept, place improper objects under it, make erroneous claims regarding the application of the concept to reality, or try to communicate with someone who employs a different species concept. Locke discusses all these problems, but they do not affect the fundamental point.

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“nominal essence,” the essence by which we define it, necessarily has an element of arbitrariness (2.30.3; 2.31.10; 3.6.3; 3.9.17; 4.1.5; 4.6). Locke seems to be on stronger ground when speaking of complex beings such as horses. Locke properly asks, who can say which specific traits must be removed from a given horse, to remove it from the species “horse” (3.3.13)? If we try to do this on the basis of a supposed Aristotelian essence of “horse,” we will get nowhere. We may make such distinctions on the basis of a “nominal essence” of horse, as we define it, but we must not claim that this has a strong relation to nature. Locke does not shrink from applying the same logic to the species “man.” To the contrary, “man” may be the principal example in the Essay of a species constructed arbitrarily by our minds. Locke begins by noting that there is wide variation in the physical characteristics of men; there are reports of creatures with language and reason, but with hairy tails; there are “naturals” of human shape, but lacking reason (3.6.22). “If it be asked, whether these be all men or no,” says Locke, “it is plain, the question refers only to the nominal essence” (ibid.). And the nominal essence of mankind, as Locke makes clear, is a variable or contested thing (e.g., 2.27.8; 2.31.6; 3.3.10; 3.6.3, 22, 29; 3.11.17; 4.4.13–16; 4.7.16). We may define “man” as a “rational animal,” or a “political animal,” or even a “featherless biped,” each of which may generate different answers to the question Locke has put (3.10.17). If this does not satisfy us, and we desire to know the “real essence,” Locke reminds us that the real essence of each object is unique, and defies privileging any particular trait as more important or essential than any other. Putting himself forward for inspection, Locke notes that he has a distinctive appearance, and a distinctive set of acuities, compared to others put under the same species, “but there is nothing I have is essential to me. An accident or disease may very much alter my colour or shape; a fever or fall may take away my reason or memory, or both”; yet the remaining lump will still be John Locke, with a real essence of its own (3.6.4). If we wish to decide whether that lump is “human,” we will be thrown back upon some nominal essence we assign to the species. So, although Locke’s nominalism may be less dramatic than it seems from one point of view, its effects are fully as dramatic from others. Though we are not mistaken to distinguish man and donkey – there are such creatures, produced repeatedly by nature – we are mistaken if we think that certain “essential” characteristics constitute them as species,

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or govern their production by nature. Though donkeys all share certain characteristics, we would also have to say that, from the point of view of nature, each of them is a unique assemblage of innumerable small particles.21 We should bear in mind, Locke says, that those brought under a single species name often differ more among themselves than they do from individuals nominally of another species, a rule from which the human species is not exempt (3.10.20; 3.6.12; 4.6.4). This might be said even of those individuals produced “regularly” by nature, and it is an error, Locke tells us, to assume that nature’s production is fundamentally “regular” (3.6.14; 3.10.20). His repeated appeal to “monsters” is meant to drive this point home. Locke himself claims to have seen a cross between a cat and a rat, a creature that shared traits of both (3.6.23). He gives at least provisional credence to tales of fantastic creatures found by explorers around the globe (e.g., 2.27.8; 3.6.26–27). This is not wide-eyed na¨ıvet´e on Locke’s part, but the consequence of a settled philosophic conviction. Whatever else this account of species accomplishes, it destroys any possibility of drawing from a species concept “man” any universally valid moral law, in the fashion of the old philosophic schools. There is no “form” of man, no essence of humanity, no perfection of man implicit in his nature. And yet, as we all know, Locke champions a certain view of natural law, a universal moral code applying to humanity as such. In the Essay itself, he speaks of a human “perfection” that stands as a moral duty to human beings (2.6.3–4; 2.21.48, 51; 4.14.2; 4.18.6). How can these things consist with what we have just seen? Before we get to that question, we need to pick up the thread of Locke’s epistemological argument, though it will initially make things worse for us, rather than better.

Moral ideas as “mixed modes” We began with sense perception and the simple ideas it raises in the mind. We watched as the mind assembled these into complex ideas 21

This way of describing Locke’s “nominalism” brings it close to what we found in William of Ockham. Though each particular is unique, there are regularities. Those regularities are not caused by a substantial form or really existing universal, but may be observed in nature. We do not know the cause of the regularities, but we have learned empirically that some of them may be relied on for the advancement of human knowledge. See the discussion of Ockham in Chapter 1.

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of substances, such as tree trunks. Finally, we saw it construct species concepts by gathering objects into groups, based on criteria of its own choosing, for ease and for the advancement of useful knowledge. “Abstraction” is the mental process vital to this achievement – separating traits from their observed context, and using them as principles with which to organize experience (2.2.15; 2.11.9; 2.32.7; 3.3.8–9). The mind abstracts yellowness, density, ductility, and perhaps other traits from specific parcels of matter, and constructs the species concept “gold.” This is Locke’s mundane substitute for the Aristotelian and Scholastic notion that the mind gains knowledge of species by an “intuitive grasp” of the forms or essential natures of things. Among the abstractions the mind draws from its simplest ideas are notions such as “space,” “time,” “unity,” “shape,” “color,” and the like. It uses these simple concepts to construct a type of complex idea Locke calls “modes.” Since these play such an important role in Locke’s philosophy, including his moral philosophy, we need to grasp his meaning. The first thing Locke tells us about modes is that they are attributes not seen as existing independently, but “dependencies of or affections of substances” – “triangle, gratitude, murder, &c.” (2.12.4). Modes are ideas and not things. They are not even ideas of things. Ideas like “tree trunk” carry along with them the notion that they refer to an actually existing substance; modes are modifications or combinations of ideas that carry no implication that they correspond to real objects. We recall Robert Boyle’s enlistment of “mode” as a substitute for the neo-Aristotelian “accident.” When a lump of clay is molded into a ball, this is not the supervention of a new metaphysical “form,” but merely a new “mode” in which the clay exists. Locke’s use of “mode” parallels that of Boyle, and, like Boyle, he explicitly contrasts it with the sterile Scholastic concepts of “substance” and “accident” (2.13.19).22 Locke’s treatment differs subtly, in accordance with his philosophic interest, in that his “mode” describes a type of idea more than a state of the real world. The error with which Locke charges the Scholastics is not only a misapprehension of the structure of the world, but of where our ideas of “accidents” come from – accidents, that is, as qualities separate from the objects they characterize. The (latter-day) Scholastics 22

See the discussion of Boyle in Chapter 1. See also James Tully’s account of Lockean modes (Discourse on Property, pp. 10–23); and Ayers, Epistemology and Ontology, Vol. II, Part 1.

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take them to be “substantial forms,” like “hot” or “spherical,” that inform reality and are intuited by our minds; Locke argues our minds merely abstract them from sense experience (2.31.6; 3.3.17; 4.2.9). A simple mode arises when the mind conceptualizes modifications of a single idea. Extension, distance, and shape are modes of the simple idea of space (2.13). Modes of motion include sliding, rolling, and others. Modes of thought include memory and contemplation, and modes of pleasure and pain include love, hatred, joy, sorrow, hope, fear, and many others (2.18–20). Number is a modification by repetition of the idea of unity (2.16). The mind arrives at its idea of infinity simply by extending its notion of duration or number indefinitely, and indeed its indistinct and inadequate idea of God is composed of nothing but a series of such extrapolations (2.14, 17). None of these notions is innate; they are all the product of mind working on the simple ideas of sense. Modes do not “exist,” clearly. Yet, equally clearly, they describe reality: the stone really is rolling, those really are a dozen oranges (and if I take away two, ten will remain, etc.). We may thus assure ourselves regarding the validity or applicability of simple modes. “Mixed modes” are more complex versions of the same kind of mental abstraction and combination. If “symmetrical” is a mode, “beautiful” is a mixed mode – the same kind of mental operation, on a more sophisticated level. Mixed modes combine several types or dimensions of simple modes into a single concept. All moral concepts are mixed modes: gratitude, murder, theft, obligation, lying, and others are instanced by Locke (2.12.6; 2.22.1). Not all mixed modes are moral concepts, however, so let us begin with simpler cases. Locke names “wrestling” and “fencing” as mixed modes (2.22.9). These describe complex forms of physical activity, the parts of which have no natural connection to one another, whose unity exists only in the term and the mental concept describing it (4.4.5). “Fencing” is nothing inherent in any of the acts themselves, but refers to the concept that constitutes the activity as a whole. When viewed in light of the concept, those acts take on a different meaning than they would without it. The mixed mode confers a certain meaning on them. It also directs the activity of those engaged in the pursuit in question. We could think of innumerable other examples of mixed modes: wage-labor, irony, rhetoric, legislation, research. An observer unfamiliar with the mixed modes might be completely baffled by these activities. The activities do not disclose their meaning

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by themselves – or better, the mixed mode gives them a meaning they do not possess inherently. We can see why Locke, speaking of mixed modes, is so emphatic that they are absolutely free creations of mind, fashioned “very arbitrarily, made without patterns or reference to any real existence” (3.5.3; 3.11.15). Most of the activities just listed could be reconstructed along many different lines. They exist by convention and not by nature, in classical parlance; in a more contemporary idiom, they are social constructs. Now, this is not particularly bothersome if we are speaking of mixed modes such as fencing or wrestling. Placing moral ideas under the same rubric is quite another matter. Locke’s discussion of mixed modes uses moral terms as illustrations more than any others. He leaves no doubt that they are made just as “arbitrarily” as other mixed modes, that they too refer to no “real existence” (3.5.3). If “murder” is like “fencing” in this respect, it would mean that the acts it describes do not intrinsically or by nature have any moral significance, that a moral meaning is given to them, or imposed upon them, only by the application by mind of the moral mode. One man causes the death of another, under certain circumstances or in a certain way; this is a simple fact. That this act is “murder,” and morally condemnable, results only from a “mixed mode” being applied to the act, by the mind. After all, has not the line between killing and “murder” been drawn very differently at different times and places? Locke points out that viewing “parricide” as an especially heinous form of murder depends upon its construction as a separate mixed mode (2.22.4; 3.5.7). “Dueling,” also instanced by Locke, has been seen as virtuous or vicious, depending, in Lockean terms, on how its mixed mode is constructed (2.28.15). It is hard to avoid construing Locke’s meaning as thoroughly “constructivist.” Heresy, honor killing, holy war – countless practices have been deemed moral at one time and immoral at another, depending upon how the relevant mixed modes are culturally constructed. Locke draws attention to the immense power that would accrue to one who succeeded in defining or redefining mixed modes for a culture or civilization (2.31.3; 4.4.8; 1.4.22; 4.20.6–10). It is past doubt that he aspires to play this role himself, with his new understanding of natural law, natural rights, limited government, religious toleration, and the like. Here, we appear indeed to be close to “postmodern” territory. Locke is telling us, in no uncertain terms, that moral categories are purely

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conventional, arbitrary constructs, with no basis in objective reality. The consequences would seem obvious: limited government, natural rights, religious toleration, and the rest – the defining moral principles of our world – are the creations of sly John Locke, who knows these principles have no more foundation or validity than do tyranny, divine right, or theocracy. Locke exhorts us to free ourselves from mental “enslavement” to received ideas (1.4.22; 4.20.6),23 but in reality he wishes only to make us his slaves. We may be happy slaves, we may even be knowing slaves, as Richard Rorty would have us, but we are slaves nonetheless. The somewhat overheated language of the last paragraph is meant to underscore the gravity of this point. It also conveys some sense of the alarm that Locke’s argument caused in his own day, and not only among his enemies. Locke explicitly raises this objection to his entire epistemology: if we have no knowledge of anything but our ideas, how can we distinguish the delusions of a madman from the most sober science? And if moral ideas in particular have no real referent, how are we to be rescued from moral chaos, “confusion of virtues and vices” (4.4.9)? Locke’s response is that, to the contrary, his scheme puts morality on more solid epistemological ground, precisely by removing from it any material foundation. Mathematics is capable of full, “demonstrative” certainty, he notes, only because it is constructed of modes, abstractions that refer to nothing existing. Morality likewise is capable of full certainty, because it is made up of purely mental entities. This is a striking claim, but Locke makes it a very prominent part of his moral argument in the Essay (e.g., 3.11.16; 4.3.18–20; 4.4; 4.12.8). In order to make sense of his argument, we need to make a tour of one final part of Locke’s epistemology, his view of the (highly restricted) sphere of human certainty.

Probability and certainty One of the promises of the older, Aristotelian and Scholastic, approach to knowledge was certainty. That certainty depended upon intellect’s leap from the empirical world to the realm of forms. There could be no true knowledge, certain knowledge, of ever-changing material nature, but only of changeless form. The new science that Locke champions 23

Cf. “Conduct of the Understanding,” pp. 381–93.

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denies those forms, denies that leap, and, as we saw in the last chapter, concedes that empirical knowledge can attain to no more than probability. Adopting the older idiom, Locke warns us that a true “science of bodies” will be forever beyond our reach (4.3.26). We know the reasons: our senses are imperfect; we will never have fully adequate ideas of any external object (“not even of a pebble”); our definitions of the “nominal essences” of species are based upon this incomplete information (2.23.9–12; 2.31.6, 8); we can never be sure of the internal connection among attributes of a single object, much less among disparate objects (4.3.14; 4.6); we may observe chains of events, and make predictions on the basis of such observations, but can never be certain that the same results will obtain in future (2.21.1–2; 2.23.28– 29, 2.26; 4.3.25). Descartes and his followers believed that certainty could be recovered by constructing, or reconstructing, reality on the basis of geometrical form. The ideas on which geometry is based, Descartes argued, are clear, distinct, and precise, and so must be innate rather than empirically derived. They will provide the foundation of a precise and certain science of nature.24 Locke argues that no ideas are innate, that mathematical and geometrical ideas are extrapolations from experience (2.16–17).25 Mathematics itself, concerned only with relations among those abstract ideas, is indeed precise and certain. It cannot, however, be the basis of an empirical science endowed with certainty. This moderately skeptical approach, as we saw in the last chapter, was the position generally taken by the British Royal Society. Neither they, nor Locke, take this to cast a fatal shadow on their new science. They use it rather to establish a new category of less-thancertain knowledge, that we may nonetheless call “knowledge.”26 One of the purposes of the Essay, Locke says at its outset, is to “search 24

25

26

Descartes, Discourse on the Method, Parts Two and Four (pp. 26–39, 50–61); Rules for the Direction of the Mind (CSM I, pp. 7–78), Rule Twelve; Meditations, Meditations 3 and 5; “Comments on a Certain Broadsheet,” (CSM I, pp. 294–311), pp. 303–309. See also Gillespie, Nihilism Before Nietzsche, pp. 40–51; Gillespie, Theological Origins, pp. 171, 190–91, 197–204; Kennington, On Modern Origins, pp. 174, 183; Shapiro, Probability and Certainty, pp. 38–39, 64. In Essay 2.13, Locke appears to be rebutting the Cartesian identification of body with extension. Locke’s attack on innate ideas occupies most of Book One of the Essay. See Ayers, Epistemology and Ontology, Vol. I, Chs. 13, 14; Butterfield, Origins of Modern Science, Ch. 6; Hacking, Emergence of Probability,

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out the bounds between opinion and knowledge,” and provide guidance regarding how we are to “regulate our assent” in matters short of certainty (1.1.3). This theme runs throughout Locke’s argument, and is taken up systematically in a series of chapters near the end of the work (4.14–20). Our empirical conclusions will never achieve certainty, Locke maintains, but at their strongest, they provide “an assurance that deserves the name of knowledge” (4.11.3), indeed to which no rational person can refuse his “assent” (4.20.15–16). There are “millions” of such “truths,” Locke says (ibid.). For example, one cannot reasonably doubt there is a city called Rome, though those who have not been there do not know it with certainty. No one today can know with certainty that a man named Julius Caesar lived in that city centuries ago, says Locke, but one cannot reasonably doubt it either – nor, we might now add, that there was a man named John Locke who wrote the works over which we are now poring. We know none of this with certainty but, says Locke, the degree of probability is compelling enough to be called “knowledge.” If these examples are to provide the standard, he is doubtless correct. Locke does not suggest what degree of probability we should assign to scientific discoveries such as Newton’s laws of gravitation, or Boyle’s corpuscularism. Probability is the most we can hope for in large swaths of human knowledge, and it is Locke’s oft-repeated refrain that this is enough for our purposes – enough for our sciences, enough for the general guidance of life. We have providentially been afforded just the right amount of illumination in every sphere (1.1.5; 2.23.12; 4.14.2). We may take Locke to mean, for example, that we have only probable knowledge that the sun will rise tomorrow, that the fire will cook my meat today as it did yesterday, that spring will follow winter again this year; and that this probability will suffice. Not all of our knowledge is probabilistic, however. There is a sphere in which we may attain to ironclad certainty, the sphere that includes mathematics, and, Locke tells us, morality. We have three degrees of knowledge according to Locke, two of which attain to certainty. Intuition and demonstration are, or may be, certain, while “sensitive” or empirical knowledge is probable (4.2.14). especially Ch. 5; Schouls, Reasoned Freedom, pp. 5–19; Shapiro, Probability and Certainty, Ch. 2.

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“Intuition” consists of the mind’s inerrant grasp of relations among its ideas. I know with absolute certainty that white is not black, that red is not blue, that three is not two. This means only that my idea of white is different from my idea of black (4.2.1; 4.3.30; 4.4.6). Certainty is possible here because we are speaking only of relations among our ideas, in camera, as I have put it. The scope of this type of knowledge is obviously rather restricted, but far from insignificant. Locke claims for example that we know by intuitive certainty that nothing comes from nothing (4.10.3; cf. 1.2.14–23). Likewise, I know by intuitive certainty of my own existence (2.23.15; 4.3.21). In these cases, evidently, intuitive certainty entails certainty regarding select empirical matters as well. “Demonstrative” knowledge begins with intuitive certainties, and builds chains of reasoning upon them. For a demonstration to hold, each link in the chain must itself have intuitive certainty. Where this is the case, the demonstration as a whole is certain, though the more complex the ideas and the longer the chain of reasoning, the greater is the chance for error to creep in (4.2.2). Euclid’s geometrical proofs are paradigms of demonstrative knowledge. Locke claims that we also know the existence of God by demonstration, making God the only being external to ourselves of whose existence we can be absolutely certain (4.3.21; 4.10; 4.11.13). Of all other external realities, their properties and behavior, we have empirical and probable knowledge (with the limited exceptions mentioned at the end of the previous paragraph). We have certainty only in realms of knowledge where we deal with relations among ideas, apart from empirical reality. Mathematics is certain because it deals only with relations among ideas of the type Locke called “modes.” If mathematics were empirically grounded, it could not be the science it is. Some think mathematics is the only realm in which demonstrative certainty is possible, but Locke disagrees (4.2.9; 4.3.18). There is the proof of God’s existence, and in addition, he says, the entire realm of morality. Morality falls into the category of demonstrative certainty because, like mathematics, it deals only with relations among ideas, “mixed modes” that exist only in our minds (3.11.16; 4.3.18–20; 4.4.7). As in the case of mathematics, the precepts of morality could be only probable or hypothetical, if they were empirically grounded. They could not be absolute. They could not be commands.

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This is the point at which readers, from Locke’s day to this, have thrown up their hands in perplexity, if not exasperation. How can an objectively valid morality be constructed out of airy abstractions, constructed by the mind with no mooring in reality? It would be easy to weave an elegant moral theory out of axioms of our own devising, and tailored to our own preferences. But how would this differ from Scholastics counting angels on the head of a pin, or fabulists elaborating on the nature and habits of unicorns? Is not the really existing, concrete referent essential to morality? Applicability to the real world is its very raison d’ˆetre. For that matter, is it even true that mathematics is divorced from empirical reality in the way that Locke suggests? Is he justified in making such a sharp distinction between empirical knowledge and the realm of ideas? Presented with these questions, Locke might chide us for failing to attend to the subtleties of his argument. He told us, recall, that all of our ideas are rooted ultimately in experience – this is the point of the tabula rasa argument. Mathematical ideas are simple modes, built upon the idea of “unity,” an idea first suggested to mind by experience (2.16.1). The more complex findings of mathematics and geometry obviously do apply to the concrete world in some more-than-casual sense. Locke tells us that whatever is true of a circle or triangle in thought, the same will be true of a circle or triangle in existence (4.4.6). Mathematics is a demonstrative science, capable of certainty, because it operates purely on the level of ideas. This does not imply that those ideas are radically divorced from empirical reality; it only means that the certainty is achieved by abstracting from empirical reality. The same thing is true, Locke maintains, of morality. If murder deserves death, this is true, and absolutely knowable, he says, because of the relationship among the ideas involved, as ideas; but it will also be true of practical cases that match those ideas. Cicero’s precepts in de Officiis, he tells us, are valid even if there were no living pattern of them when Cicero wrote, just as a triangle’s properties hold whether any triangles actually exist or not. They are pure moral ideas, or (we might say) ideals (4.4.8). This account will not satisfy all readers. We will raise, but not pursue, some possible reasons for dissatisfaction. Locke admits the obvious, that mathematics largely corresponds to reality, but he does not account for the correspondence. Admittedly, the relationship of number to material reality has been a quandary since at least the time

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of Pythagoras. Nonetheless, since modern science relies so heavily on a correspondence between the two – seeming almost to suppose that number somehow governs reality – one might think it incumbent upon the epistemologist of this science to address the issue systematically. Descartes had postulated that mathematical ideas represent an intuitive grasp of the underpinnings of nature, or (depending on one’s interpretation) had proposed a science based upon a mathematical reconstruction of reality. Locke rejects his approach, but the epochmaking achievement of Newton’s Principia, which appeared relatively late in Locke’s life (though not too late to have been accounted for in the later editions of the Essay) yoked the new science irrevocably to mathematics. Given this background, one might expect Locke to say more about his understanding of the relation of mathematics to reality. The vehement exclusion of all non-material, “occult” influences from the new science was driven partly by apprehension that the admission of any such influences might give a renewed foothold to Scholasticism, or to alchemy. Yet does not this science suppose something similar in the relation of mathematics and nature?27 In his defense, Locke might have said that while mathematics itself is purely ideal and certain, the correspondence between mathematics and nature is simply an empirical fact. The cause of the correspondence is unknown, merely “positive,” in Baconian terminology, or it is presumed to be God.28 Being an empirical fact, it is probabilistic. Mathematical laws may describe the motions of the planets; but whether the planets will continue to follow those laws in future cannot be known with certainty. Science may simply presume the fact, not worrying about its ultimate cause. In the meantime, it may continue to analyze nature mathematically. A parallel but different question arises about the status of species. The species, like the mathematical laws, represent observed regularities in nature. We have explored some of the difficulties the new science has in accounting for species. Locke makes our species concepts arbitrary, 27

28

Newton conceded he could not explain the cause or nature of the gravitational force (and by extension why it “obeys” mathematical laws). See Principia, “Definition 8,” p. 9; “General Scholium,” pp. 371–72. His “gravitation” was denounced by some as an “occult” cause: see Chapter 1, note 61, and text. Bacon, New Organon 1.48; Wisdom of the Ancients, “Cupid.” See also the discussion of this issue in Chapter 1. Descartes enlisted God (or needed at least to eliminate the possibility of a deceiver god) in order to secure his mathematical system (see, e.g., Discourse on the Method, 4: 7).

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basing his argument on a nominalist outlook that seems to rule out the possibility of any species in nature. Yet the success of science would seem to depend upon gold, say, having a true essence, as a species, and science having grasped something of that essence. Only then could it predict and manipulate the behavior of the metal, wherever it is found. Locke forbids science from speaking in these terms, even where some of his predecessors felt compelled to try. We would not be able to sidestep these questions if Locke had built his moral theory on the model of natural science as he understood it. He would then need to provide an account of the relationship between our abstract ideas and empirical reality, such that we could know for certain how, and why, those ideas – such as the species idea of “humanity” – apply to that reality. What he does instead, as we have seen, is virtually to flaunt the insufficiency of any empirically derived notion of human nature to ground morality. As with species of snow, many different “nominal essences” might be attributed to humanity, all perfectly adequate to the purposes for which they were devised, none better than any other from nature’s point of view. Locke can be so cavalier about this because he believes he has discovered another and better way to ground morality. But how does he believe his philosophy of “mixed modes” to have accomplished that task, particularly given his conspicuous assertions that all mixed modes are arbitrary? What is the relationship between moral modes and reality? We can make significant progress toward solving that mystery, I believe, if we look at the parallel theory of one of Locke’s preferred authorities in moral philosophy, Samuel Pufendorf.

Pufendorf on “moral modes” and voluntarism Samuel Pufendorf, an exact contemporary of Locke (both were born in 1632), published his first major work of moral theory in 1660, quite early in Locke’s intellectual career. This work, Elementorum Jurisprudentiae Universalis (The Elements of Universal Jurisprudence), brought Pufendorf renown, and was followed in 1672 by the magisterial, eight-volume de Jure Naturae et Gentium (On the Law of Nature and Nations), still relatively early in Locke’s career. One year later, Pufendorf published a short compendium of his philosophy for use in schools, De Officio Hominis et Civis Juxta Legem Naturalem (On the Duty of Man and Citizen According to Natural Law), which

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made his teaching more widely accessible.29 Pufendorf was a legal and philosophical authority of the highest stature in Locke’s day, and retained his influence through the eighteenth century, partly due to the influence of his French translator and champion, Jean Barbeyrac (who also championed Locke). Locke’s mature judgment on Pufendorf may be gathered from the fact that, in Some Thoughts Concerning Education, there is no author he recommends for a child’s education so highly as Pufendorf. In the educational curriculum of that work, Locke first assigns Pufendorf’s shorter work, On the Duty of Man and Citizen, along with Cicero’s On Duties. He recommends Pufendorf’s eight-volume work to be read later, explicitly in preference to Grotius (§186). In “Some Thoughts Concerning Reading and Study for a Gentleman,” perhaps the only place where Locke recommends his own (anonymous) Two Treatises of Government, he simultaneously recommends Pufendorf’s full-length work as “the best book of that kind.”30 If Robert Boyle provided a model for the use of “modes” in describing attributes of physical objects, Pufendorf seems to have pioneered the similar use of “modes” in moral philosophy. He explains this theory at the beginning of On the Law of Nature and Nations (the theory is not laid out in the shorter Duty of Man and Citizen). As with Boyle, Pufendorf adopts this conceptualization as a deliberate substitute for Scholasticism: “Substance” and “mode” are to replace 29

30

Samuel Pufendorf, Elementorum Jurisprudentiae Universalis, Vol. II, trans. W. A. Oldfather (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1931); De Jure Naturae et Gentium Libri Octo, Vol. II, trans. C. H. Oldfather and W. A. Oldfather (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1934) – hereafter JNG – On the Duty of Man and Citizen, trans. Michael Silverthorne, ed. James Tully (Cambridge University Press, 1991). “Some Thoughts Concerning Reading and Study for a Gentleman,” in Locke: Political Essays, ed. Mark Goldie (Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 348–55 (p. 352). It seems, but is not entirely clear, that Locke is here placing his own and Pufendorf’s works in the same “kind,” that is, works on “the original of societies, and the rise and extent of political power.” Pufendorf’s thoughts on those subjects are not fully compatible with those of Locke. Locke also recommends Pufendorf for educational purposes in a letter to Richard King, 25 August 1703, very shortly before his death in 1704 (The Works of John Locke, Vol. IX) (http://oll.libertyfund.org/index. php?option=com staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1726&layout=html). On the links between Locke and Pufendorf, see also Tully, Discourse on Property, pp. 5–8; Stephen Buckle, Natural Law and the Theory of Property: Grotius to Hume (Oxford University Press, 1991), Chs. 2 and 3.

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“substance” and “accident.”31 In the latter-day Scholastic scheme, “accidents,” the non-essential attributes of things, were products of forms that had independent or substantial existence. For Boyle and the new scientists, they are simply modes of matter, with no independent existence.32 When Pufendorf extends this line of thought into the moral realm, making moral entities into “modes,” it entails, as Locke also concluded, that “moral ideas clearly do not exist of themselves” (Pufendorf, JNG 1.1.3; Locke, Essay 2.22; 2.31.3; 3.5.3). They are instead ideas imposed or superimposed on material reality, by mind (JNG 1.1.4). In his account of the “nature of moral entities,” Pufendorf describes them as “certain modes, added to physical things or motions, by intelligent beings,” to direct man, and “secure a certain orderliness and decorum in civilized life” (JNG 1.1.3). A mode of this type is clearly different from a mode of Boyle’s type, or a Lockean “simple mode,” which merely portrays an affect of a material object, such as “round” or “rolling.” Such simple modes describe the shifting qualities or behavior of material objects (1.1.2, 3). A moral mode is necessarily very different. Like Cicero’s ideal, it may or may not correspond to actual human behavior. It is not a description, but a prescription, a command, a law, an ought. Natural or physical modes, if we may call them that (“round,” “rolling”), arise simply and ineluctably from the material properties of objects. Pufendorf traces them ultimately to God, as creator of those objects and their properties (1.1.2, 4). Knowledge of these, Pufendorf says, has been developed to an admirable degree by others. Moral entities, however, have gone largely uninvestigated, though study of their nature behooves man most of all, “to whom has been given the power to produce them” (1.1.1). Now, it can hardly be said that earlier writers had neglected the study of morality. To say nothing of classical and medieval writers, Pufendorf’s own theory relies heavily and explicitly on both Hugo Grotius and (often as a negative foil) Thomas Hobbes. What he means to say, then, is that earlier authors 31

32

JNG 1.1.3. Modus is the word in Pufendorf’s Latin text. On Pufendorf’s pioneering use of “mode,” see also J. B. Schneewind, “Pufendorf’s Place in the History of Ethics,” Synthese 72:1 (1987): 123–55 (pp. 124–30); Tully, Discourse on Property, pp. 9–10. See the discussion of this matter in the previous chapter. On this specific point, see James Tully, “Introduction” to Pufendorf’s On the Duty of Man and Citizen, pp. xvi–xviii.

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have failed to grasp the nature of moral entities as “modes.” Yet, his understanding of modes was probably suggested to him in part by the work of Grotius, who also gave to human beings the power to generate moral law.33 The character of Pufendorf’s moral theory is visible in his treatment of property, one of his principal examples of a moral mode. Like Grotius and unlike Locke, Pufendorf holds that property does not exist by nature. Human intelligence creates the moral mode of property, and imposes or superimposes it on the world.34 As a mode, it refers to nothing “real.” Calling something “my property” designates no real attribute of the object. When I transfer ownership to someone else, nothing in the object changes. What changes is merely the “mode” in which it is viewed by human beings. Nature, we might say, is oblivious to this and all moral modes; in that respect, they are like the “mixed modes” of fencing or wrestling that Locke described. Such modes bear a different relationship to material reality than do the simple or physical modes of which Boyle and Locke speak. Modes such as “rolling” or “three” describe aspects of concrete experience. Although they are in themselves abstractions, with no “real existence,” their relationship to material reality is relatively straightforward. A moral mode such as property is much more a free creation of mind. It describes no aspect of material reality. There was a time when it did not exist. When it is brought into being, it is imposed on reality as a prescription rather than a description, and a prescription that applies only to certain types of beings. In reality, Pufendorf points out, “property” designates relations among human beings rather than objects, for the objects, to repeat, are unaffected by it (1.1.16). The moral mode of property is, from beginning to end, a human construct. 33

34

Hugo Grotius, The Law of War and Peace, trans. Francis W. Kelsey (New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1925), 1.1.9.1; 1.2.1.3; 2.3.6, et al. Henceforth this work will be cited as JBP (for De Jure Belli ac Pacis). In his early Elements of Universal Jurisprudence, Pufendorf says his approach is inspired by his friend (and former Professor at the University of Jena), Erhard Weigel (“Preface,” p. xxix). Weigel was a mathematician who introduced Pufendorf to Cartesianism. Pufendorf’s notion of morals as an intellectual template superimposed on reality might then be traceable in part to Descartes (see Buckle, Theory of Property, pp. 55–6; Schneewind, “Pufendorf’s Place,” p. 125n). Grotius, JNG 1.1.16; 1.2.3; 2.2.3; cf. Grotius, JBP 1.1.10.4; 2.2.2.1.

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The discovery that moral entities are “modes” of this type is a great breakthrough, according to Pufendorf, because it allows morality to become a science capable of “demonstration,” yielding “a certain and pure knowledge, in every way and at all times constant and free from error” (1.2.3). In an extended repartee with Aristotle, he maintains that Aristotle correctly identified certainty with sciences that proceed deductively from axioms, but incorrectly identified ethics or morality as a field incapable of such precision (1.2). There is a part of moral theory, to be sure, which is prudential and variable. This concerns the management of one’s affairs with reference to one’s own and the common good (1.2.4). Insofar as morality concerns the attainment of concrete ends such as these, Pufendorf agrees with Aristotle that its dictates cannot be demonstrative or precise (ibid.; cf. 1.3.6–7). This, however, is not the whole of morality. It is not even its most important part. The foundation of morality, and its demonstrative or certain part, are the modes devised by intelligence. Since these modes are not empirical but are purely ideal, knowledge of them, and of the relations among them, can attain to a certainty akin to that of mathematics. “‘Where there is no property, there is no injustice,’ is a proposition as certain as any demonstration of Euclid,” as Locke was to put it, for, like geometry, it relies upon the relations among ideas exclusively (Essay 4.3.18). Since moral modes, as opposed to mathematical modes, are prescriptive, their imposition by intelligent agents is in effect an act of legislation. Pufendorf accordingly asserts that all morality takes the form of law, a binding rule that serves as the measure of right and wrong (1.2.4; 1.6). For such modes to be binding, however, the legislating intelligence must have specific authority to obligate (1.6). Hobbes saw clearly enough that the essence of morality is law, says Pufendorf, but he wrongly took all law to originate in human consent (1.2.4).35 He properly saw that morality could become a demonstrative science like mathematics, but he mistakenly thought that this was because human beings have created its principles. Grotius also saw that morality had the character of law, also saw that human consent could generate moral law, but he realized in addition that this human power could only exist 35

Pufendorf cites De Homine, Ch. 10, where Hobbes argues that before civil law there is no justice. Hobbes acknowledges in Leviathan that the natural laws are truly laws only if attributed to God (Ch. 15, end; also Chs. 21, 26, 31).

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against the backdrop of a wider moral order. Where Grotius stumbled, according to Pufendorf, was in following the ancients who held that this law was somehow intrinsic to or ingrained in nature (JNG 1.2.6; Grotius JBP Prolegomena 11). Sounding a great deal like William of Ockham, Pufendorf charges that this Aristotelian and neo-Aristotelian view is incompatible with divine omnipotence. It postulates a “coeternal extrinsic principle” that constrains God in creation (1.2.6; cf. 2.3.2). Like Ockham, Pufendorf adopts voluntarism in order to vindicate God. The moral law is not an eternal and unalterable principle, but a free creation of God, who could have ordained that law differently. So, although human beings create some moral rules, for example through the institutions of property and of political sovereignty, human consent is not the sole source of their authority. The principle of sociability, laid upon man as a duty by God, provides the ultimate grounding for these human institutions (1.2.5; 2.3.5; 3.4). This background principle, rather than the consensual precepts, provides the foundation of moral science (1.1.3; 1.2.5). Pufendorf’s voluntarism is motivated by more than the desire to vindicate divine power and freedom. He has constructed a theory in which divine legislation is the only possible origin of morality. As the new science teaches, nature is morally vacuous; moral law is not part of the natural order. Morality can arise only by the imposition of moral modes upon nature, by intelligent agents. So far as nature is concerned, no actions are good or evil in themselves. This is the truth in Hobbes’s claim that good and evil do not exist by nature.36 If Hobbes argued that the bare impulse of self-preservation is the foundation of right, however, he was mistaken, for right cannot emerge from brute natural facts. They gain moral significance only by the imposition of a moral mode, a law (1.2.6). The only agent with the capacity, and the authority, to impose moral modes upon humanity in a universally valid way, is God (1.1.4). God is “the author of natural law” (1.6.7). God’s authority to impose this law comes not simply from his overwhelming power, as Hobbes had supposed (1.6.10). It does not derive from his superior perfection, as Cicero had supposed. Mere superiority of nature, Pufendorf believes, is not enough to overcome the freedom of 36

Pufendorf does not subscribe to Hobbes’s view of the state of nature. He claims that human beings are naturally at peace, and have prepolitical duties (JNG 2.2).

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a creature such as man (1.6.11). Authority over human beings comes only from their consent, or in debt for some “special service” done them (1.6.12). God’s creation of the world and of the human race is service enough to incur this debt, Pufendorf finds (1.1.4). Even then, he says, enforcement is necessary, including punishments for violation, in order to give law “stability,” to make it “efficacious,” indeed to make it law (1.6.12, 14; 1.1.4; 1.6.5; 8.3). Again, only God could effectively impose such punishments upon the whole of mankind. The fundamental moral law is thus divine law. In order for it to qualify also as “natural law,” of course, it must be knowable by the unassisted efforts of reason, a reason bereft of innate ideas. Anyone who applies his reason, Pufendorf assures us, will discover that the author of the universe is also the author of natural law (1.6.13). But how do we determine the content of this law? If morality is to become a demonstrative science, how do we learn its axioms, its conclusions? Pufendorf denies that knowledge of the moral law is innate; we must reason our way to it (2.3.13; 2.4.2). The way we do so, he says, is by considering our nature, which comports with the natural law (1.2.6). The nature God has given us is rational, and sociable. The natural law therefore bids us care for our own preservation, but also to respect the equal rights of others (2.4.1; 3.2). Sociability requires us not only to respect, but actively to assist other human beings (2.2.9; 3.3). Virtues such as “kindness, humanity, fidelity, gratitude, and the like” are necessary to our survival, according to Pufendorf, and our nature is attracted to them – this shows us that they are a law and duty to us (2.3.5). Humanly created moral modes such as property, political authority, and myriad others – most of the moral modes by which we live, Pufendorf says, are of human origin – receive their authority ultimately from the fact that they further the divinely decreed goal of a peaceful and civilized life for human beings (1.1.3). Correct and incorrect, valid and invalid moral modes may be distinguished by this rule, but human beings have relatively wide latitude in how they pursue this moral mandate. This is the divine plan, in Pufendorf’s understanding: God desires us to achieve the goods of peace and civilization, but leaves it to us to devise ways of doing so. Our natural condition is inhospitable to these ends, as Hobbes argued. Natural law, in its bare form, does not provide an adequate framework for the flourishing of mankind. It must be supplemented, as Grotius argued (JBP 1.2.1.3; 2.2.5; 2.21.11).

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These supplements take the form of humanly devised moral modes, Pufendorf argues (1.1.3; 1.2.5; 2.2). Property is one of these. Slavery is another, in times and places where a greater good justifies the suspension of natural liberty (7.6.5). Pufendorf, like Hobbes, regards absolute monarchy as the favored solution to the political problem (2.2.4). In any event, God desires us to move beyond the barely natural condition, and bare natural law, to create human, or humane, moral modes. We learn these things, according to Pufendorf, by reflecting on experience. This creates a rather glaring difficulty, relevant to our consideration of Locke. In Pufendorf’s philosophy (and Locke’s), moral modes are essentially, even radically, non-empirical. They are not part of nature, but are imposed upon nature. Yet Pufendorf claims that our knowledge of them stems from empirical observation, observation of human nature and of the requirements of human society. If nature is morally vacuous, if even human actions have no intrinsic moral significance, how can observation of nature or of human behavior teach us of the moral law? How can we pursue knowledge of the law empirically, if our quarry is essentially non-empirical? There is only one way this difficulty may be resolved, so far as I can see. We must understand Pufendorf’s argument to be that empirical observation presents us only with signposts, pointing to something outside the empirical realm. It is not that our sociable nature is a law to us, as Grotius or Cicero held; rather, that nature is an indication of the law God has imposed on us (2.3; 3.4.4). God gave us a sociable nature, and imposed a corresponding law on us, but his imposing this law, and giving us that nature, were two different, metaphysically different, acts. Only the second has moral significance. The distinction may seem overly subtle, but it is pivotal to Pufendorf’s argument, because it creates the separation he needs between material nature, which modern science has revealed to be morally vacuous, and moral law. Without this separation, morality is not possible, as nature does not support it; with it, morality can become a “demonstrative” science, based on non-empirical, wholly ideal “moral modes.” Yet, paradoxically, in order for this to be a natural law, the elements of that demonstration must be deducible from experience. Pufendorf’s argument therefore relies on a presumption that God was consistent in the fashioning of our natures and of the moral law. It even seems to impose a rule of consistency that constrains God in creation. If God had intended a different natural law, Pufendorf tells us, he would necessarily have

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given us a different nature.37 This assumption, or set of assumptions, would have warranted more notice than Pufendorf gives it, particularly since it seems at odds with his defense of divine omnipotence, and since it seems to imply a heterodox position on original sin.38 Still, for our purposes, Pufendorf’s position is not unlike that of William of Ockham, who employed the distinction between God’s “absolute” power and his “ordinate” power to similar effect. Though God could have created a radically different moral and material world, the world he has placed us in has stable and predictable parameters. The result, for both Pufendorf and Ockham, is that the voluntarist position, so radical in its metaphysical suppositions, issues in a moral teaching that fits within familiar bounds. Though Cicero and Grotius were metaphysically in error for believing that the moral law is part of nature, their moral teachings, and even the way they derived those teachings, were to a large degree correct. Like them, Pufendorf argues from human nature to the moral law. He frequently uses both Cicero and Grotius as authorities in developing his own argument. Though Pufendorf’s argument is philosophically “voluntarist,” he is able to proceed essentially as a rationalist, or naturalist, in deriving and studying the natural law. Natural reason is sufficient to the task of discovering the moral law.

Locke and moral “demonstration” Locke is not a simple disciple of Pufendorf. He conspicuously disagrees with Pufendorf on the origins of property and the limits of political authority. He gives human beings considerably less power to create moral modes on their own authority, seeing human law more as an implementation of natural law, than a supplement to it. This is in good part, no doubt, because he saw that granting a human power to supplement natural law led both Grotius and Pufendorf to endorse 37

38

JNG 2.3. Pufendorf also makes this argument in his early work, The Elements of Universal Jurisprudence (Definition 13.14). Here, Pufendorf already lays out his notion of a demonstrative moral science, though without the theory of moral modes. Original sin entails that the (tainted) nature we have is not the pristine nature God gave us. Inferring natural law, empirically, from human nature as we find it, would under these conditions be problematic (though certainly not impossible: this was the endeavor of Christian natural law thinking from at least the time of Aquinas: see Aquinas, Summa 1.80; 1.82.2; 1.91.6; 2.1.94). We will encounter this again in Locke.

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absolute monarchy and slavery, despite natural freedom.39 Nonetheless, the foregoing synopsis of Pufendorf is enough, I believe, to indicate that Locke embraced Pufendorf’s approach to morals in its fundamentals. Morality consists of modes – a subset of “mixed modes,” in Locke’s terminology. They are creations of intellect, which superimposes them on the material world. They do not refer to anything real or any pattern existing in that world, as the Scholastics mistakenly believe. Though we do not have innate knowledge of morality, we can reason our way to it. Morality can become a demonstrative science, capable of true certainty, only because it is non-empirical, dealing only with relations among ideas or mental constructs akin to those of mathematics. Unlike mathematical modes, moral modes are prescriptive, meaning they can be objectively valid or binding only if they come ultimately from a will empowered to impose law universally, that is, from God. Locke grounds this argument much more explicitly than does Pufendorf in modern science, which (he argues) has destroyed the notion of species forms, and shown brute nature to be morally vacuous. The resulting theory, as both Pufendorf and Locke emphasize, cannot dispense with divine legislation.40 We must dwell on this point for a moment, since there is controversy concerning the sincerity of Locke’s appeals to God in his own moral theory. Some have argued that these appeals are a rhetorical ploy, cover for a completely secular moral and political theory.41 It is certainly true that Locke would have had reasons to claim divine grounding for his theory, whatever his real views might have been. The fact that he sometimes argues from nature to natural law, seeming to obviate divine grounding, can create the impression that Locke’s appeals to God as the source of moral law are superfluous. This style of argument is 39

40

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Grotius, JBP 1.3.8.1; Pufendorf, JNG 7.6.5; 7.8.6. See also Richard Tuck, Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development (Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 156–62. For other accounts of Locke’s debt to Pufendorf, see Tully, Discourse on Property, pp. 9, 23; Buckle, Theory of Property, Chs. 2, 3; Michael P. Zuckert, Natural Rights and the New Republicanism (Princeton University Press, 1994), Chs. 7 and 9. Interpreters who make this argument include Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 212–14, 227–29; Leo Strauss, “Locke’s Doctrine of Natural Law,” reprinted in What is Political Philosophy? And Other Studies (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1959), pp. 201–6); Thomas Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism: The Moral Vision of the American Founders and the Philosophy of Locke (University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 136–60, 196–211; Zuckert, New Republicanism, pp. 237–40, 274.

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characteristic especially of the Second Treatise of Government, which is the most widely read of Locke’s works today. Yet, we have just seen that Pufendorf similarly argues from nature to natural law, though God remains the indispensable linchpin of his theory, for metaphysical reasons he shares with Locke. The fact is, it would not have been difficult for Locke to construct a theory that did not depend so completely on divine legislation. He need only have followed Grotius rather than Pufendorf, and argue that morality is intrinsic to nature. Grotius, following Aristotle and Cicero, and indeed the entire “rationalist” as opposed to “voluntarist” tradition of Christianity (and we may put Richard Hooker too in this camp), found a moral law in nature, with a status independent of divine legislation.42 Locke could have followed these precedents without apology. Among his contemporaries, Locke could have sided with Leibniz, or with Ralph Cudworth and the “Cambridge Platonists,” who tried to maintain a teleological view of nature in the face of modern science.43 None of these authors proposed a wholly secular theory, to be sure, but their theories are not irrevocably dependent on divine legislation, as is that of Pufendorf. If Locke had wanted covertly or esoterically to advance a completely secular account of natural right or natural law, such theories would seem to make a much better fac¸ade. He could begin by assuring readers, as Grotius did, that he has no doubt of God’s existence, but believes morality to have independent standing.44 Few if any eyebrows would have been raised. Such an 42

43

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See Cicero, de Officiis, trans. Walter Miller (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), 1.4; Hooker, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, 1.3, 8. Francisco Suarez summarizes the two schools of Christian thought in his 1612 ´ work, On Laws and God the Lawgiver (in Selections from Three Works, trans. Gwladys L. Williams, Ammi Brown, John Waldron, and Henry Davis, S.J. [Oxford University Press, 1944], 2.6.3). Cudworth, True Intellectual System, pp. 147–71. See also Culverwell, Elegant and Learned Discourse, Chs. 3, 5, 6; Benjamin Whichcote, “The Use of Reason in Matters of Religion,” in The Cambridge Platonists, ed. C. A. Patrides (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), pp. 42–61 (pp. 42–47). Among commentators, see C. A. Patrides, “Introduction,” in The Cambridge Platonists, ed. Patrides, pp. 1–41 (pp. 10, 26, 30); Shapiro, Probability and Certainty, pp. 88–89; Schneewind, “Pufendorf’s Place,” pp. 130, 148; Tully, “Introduction,” pp. xvii–xix; Wojcik, Limits of Reason, pp. 126–29. Grotius, JBP, Prolegomena 11; cf. 1.1.10.1; 1.1.10.5; 1.2.5.1. See also Steven Forde, “Natural Law, Theology, and Morality in Locke,” American Journal of Political Science 45:2 (2001): 396–409 (pp. 398–400); A. John Simmons, The Lockean Theory of Rights (Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 103.

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approach might indeed have aroused less theological controversy than the theory Locke did propose. Locke takes the approach he does because he believes that modern science has shown nature to be matter and motion, devoid of moral content. Nature is not ordered by species or forms; it has no metaphysical structure of the kind that could support a teleology. In particular, there is no human form or species in the Scholastic sense, to give humanity a perfection that stands as a duty to us. Locke’s extended and withering attack on the very notion of species, including the human species, is a clearing away of Scholastic rubbish and a vindication of the new science as he sees it. It is also an exercise in bridge-burning that leaves him with limited options in the construction of his own moral theory. Locke’s embrace of Pufendorf and the theory of moral modes is thus conditioned by the whole of his epistemology. Nature as uncovered by the new science is pure mechanism, as Boyle asserted. If (objective and universal) morality is to exist, it must come from outside of nature. Locke says, repeatedly and in many contexts, that the essence of morality is conformity to a rule or law, and that the law-giver is God.45 The “true ground of morality,” he says in one of these passages, “can only be the will and law of a God, who sees men in the dark, has in his hand rewards and punishments, and power enough to call to account the proudest offender” (Essay 1.3.6). If, as the classics had it, morality is the fulfillment of our form or the perfection of our nature, it is an end in itself and its own reward. No further reason or incentive would seem necessary for its cultivation. As Locke puts it elsewhere in the Essay, the ancients made morality something whose violation is simply beneath human dignity, unworthy of a human being. Yet, to leave it at that is to leave morality “unendowed” (1.3.5).46 The ancients’ appeal to the noble, Locke suggests somewhat ungenerously, amounted to little more than an appeal to “opinion or reputation” (2.28.7, 10).47 Since ancient philosophy failed to find the true basis 45 46

47

Locke, Essay 1.3.5, 12; 2.27.26; 2.28.4–5, 15; 3.11.16; cf. Some Thoughts Concerning Education §§61, 135–36, 139. Cf. John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity, as Delivered in the Scriptures, ed. John C. Higgens-Biddle (Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 161–62. Cf. “Of Ethic in General,” §4. In Questions, Locke avers that the Stoic Seneca thought that the beauty of virtue was enough to satisfy man (Question 1, p. 97).

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of moral law, its appeal to the noble inevitably resolved itself into an appeal to common opinion. For Locke, morality is not a perfection of the human form, nor can it be an end in itself. It is only through divine legislation, then, that Locke can combine his very prominent account of moral concepts as “arbitrary” mixed modes, with his equally prominent account of the moral law as “the eternal law and nature of things” (3.5.2; 2.21.56). All mixed modes, from the point of view of nature, are arbitrary constructs of mind, like “fencing.” What transforms some of them into eternal measures of good and evil is the bringing of them under a rule or law, by one with the authority to impose such a law (2.28.15). What we need to know, then, as with Pufendorf, is what is the moral law by which we are bound? What is the flawless moral demonstration that the theory of moral modes promises us? Given the way Locke trumpets the concept of demonstrative morality in the Essay, we might expect him to produce a chain of reasoning on the model of Euclid, beginning with foundational concepts or postulates, and culminating in the “mixed modes” that represent the true moral teaching. Hobbes, after all, had done exactly that in his Leviathan. Notoriously, Locke never provided this demonstration, neither in the Essay nor anywhere else. To friends who were dismayed by this lacuna in the Essay, Locke replied, not entirely convincingly, that providing such a demonstration was not part of his purpose in that work.48 A vital part of any such demonstration, of course, would be proof of the existence of the legislating and enforcing god it relies on. Locke may not have believed himself in possession of such a proof. He could have presented a moral demonstration, bracketing the theological proof, but he never did that either. We will need ultimately to consider the implications of these omissions. In the meantime, Locke did not leave us completely in the 48

Locke’s friends William Molyneux and James Tyrell tirelessly if gently prodded him to write the ethical treatise toward which the Essay points. Locke’s reply to Molyneux is seen in his letters to him of September 20, 1692, January 19, 1694, and March 30, 1696 (http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1444&layout=html#chapter 81479). His exchanges with Tyrell may be found in The Correspondence of John Locke, 8 vols. ed. E. S. de Beer (Oxford University Press 1976–), Vol. IV, pp. 101, 110–13. The short essay, “Of Ethic in General” is supposed to have been intended as a moral demonstration, and concluding chapter to the Essay. It was never completed, and in its current state it adds nothing to the Essay regarding our question (Political Essays, pp. 297–304).

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dark concerning his projected moral demonstration. Works such as the Two Treatises of Government, as we shall see, visibly contain outlines of parts of the demonstration. There are numerous hints in the Essay itself regarding the form such a demonstration would take, and we must first try to piece together his understanding from those hints. At one point in the Essay, he outlines the intended demonstration this way: The idea of a Supreme Being, infinite in power, goodness and wisdom, whose workmanship we are, and on whom we depend; and the idea of ourselves as understanding, rational beings, being such as are clear in us, would, I suppose, if duly considered and pursued, afford such foundations of our duty and rules of action as might place morality amongst the sciences capable of demonstration. (4.3.18) Or, a little less diffidently: He also that hath the idea of an intelligent but frail and weak being, made by and depending on another who is eternal, omnipotent, perfectly wise and good, will as certainly know that man is to honor, fear, and obey God. (4.13.3)

These demonstrations, or projected demonstrations, follow the model Locke has laid out. Like geometric proofs, they are constructed entirely from abstractions. Our (imperfect) idea of God, Locke has told us elsewhere, is formed by abstraction and extrapolation from certain observed qualities and perfections (2.17; 2.23.33; 3.6.11). According to the demonstration, this God stands in a certain relationship to us, as creator to his “workmanship,” a relation of dependency. We on our side are subject to the moral law not as “human beings,” but as “understanding, rational beings,” or “intelligent but frail and weak” beings. “Man” is subject to God’s law not as a natural being, but only as he falls under these abstract categories. Any being in these categories, human or not, standing in the specified relationship to a God with the specified nature, will be under the moral authority of that God. As Locke says at one point, a monkey with the requisite traits would be subject to God in the way we are (3.11.16). The same would be true of the created intelligences on other planets about whom Locke occasionally speculates (e.g., 4.3.24). This demonstration works because it does not rely on the supposition of a morally freighted, natural “human essence,” but on isolated traits that carry moral weight.

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Thus, as Locke is careful to point out, “when we say that ‘man is subject to law,’ we mean nothing by ‘man’ but a corporeal, rational creature: what the real essence or other qualities of that creature are in this case, is no way considered” (3.11.16). It does not matter that there is no human essence, considering man as a part or a product of nature; the moral demonstration applies to corporeal, rational creatures of any sort. These traits are to be considered “essential” to us, but only for purposes of moral demonstration. For other purposes, different human traits might be singled out. Locke regards this as the breakthrough in moral philosophy (inspired by Pufendorf) that allows him not only to rescue morality from the ruins of Aristotelian Scholasticism, but to improve decisively on the old approach. It is because moral demonstration rests on abstractions and relations among abstractions, without reference to the messy and uncertain details of physical existence, that morality can become a true, demonstrative science. We need only identify the root concepts properly, and reason carefully from them, as do mathematicians. Yet we seem to run into problems at the very beginning of our project. Locke specifies the root concepts somewhat differently even in the few passages we have just reviewed. In the first, the moral subject is the “understanding, rational” being; in the second, it is the “intelligent but frail and weak being”; and finally, the “corporeal, rational creature.” In his hypothesis regarding the moral monkey, Locke stipulates the ability to “understand general signs, and to deduce consequences about general ideas.” Now, these different formulations are presumably meant to signify the same thing, and they clearly converge on rationality, but they are not simply the same. Given the immense significance being invested in this abstract characterization – it is to bear all the weight formerly placed on the “human essence” – it would seem necessary to specify it with mathematical precision. The conspicuous anomaly in this series of definitions is the insertion of “corporeal” in one, but only one, of the formulations.49 Might not the presence 49

Is the “frail and weak” of 4.13.3 the same as “corporeal”? Locke also mentions the possibility of defining man as the “rational animal,” which would seem to parallel “corporeal, rational.” He is rather dismissive of this definition, which he identifies with the Scholastics. In these contexts, though, Locke is not addressing the present issue (3.3.10; 3.6.29). On this question, see also Ayers, Epistemology and Ontology, Vol. II, pp. 188–89; Jeffrey Reiman, “Towards a Secular Lockean Liberalism,” Review of Politics 67:3 (2005): 473–93 (p. 490);

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or absence of this concept make a great difference in our deduction? Locke frequently discusses the possible traits of angels in the Essay, as creatures of an intelligence superior to ours, and perhaps without bodies (2.23.28; 3.6.3, 12; 3.11.23; 4.11.12; 4.17.14). They too are God’s workmanship, and dependent upon him. Are they under a different moral law than ours? The human moral demonstration on which Locke relies in works such as the Second Treatise of Government clearly presuppose coporeity. Human beings have a natural right to “meat and drink,” for example, and to property generally, because they have certain bodily needs (cf. Letter Concerning Toleration, p. 47). If we had different bodies, different needs, would we have a different moral law? Would rational monkeys be under the same moral law? Or, does the moral law simply stipulate that the real needs, whatever they may be, and the real happiness, of any moral beings are to be respected and served?50 Difficulties such as these may be among the reasons Locke was not confident that he could produce the moral demonstration he projected, in full. Yet, he was clearly convinced that he was on solid enough ground to launch a new philosophy of government, of morality, and indeed of human life. Nor does he leave us with the mere hints, cited above, concerning the defining traits of the moral subject. Let us remind ourselves: the defining traits of the moral subject would be those traits shared by humans, and perhaps other creatures, that subject us to moral law. They would be the few traits, out of the innumerable traits making up the natural or “real essence” of any individual human being, that make that individual a moral being. These traits would constitute the “essence” of that person as a moral agent, his essence for purposes of moral philosophy. There are two chapters in the Essay where Locke takes on this subject in a systematic way, “Of Power” (2.21), and “Of Identity and

50

Jeremy Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations of John Locke’s Political Thought (Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 67–71. If this is the case, it would help explain why Locke never produced anything like a catalogue or list of “natural laws,” as Hobbes for example had done. His natural law would resemble that of Aquinas or Hooker – embodied in a general principle, with deductions from that principle for purposes of application being somewhat variable, depending upon circumstances (or the traits of the different types of rational creatures). Locke does insist on the universal validity of certain deductions, such as property, at least among human rational creatures. This will be discussed at length in the next chapter.

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Diversity” (2.27). The second of these distinguishes between different senses in which we speak of a human being, only one of which denotes the moral being. The three terms, “person, man, and substance,” Locke tells us, denote three separate ideas. “Substance” refers to the brute material object among other objects in the world. “Man” is closely related, referring to nothing but “an animal of such a certain form” (2.27.8). This, Locke takes it, is the notion or species concept of man held in the minds of most people. Reason, Locke claims, is not essential to this common notion, which takes its bearing from form and appearance primarily (cf. 3.6.29). In this conception, a “natural” without reason would still be thought a man, while a parrot with reason, though a “rational animal,” would not for all that be considered a “man” (2.27.8). “Person” is the term Locke reserves for the moral agent. A “person” is one who bears responsibility for his actions, and can be justly rewarded and punished for them. A person is “that thinking intelligent being,” with “reason and reflection,” that each of us thinks of as his “self” (2.27.9). “Consciousness,” Locke says, is necessarily part of such a self (2.27.10). Consciousness and selfhood are the locus of moral responsibility. Locke engages in a series of thoughtexperiments to establish where responsibility lies. If the same consciousness were to transmigrate into another body, this consciousness would remain responsible for its acts in the previous body, but not for acts committed previously by its new body (2.27.15). Locke distinguishes between “consciousness” and “soul”: a reincarnated soul would bear no responsibility for acts in a past life, unless the same consciousness followed the soul. In this case alone would the same soul also be the same “person” or “self” (2.27.14). Could a consciousness be transferred to a new soul, it would constitute the same self, despite the difference of soul (2.27.16). “Consciousness” then is different from “soul,” separable at least in thought, and it is clear which is more fundamental for purposes of moral philosophy.51 Locke lays down the general rule that no one may be held responsible for acts which he is not conscious of having performed (2.27.22). It is difficult to see how this rule could be applied to cases in human law, as he 51

It would be interesting to consider whether this particular series of thoughtexperiments presuppose an Aristotelian rather than a Christian notion of soul.

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points out (ibid.). It is easy to see how it applies to the doctrine of original sin, as he does not point out. Locke’s use of “consciousness” and “self” foreshadows the large role they play in the subsequent history of philosophy. For Locke, we should note, these appear to be mere concomitants of other mental activities. Locke does not explain how a conscious self arises out of those activities. Animals, he tells us, have simple ideas, and the ability to manipulate those ideas. They therefore have “reason,” of a kind (2.11.10–11). Yet, they do not have consciousness, or moral responsibility. The critical divide between man and beast is not reason per se; it is rather the ability to abstract, to create general terms, and mentally to manipulate those terms. This, Locke says, is an “excellency” that marks the absolute divide between human and beast (2.11.10). It is apparently inseparable from consciousness and selfhood.52 It is worth pondering the claim that abstraction is the defining trait of a moral creature, the trait that brings that creature under moral law. Abstraction, we recall, is the mental operation of creating general categories such as “snow” – categories, paradoxically, that have no real or substantial existence, that indeed have a tenuous or even arbitrary relation to reality. This is appropriate inasmuch as moral demonstration, according to Locke, is composed entirely of abstractions, meaning that only an abstracting intelligence could ever become aware of moral truth. But there remains something strange about making the ability to create certain types of unreal or insubstantial ideas the lynchpin of morality. It points to a problem we have noted before with the moral theory Locke is proposing. If his theory is to be more substantial than that of Scholastics counting angels on the heads of pins, his abstractions must at some point touch concrete reality, rather than being merely mental constructs. We must be assured that the beings referred to in the moral demonstration – providential creator on the one side, created intelligence on the other – actually do exist, and that the relations stipulated between them hold in truth. We must 52

Locke never makes this point explicitly, but both qualities are said to be definitive of moral agency. Among commentators who highlight the role of abstraction in Locke’s account, see Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, pp. 75–81; Zuckert, New Republicanism, pp. 281–84. Other treatments that focus on the centrality of consciousness include Marshall, Resistance, Religion and Responsibility, pp. 153, 398–400, and Zuckert, New Republicanism, pp. 281–84.

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establish that this god is in fact legislating on the basis of the traits that we take to be determinative for morality, and we must establish that the soul is immortal, in order to be subject to the otherworldly rewards and punishments that, according to Locke’s argument, are necessary to moral law (1.3.6, 12). We must establish all this with certainty, it seems, in order for our moral demonstration to hold. Yet Locke seems nowhere to provide the requisite proofs, a situation that would seem to be fatal to natural law.53 Or are we perhaps misconstruing Locke’s concept of moral demonstration? Certainty, in his view, can apply only to relations among ideas, not to any claims that those ideas correspond to external or empirical reality. The most that can be claimed for empirical knowledge is probability. Locke might then claim certainty for his abstract moral demonstration, but only probability for any empirical claims or applications associated with it. We may think of mathematics, the paradigm of demonstrative science for Locke. A construction engineer may warrant the absolute certainty of his calculations, since they represent only relationships among abstract, ideal entities; but (in Locke’s scheme) he is justified in certifying only with (a high degree of) probability that the resulting structure will stand. That claim depends upon empirical facts that as such cannot be known with certainty. The degree of probability may be very high, such that no reasonable person may doubt it, but probability it remains. Is the same combination of certainty and probability to be characteristic of moral demonstration? That provident creator and rational creature must stand in a certain relationship may be demonstrable and certain, while application of this to our situation would involve empirical and merely probable premises. The resulting demonstration would be partly certain, and partly probable. We recall some of the examples Locke furnishes of moral 53

See Strauss, “Locke’s Doctrine of Natural Law,” p. 210. On Locke’s failure to prove the immortality of the soul, see Essay 4.3.6 and Locke’s reply to Stillingfleet on the matter (included in the cited edition of the Essay), pp. 458, 473, 478. In order not to misconceive Locke’s argument, though, we must distinguish, as he does, the questions of immateriality, and of the resurrection, from that of immortality. Locke argues that the immateriality of the soul cannot be proven, but immateriality need not be a precondition of immortality, given an omnipotent God. Similarly, Locke’s confession that the resurrection of the body cannot be certain (e.g., 4.3.6, 27; 4.17.23) has to do not with immortality per se, but materiality. See also Michael Zuckert, “Locke – Religion – Equality,” Review of Politics 67:3 (2005): 419–31 (p. 423n).

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demonstration. If murder deserves death, this is true and certain because of the relationship among the ideas involved (4.4.8). Cicero’s precepts in de Officiis are absolutely valid as abstract descriptions of certain kinds of relationships, whether or not any were found in his day who matched them (ibid.). Where there is no property, there is no injustice, a syllogism as valid as any in Euclid (4.3.18). These precepts may all be certain, while their application to a given set of creatures in a given set of circumstances would be only probable. Locke would still be justified in speaking of a “moral demonstration” endowed with certainty, though some readers might conclude that the end result was less grand than they had been led to believe. Locke never makes clear whether this is how he understands moral demonstration and its application, but if it is, it would help to solidify his moral argument in the Essay. He tells us early on that probability is all we have to guide us in most of our concernment, apparently including moral concerns, and that that is sufficient for the purposes of human life (1.1.5). If we comb the Essay for the elements of the moral demonstration, we discover that some of them can be known with certainty, and others, it seems, only probabilistically. Locke says there are only two beings we can know for certain to exist, God and ourselves (4.9). I can know for certain that I exist and (since the proof is in my mental activity) I presumably may be certain that I am a rational, abstracting creature (4.3.21). This anchors one leg of the demonstration – anchors it with certainty, we note, in concrete reality. Locke claims that we can also know with certainty that God exists. The proof, once again, is in our mental activity: the mechanism of nature, as the new science has uncovered it, is incapable of producing a conscious, “cogitative” being. Any such beings must therefore be the workmanship of God (4.10.1, 9).54 This anchors another leg of the demonstration, again in objective truth. We now have a creator god, and created intelligences. Unfortunately, this may be the limit of our certainty, even in principle. Locke may not have believed that we can prove with certainty that this god is “eternal, omnipotent, perfectly wise and good,” as moral demonstration requires (4.13.3). We may not be able to prove with certainty that this god is providential in the sense required for the support of moral law. At least, Locke never 54

Cf. 4.3.6, 21; 4.9; 4.11.13; 4.13.3. Ayers (Epistemology and Ontology, Vol. II, Ch. 14) discusses this proof at greater length.

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unambiguously asserts that we can, though it would have been most germane (and useful in rebutting his critics) to do so. It appears that the immortality of the human soul, which is necessary for appropriate rewards and punishments to be attached to moral law, also cannot be known with certainty.55 Despite all this, Locke asserts at one point that the probability of punishments in another life is enough to support the rational embrace of morality, and that it is inappropriate to expect more than probability in moral calculations generally (2.21.67–70). He does not tell us how great the probability of providence is. If it is as great as the probability that a man named Caesar once lived, or that a bridge designed by a professional engineer will stand, it will doubtless be enough to satisfy most people. At any rate, Locke proceeds with his philosophical project as though it has foundation enough to support it. This, so far as I can see, is where Locke leaves us on the general subject of moral demonstration. We have more to learn, however, about Locke’s moral subject.

Consciousness and moral motivation It is axiomatic for Locke that consciousness, in addition to being the seat of moral responsibility, is inseparable from self-concern. “Self is that conscious thinking thing,” Locke tells us, “which is sensible or conscious of pleasure and pain, capable of happiness or misery, and so is concerned for itself, as far as that consciousness extends” (2.27.17, 26).56 Brutes feel pleasure and pain, and of course act to gain the one 55

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Essay 2.21.70, 4.11.12.4.14.2. Locke does at one point claim that from the existence of “an eternal, most powerful, and most knowing Being” we can deduce all the other attributes we “ought” to attribute to him (4.10.6). See also Locke’s replies to Worcester’s objections to Essay 4.3, and the discussion in note 53, above. Regarding the immortality of the soul, Locke wrote to Worcester (in the context of a discussion of Cicero, also regarding 4.3), “though the light of nature gave some obscure glimmering of a future state, yet human reason could attain to no clearness or certainty about it” (p. 479). Locke outlines a providential natural theology based on God’s wisdom and role as father in his journal for July 15, 1678 (Political Essays, p. 270), but never argued in print, so far as I know, that this passed muster as a proof. See also Questions Concerning the Law of Nature, Question 5, pp. 161–65, Reasonableness of Christianity, pp. 139–41, 152–54. In The Reasonableness of Christianity, Locke charges that classical philosophy discovered neither the moral demonstration nor the true divinity (pp. 144, 149–50, 154). See also Zuckert, New Republicanism, p. 285.

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and avoid the other. “Happiness or misery” in this passage appear to be the more exquisite states produced by or compounded of these in a conscious self. Locke makes this statement in the same context where he links consciousness to moral responsibility, encapsulating one of the distinctive features, or paradoxes, of his moral theory. Consciousness is inseparable from both self-concern, or self-interest broadly defined, and from moral agency. Any moral agent will also be an agent concerned to pursue its own happiness. In theological terms, a god who wishes to create a moral creature must endow that creature with consciousness, which in turn will put self-concern at the center of that creature’s motivation. It goes without saying that the creator will be aware of this fact, and will tailor the moral law given to that creature accordingly. The self-concern of human consciousness is partly rooted in the body. Regarding the seat of consciousness, Locke ventures that it is probably an immaterial soul, but denies that this can be known for certain (2.27.25; 4.3.6; 4.10.9). We can know, however, that there is no strict dualism between body and soul in the corporeal rational creature, man. Though our consciousness is separable from our bodies in thought (and also in fact, if consciousness is to be immortal), its relation to those bodies here and now is intimate. In what may be intended as a rebuttal of Cartesian dualism, Locke argues that, here and now, our bodies are part of our conscious “selves.” Pleasure and pain for creatures such as us, and thus happiness and misery, are inseparable from our bodies. The ailment of a single finger can make us miserable; let that finger be cut off, and its state no longer affects us (2.27.11). Our consciousness extends to our bodies; our bodies are contained in our consciousness (2.27.17). Our bodies and their appetites play a central role in Locke’s account of moral behavior in the Essay (and elsewhere). Our appetites, and pleasure and pain, guide our actions. This is proper and good, for without the appetites, human beings would not be motivated to do anything. Even our minds would remain idle (2.7.3; 1.3.3). Pleasure and pain are dispensations of divine wisdom that spur us to perfect ourselves (2.7.4). But they can also lead us astray. Indeed, “if they were left to their full swing,” the appetites “would carry men to the overturning of all morality” (1.3.13). As Locke repeats in Some Thoughts Concerning Education, moral education is primarily a matter of submitting the appetites to the control of reason (§§52, 107, 109, 200).

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Part of the difficulty of moral education stems from the fact that the appetites are “innate principles of action,” while morality is a discovery of cultivated reason (1.3.1–4; Second Treatise of Government §§6, 124). Still, the appetites, properly screened or supervised, are our guide to true and proper happiness. The chapter “Of Power” (2.21) deals in good part with the phenomenon of rational control of the appetites. This chapter was significantly augmented by Locke over the successive editions of the Essay, as he worked out the relationships among pleasure, pain, reason, will, and happiness. The chapter begins simply enough: “power” is an idea our minds distill or abstract from the observation of effects that objects in the external world have on each other, and from our minds’ ability to direct our own thoughts and actions (2.21.1–5). Power thus encompasses all of natural causation, as well as the capacity of our minds to direct themselves, and our bodies. It encompasses both natural necessity, and the liberty of rational creatures. Not surprisingly, “Of Power” is the longest chapter of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding as it now stands. The bulk of the chapter is given over not to natural phenomena, but to mind’s power over human action, and the limits of that power. This evolves into one of the most extended discussions in Locke’s entire corpus of the nature of moral action and moral responsibility, a discussion that is not without its difficulties. Locke begins by telling us that mind or understanding is the ability to perceive ideas, to perceive the relations among ideas, and to understand signs (2.21.5). As these operations clearly involve abstraction, we may read this as another description of the mental capacities that make a moral “person.” Locke aptly links them to liberty and moral responsibility. Mind or understanding is necessarily free in the sense that it is able to direct its own thoughts and form preferences. Conversely, nothing without mind can be free (2.21.8–9). Where the moral agent is able to pursue his preferred course of action concretely, we have liberty in the practical sense (2.21.9–11). Locke’s embrace of self-concern as the central, and blameless, motivation of the moral subject, and the close association of that selfconcern with pleasure, raise questions about the character of his moral teaching. Is he a hedonist? Is he a Hobbesian? In opposition to Hobbes, Locke asserts in his discussion of power that “will” and “appetite” are not one. Will is the operation of understanding by which it prefers

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one alternative to another, something it can do in defiance of appetite (2.21.30).57 Indeed, the essence of moral volition for Locke is the control of appetite by reason. Left to themselves, Locke has told us, the appetites would “carry men to the overturning of all morality” (1.3.13). Or, as he puts it in Some Thoughts Concerning Education, the “principle of all virtue and excellency,” and hence the substance of moral education, is the establishment of rational control over the appetites (§38). Gusts of passion may overturn this control, but reason can always regain it (Essay 2.21.12, 53). Sounding almost like a classical author, Locke tells us that, when reason regains its supremacy, the man becomes “a free agent again” (ibid.). Mind or understanding after all, not desire, is the part of us that is free. Locke sounds less like a classical author when he says that happiness is reason’s goal, and that happiness is compounded of pleasure and pain (2.21.41–42). Locke sounds quite like Hobbes, on the other hand, when he says that we call “good” what causes us pleasure, “evil” what causes us pain, and that these are different for different individuals (2.20.2). “Hence it was,” he concludes, “that the philosophers of old did in vain enquire, whether summum bonum consisted in riches or bodily delights, or virtue, or contemplation. And they might have as reasonably disputed, whether the best relish were to be found in apples, plums, or nuts; and have divided themselves into sects upon it” (2.21.55; cf. 2.21.42, 62; Hobbes, Leviathan, Ch. 11). These positions, taken together, constitute one of the most difficult puzzles in Locke. The “Hobbesian” statements just mentioned would seem to be compatible only with a Hobbesian moral teaching, one granting the relativism of moral judgment, conferring on each the natural right to pursue the good as he sees it, and bottoming moral obligation on individuals’ right to provide for their own security.58 From the beginning, interpreters have been found who take Locke to be a Hobbesian, at least thus defined. Is this Locke’s true teaching? This question will demand our attention repeatedly during our investigation 57

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The preceding chapter of the Essay, “Of Modes of Pleasure and Pain,” reads almost like a recapitulation of Chapter Six of Hobbes’s Leviathan, but conspicuously lacking Hobbes’s reduction of will to appetite. Locke does not mention Hobbes here (references to Hobbes are quite scarce anywhere in Locke). Locke mentions Hobbes in exchanges with Stillingfleet over the Essay, some of which are occasionally published with the Essay. Stillingfleet accused Locke of being a Hobbesian.

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of Locke’s moral and political teaching, but this is where we confront the issue at its philosophic depth. Within pages of stating the “Hobbesian” premise that the good for each is what he finds pleasant, Locke seems to move so completely away from it as to raise questions concerning his coherence, or his sincerity. But let us frame the issue properly. One of the themes of the chapter “Of Power” is this paradox: If happiness defined as pleasure is the true and proper motive of all rational consciousness, how can there be any distinction between good and evil other than idiosyncratic preference? Is not the choice among “riches, or bodily delights, or virtue, or contemplation” simply a matter of personal taste (2.21.55)? The unremitting sway of desire may overthrow all morality, but a Hobbesian is willing to accept this result, or rather, to refashion morality on the basis of self-preservation alone, the one appetite universally shared. Locke accepts the relativity of desire, and he argues that morality must align itself with the individual’s happiness or pleasure. He does not, in the Essay at least, appeal to preservation or the fear of death as the means of escaping relativism. He escapes relativism by developing a distinction between the good to which we might be prompted by raw appetite, and the “true and solid happiness” that is our good in the full sense (2.21.51). Raw or untutored desire would overturn morality, but the pursuit of true happiness is compatible with morality, indeed is synonymous with morality. Locke makes an example of the alcoholic. The toper who drinks himself to ruin is following his desire, but destroying his happiness. He knows that he is ruining himself, but still returns to his cups. He knows the good – his own good – but fails to do it. Locke’s revisions to this chapter of the Essay were crafted in large part to account for this paradox.59 The key, he decided, is that the mind is not necessarily moved by the greatest good, even the greatest pleasure. It is moved rather by the nearest unease. The drinker’s present thirst outweighs the greater goods, whose lack does not at the moment cause him the same unease (2.21.35, 43, 44). To break his habit, his reason must raise in him an unease at the lack of these greater goods that would outweigh his thirst. Happiness would remain his motive, even happiness defined as pleasure, but his behavior would be altered by a restructuring of his felt unease. His “freedom” would consist not of forsaking appetite for reason – such a thing is not 59

See Myers, Star and Compass, p. 119.

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possible in Locke’s psychology – but of suspending desire, deliberating on true happiness, and indulging only those appetites that conduce to happiness as uncovered by reason. Our drinker would then graduate from an unreflective slavery to appetite, to a rational or considered view of his happiness, one that would motivate him to act properly. Such a thing, Locke insists, is within the power of every moral agent.60 Of course, suspension of immediate appetite, in the name of greater pleasure or long-term self-interest, is perfectly compatible with Hobbesianism. This is precisely what Hobbesian individuals do when they curb present impulses for the sake of peace. Hobbes goes so far as to say that such curbing is a duty. Lockean individuals likewise have a duty to suspend their appetites and refashion their unease, but in the Essay at least, this is linked not to peace, or indeed to any social or political good, but to the individual’s comprehensive happiness. This is strikingly different from Hobbes’s account. Again, Locke does not in the Essay rest morality on preservation. The specific appetite for preservation plays little or no role in his argument, except perhaps insofar as preservation is a precondition of true happiness. Nor is Locke ultimately willing to concede that human happiness is simply relative and idiosyncratic. To be sure, one may prefer apples, another plums, and another nuts, indifferently (2.21.55). The choice between immoderate drink and a rationally discovered form of happiness, however, is not indifferent. Locke’s denunciation is almost biblical in tone: the toper has acted in violation of the “eternal law and nature of things.” Though his will be always determined by that which is judged good by his understanding, yet it excuses him not: because by a too hasty choice of his own making, he has imposed on himself wrong measures of good and evil . . . He has vitiated his own palate, and must be answerable to himself for the sickness and death that follows from it. (2.21.56)

These remarks come scarcely one page after Locke’s apparently “Hobbesian” statement regarding the relativity of good and evil and the vacuity of the summum bonum, creating the interpretive problem referred to above. As in the case of Locke’s theological commitments, a certain rule of interpretation would incline us to accept the Hobbesian statement as Locke’s true view, despite its singularity, despite a preponderance of statements to the contrary effect (such as the one just cited). 60

This aspect of Locke’s argument is emphasized by Myers, Star and Compass, Ch. 5; and Schouls, Reasoned Freedom, pp. 119–35.

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If Locke were a Hobbesian, after all, he would have ample reason to conceal the fact, and to provide his teaching with a more respectable cover. It is undeniable, moreover, that Locke was extremely careful when expressing himself in controversial matters, and was entirely willing in those contexts to make his philosophy appear more traditional than it is. Such a line of interpretation would be confirmed in this case if the anti-Hobbesian statements in the Essay were found to contain hidden ambiguities or evasions, while the Hobbesian statements rather than the anti-Hobbesian ones accorded with the fundamental principles of Locke’s philosophy. It is difficult to see any ambiguity in the statement just quoted, concerning the eternal law of good and evil, or in the extended argument that follows from it, the gist of which is conveyed by the example of the drinker. True happiness, the argument goes, provides a common moral standard to all of us. This standard excludes some courses of action and some ways of life as morally reprobate, though they may be urged by our desires. This view would not be considered traditional or conventional in Locke’s day, but neither is it Hobbesian. If we can find no hints that Locke is advancing this line of argument insincerely or as a cover, then, we must consider whether the apparently Hobbesian statements on the relativity of desire and the vacuity of the summum bonum accord better with Locke’s philosophical principles than do the non-Hobbesian statements. Or would it be possible to find some way to reconcile them? On the surface, this seems absurd. One proclaims the relativity of good and evil, while the other vehemently asserts the existence of an “eternal law” of good and evil to which we must all conform. Still, we might be able to reconcile them in a way by viewing them through the prism of Locke’s theory of moral concepts as “mixed modes.” The chapter immediately following “Of Power” is the chapter in which Locke elaborates his teaching on mixed modes (2.22). He there identifies “drunkenness” as one mixed mode (2.22.1). Insofar as “drunkenness” is a term of moral blame, rather than a simple physical description, it, like all mixed modes, refers not to anything really existing, but an idea, a norm, superimposed on reality. So far as brute nature is concerned, drunkenness is a mere physical occurrence among other physical occurrences, with no more moral significance than they. What gives it moral significance is the mixed mode under which it is brought. In this view of things, it would be possible to portray human beings, considered purely as natural creatures, in a

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Hobbesian light – endowed with appetites having no moral significance one way or the other – while bringing them under absolute moral law as “corporeal, rational creatures” subject to supernatural legislation. If this is the meaning of his jarring juxtaposition of “Hobbesian” and “non-Hobbesian” passages in the chapter on power, Locke certainly could have made it clearer. Perhaps he could not be clear here because he has not yet outlined his theory of mixed modes. Locke does make his Hobbesian denial of the summum bonum in “Of Power” conditional, saying that good and evil are simply relative to the appetites of the individual, if we are speaking only of our destiny in this life (2.21.55).61 Men could all choose differently, Locke tells us, and all choose aright, “supposing them only like a company of poor insects,” who would live out their chosen lives, then “exist no more forever” (2.21.55). The “philosophers of old” might have searched in vain for the summum bonum, then, simply because they were considering man as part of the natural world. Much earlier in the Essay, Locke dismissed “the old heathen philosophers” for arguing that virtue is to be pursued simply as “the highest perfection of human nature,” whereas the true measure of virtue and vice is divine mandate (1.3.5, 6). Locke would concur with the Hobbesian dictum, that the human appetites are neither good nor evil in themselves, until they know a law to judge them (Leviathan, Chs. 6, 13). He differs with Hobbes on the nature, and perhaps the source, of that law. Such an interpretation accords, at any rate, with the succeeding chapter on mixed modes. There is another chapter in the same section of the Essay that points in the same direction. This chapter, “Of Other Relations,” concerns mostly moral relations (2.28). Moral relations, the chapter tells us, are nothing but “the conformity or disagreement men’s voluntary actions have to a rule to which they are referred, and by which they are judged” (2.28.4). They are essentially different from “natural relations” (2.28.2, 4). Drunkenness is once again an example. Drunkenness, Locke says, is no more remarkable than the drinking of a horse, considered as a mere collection of ideas, or as a phenomenon in nature. It gains moral significance only in relation to a rule (2.28.15). As to the rules by which things are made morally good and evil – the sources of our moral mixed modes – Locke tells us here they fall into 61

We should note that Hobbes seems to include a similar stipulation in his statement against the summum bonum, Leviathan, Ch. 11.

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three principal categories: divine law, civil law, and “the law of opinion or reputation” (2.28.7). Some may quibble about the last type of law, Locke notes, because law is “utterly vain” without enforcement; but such quibblers must consider, that opinion or reputation has at least as great a hold on men’s behavior as do the other types of sanction (2.28.10–11). Somewhat ungenerously, perhaps, Locke suggests that the philosophers mistook this for true moral law.62 Locke will make extensive use of sensitivity to reputation in Some Thoughts Concerning Education, making it the principal tool of moral education, at least to start (§§56, 67, 110, 185). More broadly, Locke’s own politicalphilosophic project clearly aspires to reform the “law of opinion” by redefining moral terms for his society (and ours), and restructuring praise and blame. Both in the Essay and in his educational treatise, however, Locke is careful to point out that the true measure of right and wrong, virtue and vice, is not the law of opinion, which is notoriously variable, but divine law (Education §61; cf. “Of Ethic in General” §§9–10; Essay 2.28.8). We are already familiar with Locke’s reasons for this claim. It is significant that Locke does not identify “natural law” among the three types of law by which men make moral judgments. Natural law, in the old sense of a law ingrained or embedded in nature, cannot exist for Locke, as it could not exist for Samuel Pufendorf or for William of Ockham. Yet all three develop moral arguments relying on what they call “natural law.” This is possible, as we saw in the case of the two earlier authors, upon the supposition that God’s creation, particularly his creation of human beings, is consistent with the law he has imposed on us. We could discover it by “reading the book of nature,” provided we understand the natural phenomena only as signposts of divine will. Divine law could be called “natural law” by extension. As Locke puts it here, the divine law may be promulgated by “the light of nature” as well as revelation (2.28.8).63 The virtual absence of natural law from 62

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The section on the law of reputation is headed “Philosophical law” (2.28.10), which seems to be a holdover from the first edition of the Essay. There, the law of reputation was given that label only, “not because Philosophers make it, but because they have most busied themselves to enquire after it” (quoted in Ayers, Epistemology and Ontology, Vol. II, p. 316n108). This seems to suggest that the old philosophers confused common opinion with moral truth, perhaps, again, because they mistook its true root. Though Locke does not refer to the “law of nature” here, he does refer to it in a parallel context in the essay “Of Ethic in General.” This essay is a summary

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the Essay, contrasted with its prominence in the Second Treatise of Government, is one cause of the doubts that have long been expressed concerning the compatibility of the two works, and of the coherence of Locke’s overall teaching.64 But if the law of nature is one with divine law, it is fully present in the Essay. Perhaps Locke eschews the shorthand of calling it “natural law” in the Essay because he is more concerned in that work with the origin and foundation of the law.65 There is another, glaring, discrepancy between the Essay and some of Locke’s other works that cannot be disposed of in this way. Today, Locke is best known as a champion of rights – individual natural rights that define the purpose and scope of government, ground the theory of consent, and mandate religious toleration, among other things. Since Locke also speaks of “natural law” in these contexts, a question arises regarding which has priority in his philosophy – right, or law and duty. The question is tied once again to the controversy over Locke’s relationship to Hobbes. Hobbes spoke of both natural law and natural right, but right was unambiguously prior, the law being derived only from the right. Hobbes made the individual’s right to preservation the fundamental moral fact, and presented all the precepts of natural law as corollaries of that right.66 The only natural duty that an individual

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of some of the key ethical arguments from the Essay, originally drafted as a final chapter of the Essay (and, perhaps, the place where Locke once hoped to outline his moral demonstration). He here speaks of the moral law, given and enforced by God, as the “law of nature” (§11). This view of things resolves an apparent problem in Locke noticed by Ayers and others (Ayers, Epistemology and Ontology, Vol. II, pp. 190–97). Zinaich, Jr., provides an overview of these arguments in Moral Revolution, Ch. 5. This insight will also serve to lessen the apparent gulf between Locke’s early work, Questions Concerning the Law of Nature, and both the Essay and the Second Treatise. Questions seems to argue from an “essentialist” view of human nature to natural law (e.g., pp. 101, 205, 227–29), which is held to be incompatible with Locke’s later arguments (see, e.g., Tully, Discourse on Property, 28; Zinaich, Jr., Moral Revolution, Chs. 2 and 4). I believe that, even in the early work, Locke is arguing in the way indicated, not in the manner of classical or Scholastic “essentialism.” Questions also argues that natural law is morally prior to right and interest (p. 101 and Question 11), that natural law must be the product of a legislating will (pp. 159, 193, 209–11), and that our knowledge of it is not innate (Questions 4 and 5). These positions (I have argued) are consistent across Locke’s other works. This is not to say that there are no differences of substance between Questions and later works. Hobbes does acknowledge that there must be a duty or a command to pursue one’s right, in order to make it the basis of law: Leviathan, Chs. 14–15.

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has, in Hobbes’s view, is a duty to himself. Since morality is grounded in the base or core need of bodily preservation rather than any higher aspiration, its goal is mere peace, rather than any kind of perfection. The priority of right to law, for Hobbes, entails that any duties to others can be grounded only in individual self-interest, and consent. These are the origins of political authority. There are striking parallels between the teachings of Hobbes and Locke on many of these points, as any reader of Locke’s political works knows. These parallels have led some to argue that Locke follows Hobbes in grounding his moral argument not in natural law, but in individual natural right, right in turn being derived from selfpreservation.67 Equally striking though, against the background of those works, is the virtual absence of rights from the extensive account of morals in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The Essay depicts morality exclusively in terms of law and duty. In comparison to the Second Treatise of Government, the work for which Locke is best known today, the Essay seems almost militant in its exclusion of rights-based theory. Since the publication history of the Essay overlaps that of the Treatises, we cannot well attribute the differences to a change in Locke’s thinking. Let us make a brief survey of the evidence. In the chapter on moral relations that we have just reviewed, Locke defines morality as “relation to a law” (2.28). We would expect a rights theorist to identify right rather than law as the essence of morality. In this chapter, Locke does use “right” twice in the sense of subjective right, right as a power or claim inhering in an individual. The first speaks of a “right” that may be invested in one man by the consent of others, such as a right to command (2.28.3). This is a matter of consent and positive law, not of natural right. The second refers to God’s “right” to rule over man. If this is an instance of “natural right,” it is presumably not the kind of natural right that humans might possess. In the previous chapter, the 67

Authors who make some version of this argument include: Strauss (Natural Right and History, pp. 212–14, 227–29; “Doctrine of Natural Law,” pp. 201–206); Pangle (Modern Republicanism, pp. 136–60, 196–211); Michael S. Rabieh (“The Reasonableness of Locke, or the Questionableness of Christianity,” Journal of Politics 53:4 [1991]: 933–57); Zuckert (New Republicanism, pp. 237–40, 274; “Do Natural Rights Derive from Natural Law? Aquinas, Hobbes, and Locke on Natural Rights,” in Michael P. Zuckert, Launching Liberalism: On Lockean Political Philosophy [Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2002], pp. 169–200 [pp. 190–93]).

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most extended discussion in the Essay of the nature and identity of the moral “person,” Locke defined that person as one who is capable of being subject to moral law (2.27). We would expect a rights-oriented theorist to make the “rights-bearing subject” the theme of this discussion instead. In the course of Locke’s discussion, the relevant sense of “right” appears once, if “the right and justice of reward and punishment” that Locke assigns to the moral subject constitutes such a right (it seems rather to intend right as “rectitude,” 2.27.18). Locke’s projected demonstrative science of morals, as we saw earlier, postulates a law-giving creator, and a moral agent subject to law (4.3.18; cf. 3.11.16; 4.4.9; 4.12.8; 4.13.3). Locke never speaks in these contexts of the “rights” of the moral agent. When he argues that a rational monkey would be a moral agent, he explains that the monkey would be “subject to law” (3.11.16). There is no mention of this monkey possessing “rights.” The chapter “Of Power” which, again, may be the most comprehensive account of morality in the Essay, exhibits the same profile. The chapter contains not a single assertion of “right,” in the sense of subjective individual right. We learn at great length of our duty to conform our behavior to the “eternal law and nature of things” (2.21.56); we hear nothing of our “rights.” Locke uses the phrase “pursuit of happiness” repeatedly in the chapter (2.21.43, 47, 50, 51, 59), a phrase we associate with one of history’s most ringing endorsements of individual right. Locke’s usage is decidedly different: we have a duty to suspend our appetites, subject them to rational scrutiny, and indulge only those found conducive to a pursuit of “true and solid” happiness (2.21.51). The drinker may be pursuing happiness, but he is doing so erroneously, and culpably. Though he alone may suffer from his error, Locke nowhere says that he, or anyone, has a “right” to pursue happiness as he sees fit. He, and we, have not so much a right to pursue happiness, as a duty to pursue happiness aright. If this surprises us in Locke, we are destined to be surprised again. I shall argue that even in contexts where Locke confers natural rights on individuals – for he does confer such rights, and they are indeed pivotal to his political philosophy – they are derivative from law. The argument is consistent across all Locke’s works. The priority of law to right separates Locke’s philosophy from that of Hobbes, as does his insistence that it is our duty as rational creatures to follow rational, “true” happiness rather than untutored

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appetite.68 Still less Hobbesian is Locke’s prominent assertion that this form of moral and rational self-control is a “perfection of our nature” (2.21.48). Almost the first thing Locke says in the Essay is that “understanding” is what elevates man above the beasts, giving him dominion over them (1.1.1; cf. First Treatise §§27–30). Understanding is subsequently revealed as the faculty that gives us the capacity of rational self-control, and brings us under moral law. The “government of the passions” in the name of true or proper happiness is the “right improvement of liberty” (2.21.52, 53). The appetites, and pleasure and pain, are the means by which we are intended to learn the means of self-perfection – but only, obviously, if we screen them appropriately (2.7.4; cf. 4.14). This perfection, rather than mere preservation, is the purpose for which we were given these appetites (2.7.4). This “perfectionist,” even teleological, view of human things distinguishes Locke not only from Hobbes, but from many other thinkers in the liberal tradition.69 It almost makes him sound, once again, like a classical thinker. The classical thinkers maintained that human nature had a rational perfection, a perfection of knowledge or understanding. Human nature was oriented toward this perfection, in such a way that even the desires, properly understood, pointed toward it. Human eros was fundamentally a longing for this; the contemplative life was the summum bonum for man, understood as the fulfillment of the human form. Locke’s repudiation of the metaphysic of form thus leads directly to the “Hobbesian” denial of the summum bonum we saw earlier. When he reverses course, then, and makes the attainment of “perfection” a duty to us, does he revive the classical view, or some version of it? Must not this perfection be a summum bonum of some sort? Though Locke castigates the “philosophers of old” for their fruitless pursuit of a summum bonum in the Essay’s chapter “Of Power,” he himself speaks of a summum bonum near the end of the Essay. In a chapter on the “Improvement of our Knowledge,” he tells us that “morality is the proper science and business of mankind in general, (who are both concerned and fitted to search out their summum bonum)” (4.12.11). How can the summum bonum be both a chimera, 68 69

In addition to the citations to the Essay in the preceding paragraphs, see Some Thoughts Concerning Education §§52, 107, 109, 200. See Myers, Star and Compass, pp. 2–6, 168; Schouls, Reasoned Freedom, pp. 61–63, 92–94, 109–13.

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and the true object of human inquiry? Reconciliation between these two statements is only possible, I would once again suggest, if we read them in the light of Locke’s teaching on mixed modes and the divide between empirical and moral science. Locke’s critique of the old philosophy is premised on the futility, in his view, of finding a summum bonum for man considered as a natural creature. The “philosophers of old” sought the summum bonum in vain if they sought it empirically, for as natural creatures, part of the natural order, we no more have a summum bonum than do insects (2.21.55). They failed to find its true ground, which stems from mixed modes not devised by nature (cf. 1.3.6; Reasonableness of Christianity, Ch. 14, p. 162). The context in which Locke affirms the summum bonum is a discussion of the divide between empirical and moral science, as it pertains to the purposes of human life. Empirical knowledge will never penetrate far into nature, Locke reminds us, but morality can become a true science. Empirical science can provide immense benefits to mankind, but “the proper science and business of mankind in general” remains moral science, which is connected to their summum bonum (4.12.11). The classical view of the summum bonum was tied up with the classical verdict in favor of the contemplative or philosophic life. This depended on the view that the perfection of reason was the perfection of human nature, of the human form. Underlying this in turn was the view that the order of nature, its essence and structure, were accessible to human reason, that human reason was somehow attuned to or reflective of the cosmos or the order of nature.70 The life of philosophy was our summum bonum because it culminated, at least in principle, in a grasp of this nature, this essence, this structure, and because this understanding in itself represented the completion of the human form. Locke repudiates this view at almost every point. He takes modern science to have established that the world has no structure of the type hypothesized by classical philosophy. He himself has concluded that an impenetrable veil separates our minds from the essence of things, even as conceived by that science. Such a view of our situation cannot support a contemplative life in the classical mold. Contemplation of a nature that has no architectonic order, and whose character we can only superficially grasp, cannot be the fulfillment of our existence. 70

The classical philosophers did not necessarily assert this dogmatically, as I explained in Chapter 1, but they supposed it at least as a working hypothesis.

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Locke does speak of the gratification, even delight, brought by the contemplation of nature as modern science progressively uncovers it. Yet this gets caught up in his skepticism regarding the summum bonum: contemplation is a pleasure enjoyed by some, not all, and is not fundamentally of higher rank than other pleasures (1.21.43, 55). It certainly cannot be considered the perfection of our nature. Locke refrains from making even the kinds of gestures that Francis Bacon made toward the contemplative life, perhaps because of his humbler view of the level of understanding attainable by empirical science.71 The radically limited nature of our empirical knowledge turns us to the pursuit of moral science, and the knowledge of the human summum bonum discovered there, as our purpose in life (2.7.5; 2.10.1).72 Here, Locke is willing to speak of a rational perfection, a perfection that we have a duty to cultivate. It is a perfection attainable, in principle, by all. There are elements of Locke’s perfectionism, though, that do not sit well with his egalitarianism. This is one of the issues we will explore in the following chapters.

Postscript: Locke and Kant Readers familiar with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant may be struck by similarities between the foregoing account of Locke’s moral philosophy and that of Kant. Kant bases morality on abstract, legislating reason, which he separates strictly from empiricism and the realm of natural necessity. We are moral as “noumenal,” rational beings, not as “phenomenal,” material beings.73 Locke says we are moral not as we are human beings per se, but as we are rational creatures. Non-human creatures would be subject to moral law as we are, so long as they were rational. The source of this law must be located outside of material nature, and moral science is strictly separated from empirical science. 71 72

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Bacon, New Organon, 1.129; Kennington, On Modern Origins, pp. 19–20. Locke makes the same argument in “Of the Conduct of the Understanding.” He does not slight scientific knowledge, but directs us most urgently to knowledge of concern to us, particularly moral and theological knowledge (“Conduct of the Understanding,” pp. 342, 354). See also “Some Thoughts Concerning Reading and Study for a Gentleman.” Kant’s clearest statement of these principles is in the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959).

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It would not be hard to show that Locke had an influence on Kant. Locke’s Essay was prominent throughout the eighteenth century, Kant was a lifelong reader of Locke, and references to Locke are found across his works.74 I would point though to a different and deeper reason for the similarities between the two. Locke and Kant (and a host of other philosophers, beginning at least with Pufendorf) are confronting the same problem, the problem created for moral philosophy by empirical modern science and its view of nature. Modern science rests on an account of nature fundamentally incompatible with the old moral philosophy, perhaps with any moral philosophy rooted in nature. Science finds nature to be matter and motion, rather than matter and Aristotelian form. Species have a tenuous existence; species perfections seem to be ruled out entirely. Nature is mechanism, a realm of necessity, with no apparent room for freedom. Nature thus understood is devoid of moral content; purely natural events have no moral significance. Human beings are obviously natural creatures, part of this natural world, whatever else we might be. Human action, considered simply as empirical fact, also has no moral significance – so at least Locke and Pufendorf and (later) David Hume tell us.75 To be sure, the empirical-scientific approach as understood by Locke, with its reliance on the senses and its epistemology of ideas, creates problems for understanding that go beyond the moral realm. If the ideas in our minds constitute the totality of our experience, we can never be certain (absent a divine guarantee) that those ideas correspond to reality. We cannot be certain that the order we perceive in nature belongs to nature. Kant’s approach to this problem seems closer to Descartes than to Locke. Descartes’s notion of mind directly intuiting a mathematical rationality behind experience, or imposing a mathematical-rational order upon it, is not unlike Kant’s notion of a priori, transcendental categories of the understanding.76 Locke appears 74

75 76

See Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, “Memoir of Kant,” in Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and Other Works on the Theory of Ethics, trans. Abbot (London: Longmans, Green and Co, 1889). Pufendorf, JNG 1.1.4, Locke, Essay, 2.22, 28; Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, 3.1.1, pp. 466–69. See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1965), “Transcendental Aesthetic” (pp. 65–91), “Pure Concepts of the Understanding” (pp. 111–19); Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, ed. Lewis White Beck (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1950), §§6–13. I do not mean to suggest a strict similarity

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to be satisfied with a less tidy, empirical-probabilistic approach to this set of questions. Locke is not satisfied with such an approach to moral questions. Empirically rooted probability, he holds, is not enough to support right or duty. It would seem that the moral dilemma created by modern science is soluble in a limited number of ways. One might try to extract a moral code from nature as newly understood. One might, for example, propose with Hobbes that the human “compulsion” to flee death be construed as a “right” to defend one’s life (e.g., De Cive, 1.7), or with Spinoza that the natural superiority of weak over strong be construed as a “natural right” of the strong.77 But by the same logic, a stone would have a “right” to fall to earth, and the sun would have a “right” for earth to revolve around it rather than the reverse – phenomena that clearly have no moral significance. Upon mature reflection, Hobbes conceded that “laws of nature” can become laws in the moral sense only on the supposition that they are divine decrees (Leviathan, Ch. 15, end). And whether Spinoza’s “pantheism” is, or is intended to be, a moral theory at all is open to question. Science finds all causes and effects in nature to be “blameless” – meaning “without moral significance,” rather than “rightful.” It may be, then, that the most straightforward way – according to Locke and Kant, and others, the only way – to rescue morality, is to find a grounding for it outside of material nature. This is the purport of Pufendorf’s reformulation of natural law as a “mode” superimposed upon material reality by (divine) intelligence, and of Locke’s theory of morality as “mixed modes.” Thus was launched a line of thought that found a particular kind of non-empirical “metaphysic of morals” to be necessary. Kant’s division between the material-phenomenal realm and a rational-noumenal realm is a more radical solution than that of Pufendorf and Locke, but formally not dissimilar. I do not intend to portray Locke as a (mere) proto-Kantian; a Kantian might be more impressed with the differences between the two than with their similarities. Despite its “transcendent” origin, for

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between the two thinkers. Kant’s references to Descartes in the Critique of Pure Reason (like his references to Locke) are ambivalent. Benedict de Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, ed. and trans. Martin D. Yaffe (Newburyport, MA: Focus, 2004), Ch. 16 §§2–5, 7; Benedict de Spinoza, Political Treatise, in The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza, trans. R. H. M. Elwes (London: George Bell and Sons, 1891), Vol. I, 2; 3.13; 5.6.

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example, Locke’s natural law serves the happiness of the individual, a happiness that clearly has material as well as intellectual components. Indeed, the moral law must serve individual happiness, if it is to be binding on the individual. Kant would charge that the motivation of Locke’s moral agent is hopelessly “heteronomous.” Locke would reply that self-concern is inseparable from rational consciousness, and might charge Kant with failing to expel personal happiness from his own account of morality in any case. This dispute, or imagined dispute, cannot be played out here, obviously. It serves though to highlight some problems or unanswered questions in Locke’s Essay. It is difficult, for example, to conceive exactly how Locke understands the relationship between humanity as a collection of natural beings, with no Aristotelian form, no species essence, and no perfection; and humanity as part of the abstract category “corporeal, rational creature,” subject to moral law, having a purpose and a perfection. It is paradoxical that Locke should deny that rationality is any part of his own essence (3.6.4), and yet assert that his perfection, and ours, lies in a certain cultivation of the rational faculty. Locke has opened a metaphysical divide between material nature and morality, a divide that rational (or conscious, abstracting) creatures straddle. But how are we to understand this straddling? A related difficulty concerns the role of happiness or pleasure in Locke’s account of morality. Our appetites, in and of themselves, are morally indifferent. Yet they are morally freighted with a law imposed or superimposed upon them. In themselves neutral, the appetites are to be read as signposts of the moral law. In serving our happiness we behave morally; but the essence of morality, we would have to say, is not the pursuit of happiness but conformity to the law. What exactly should our motivation be, as moral agents? This problem, which has long bedeviled Locke interpretation, might have motivated Kant’s expulsion of happiness from true moral motivation. Locke’s notion of human perfection (or rather, the perfection of rational creatures) invokes a quasi-Kantian “autonomy,” a sovereignty of reason over appetite. Given Locke’s psychology, however, with happiness as its end, this “sovereignty” consists only of a choice among appetites, separating the salubrious from the insalubrious. But can it really be that moral action requires no genuine sacrifices from us? If it requires no real sacrifice, why should we insist that moral law cannot stand

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without divinely imposed rewards and punishments that are “not the natural consequence of the action itself” (2.28.6)? Perhaps the real truth is, as Locke says elsewhere, that the virtuous life is only “for the most part” the most pleasant life (2.21.70).78 Otherworldly rewards and punishments would then be necessary to compensate for those instances where virtue requires terrestrial sacrifice, to make those sacrifices rational. But they could also justify, and compensate for, the most flesh-mortifying demands that a god might lay on us in this life (cf. 2.21.70). This would nullify Locke’s liberal argument that happiness in this life, our happiness as corporeal as well as rational creatures, is the fulcrum of morality. Locke’s response to this is that a benevolent god would never impose such a law, but this does not fully rebut theologies premised on a fundamentally different view of the human good, or a mysterious and unfathomable divine will.79 This leads to two further difficulties, or perhaps lacunae, in Locke’s account in the Essay. For one, what is this happiness which is now bearing so much moral weight? The Essay contains only the vaguest account of it – and a very limited account of natural theology, the other essential element of his argument. If the drunk has vitiated his palate in defiance of the eternal law and nature of things, what way of life or range of lives is sanctioned by that eternal law? The Essay gives us remarkably little guidance. It is easy to make the case that avoiding drunkenness serves my happiness. Does respecting the property rights of others also serve my happiness? Locke endorses the principle “that one should do as he would be done unto,” as an “unshaken rule of morality,” but does not specify it further, and certainly does not say how it is to serve one’s happiness (1.3.4).80 Locke instances Cicero’s Offices as a moral ideal, and makes it a key reading of his pupil in Some Thoughts Concerning Education. Yet Cicero’s moral teaching seems to 78

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In The Reasonableness of Christianity, Locke goes so far as to say that “Virtue and prosperity do not often accompany one another; and therefore virtue seldom had many followers” in the classical world (p. 161). For a probing review of these questions, see Thomas Pangle, Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), especially the “Introduction” and Ch. 1. In “Of Ethic in General,” Locke asserts that all moral rules resolve to the principle “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (§11). Sentiments along these lines appear repeatedly in Locke’s private journals (see, e.g., Political Essays, pp. 226, 251, 319).

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comport ill with the liberalism for which Locke is known.81 Regarding natural theology, Locke claims in the Essay that we can know for certain that there is a god (4.10), but it is unclear exactly how much more we can know with unassisted human reason. The proof of God’s existence is in ourselves: the mechanism of nature, as the new science has uncovered it, is incapable of producing a conscious, “cogitative” being. Regarding the afterlife and other aspects of this god’s providence, Locke speaks only probabilistically.82 I proposed earlier a way in which Locke’s moral demonstration might combine elements of probability and certainty, but it would seem that the establishment of a legislating, rewarding and punishing god would need to be in the part of the demonstration endowed with certainty.83 When readers of the Essay, both friendly and hostile, urged Locke to produce the “moral demonstration” on which the teaching of the Essay so heavily relies, they had at least these two things in mind, the incomplete theology and the incomplete account of human happiness. Locke replied to them that his aim in the Essay was to outline the form and foundation of moral knowledge, rather than its content.84 We must be content with that answer for now. Other works, such as the Two Treatises of Government, Letter Concerning Toleration, and Some Thoughts Concerning Education, will add considerably to our understanding of Locke’s theology and his view of human happiness. In the succeeding chapters, we will square them, if we can, with the foundations provided by the Essay. 81

82 83

Essay 4.4.8; Locke assigns Cicero’s On Duties in Some Thoughts Concerning Education §185. In On Duties, Cicero asserts that duty and utility are one, but could scarcely be said to make a persuasive argument for it. These points were discussed earlier in this chapter. 84 See pp. 114–16, above. See note 48, above, and text.

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The paradoxes of Locke’s moral and political teaching

In 1704, the year of his death, John Locke’s intimate, Damaris Masham, wrote that Locke considered civility a more important moral duty than he was given credit for.1 By “civility” she understood (as did Locke himself2 ) an active sense of social benevolence. In his own life, she reports, Locke was solicitous of the deserving poor of his neighborhood, believing that the old and infirm were entitled not merely to subsistence but “comfort.”3 Even among his contemporaries, it appears, the friends of John Locke felt compelled to defend him against charges that his individualistic philosophy left him cold to the plight of others. Interpreters have been divided ever since on the character of Locke’s moral teaching. Locke’s writings seem to support a wide range of interpretations on a number of subjects, including his “civility.” Lady Masham recalled that Locke recommended the essays of Pierre Nicole on the subject of civility.4 Locke possessed multiple copies of Nicole’s Essais de Morale, and translated some of the Essais into English.5 To read these essays is to be lectured sternly, not to say tediously, on the duties of a self-abnegating morality. Nicole argues that service to one’s fellow man – charity – is a central expression of piety, and the heart of true civility. The principal obstacle to this virtue he finds, in Jansenist fashion, to be the sinfully self-assertive nature of mankind.6 Locke’s apparent endorsement of Nicole is paradoxical because his liberalism, as exemplified in his Second Treatise, 1 2 3 4 5

6

Related in Cranston, Biography, p. 179. See Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education §§67, 143, 145; Marshall, Resistance, Religion and Responsibility, pp. 179–80. Cranston, Biography, p. 425. This is related by Marshall, Resistance, Religion and Responsibility, p. 179. See Jean S. Yolton, John Locke as Translator: Three of the Essais of Pierre Nicole in French and English (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2000), and Marshall, Resistance, Religion and Responsibility, p. 89. Pierre Nicole, Moral Essays, Contain’d in Several Treatises on Many Important Duties (London: Printed for Samuel Manship, 1696). See for example, Vol. I, First Treatise and Fourth Treatise (both of which were translated by Locke).

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appears to approach morality very differently. Liberal morality sanctifies fundamental individual interests, identified as “rights.” It encourages self-assertion, in defense of those rights. Civil society is a creature of compact, each signatory motivated by self-interest, the society itself devoted to the collective interests of its members. If individuals have duties to others, they are only duties not to harm, and do not require any kind of charity or active assistance. Liberalism makes its peace with the self-interested nature of man, proposing a social and political system that neutralizes his erstwhile vices, or puts them to use, rather than trying to correct them. Nicole’s project, by contrast, is the hoary one of moral reform. He would bring about social peace and harmony through arduous, individual moral improvement.7 Why would Locke recommend him so highly? There are passages in Locke that might remind one of Nicole, though they fit ill with the liberal teaching sketched above. If charity is excluded from the Second Treatise of Government, it appears to be strongly endorsed in the First. In his Letter Concerning Toleration, Locke asserts that we owe to our fellow men more than “bare justice: charity, bounty, and liberality must be added to it. This the Gospel enjoins, this reason directs, and this that natural fellowship we are born into requires of us.”8 In Some Thoughts Concerning Education, while reiterating the principle (familiar from the Essay Concerning Human Understanding) that happiness is our proper motive, even happiness defined as pleasure, Locke outlines an education whose culminating virtue is “civility,” and civility is defined as a “general good will and regard for all people,” or even “love and respect” for others (§§143–44). This tension, between what we might broadly call the “charitable” John Locke, and the liberal, or individualist, or laissez-faire John Locke, is the greatest paradox presented by Locke’s moral teaching.

7

8

Pierre Nicole was also one of the authors of the “Port-Royal Logic” (Art of Thinking) that was so influential in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century epistemology. See especially Nicole’s essay, “Of the Means to Conserve Peace Among Men,” one of those translated by Locke. See also Kim Ian Parker, The Biblical Politics ´ of John Locke (Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier University Press / Editions SR, 2004), pp. 21, 53. We will consider Locke’s relation to Nicole at greater length in the next chapter. Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, trans. William Popple, ed. James H. Tully (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983), p. 31.

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The second Locke is widely known, and widely taken to be the “real” Locke, owing to Locke’s status as a founding father of liberalism, and the view that the Second Treatise of Government is Locke’s signature work. This view has never quite been able to dispose of the other Locke, however, and the gentle prodding of Lady Masham should induce us at least to take another look. Our task in this chapter, then, will be to explore this tension, to resolve it if we can, but in any case to use it to gain insight into Locke’s moral perspective as a whole. The puzzle is complex, and involves several distinct, though closely interrelated dichotomies. One is the relation of law and right, which concerns also the relation of right and duty, and the relative moral claims of the individual and the community. The Second Treatise of Government presents its argument mostly in terms of right, while the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, as we saw in the last chapter, speaks of duty to the virtual exclusion of right. Yet the rights argument of the Second Treatise is tied to a natural law that purports to be grounded in a duty to preserve mankind at large, while the duty of the Essay appears to be only a duty to self. Another dichotomy concerns the relation of rational perfection, which the Essay makes the centerpiece of morality, and self-interest, which seems to be the heart of the rights-focused argument of the Second Treatise. Rational perfection in the Essay is no stranger to self-interest, inasmuch as the rational perfection of the moral agent turns out to be the proper pursuit of that agent’s own happiness. In the Second Treatise, rational cultivation appears as the study of natural law, which somehow induces us to respect the rights of others. Yet neither the Second Treatise nor the Essay explains how respecting the rights of others is fully compatible with my interest, serves my happiness, or results from rational selfperfection. Both works, meanwhile, create potential problems for the principle of equality that is the basis of Lockean (and all subsequent) liberalism. In the Second Treatise, Locke maintains very notoriously that those who fail to “study” the natural law adequately, and who fail to respect the rights of others, sink thereby to the level of beasts without rights, and may be treated accordingly. It may be that, at least in the state of nature, these make up a significant portion of mankind. What then becomes of the principle of equality? Or if, as the Essay teaches, rational inquiry into happiness is our moral duty, which alone elevates us above the beasts and makes us moral creatures, what must we make of those who fail even to embark on this inquiry? What do we

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make of that majority of mankind who, according to The Reasonableness of Christianity, “cannot know,” and so “must believe” instead?9 Are these the equals of John Locke? Finally, and to return us to our original quandary, what is the actual moral code that Lockean reason bids us follow? Is it simply the pursuit of our personal self-interest and happiness while harming no one, or does it include charity and love of all men, as in the passages from A Letter Concerning Toleration and Some Thoughts Concerning Education, cited above?

The Two Treatises of Government Let us begin with the work for which Locke is best known today, the Second Treatise of Government, along with its companion First Treatise. The Second Treatise is the work that launched liberalism more or less as we know it today, with its devotion to individual rights, including especially property rights, to consent, and to limited government. These all bespeak an “individualist” philosophical approach, entailing a priority of individual over community, of right over duty. Yet there are elements even of this work’s argument that cut strikingly against this grain. In one section of Chapter Two of the Second Treatise (§6), Locke provides a brief explication of natural law – the only comprehensive explication of this critical topic in the entire work. Locke describes the natural law, and gives three parallel or overlapping derivations of it. Even in the state of nature, Locke begins by explaining, man does not have an unbounded liberty. Natural law circumscribes it. The fundamental principle or concern of that law, Locke asserts, is the preservation of all mankind. “Reason, which is that Law,” teaches us that, “being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions.” Unlike Hobbes’s natural law, which commands only my own preservation, without regard to the interests of anyone else (Leviathan, Ch. 14), Locke’s natural law commands me not to harm others. While Hobbes’s natural law is based solely on individual preservation, Locke’s natural law is not, in this passage, rooted in individual interest or preservation. It looks to the human common good and equality. While this includes my own preservation, my interests and preservation do not rank any higher 9

The Reasonableness of Christianity, pp. 157–58.

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than anyone else’s, and Locke’s natural law requires me to take my moral bearings from this fact. Locke’s argument is especially striking in light of the passage from Richard Hooker with which he prefaces it, in which Hooker uses an almost Hobbesian calculus of self-interest to derive natural law (§5). Locke’s natural law, as presented here, is less demanding than Hooker’s – Hooker finds an “obligation to mutual love,” as Locke describes it, while Locke limits the natural law to a principle of no harm – but Locke pointedly eschews the logic of individual interest on which Hooker relies.10 Locke’s law does charge me to preserve myself, and in that sense it is clearly linked to individual self-interest. The law even permits me to prefer my own preservation to that of others, commanding me, famously, not to harm others only when my own preservation “comes not in competition” (§6). Read in a certain way, these provisos could provide an opening wedge for a more Hobbesian understanding of natural law, or even be a signal that Locke’s true understanding is much closer to Hobbes’s than he is letting on. But we must understand these provisos properly. The first makes self-preservation a moral principle, to be sure, but Locke here presents it as a duty, rather than a right. This is why it entails the ban on suicide that Locke mentions here. Nor is this duty derived from a prior right, as in Hobbes. As each is “bound to preserve himself,” says Locke, and not to “quit his station willingly,” so “by the like reason” is each bound to refrain from harming others. The “like reason” here is not the individual right, but a duty rooted in the principle of the preservation of mankind as a whole. The end result is similar to Hobbes – a moral principle of self-preservation – but that principle is derivative from the common good of mankind rather than the primacy of the individual per se. As a general regime of natural law, we might conceive of it this way: limiting men’s natural duties to one another to “no harm” creates a moral system of selfhelp, charging each with responsibility for his own preservation and interests, by and large. This charge is a duty, though it obviously also entails a right. If the preservation (and prosperity) of mankind as a whole were best served by giving each primary care of himself, selfcare or self-interest would indeed be a moral principle, but not the 10

Hooker does not believe, of course, that the “Hobbesian” calculus is the basis of the natural law, which is divine mandate. In the passage in question, Hooker is explaining how men can come to know of the law, by purely natural, i.e., non-Scriptural means. See Hooker, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, I.8.7.

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primary or foundational moral principle. I believe we will find this to be the key to understanding much in this work. The second proviso, that I may prefer my preservation to that of others in cases of conflict, points more strongly in the direction of right as opposed to duty, or a more “Hobbesian” understanding of natural law. Yet, again, we must understand this aright. First, it is not clear from this passage whether I must prefer myself in case of conflict, as a Hobbesian grounding would stipulate. More importantly, we must bear in mind that a proviso of self-preference such as this does not in itself make one a Hobbesian. The proviso that I may prefer my own preservation when it “comes into competition” with that of others was typically admitted by writers in the older, “communal” natural law tradition. This tradition understood that concern for myself is a legitimate part of concern for all, as well as a moral principle in its own right. Thinkers like Cicero and Aquinas allowed preference for self where survival or other serious interests are at stake. They would not argue that, in the clich´ed lifeboat scenario, morality requires me to sacrifice myself for the others. It would take an extreme moralist indeed to argue for such a duty. In any case, allowing preference for self in such cases was a moral commonplace long before Hobbes.11 Still, the proviso might be interpreted in this context to signal a Hobbesian priority of individual right to duty through an indirect logic.12 If the state of nature is as brutal as Hobbes says it is, my preservation always in imminent danger, the proviso to prefer myself in case of need would be always in force, effectively negating the purported limitations on self-interest in Locke’s natural law. Hobbes’s natural law, after all, charges me to be peaceable, and behave civilly toward others, whenever it is safe to do so. Since it is never safe to do so in the state of nature, these provisions are null or remain in suspense. In this interpretation, much would hinge on the character of Locke’s 11

12

See Cicero, de Officiis, 1.4.11, 3.10.42; Aquinas, Summa 2.2.26.4, 5; Grotius, JBP 2.1. Though Christian charity exhorts pure self-sacrifice, and Christian writers often held that persons who had made a special commitment (such as priests and monks) could be held to a higher standard, Christian natural law did not typically demand this of others (Aquinas, Summa 2.2.26.4, 5; Grotius, JBP 1.3.3, 2.1.10). Versions of this argument have been made by Strauss, Natural Right and History, pp. 226–29; Zuckert, New Republicanism, pp. 239–40, 269; Pangle, Modern Republicanism, pp. 134, 191–204.

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state of nature. It is not difficult to establish that in Locke’s true view, the state of nature is more strife-ridden than he sometimes chooses to make it appear. In the Second Treatise, he eventually reveals to us that men are “quickly driven” from the state of nature into civil society, for in the state of nature they, and their property, are “very unsafe, very unsecure” (§123; cf. §§101, 124–26). If the state of nature, in practice, is Hobbesian, Locke’s natural law might become similar, in practice, to Hobbes’s natural right. But this, it seems to me, is not entirely the correct way to view the matter. The real question, as both Hobbes and Locke view it (not to mention Aristotle and others) is not how people behaved or would behave in a hypothetical condition of anarchic scarcity, a war of all against all. It is, rather, what is the natural relationship of man to his fellows in a more abstract or philosophical sense. Aristotle laid out two alternatives: either men are by nature political, or they are by nature at war.13 To say that man is political by nature is not to deny that, under conditions such as Hobbes describes, they would fight. In all likelihood they would fight, and if the condition persisted for long, they would quite possibly descend into a rather brutish condition. Aristotle says, after all, that apart from law, man is a savage beast (Politics 1.2, 3.16). But this is not the decisive consideration for Aristotle nor, it seems to me, for Locke. In truth, Hobbes’s argument does not rest on this bare consideration either, but on his analysis of human nature, of which the war of all against all is only a reflection. That analysis is encapsulated in Hobbes’s twin claims that human appetite is insatiable, and that reason commands each individual to care for himself exclusively (Leviathan, Ch. 14). Locke envisages an appetite that is more limited, or limitable, as we saw in the previous chapter’s discussion of the Essay, and shall shortly see in Locke’s account of property rights. Lockean reason, meanwhile, commands us to respect others – not simply out of self-regard, but out of a duty to preserve mankind at large as far as possible. In this one respect, at least, Locke’s reason is more like the reason of Aquinas than that of Hobbes. It takes the point of view of the generality, or represents the voice of the common good within us (cf. Aquinas, Summa Theologica 2.1.90.1, 2; 2.1.94.1). As Locke says later in the Second Treatise, the law of nature makes mankind “one Community,” 13

Aristotle, The Politics, trans. Carnes Lord (University of Chicago Press, 1984), I.2, 1253a5.

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though clearly one not strong enough to obviate a social contract (§128). We do not yet know what to make of this. John Locke is obviously not a Thomist, but this first passage on natural law (§6) establishes at least a preliminary priority of duty to right. In this passage – which, to repeat, is the sole systematic explication of natural law in the work – Locke describes the duties the law imposes on us. Not once does he mention “rights” (§6). Individual right does appear in the immediate sequel – as something we are duty-bound to respect in others (§7).14 Locke identifies the foundation and purpose of natural law to be not the right of the individual per se, but “the Peace and Preservation of all Mankind” (§7). Locke reminds us of this repeatedly in the Second Treatise: the preservation of mankind at large is the goal of natural law (§§6, 7, 8, 11, 128, 135, 182). Locke says the same thing in Some Thoughts Concerning Education. In the course of constructing a curriculum designed presumably to inculcate proper principles of liberal morality, Locke asserts that “the preservation of all mankind, as much as in him lies . . . is everyone’s duty, and the true principle to regulate our religion, politics, and morality by” (§116). As his education progresses, Locke’s pupil in this work learns considerably more about duty than about “rights.”15 Within the Two Treatises, what we might call the “communal” or common-good principle of the preservation of the race is woven into Locke’s argument in ways that are not easy to discount. One is what Locke calls his “strange doctrine” that every man has executive power in the state of nature. Each has the power to punish violations of the natural law on behalf of mankind, whether he is directly affected by the violation or not. Locke traces this power to natural law’s intent to preserve the race as a whole, and not, for example, to a particular interest that individuals might have in shoring up a general regime of enforcement (§§8–13). Another manifestation of the communal element of natural law is the limitation of spoilage that we will examine when we get to Locke’s treatment of property. A third, and perhaps the most telling, is his teaching on the family. Family is one of the most difficult phenomena for a purely individualist interpretation of humanity to account for. The family is a natural 14 15

Cf. Willmore Kendall, John Locke and the Doctrine of Majority Rule (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1965), p. 68. A more complete discussion of Some Thoughts Concerning Education will be presented in the next chapter.

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community of a kind, based upon mutual dependencies. For a family to work, its members must fulfill obligations to each other and to the whole, obligations we would have to describe, it seems, as “natural.” No matter how “individualist” some of us may be as adults, we all owe our existence to this natural community, and (unless we are most unfortunate) benefited greatly from the fact that others fulfilled their obligations. A purely individualist theory – where liberty and individual right are the primary, and the only natural, moral phenomena – has great difficulty grounding, or even explaining this. Hobbes conceded that a mother has natural authority over her child, but explained this by the fact that she holds power of life and death over it. She has the right, apparently, to abandon it to its death; if she chooses to nourish it, she gains “dominion” over it. Even this arises not from any natural obligation in the child, but from a presumption that the child consents to her authority, by accepting her breast (Leviathan, Ch. 20). Any authority a father may have rests similarly on contract (ibid.). By nature, neither parents nor children have any kind of obligation. This account of the family seems contrived, to say the least. Locke’s account is very different. In the chapter of the Second Treatise devoted to family (Chapter Six), Locke asserts, without fanfare, that parents and children have mutual and reciprocal obligations. These do not come from compact, but directly from the law of nature. This law imposes upon all parents “an obligation to preserve, nourish, and educate the children” born to them (§56). To say that this obligation comes directly from the law of nature is to say that it is not dependent upon any prior moral fact, such as (for example) a “right” of the child. One point of the chapter is indeed that children, being pre-rational, do not have rights, and none are attributed to them in this context. Locke would presumably have no objection to speaking of the “rights” of children vis-a-vis their parents, but this might muddle our thinking ` rather than clarify it, for these rights would be derivative from parental duty (and the fundamental imperative of the preservation of mankind), rather than the reverse. This duty gives parents rights too, rights of authority over their children. “The power, then, that parents have over their children, arises from that duty which is incumbent on them, to take care of their offspring during the imperfect state of childhood” (§58). This power is power only to benefit the child; should parents fail of their duty, their power over the child is suspended (§§64–65). To be sure,

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Locke’s account of the family is more “individualist” than many traditional accounts. The power of the parent ceases when the child no longer needs it; thereafter, an imperfect obligation of “honor” rather than obedience is due, and that in proportion to the care the parents bestowed upon the child (§§67, 69). The obligation of fathers to mothers, under natural law, expires after the same period, and for the same reason (§§79–80). The only purpose of the commerce between the sexes under natural law, apparently, is the production and rearing of the next generation. But for the duration of Locke’s “natural law family,” if we may call it that, duties are assigned to all. This is as it must be. It would be possible, barely, to give an account of the family exclusively in terms of rights, but this account would be artificial and labored. It would resemble the Ptolemaic astronomy that resorted to cycles and epicycles to preserve its geocentric view of the universe. Locke makes no attempt to give such a “rights-centric” account of the family. He has no need, for his law of nature, devoted first and foremost to the preservation of mankind as a whole, has no difficulty assigning duties independent of rights. The chapter on family in the Second Treatise relies more prominently upon God as moral legislator than does most of the rest of the work (§§52, 56, 58, 60, 63, 66, 67). This is natural, inasmuch as the imposition of duties more clearly requires an imposer (and enforcer) than does the assigning of rights. As we saw in the previous chapter, Locke’s account of morality in works other than the Second Treatise is explicit in its reliance on a divine legislator. A satisfactory account of civil society, which is a conventional and limited association, can more nearly be given in terms of rights alone. Indeed, it is Locke’s argument that, given the limited purposes of that association, it must be predicated primarily on rights. This allows the figure of the divine legislator to recede into the background. There is a set of passages in the First Treatise of Government that sheds light on this issue, passages that treat of family in a wider context of natural law, natural right, and theology. In the First Treatise, much of Locke’s argument hinges on the claim that the biblical injunction to “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it,” addressed to the human race as a whole, encapsulates God’s plan for mankind (§33).16 The 16

Cf. §§39, 59, 86; Genesis 1:28–29, 9:1.

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injunction thus becomes the biblical equivalent of the natural law principle of the Second Treatise, enjoining the preservation of all mankind. This divine mandate, as Locke glosses it at one point, “contains in it the improvement too of Arts and Sciences, and conveniences of life” (§33). Whether or not this is true to the meaning of Scripture, it is an admirable synopsis of Locke’s interpretation of natural law, and thus of the intention of the god who stands behind natural law. This god might be dubbed “nature’s god,” and Locke makes clear, even in the First Treatise, that he is not relying exclusively, or even primarily, on Scripture to discern his intent. After sparring at great length with Robert Filmer on the meaning of the biblical injunction, which Filmer claimed was addressed to Adam alone and made him sole proprietor of the earth and absolute lord of mankind, Locke reveals the true ground of his own position. “Not to follow our author too far out of the way,” he says, “the plain of the case is this: God having made man, and planted in him . . . a strong desire of Self-Preservation, and furnished the World with things fit for Food and Rayment and other Necessaries of Life,” intended men – all men, not just Adam – to make use of those resources for their survival and comfort (§86). The appetite and the earthly provisions are both part of God’s providence, and together they convey a divine message: in appropriating things needful to them, men follow God’s will. Man’s reason, “which was the voice of God in him,” taught each man that he had a “right” to these things (ibid.). This is true, Locke pointedly informs us, whether God ever literally spoke to anyone on this subject or not. Revelation, in this matter at least, is redundant, perhaps even subject to correction by reason. The content of this argument interests us of course, but we must also note its logic. From the facts of natural appetite and natural provision, we draw a moral and theological conclusion. In acting on their Godgiven appetites, men follow divine will, and properly conclude that they all have a right to the things of the earth. The logic is not that the appetite, in and of itself, confers a right. The right comes rather from the same divine agent who bestowed the appetite, and provided the means of satisfying it. As we saw in the last chapter, Locke takes natural science to have shown that bare natural facts, such as appetites or natural plenty, can have no moral significance in themselves. His procedure in the present passage is that of Samuel Pufendorf: despite the moral vacuity of natural facts, we may argue from natural facts

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to moral directives, if we regard those facts as signposts or indicators of a divine mandate or plan. Or, in the terms of the Essay, mixed modes such as “right” or “obligation” are arbitrary mental constructs considered merely in themselves. They refer to nothing real but are imposed upon reality. Only a divine legislator can impose them in such a way as to make them “eternal” moral law. This prepares us to understand the passage on family that follows closely in the First Treatise. Along with the desire for preservation, Locke notes, “God planted in Men a strong desire also of propagating their Kind” (§88). From this circumstance, Locke draws not a right to produce children, as the parallel with preservation would suggest, but a duty in parents to provide for the children they have produced. “Men are not proprietors of what they have meerly for themselves,” he adds, “their Children have a Title to part of it” (ibid.). Locke is explaining why children have a claim to inherit the goods of their parents in preference to the rest of mankind, under natural law.17 It is because natural law seeks the preservation of the race, and imposes upon parents a duty to provide. Once again, the logic of the argument draws our attention. When Locke argues from the strong desire of “propagation” to parental duty, it is not because the desire of propagation imposes the duty – for, to say nothing of other considerations, how many parents have been motivated rather differently, when they made themselves parents? Rather, as Locke puts it, when a desire is “wrought into the very Principles of their Nature,” this is to be taken as a sign of some divinely sanctioned purpose for men (§88; cf. Second Treatise §170). The desire is implanted for the furtherance of the purpose, and stands as its emblem; it is not in itself the source of the moral principle. The deep-seated desire for children is a sign of the divine or natural law purpose to perpetuate the species. The fulfillment of this purpose requires that duties of care and upbringing be imposed on parents. Given their equal provenance, Locke places this duty on a par with the right (or the duty) of self-preservation, “men being by a like obligation bound to preserve what they have begotten, as to preserve themselves” (§88). 17

He is also concerned to show, contra Filmer, that all the children of Adam would have shared his goods equally. When Locke says in the Second Treatise (§72) that a father has a right to disinherit wayward children, this applies to grown children, and does not derogate from his duty to care for them in their nonage.

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The passages on the family in the Two Treatises, as well as the analysis of natural law at the beginning of the Second Treatise, establish a priority of law and duty to right. When Lockean man listens to his reason, it teaches him of rights and duties that derive from the principle of “the preservation of all mankind.” In this respect, again, Locke’s natural law is, again, more like that of Richard Hooker or Thomas Aquinas, than that of Hobbes.18 Lockean reason, the voice of the natural law, takes the point of view of the generality. It tells us of our duty to provide for our children, to respect the rights of others, and in general to preserve mankind at large, as well as to care for ourselves.

Property and charity Locke’s extended treatment of property in the Second Treatise of Government is the part of his argument that seems to tell most against the foregoing interpretation, in favor of an “individualist” interpretation premised on right rather than duty. The argument of Chapter Five, “Of Property,” rests so squarely on individual right as to exclude, to all appearances, any “communal” elements, or duties. Individuals are given a right, rooted directly in preservation, to a limitless accumulation of property (after the invention of money, at any rate). They are not assigned any duty to help the needy in any way (except by not plundering their meager possessions), and the needy are not assigned any right to take from property owners what they need. Yet this presents a puzzle, both because of the arguments in the First and Second Treatises that place duty on a par with, or even above right, and because Locke specifically endorses a duty to share property with the needy, or charity,19 in the First Treatise. 18

19

Hooker, Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, 1.7–9; Aquinas, Summa 2.1.90.1–2; 2.1. 94.1; Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles (in Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Vol. II, ed. Anton C. Pegis [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997]), 3.112–13; cf. Hobbes, Leviathan, Ch. 14. See also Simmons, Theory of Rights, pp. 15–17. This is not to deny that there are substantial differences between Locke and the earlier authors on the issues before us. Some of these will be addressed later in this chapter. “Charity” is a term with broad and multiple meanings. This may lead to confusion, but I can find no better term to use in this context. I use the term to mean a putative moral duty on the part of the well-off to share some of their material possessions with those in need. The “right of necessity” is a closely

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Some have argued that we may read charity or a right of need into Locke’s treatment of property in the Second Treatise, owing either to its presence in the First Treatise, or Locke’s grounding of property in need in the Second Treatise, but it is not quite that easy.20 The passage endorsing charity in the First Treatise seems little more than an aside in a wider argument, while Chapter Five of the Second Treatise is Locke’s seminal treatment of property. This treatment is clearly in conversation with earlier theories of property (e.g., §§ 25, 29, 31). Many of the earlier theories, such as those of Thomas Aquinas, Hugo Grotius, and Samuel Pufendorf, had duties of charity and rights of the destitute built into them, as an internal part of their logical structure.21 Given this context, Locke’s silence on any such right or duty in Chapter Five cannot be construed as casual or inadvertent. Yet, the statement in favor of charity from the First Treatise is equally hard to dismiss: God the Lord and Father of all, has given no one of his Children such a Property, in his peculiar Portion of the things of this World, but that he has given his needy Brother a Right to the Surplusage of his Goods; so that it cannot justly be denyed him when his pressing Wants call for it . . . As Justice gives every Man a Title to the product of his honest Industry, and the fair Acquisitions of his Ancestors descended to him; so Charity gives every Man a Title to so much out of another’s Plenty, as will keep him from extream want, where he has no means to subsist otherwise. (§42)

This call for charity is hedged with numerous qualifications, and the exact extent of the duty depends a great deal on how we understand key terms in this passage. Nonetheless, this is an unmistakable endorsement of a duty to share with those in need – stronger, in some respects, than

20 21

related concept that will surface later in our investigation, referring to a putative right of the needy to seize what they need, if the well-to-do refuse to share. See Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, p. 172; Tully, Discourse on Property, pp. 131–32; Simmons, Theory of Rights, pp. 327–28. More will be said about these authors shortly. For discussions of seventeenth-century theories of property that included charity, see Laura Brace, The Idea of Property in Seventeenth-Century England: Tithes and the Individual (Manchester University Press, 1998), Chs. 2, 3, 5; Buckle, Theory of Property, Chs. 1, 2; Thomas A. Horne, Property Rights and Poverty: Political Argument in Britain, 1605–1834 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1990), Chs. 1, 2; Tully, Discourse on Property, Chs. 3–5; Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, Chs. 1, 3, 8.

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found in his predecessors. Locke gives us a duty on the part of the wellto-do, and a “Right” on the part of those in “extream want.”22 There is no explicit mention of a duty to repay, should the needy individual later be in a position to do so. Many earlier theories included such provisions.23 The “Title” to goods based on need is explicitly put on a par with the title to property derived from labor, of which we learn in the Second Treatise. Yet they are, potentially, conflicting titles to the same thing. How does Locke understand their relationship? Let us look at Locke’s account of the title to private property in Chapter Five of the Second Treatise, with particular attention to any room that might be in it for charity.24 It turns out that, along with the obviously individualist thrust of Locke’s account of property, Chapter Five of the Second Treatise contains a number of “communal” features at odds with a simply individualist theory. In the opening of Chapter Five, individualist right seems to be foremost. Locke says the root of the property right is that “Men . . . have a right to their Preservation, and consequently to Meat and Drink, and such other things, as Nature affords for their Subsistence” (§25). Both reason and revelation inform us of our right to material possessions, as a means to our preservation. But what comes next seems strange: this right supposed, Locke says, it still leaves unexplained “how any one should ever come to have a Property in any thing” (ibid.). Does not the first statement explain exactly that? It does not, according to Locke, because that statement refers to a collective right – the statement is plural – and does not in itself confer any right on individuals. The goods of nature originally “belong to Mankind in common . . . and no body has originally a private Dominion, exclusive of the rest of 22

23 24

Locke does not speak explicitly of a “duty” on the part of the prosperous in this passage. But I take Locke’s statement that “’twould be a Sin in any Man of Estate, to let his Brother perish for want of affording him relief out of his Plenty,” and his reference to the “Relief, God requires him [who has plenty] to afford to the wants of his Brother” to be equivalent expressions (§42). These statements make clear, I believe, that this is a duty on the part of the prosperous and not, for example, a simple appropriation-right on the part of the needy. See Horne, Property Rights and Poverty, p. 57, and my discussion of these theories, below. In what follows I will be using “property” to refer only to material possessions. Locke sometimes uses the term more widely, to include “life, liberty, and estate” (Second Treatise §§87, 123, 173), but our concern here is property in the narrower sense.

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Mankind, in any of them” (§26). Locke repeats the refrain no fewer than six times in the first three paragraphs of this chapter (§§25–27; cf. 32, 44). He does not want us to mistake his point: the primitive or underlying right of property is collective, and it must be modified or altered in some way to bring about private property.25 A purely individualist theory would not likely begin this way. Locke’s communal ownership argument is admirably suited to rebut Robert Filmer’s claim that God gave the world to Adam alone, but its ramifications do not stop there. To begin with, it creates the difficulty just noted, of explaining how private property did arise. Locke solves this difficulty with the following logic: God, who gave the earth to men for their benefit, must be “supposed” to have intended it not to remain common, for this would benefit no one. God must be supposed to have intended private property to replace the original grant in common (§34). Thus do we get the individual property right for which Locke is famous, but it now seems strangely tenuous. It is not an absolutely original or fundamental right. The original grant, to mankind at large, was positive and explicit, while private property is an inference we draw, from a variety of contextual considerations. It is a “supposed” necessary means to something else. This in itself is not too unsettling, for such suppositions also formed the basis of the arguments for the right of appropriation and the duty of parents in the First Treatise. We should note, though, that the root of all these suppositions is the common good of mankind, not the preservation of the individual per se – a difference that is not trivial, as we saw in the earlier cases. With regard to property, Locke’s argument is that God gave mankind the earth in common, he wished us collectively to prosper on it, and (only) for that reason conferred on individuals a right to appropriate 25

For a discussion of this problem that is similar in many respects to mine, see Andrej Rapaczynski, Nature and Politics: Liberalism in the Philosophies of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 181–86. To be sure, Locke is moving within a common trope here: many property theories of the seventeenth century supposed original common ownership, and sought to explain how private property arose out of it. See Richard Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics & Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 251, 256; Horne, Property Rights and Poverty, p. 10 and Ch. 1. We shall examine some of these theories presently. The fact that Locke is dealing with a common problem, or takes a common departure point, does not of course excuse us from examining his solution on its own terms.

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for themselves. The resulting private property right is indeed a right, and it is individual, but its underlying purpose, its raison d’ˆetre, is communal.26 It reflects the natural law’s focus on the preservation of mankind at large. If this is correct, private property is only a means for Locke, the end being the common good. Locke’s argument for property rights would then be essentially utilitarian.27 This in turn would seem to open the possibility that, if property under certain circumstances failed to serve the common good, it could be modified, restricted, or even abolished. It might in particular be overridden by the kind of charitable duty identified in the First Treatise, where the common good of mankind seems to require that some goods of the wealthy should be transferred to those in dire need. In such circumstances, need would trump the property right. As we shall see, something like this argument was common in the natural law tradition before Locke. But is this Locke’s view? There is one prominent line of argument in Chapter Five of the Second Treatise that seems to cut strongly against such a conclusion, and indeed against any utilitarian or instrumentalist interpretation of property. Despite the grant of the earth in common, Locke says, each man had a private and exclusive property in his own person (§§27, 44). His labor was his own, and external objects with which he mixed his labor therefore become his private property (§§27–30). This appears to ground property purely in personal right and personal need, exclusive

26

27

Compare Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics, p. 208; Kendall, Majority Rule, pp. 69, 72; Horne, Property Rights and Poverty, p. 29; Parker, Biblical Politics, pp. 134–35; Simmons, Theory of Rights, pp. 39, 48, 243–44. Simmons, Theory of Rights, has developed a version of this argument at significant length. I concur with much of what he says, though my argument is different in some key respects, which I will point out. Others who suggest a utilitarian interpretation of property are Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics, pp. 264–65; Horne, Property Rights and Poverty, pp. 59, 63; Kendall, Majority Rule, p. 72; E. J. Hundert, “The Making of Homo Faber: John Locke Between Ideology and History,” Journal of the History of Ideas 33:1 (1972): 3–22 (p. 11); Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. 242; Tully, Discourse on Property, p. 99; cf. Buckle, Theory of Property, p. 153. Richard Cumberland had published a treatise in 1672 that made property part of natural law, but grounded it entirely in a natural law principle of the common good. He concluded that property should be regulated in ways that served the common good (A Treatise of the Laws of Nature, trans John Maxwell [New York: Garland Publishing facsimile edition, 1978], 7.1–5, 9.6).

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of any communal considerations. In principle, it would justify private property whether that property served the common benefit or not. There is lively debate over the meaning of Locke’s assertion of selfownership in the chapter on property, and its relation to other parts of Locke’s argument. There is much at stake in this debate – in essence, once again, whether individual right is at the center of Locke’s moral philosophy, or the “transcendent” natural law rooted in the common good.28 If human self-ownership is prior or absolute, it rather than the common good is the true justification of property for Locke, with important consequences for charity, among other things. One thing that is acknowledged on all sides is that absolute self-ownership is incompatible with two other positions Locke takes in his initial presentation of natural law in the Second Treatise (§6). In one, Locke asserts that human beings do not have a right to commit suicide, whereas he elsewhere equates ownership with the right to destroy.29 The second is the ground of the first: human beings are forbidden to commit suicide because they are the property of God, “his Property, whose Workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one anothers Pleasure” (§6). The argument in favor of absolute self-ownership maintains that Locke puts forth these positions, and indeed his entire argument regarding a natural law rooted in the common good, as a provisional or even a decoy position, which he covertly replaces with self-ownership and individual right in the course of the Second Treatise.30 Now, there is no doubt that Locke does on occasion write esoterically, disguising his positions to make them appear more respectable, or traditional, than they are. There are reasons to think, however, that this

28

29

30

“Transcendent natural law” is the phrase of Michael Zuckert, who is one champion of the individual-right point of view. See Zuckert, New Republicanism, pp. 210, 216, 233. First Treatise §39; see Gary D. Glenn, “Inalienable Rights and Locke’s Argument for Limited Government: Political Implications of a Right to Suicide,” Journal of Politics 46:1 (1984): 80–105; Tully, Discourse on Property, p. 62. See Patrick Coby, “The Law of Nature in Locke’s Second Treatise: Is Locke a Hobbesian?” Review of Politics 49:1 (1987): 3–28 (pp. 7–10); Pangle, Modern Republicanism, pp. 157–60; Strauss, Natural Right and History, Ch. 5; Michael Zuckert, “The Recent Literature on Locke’s Political Philosophy,” The Political Science Reviewer 5 (1975): 271–304 (p. 303); Zuckert, New Republicanism, Chs. 7–9; Simmons, Theory of Rights, pp. 256–60.

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is not what he is doing in the present instance. For one, Locke’s natural law teaching is not a simple copy of some traditional model, as one would expect if he were presenting it merely as a decoy. It is a novel combination of elements that achieves a distinctly Lockean purpose, as we shall see. Further, the idea that we are God’s workmanship, and that this gives God ownership of and authority over us, occurs repeatedly in Locke’s writings, in contexts that are difficult to dismiss.31 It is vital to moral demonstration, as Locke presents it in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding: workmanship, or the relation of creator to created, is necessary to produce the relationship of authority and subjection necessary for the imposition of moral law.32 We are already familiar with the backdrop of modern science, among other things, that induces Locke to regard divine legislation as the only possible source of morality. As Locke says in the Essay, not only “natural law,” but morality tout court requires legislation of this type.33 We might say, then, within the context of Locke’s moral philosophy as a whole, that self-ownership in the fullest sense would be incompatible with human subjection to moral law. Or, put more simply, full self-ownership would imply freedom from all moral restraint.34 Locke himself suggests a more straightforward way of reconciling his assertions of self-ownership and divine workmanship. In the First 31

32

33 34

See Essay 2.28.8; 4.3.18; 4.18.5; Questions, pp. 205, 213; Second Treatise §§6, 56. See also Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics, p. 258; Ruth W. Grant, John Locke’s Liberalism (University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 21; Marshall, Resistance, Religion and Responsibility, pp. 206, 215, 267; Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, p. 80. Essay 4.3.18; 4.13.3. See also Second Treatise §§6, 56; Questions, pp. 117, 163, 203–207; Pufendorf, JNG 1.2.6 2.3.2. This was discussed at some length in the previous chapter. Essay 1.3.6, 12; 2.28.5. See the discussion of “moral demonstration” in the previous chapter. As Locke puts it in an unpublished fragment from around 1693, “If man were independent he could have no law but his own will, no end but himself” (“Law,” in Political Essays, p. 328). See also Tully, Discourse on Property, p. 36; Grant, Liberalism, p. 43; Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, pp. 83, 106. It could be argued that self-ownership is intrinsically moral because it implies respect for other self-owners, a kind of moral reciprocity (cf. Pangle, Modern Republicanism, pp. 187, 264; Zuckert, New Republicanism, pp. 277–78, 286). It is not clear to me though why self-ownership of itself implies reciprocity, rather than its Hobbesian opposite. In any case, Locke does not make any such suggestion in the passages under consideration, arguing rather from divine legislation.

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Treatise, he says that, though men have indeed a right to property “in respect of one another,” in respect to God, theirs is only a use-right (§39). Property is a genuine right, and absolute within the human sphere, but not absolute simply. In a similar way, human beings might be said to have property in themselves – self-ownership – without denying that they are also property of or subject to God, in a superordinate sense.35 This view of things makes better sense of Locke’s arguments in the Two Treatises, from his statements regarding parental obligations, to elements of his chapter on property, and serves better to integrate the argument of the Second Treatise with that of the Essay. If self-ownership were to be taken as the ground of property in an absolute sense, its only limit would be the limit of one’s labor. Yet, Locke no sooner introduces self-ownership as a ground of property in the Second Treatise, than he imposes an external limit on it. Someone might object, he notes, that self-ownership and labor create a title to property by which any one may “ingross” as much as he will (§31). Not so, says Locke: accumulation of more property than an individual can use before it spoils, in the state of nature, is a violation of the law of nature (ibid.). This limit, spoilage, might be thought insignificant because, in the state of nature, it would be largely self-enforcing (few will waste their labor by gathering things that will spoil in their possession), and would be of little practical significance when there is plenty (§§31, 36, 46, 48, 51).36 Nonetheless, spoilage is emphatically part of the natural law of property in the Second Treatise. Locke reminds us of it with surprising frequency (§§31, 33, 36, 38, 46, 48, 51). Spoilage is a moral limit on the use of the individual’s body and labor to make property. Where does it come from? The way Locke derives it reveals much about how he understands the natural property right. Locke begins, again, with the “communal” principle that the earth was given to men in common, for their benefit. This leads to the spoilage limit by a dual logic. First, the divine grant imposes a broad limit: it makes the earth ours to use, but not to waste (§31). This is a rather deep-cutting limitation of our property right, if we take it seriously. 35 36

Cf. Simmons, Theory of Rights, pp. 256–57. Cf. Strauss, Natural Right and History, p. 237; Zuckert, New Republicanism, p. 256; Francesco Fagiani, “Natural Law and History in Locke’s Theory of Distributive Justice,” Topoi 2 (1983): 163–85 – reprinted in Locke, Volume II, ed. John Dunn and Ian Harris (Great Political Thinkers series; Lyme, CT: Edward Elgar, 1997, pp. 7–29), pp. 166, 169.

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What it leaves us with might not be recognized as a true property right at all, by civil law standards.37 Second and more strikingly, Locke says that, in the state of nature, one who takes “more than his share” takes what “belongs to others” (§31). It “belongs” to them by virtue of the fact that God’s original grant is collective; it is a grant to mankind at large. Locke goes so far as to say that he who took more out of the common than he could use “robb’d” it of his fellow man (§46). Self-ownership, in other words, and the ownership of the labor of our bodies, is restricted if not trumped by the communal considerations underlying property. None of this is to deny that there is a natural, individual right of property for Locke, nor that this right is more fundamental in his theory than in those of earlier thinkers. But we cannot avoid the conclusion, it seems to me, that it is less fundamental for Locke than is often thought. It is derivative from, and subordinate to, an overarching principle of common benefit to mankind. That is, God and nature authorize and legitimize individual appropriation in the form of property (or so at least we must “suppose”), but the authorization is justified and in some respects limited by its underlying purpose, the common good. At this level, the logic of Locke’s argument is essentially the same as that of his predecessors Thomas Aquinas, Hugo Grotius, and Samuel Pufendorf. They too solidly defended private property, but on the basis of a prior and superordinate principle of the common good. They found, on that basis, a duty to share with those in need. The duty was built into the institution of property itself. We need to take a brief look at some of these earlier authors in order properly to understand Locke’s meaning.

The natural law background On the subject of property and charity, Locke is engaged in a conversation that was already centuries old in his day. His account is shaped to some extent by that conversation. Thomas Aquinas, representing the classical Scholastic view, and Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf, 37

Cf. Kendall, Majority Rule, p. 72; Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), p. 180; Tully, Discourse on Property, p. 62; Buckle, Theory of Property, p. 181; Richard Boyd, “The Calvinist Origins of Lockean Political Economy,” History of Political Thought 23:1 (2002): 30–60 (pp. 40–43).

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two pioneers of modern natural law, provide important context for Locke’s argument and help to clarify both his debts to earlier traditions, and his innovations.38 Thomas Aquinas held that in the strict sense, all external things belong to God. God alone has true property (dominium) in material things (Summa 2.2.66.1). Human beings, however, have a “natural” dominium over them; in a sense, they were made for our use (ibid.). By natural law, which of course is ultimately God’s law, men possess things in common. But it is lawful for men by agreement to divide this common into private property. Indeed, Aquinas says, the establishment of private property is “necessary to human life,” rehearsing the arguments Aristotle uses against Platonic communism in the Politics (Summa 2.2.66.2).39 Although the division of goods into private property is devised by human agreement rather than natural law, God and natural law smile on this development (ibid.). Aquinas does not trace the need for this institution to mankind’s sinful nature, as others in the Christian tradition had done.40 Still, the underlying condition, as we might call it (there is no “state of nature” here), is not private property, but common possession. This common reflects the divine intent that material nature serve mankind as a whole. Since common possession does not adequately serve this end, private property is established as a wholly legitimate and even necessary expedient to the same end. In accord with its “utilitarian” justification, private property can be suspended in cases where it conflicts with the common good. This is the case with what I am calling charity, which Aquinas refers to simply as need (“charity” being a much broader term in Christian theology). In cases of need, Aquinas maintains, there is a diffuse duty to share, on the part of those with plenty (2.2.66.7). If this fails, it is lawful for those in need to take the possessions of another without consent. His logic is that, in such cases, the original natural law condition of common ownership reasserts itself. Private property, which is of human institution, cannot derogate from its natural and divine ground. Whatever the possessors have “in 38 39 40

More complete accounts of these authors on the subject of property may be found in the authors cited in notes 20 and 21, above. Cf. Aristotle, Politics 2.3. For general accounts of this, see Frank Grace, The Concept of Property in Modern Christian Thought (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1953), especially pp. 20–30; Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, Chs. 1–2.

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superabundance” is owed to the needy by natural law; it becomes their property “by reason of that need” (ibid.). When they seize it, this is neither theft, nor a sin. Aquinas was able to rely in part on the tradition of Roman jurisprudence in asserting that common ownership was the condition established by natural law.41 Hugo Grotius relies explicitly on these same sources in asserting that the original arrangement was the possession of the earth by mankind in common.42 In this original condition, which Grotius conceives as an actual historical epoch, individuals could appropriate from the common stock to meet their needs (JBP 1.2.1.4; 2.2.2.1). This simple appropriation for use did not create or require property in the full sense: full property is not absolutely necessary to human existence. Full property rights and a division of titles became necessary, Grotius maintains, once men were no longer content to feed on roots and berries, and live in caves (2.2.2.4). That is, though property rights are not absolutely necessary for life, they are necessary for any but the most primitive form of life for man. Only with property, says Grotius, could human “industry” arise (ibid.), and all the advances that come with it. Still, while for Aquinas, God and natural law clearly favor the institution of property, Grotius’s natural law is neutral or indifferent. It allows, but could not be said to prefer, the institution of property (and hence the improvement of the human condition). Once property is instituted, though, Grotius holds that natural law imposes a moral obligation to respect it (1.1.10.4). As in Aquinas, property rights arise by consent or agreement among men. Locke was to find this position untenable (Second Treatise §29), but Grotius sees no other way out of the original, natural mandate of common ownership. Once common ownership was abandoned, Grotius supposes that the actual distribution of goods was based on present possession, or first occupancy (JBP 2.2.2.5). Consent transformed simple possession into true property. 41 42

See Justinian’s Institutes (Fordham University: Internet Medieval Sourcebook (www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/535institutes.html), 2.1.1. JBP 2.2.2.1. Grotius wrote an earlier work, The Law of Prize and Booty, which differs in some respects on issues relevant to us. I will rely exclusively on the later work, as Grotius’s mature statement (see De Jure Praedae Commentarius, trans. G. L. Williams and W. H. Zeydel [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950]). For a more detailed discussion of this point, see Zuckert, New Republicanism, pp. 129–38.

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Grotius is certain that the institution of property includes a provision for charity or assistance to those in need, but he is not certain why. It seems not to be the Christian law of love asserting itself (2.2.6.4). Rather, it must have been a part of the original compact establishing property. We must presume, says Grotius, that the original compactors, out of benevolence, included a clause providing for private possession to be suspended in case of sufficient need. We must presume that they intended the new institution not to violate natural equity, that they intended the primitive use-right to override property in case of conflict, in a kind of “right of necessity” (2.2.6.1–2). For Grotius, unlike for Aquinas, this right is not an instance of natural law re-establishing the original common ownership on behalf of the needy. It is rather part of the original property compact. In this and other instances, Grotius takes the position that natural law is of limited relevance to human conditions today, that civilized life requires us to supplement if not supersede natural law with human agreements. Property is only one example of this. Another is slavery: although natural law establishes freedom and equality among men, it allows slavery to be instituted by human beings. It does not stand in the way of absolute monarchy, if a society’s founding compact so ordains it. A right of resistance to government may or may not exist, depending on the terms of the original compact (JBP 1.4).43 As with property, natural law stands behind these human institutions once established, partly by its principle – pacta sunt servanda – human beings must abide by agreements they have made. They are free to make a wide range of agreements, obviously, even abrogating some original natural law principles, where a greater human good would be served by it.44 In the light of this, Grotius’s argument regarding charity or the right of need is somewhat odd. He makes essentially an a priori assumption concerning what the founders of property must have intended, or perhaps adopts a rule that the most benevolent 43

44

Grotius says that by the law of nature men are born free, but this applies only to a state of affairs that “precedes all human conditions,” and may be abrogated by compact (2.21.11). In this, Grotius is following his Roman sources (see Justinian’s Institutes 1.2, 3, 8; cf. Zuckert, New Republicanism, pp. 133–34). For a more complete discussion of these points, see Steven Forde, “Hugo Grotius on Ethics and War,” American Political Science Review 92:3 (1998): 639–48; Zuckert, New Republicanism, pp. 137–38.

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interpretation of the property compact is to be assumed.45 This is odd because the same interpretive procedure might have led him to suppose that every society’s founding compact bars absolutism, absent clear evidence to the contrary. Grotius does make this argument, but refuses to apply it unequivocally (1.3.8). Perhaps the prevalence of tyranny in human history prevented him from arguing thus, though it led Rousseau, for example, to brand Grotius a friend to tyranny.46 In any case, though charity or the right of necessity derives from human compact rather than from natural law, Grotius regards it to be a secure and binding moral rule, a rule incorporated into the original agreement establishing property. Samuel Pufendorf we have met already, as godfather to Locke’s theory of mixed modes. His theory of property was another widely influential part of his philosophy. Writing explicitly as a follower of Grotius, Pufendorf hews mostly to the same line of argument. In the original condition, the earth belonged to mankind in common. Each had a right to appropriate for his needs, but this use-right did not constitute a full property right.47 True property or dominium arose by human agreement, an agreement not required by God and natural law, but clearly favored by them (4.4.4). This difference with Grotius derives partly from Pufendorf’s view that the primitive appropriation right was not secure until some form of agreement had supervened. In the original state, men had a right to appropriate goods; but others were just as free to wrest them away if they could (4.4.4, 5, 9, 14).48 Here Pufendorf follows Hobbes, whose writings had appeared in the interim. In Grotius’s original condition, appropriation was enough to establish a right to exclude others; for Pufendorf, even this requires at least tacit consent (3.5.3). As Hobbes argued, therefore, it was absolutely imperative that men move beyond the original condition, to some kind of explicit compact establishing property. Accordingly, though the law of nature does not establish property, 45

46 47 48

Buckle (Theory of Property, p. 46) argues, with some plausibility, that in the matter of property and need, Grotius is deploying a pure a priori argument, disguised as an historical supposition. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On the Social Contract, trans. Judith R. Masters (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1978), 1.4, 5. Pufendorf, JNG 1.1.16; 2.2.3, 4.4. See also Cumberland, Laws of Nature, 7.2–3; Buckle, Theory of Property, pp. 78–79, 93. Cf. Grotius JBP 2.2.2.1.

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Pufendorf maintains that it strongly favors, perhaps even requires, the establishment of property by men (4.4.6; 1.1.3; 7.1.4). Pufendorf has another quarrel with Grotius, centering on charity or the right of necessity. Grotius and Pufendorf (like Aquinas) agree that the property convention includes a clause allowing the primitive right of appropriation to return in cases of necessity: those in dire need may take the goods of others without permission.49 But Pufendorf is concerned that Grotius did not define the relevant circumstances narrowly enough. Grotius did not specify, for example, that the one in need must not be in need due to laziness or other fault of his own. Further, before seizing another’s goods, Pufendorf stipulates that he must attempt to persuade the possessor to share. Finally, reparations should be made when possible for goods thus seized (2.6). Pufendorf is eager to narrow the operative conditions of the right of necessity partly because he is concerned, in a way that Grotius evidently was not, that this right could undermine many of the advantages that private property brings to human life. In the wake of Hobbes, Pufendorf emphasizes that stable property rights are vital to prevent conflict (2.6.5; 4.4.6, 7). But they serve another purpose as well: they are the precondition of commerce, and they stimulate human industry. They are essential in lifting the race above its primitive origins to the level of civilization we see today (2.6.5). Grotius had noted that private property was necessary for humanity to rise above the primitive condition, but had evidently not quite appreciated this point. Pufendorf fears that Grotius’s interpretation of the right of necessity may open the door to lazy and otherwise undeserving individuals to take from the provident. It may invite Aesop’s grasshoppers to take from Aesop’s ants, under cover of the “right of necessity.” Not only would this be unjust, it would jeopardize the progress that comes from honest industry.50 Pufendorf’s analysis of property, along with those of Aquinas and Grotius, demonstrates how a theory of property reflects a certain understanding of the relation of individual right and the common good. This is particularly true of a theory’s view of the duty of charity and its counterpart, the right of necessity. Locke’s theory of property 49 50

Grotius JBP 2.2.6.1–2; Pufendorf JNG 2.6. On this general point, see Buckle, Theory of Property, p. 117. Pufendorf suggests that government should proscribe laziness, while supporting the deserving poor (JNG 7.9.11).

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has salient differences from those of his predecessors, but he follows them in two crucial respects: the original situation is one of common ownership, and the establishment of private property out of this original common is authorized by a principle of the common good. We must give sufficient weight to the differences between Locke and his predecessors, but also to their agreement on this “communal” element. The limit of spoilage is one expression of the communal strain in Locke’s thought; does it lead him as well to endorse some form of charity, as it did his predecessors? The passage on charity in the First Treatise suggests a close kinship with the earlier thinkers. There, we recall, he says that the property right of any man is not so absolute “but that [God] has given his needy brother a right to the surplusage of his goods; so that it cannot justly be denied him, when his pressing wants call for it” (§42). This certainly sounds like a “right of necessity” that trumps the property rights of those with “surplusage,” as stipulated in the previous tradition. The condition under which it comes into play, extreme need, also echoes the condition postulated in the earlier tradition for this scenario. The “right” Locke gives to the man in need is equal to anything offered by his predecessors; the duty imposed on the man with plenty is, if anything, stronger.51 And what is the ground of this right and this duty? Locke prefaces this part of his argument with an allusion to the seminal moral principle of the First Treatise: God’s design is for mankind as a whole to “Increase and Multiply” (§41). As we noted earlier, Locke interprets this as the biblical equivalent of his argument in the Second Treatise that divine and natural law looks to the preservation or common good of mankind. The passage therefore seems to establish a link between Locke’s foundational moral principle, and a duty of charity and right of necessity. This has all the makings of a traditional stance on charity. And yet, it is delivered almost as an aside, with no explanation of how it might relate to a wider theory of property. And when Locke does get around to his theory of property, in Chapter Five of the Second Treatise, it is completely silent about charity. When Aquinas, Grotius, and Pufendorf gave their accounts of property, charity was integral. 51

It is stronger because the duty appears to lie on a particular individual rather than a diffuse set of individuals. This may be due to the context: Filmer’s Adam is the hypothetical case here – one man who possesses title to all earthly goods, and who would therefore have sole duty to share.

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Aquinas saw charitable duty and the right of necessity as a reversion to underlying natural law, in essence a part of the natural law of property. Grotius and Pufendorf made property conventional, but included charity as an essential clause of the property convention. If charity is a real duty or right, it represents a limit of a kind on property, or a potential claim to goods that overrides the title of property holders. It can hardly be left out of any philosophic account of property. Locke’s philosophic account makes property more fundamental than it is for his predecessors. Individual property is not of human institution, it requires no man’s consent. Although it was not part of the original arrangement (which was common ownership), it is a creature of bare unmodified natural law. Individuals create property by their first acts of sustaining themselves in the state of nature: appropriation for use, by itself, creates a full-blown property right. Natural law commands others to respect property thus gained.52 Yet Locke retains his predecessors’ ultimate justification of property by the common good. If Locke had wanted to follow his predecessors’ lead on the issue of charity, then, he would have stipulated that, as the natural law establishes property in the name of the common good, it simultaneously establishes the duty of charity or the right of necessity, as an explicit exception to that institution in cases of need. This exception would be integral to the institution of property. He might have hedged this duty with limitations, as did Samuel Pufendorf, but he could hardly have avoided mentioning it. The fact that Locke does trace property to the common good, and even imposes a limitation on it in the name of the common good (spoilage), makes his failure to mention any limitation or exception based on charity or a right of need all the more glaring. Why is Locke so reticent concerning this particular moral principle, particularly if, as Lady Masham insists, he practiced it in his own life? We can best make headway on this question, I believe, by broadening our view of his immediate philosophic predecessors, Grotius and Pufendorf.

52

Though this clearly distinguishes Locke from Grotius and Pufendorf, the case of Aquinas is somewhat ambiguous, because Aquinas is not much concerned with an original condition or state of nature in the seventeenth-century sense. It is enough for Aquinas that humans adopted a property regime at some point in the distant past, as God and natural law intended. Still, neither God nor natural law instituted private property.

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The “new natural law” Hugo Grotius is a pathbreaking figure in the history of political thought because of his new way of understanding natural law. Pufendorf follows him and Locke, by at least one account, is the culmination of this new way of thinking.53 Grotius infused the traditional definition of justice, “the perpetual and constant will to render to each his due,”54 with new meaning. He retained natural law as the basis of morality, but his natural law shifts decisively toward individual right, defining justice for the first time not as a general state of affairs, a proper distribution of goods and honors, but as respect for the personal integrity of the individual.55 He asserts, on the authority of Cicero, that human nature is rational and sociable, and that these, together with preservation, form the foundation of natural law.56 But whereas Cicero had created an austere and elevated notion of altruistic duty out of this amalgam of self-interest and sociability, Grotius uses it to fashion a remarkably minimal notion of justice. Rather than altruistic duties, Grotius extracts from the sociable element of human nature only the duty to refrain from what is “utterly repugnant” to society (1.2.1, 52). The just he permissively defines as whatever is “not unjust” (1.1.1, 34). 53

54 55

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Jean Barbeyrac, the eighteenth-century French translator and commentator, expresses this view (“An Historical and Critical Account of the Science of Morality,” introduction to Pufendorf’s Of the Law of Nature and Nations, Eight Books, ed. Jean Barbeyrac, trans. Basil Kennett [London, 1729], pp. 3–88 [pp. 79–82]). See also Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, pp. 174–75; Tully, Discourse on Property, pp. 5–6. Aquinas uses this formulation, borrowed from Justinian’s Institutes (Summa 2.2.58.1; Institutes 1.1). See also Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, Chs. 1–2. Grotius, JBP 1.1.4–8; Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, Ch. 3; Buckle, Theory of Property, Ch. 1; Zuckert, New Republicanism, Ch. 5. There is a budding presence of “subjective” or individual right in the late-scholastic contemporary of Grotius, Francisco Suarez, though not so prominently as to displace ´ traditional justice (On Laws and God the Lawgiver 1.2, 2.17; cf. Tully, Discourse on Property, pp. 65–67, 80). On the centrality of the suum (“one’s own”) as an innovation, see Karl Olivecrona, “Appropriation in the State of Nature: Locke on the Origin of Property,” Journal of the History of Ideas 35:2 (1974): 211–30 (p. 211); Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, Ch 1. For an argument that subjective right existed even in ancient Roman sources, see Benjamin Straumann, “Is Modern Liberty Ancient? Roman Remedies and Natural Rights in Hugo Grotius’ Early Works on Natural Law,” International Law and Justice Working Papers, 2006/11 (www.iilj.org). JBP 1.1.3; 1.2.1; Cicero, de Officiis 1.4; 3.10.42.

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Grotius’s natural law bars only clear injustices, acts that are unambiguously destructive of society. Justice is directed to the bare preservation of social peace. It is not directed to the achievement of any higher human purposes. Grotius does not deny that we have duties to the traditional moral virtues, and even the pious virtues. He follows Cicero in separating lower and higher principles of our nature, and in stipulating that the duties coming from the higher principles, sociability and rationality, are more authoritative (1.2.1). But it becomes clear rather early that Grotius does not intend this in the same way as his classical predecessor. Though civil law may enforce any of the higher duties that it wishes, Grotius denies that any of these is a part of justice or natural law strictly speaking (1.1.8; 1.1.7; 1.1.4; 1.1.9). He adopts Aristotle’s distinction between contractual justice (which Grotius calls “expletive justice,” iustitia expletrix), and distributive justice (“attributive justice,” iustitia attributrix, 1.1.8). The first is based on legal possession, while the second relies on differential individual merit (in Aristotle’s example, the flute is properly his who can use it best: Politics 3.7). For Aristotle, the second is clearly higher, though the first is obviously necessary for political order. Grotius, however, says that only the first, legal justice, is justice properly speaking (1.1.8; 2.17.2–3).57 The second is indeed a part of morality, but not of justice (1.1.8; 1.1.7; 1.1.4; 1.1.9; 2.17.2–3; 2.20.20.1). In case of conflict, mere justice prevails. Grotius approvingly relates the tale from Xenophon’s Cyropaideia in which the young Cyrus is whipped for exchanging the cloaks of a large and a small boy. Cyrus took justice to be natural fit rather than legal or conventional ownership, but he was mistaken (1.1.8, 37). Justice is not concerned with ranking individuals and allotting them goods or honors on the basis of merit; it is concerned only with preserving each in the possession of what he has (Prolegomena 10, 1.1.7–8). It takes its bearings from the suum, from what each has, rather than any notion of what he should have or deserves to have. This understanding of things points in the direction of a distinctly modern natural right. The role of political order becomes primarily the protection of current possession, not the achievement of a more perfect arrangement of things: “society has in view this object, that through community of resource and effort each individual be safeguarded in 57

Cf. Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, pp. 68, 75.

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the possession of what belongs to him” (1.2.1, 53). Politics is thereby shorn of what used to be regarded as its higher and truest purpose.58 More broadly, Grotius’s approach minimizes natural duties, expanding individual liberty correspondingly. Society becomes a product of compact or agreement – natural sociability does not create a natural bond or obligation sufficient to ground social order, or to orient society toward higher purposes. Compact, says Grotius, is the only way that men could obligate themselves to one another (Prolegomena 15). True obligation or “perfect” right belongs only to the relatively minimal dictates of justice (1.1.5, 35; 1.1.9, 38; 1.1.10, 39). Grotius identifies right as a facultas, “a moral quality of a person,” and notes that this is what the jurists call the right to one’s own (suum: 1.1.4, 35). This suum includes life and liberty, as well as such things as chastity and honor – whatever cannot be violated without violating a person’s fundamental integrity or right. It includes goods one had appropriated from nature in the primitive condition, and it includes property, once property is established.59 This conception of rights as a kind of personal property, respect for that property becoming the fulcrum of morality, became characteristic of modern natural right. Samuel Pufendorf explicitly follows Grotius’s lead on many of these points, but modifies the theory in important ways. Since Locke prefers Pufendorf to Grotius as a teacher of political philosophy in Some Thoughts Concerning Education, and adopts a version of Pufendorf’s theory of moral modes, Pufendorf’s version of the new natural law is of special interest.60 Like Grotius (and Cicero), Pufendorf finds a mixture of self-interestedness and sociability in human nature, which together form the foundation of natural law. Pufendorf agrees with Grotius that, at its basic or compulsory level, natural law’s demands are 58

59

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The classics did not necessarily propose that statesmen should act on or attempt to implement this higher purpose. Aristotle does not propose confiscating the flutes of incompetent flute-players, and Cicero makes a statement in favor of ownership (and against redistribution) as strong as the remark of Grotius just cited (de Officiis 2.21.73). Grotius, however, cuts off the higher purpose as a matter of principle. Grotius, JBP 1.1.4–5; 1.2.1.5; 1.2.5.7; Pufendorf, JNG 3.1, 2.5; 7.8.4. These thinkers provide an interesting platform from which to consider the very contemporary issue of what should be included in individuals’ “right,” and why. See Buckle, Theory of Property, pp. 29, 77; Olivecrona, “Appropriation,” pp. 211–18; Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, pp. 16–17. Some Thoughts Concerning Education §186. On Locke’s adaptation of Pufendorf’s theory of modes, see the previous chapter.

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minimal. Natural law forbids only the most grossly antisocial behavior, behavior incompatible with social peace (3.1.1).61 The only truly obligatory or perfect natural duty we have to others is to abstain from harm. Sociability itself allows each to care first for himself, and in the first instance requires only that he allow the same to others (2.4.1). But even this minimal duty is tenuous in the natural state. There are exceptions to the principle of no harm, in cases of self-defense or other necessity (2.5; 2.6.2; 3.1.1; 4.4.6). And, as we saw in the discussion of property, Pufendorf argues that though individuals have a right to appropriate goods in this state, these goods could also be wrested from them (4.4.5). The primitive right of appropriation, based on the human need for food, clothing, and the like, is not strong enough in itself to exclude others. Natural law awaits human agreement to fix or solidify even the simplest kind of right and duty.62 This part of Pufendorf’s theory is obviously influenced by Hobbes. Pufendorf agrees with Hobbes that, in their natural state, humans’ impulses of preservation and self-interest predominate, and men become “malicious, aggressive, easily provoked.”63 That is, this is how they would behave in a hypothetical condition where they were thrown together, with no arts, and no ties to one another (2.2.1). It is instructive to think about how human beings would behave under these circumstances, Pufendorf agrees, but he denies that this “natural state” ever existed; if nothing else, humans beings would have lived in families from the beginning (2.2.4; 8.1.5). Although their “Hobbesian” side would doubtless assert itself under hypothetical circumstances, they also have a rational and sociable side that Hobbes failed to recognize, and this makes the Hobbesian “natural state” less than determinative. Ignorance too is characteristic of the “natural condition,” Pufendorf notes, but no one considers this normative for human life or behavior (2.2.4). Rather, nature desires, expects, even demands that we move beyond this condition, to a more “civilized” life, based on a cultivation 61 62

63

Pufendorf, Duty of Man and Citizen 2. JNG 3.5.3; 4.3.1; 4.4.4. It is not clear how Pufendorf understands this argument. If I have a perfect natural duty to abstain from harm, does not taking another’s goods constitute harm? Perhaps we are to understand that the natural title to appropriated goods, before the property convention, is weak enough that others may take from my stockpile of acorns without moral “harm.” Or perhaps, in Hobbesian fashion, insecurity is great enough to justify their actions. Pufendorf, Duty of Man and Citizen 3.7–9; JNG 1.2.1–3

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of sociability that will do better justice to our nature. This requires in particular that we secure a morality that goes beyond the minimal principle of no harm (1.1.3; 7.1.4). Reason does not tell us to concern ourselves with our own interests exclusively, Pufendorf insists in opposition to Hobbes. It tells us to serve others’ interests as well, and to show equal respect to all (2.2.9; 3.2–3). Pufendorf’s treatment of equality and human pride provides a revealing contrast with Hobbes (3.2). Pufendorf seconds Hobbes’s argument that treating others as equals is necessary to social peace, as no one will enter a social contract on grounds other than equality (cf. Hobbes, Leviathan, Ch. 15). He agrees with Hobbes that failing to acknowledge equality is a violation of natural law. But where Hobbes made this precept part of a blanket condemnation of human pride, Pufendorf displays human pride in a more positive light. Human nature is endowed with a self-esteem, he notes, that makes human beings exceedingly sensitive to slights (3.2.1). Sociability does not require suppression of this prickly sense of honor, unless it leads to claims of superior right. Sociability requires us rather to accommodate it in others, for this universal self-esteem reflects a sense that human beings as such have intrinsic dignity (ibid.). Pufendorf does not devote himself only to undermining pretensions to superiority, therefore, but preparing us as well to acknowledge the equality of all in a positive sense, based on common dignity. Sociability requires us not only to treat others as equals as means to our own security, but to take this equality to heart, as a principle of universal honor or respect. Thus, although heeding the basic principle of no harm is to our personal advantage – needlessly provoking enmity is to no one’s benefit – this bedrock principle of natural law is also already an expression of human sociability (Duty of Man and Citizen, 6.2). We are closer to the analysis suggested by Locke’s synopsis of natural law at the beginning of the Second Treatise: the no-harm command is a consequence of the general moral principle that all are to be acknowledged as equals, rather than a simple expression of self-interest (Second Treatise §6). For Pufendorf, this is only the beginning of sociable natural law. Human beings, he notes, display a natural affinity to “kindness, humanity, fidelity, gratitude, and the like” (2.3.5). Indeed, Pufendorf asserts, natural law creates a bond of friendship among all men (2.2.7). Hobbes was categorically wrong therefore to assert that men are naturally at war; despite their behavior in the hypothetical natural state, they are at peace by nature (2.2.7–8).

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Pufendorf’s natural law mandate of sociability results in an escalating set of duties. First is the one perfect natural duty not to harm, representing the minimum requirement of social peace, but sociability requires us to move beyond this. Hobbes correctly surmised that the natural state does not allow for even minimal cultivation of sociability, and that we are therefore under at least a latent or imperfect duty to move beyond this condition. Once again, though, Hobbes was wrong to rest this duty purely on individual interest. Sociability gives us an independent duty to cooperate for the purpose of lifting human life to a higher plane (1.1.3; 2.1.3). Pufendorf’s natural law is teleological or “perfectionist” in a way that was not true even of Grotius. Pufendorf’s stronger endorsement of the property convention, as an instrument of progress, is one sign of this. Another is that natural law, in and of itself, requires us to serve others in a positive way (3.3.1). Duties of positive service cannot become the basis of social progress, however, unless they are solidified by compact, for many are not willing to do their sociable duty unless they can be assured of benefits in return. Indeed, compact is necessary, Pufendorf tells us, because sociability is not strong enough in itself to overcome our natural liberty (2.2.4). Therefore, consent is required to transform the latent duties of sociability into perfect and binding ones. We have a duty to enter into such compacts, to bind ourselves to sociability and pave the way for a more civilized mode of life (2.2.11; 4.4.1). Human beings establish, by consent, a host of institutions and moral modes in furtherance of the general mandate of sociability. Property is one of these. Political society is another. The role played by consent is emblem enough of the gulf between Pufendorf’s theory of sociable morality and the classical model exemplified by Cicero. This difference is traceable partly to the influence of Grotius and Hobbes, but we should be aware that it is a reflection as well of Pufendorf’s theory of “moral modes.” The first premise of this theory is that material facts, such as natural human inclinations, have no moral significance. This Pufendorf takes modern science to have shown. Moral entities or obligations must then be “modes” imposed or superimposed by intelligent agents upon material facts.64 Thus, the sociable elements of our nature do not in themselves have any moral 64

JNG 1.1.3; 2.3.4. On “moral modes,” see the discussion of Pufendorf in the previous chapter.

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import, and Pufendorf specifically denies that sociability can be conceived of as man’s “natural end,” as the classics held (2.2.4; 2.3.4; cf. 1.6.11). Pufendorf speaks rather of a natural law mandate that human beings follow the lead of these inclinations and make themselves sociable.65 Knowledge of this law is not innate, as it would doubtless be if it were a product of inclination; we must reason our way to it (2.3.13). A key part of this reasoning is discovery of the god who imposes the law on us for, as we saw in the last chapter, God is the only agent capable of imposing moral modes in an objective and binding way (1.1.3, 4; 1.2.5–6; 1.6.4). Although our sociable inclinations do not themselves impose duties on us, therefore, they point toward an object of divine legislation (2.1.5; 2.3.4). These inclinations, along with reflection on the fact that sociable behavior is necessary to the survival and progress of humankind, teach us of the natural law and its content. The scope of this law is great, but its content is vague. It mandates whatever will best serve the peace and progress of society. Many different moral modes and institutions might serve the general good, at different times and places. God and natural law therefore leave it to human societies to devise the proper regime for their time and place. The resulting modes and institutions are given “real existence” and become binding by human consent, but the ultimate authority behind them is God and natural law (1.6.4; 2.2.5–6). Pufendorf’s understanding of political society exemplifies this approach. Despite human sociability, political society is a creature of compact, not nature. It was instituted, according to Pufendorf, by men who sought only to further their own interests, with no thought of any higher goal (7.1.5–7). Thus far, Hobbes was correct. By nature though, or under natural law, the social contract also has the higher purpose of advancing a more “civilized” life for man (1.1.3; 7.1.4). Grotius was correct to see that the moral principles associated with sociability give society a separate, and independent, moral entitlement. Grotius and Pufendorf represent interesting attempts to combine a social contract understanding of politics with a sociable understanding of human nature. Though they are clearly architects of the platform from which liberalism was launched, this combination prevents 65

Pufendorf, Duty of Man and Citizen, Preface §2; 3.8–9; JNG 2.4.6, 3.1–3; 7.1.1–4. This idea is visible as well in Pufendorf’s discussion of the duty to treat all as equals, possessing the dignity of all human beings.

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Grotius and Pufendorf from being fully liberal. They paved the way for liberalism by moving individual right to the center of social morality, and with it self-interest.66 The primacy of individual freedom or individual right dictates that political society can be created, and gain authority over men, only by their consent. Its primary task is the protection of individual right and possession, which is also the cardinal concern of natural law (and, for Grotius, the limit of justice). Neither Grotius nor Pufendorf is fully liberal, however, because they hold that the basic individual rights are neither inalienable, nor indefeasible. Both argued that individuals can cede all their rights, contracting themselves into slavery. Entire peoples can do the same.67 Although peoples are obviously masters of themselves at the moment they elect to establish a state, the terms of the social contract may cede sovereignty entirely and irrevocably to others. Grotius denies even that government is always for the benefit of the governed; it depends upon the terms of the original compact (JBP 1.3.814–15). If the original contractors found it advisable to establish absolute monarchy over themselves, such a government would be wholly legitimate. Not even their descendants would be justified in rebelling against the yoke.68 Grotius, at least, does not believe that absolutism of this type is common, even among the European monarchs of his day,69 and neither he nor Pufendorf (in contrast to Hobbes) believes that it is intrinsic to the social contract, but they will not exclude it from possibility. Two reasons may be assigned for these “illiberal” features of the philosophies of Grotius and Pufendorf. The first is that they take human will to have greater freedom vis-a-vis the law of nature than ` do liberals like John Locke. Although human beings are free by nature or by primitive natural law, this freedom may be abrogated by compact, just as original common ownership may be superseded by the institution of private property. Such institutions are then sanctified by natural law. Natural law is directed to the human common good, and Grotius and Pufendorf are willing to believe that, under certain 66 67

68 69

See Buckle, Theory of Property, p. 51; Zuckert, “Do Natural Rights Derive from Natural Law?,” p. 185. See Grotius, JBP 1.3.8; 2.5.27; Pufendorf, JNG 7.6.5; 7.8.6 Pufendorf maintains that sovereignty is illimitable, and the law of nature intends the ruler to be unfettered (2.2.4). Grotius hedges a bit in this. JBP 1.4.4.5; 1.4.7.2; cf. Pufendorf, JNG 7.6.6. Grotius, JBP 1.3.14; 3.20.5.1; Pufendorf, JNG 7.6.8–10, 13.

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circumstances, the common good may be served by slavery and absolutism. Even where it is not advantageous, human beings are free to make this choice (Grotius, JBP 1.3.8.2). Second, and relatedly, the role of sociability in Grotius and Pufendorf dilutes the individualism of their political philosophies in ways contrary to classical liberalism. Although society can be established only by individual consent, and although its core task is protecting individual right and possession, its character as an expression of human sociability gives it independent standing. Once civil society is established, it acquires a kind of higherorder right, different from any right that individuals possessed in the natural state. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Sovereign right, the expression of a higher good, can in key circumstances prevail against individual right.70 There is at least an echo here of the Scholastic doctrine (itself an echo of Aristotle) that the political community is a complete or perfect whole, a body possessing powers and rights that the constituent individuals by themselves could never possess.71 This is particularly true for Pufendorf, who is more emphatic about duties of sociability than Grotius, and who links them to a teleology of human development or flourishing. He asserts that government is “natural” in a very real sense, despite its origin in voluntary compact (2.2.4; 7.1.4–8). It is intended if not commanded by God and natural law. On this basis, Pufendorf can claim that sovereignty comes ultimately from God, giving it a majesty or sanctity of its own (7.3.2–3). This might be explanation enough for Locke’s failure to follow Grotius and Pufendorf in identifying “sociability” as part of human 70

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Grotius, JBP 1.1.6; 1.1.12.1; 1.2.1; 1.4.2.1; 2.1.9.2; 2.9.23; Pufendorf, JNG 2.2.4; 2.2.8; 2.3.5; 3.3, 3.4; 3.5.3; 7.6.5; 7.8.4–6; 8.2.5. See also Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, pp. 72–3, 78–81; Buckle, Theory of Property, p. 19; Horne, Property Rights and Poverty, p. 38; Marshall, Resistance, Religion and Responsibility, p. 201; Zuckert, New Republicanism, pp. 136–38. Benjamin Straumann argues that Grotius has an essentially liberal understanding of subjective rights, and argues strongly for the presence of such rights in Cicero and Justinian’s Institutes. While subjective right is doubtless present in all these authors, I believe that a gulf remains between them and Locke, for the reasons given (Straumann, “Is Modern Liberty Ancient?”) See Aquinas, Summa 2.1.90.2; 2.1.96.4. Aquinas traces this view to Aristotle’s argument for the completeness of the political community, and its priority to the individual. See also Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics, trans. Ernest Fortin, in Medieval Political Philosophy, ed. Ralph Lerner and Muhsin Mahdi (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1963), pp. 297–334; Proemium §4; 1.1.11.

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nature, or making it a root of natural law, despite the sociable elements that appear in his treatment of those subjects. He does not give human beings a right to contract away their freedom (unless their lives are already forfeit), or establish absolute monarchy. He enshrines individual right more securely, and does not give sovereignty any rights or powers that individuals did not possess in the state of nature. The whole is not greater than the sum of its parts; the common good is nothing more than the sum of individual goods (cf. First Treatise §92). The status of individual right vis-a-vis government authority becomes ` correspondingly stronger. These things make him a liberal in the classic sense. We should be wary though of overstating the difference between Locke and these two philosophic predecessors. He does make the human common good the focus of natural law, and asserts that that law makes mankind one community (Second Treatise §128). Grotius and Pufendorf argue for what we might call a two-tiered morality. Self-interest and individual right form the first tier, and account for the part of morality – called “justice” by Grotius and identified with the no-harm principle by Pufendorf – that is compulsory even prior to compact. Though more solid, it is lower. Both thinkers would balk, however, at any suggestion that this lower tier represents the whole of their moral teaching. They argue for a higher tier as well, a part of morality rooted in sociability, whose duties may be weaker or more imperfect, but still are natural duties, and may (perhaps should) be made perfect or compulsory by compact. Their doctrines of charity within the property compact, to return to our main theme, may be seen as one expression of this.

Property, charity, and the Lockean common good It is Locke’s view of the relation of individual right to government power that makes him a true liberal. The issue of charity though, as we have defined it, has less to do with government authority than with the strength of the property right vis-a-vis claims of need in other indi` viduals. Does Locke’s stronger individual right and silence on sociability dictate a narrower view of charity on the personal or moral plane? Let us return to his treatment of property in Chapter Five of the Second Treatise. There, Locke describes the transition from common to individual property in this way:

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God gave the World to Men in Common; but since he gave it them for their benefit, and the greatest Conveniencies of Life they were capable to draw from it, it cannot be supposed he meant it should always remain common and uncultivated. He gave it to the use of the Industrious and Rational, and Labour was to be his Title to it; not to the Fancy or Covetousness of the Quarrelsom and Contentious. He that had as good left for his Improvement, as was already taken up, needed not complain, ought not to meddle with what was already improved by another’s Labour. (§34)

We are familiar with the first argument. God’s overarching purpose is human benefit and “convenience.” Common ownership is God’s initial provision, but it must be modified in order to fulfill that purpose. Locke differs from Grotius and Pufendorf in holding that the original provision was necessarily inadequate, that full-blown private property is necessary not just for social progress, but for human survival. His position is somewhat disingenuous, in light of the fact that Grotius and Pufendorf had provided for this situation with their simple appropriation-right short of property. They agree that an Indian picking an apple in the state of nature has a right to it; it is Locke who insists that this Indian will starve unless we grant him full-blown property rights over the apple (Second Treatise §§16–17). Consequently, for Locke, unlike for Grotius or Pufendorf (or Aquinas), property rights are secured by a purely natural process ordained by natural law, and require no human agreement. Why, in the face of the preceding accounts that were very well known to him, did Locke make this novel argument?72 The way Locke states his case in the passage above indicates part of his motivation. It was God’s intent not only that man subsist in the world, but that he draw the greatest possible “Conveniences of Life” from it. He wished us not only to gather the spontaneous fruits of the earth, but to “cultivate” it. As Locke asserted in the First Treatise, God’s injunction to mankind to “be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth . . . contains in it the improvement too of Arts and Sciences, and the conveniences of Life” (§33). Grotius and Pufendorf agreed that the improvement of human life beyond a primitive level required private property, but they did not 72

Locke’s position is not entirely novel; other writers had argued for a property right by nature. For brief accounts of some of these, see Peter Laslett, “Introduction,” in John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge University Press, 1960), pp. 3–126 (p. 102); Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, Ch. 8.

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believe that the law of nature in itself provided for that property, or that progress. In order to move beyond the primitive condition, human beings needed to modify original or bare natural law. We could say that Locke’s law of nature is more provident. We could also say that Locke’s law of nature is more demanding. The material progress that was merely a possibility for Grotius, and a latent duty requiring human initiative for Pufendorf, becomes for Locke an imperative directly from the mouth of God. “God, when he gave the World in common to all Mankind, commanded Man also to labour . . . God and his Reason commanded him to subdue the Earth, i.e., improve it for the benefit of Life” (Second Treatise §32). God gave the earth to mankind at large, as he has told us repeatedly; but, in view of his purpose that mankind prosper on it, this donation turns out to be something of a test. In reality, as Locke says two paragraphs further on, the donation was made to the “Industrious and Rational” who would labor on it, and not to the “Quarrelsom and Contentious” (Second Treatise §34). This remarkable statement almost undercuts the notion that God gave the earth to mankind as a whole. It may even threaten the principle of equality that Locke laid down in his original exposition of natural law. Or perhaps it sheds light on that principle; we will examine that question presently. One clear consequence of Locke’s argument, though, is that property receives an elevated status. Individual property rights are not merely one way to serve the common good of mankind, or the preferred way, or even the most economically efficient way. They represent the sole, divinely mandated way. This is a rather large claim. It is not only economic, it is theological. Part of its justification is Locke’s new argument concerning the virtues of property, which he puts on display in Chapter Five of the Second Treatise. The outlines of this argument are familiar enough. Human labor is the principal source of wealth, so the general level of wealth depends on how much labor humans expend.73 General prosperity will be increased by stimulating human labor, but there are at least two preconditions. The first is the securing of property rights, to secure 73

Locke does not hold to a simple “labor theory of value,” though the schematic argument of Chapter Five can give that impression. I follow the schematic here, but for a more subtle accounting of Locke’s economics, see Karen Iversen Vaughn, John Locke: Economist and Social Scientist (University of Chicago Press, 1980), especially Ch. 2. See also Jeremy Waldron, “Enough and as Good Left for Others,” The Philosophical Quarterly 29:117 (1979): 319–28 (p. 323).

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the materials and the rewards of labor. The second is the expansion of those rights to potentially limitless accumulation. This happens in Locke’s account after the introduction of money, which unleashes the power of human labor for the first time on a grand scale (§§36–40). Locke recites his economics lesson in part as justification for his “supposition” that God must have ordained the right of property from the beginning, that natural law, even in its primitive and unmodified state, must sanction it. As a moral argument, though, it has two features that we must particularly note, for they seem to cut in opposite directions. First, the argument is fundamentally utilitarian, in the manner we noted before – private property is ordained (only) because it is necessary to the general prosperity of the race. This is the argument’s communal element. But second, as just noted, private property is the sole approved or allowed means to that end. God gave the earth to men in common – this is the token that his providence encompasses the race as a whole – but he intends it to be divided into private possessions, as the only means to attain his end.74 Locke makes the reasonable assumption that God is aware of basic economic principles. He is aware that if the love of money is the root of many evils, it is also a source of general good. In all its honest forms, therefore, he smiles on this love. He knows that the pursuit of one’s own interest is not the expression of a corrupt or fallen nature, but a benign, indeed useful attribute. He commands man to labor, pursuant to his design for the race as a whole. But he knows that commanding alone will produce indifferent results, that providing rewards for that labor is the only reliable means to elicit it. Finally, he knows that placing moral limits on accumulation through labor, once money has fully unleashed the power of labor, will only harm the common good of mankind. It would be a mistake to think that Locke is driven to this argument, in spite of himself, by a discovery of free-market principles. The centrality of self-interest is not confined in his understanding to homo economicus. We recall Locke’s argument in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding that self-concern is inseparable from rational

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We should beware of concluding that material prosperity is the sole aim of Locke’s God and his natural law, though that is Locke’s focus in the Second Treatise of Government. The inclusion of “arts and sciences” in the statement of the First Treatise hints at the richer view of human flourishing that stands behind Locke’s natural law. See Myers, Star and Compass, pp. 248–49.

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consciousness.75 God therefore knows that any laws or commands he lays on a rational creature must be matched with incentives – rewards or punishments or both – if compliance is reasonably to be expected. Locke’s God provides such incentives for his natural law (Essay 1.3.6, 2.28.6). Locke’s reliance on private incentives in economic matters is not casual or unconsidered, therefore, but part of a broader philosophic teaching. That teaching holds that conferring individual rights upon rational creatures, entrusting – and charging – them with their individual welfare, is the most effective way to advance the general welfare. The derivation of these rights from the general welfare, or the moral goal of the “preservation of all mankind,” is reflected in certain limitations on the rights, canvassed above, and the fact that these rights can also be construed as duties. We have not only a right to accumulate property, but a duty to labor. We are not only entrusted with our own welfare, we are charged with responsibility for our own welfare. This is the thrust of Locke’s regime of rights. It is visible in other places as well, such as Locke’s rationale for religious liberty.76 All of this militates against any role for charity in Locke’s account of property. In a sense, Locke’s scheme of economics and property replaces traditional Christian charity with Baconian charity – good brought to the human race by technical means, as it were, rather than by the milk of human kindness.77 If Pufendorf was worried that Grotius’s right of necessity could undermine the social progress that property produces (JNG 2.6), Locke’s economic analysis compounds that concern. If prosperity depends upon allowing the industrious to accumulate limitlessly, and to keep their gains, saddling them with a duty to share may harm the common good. Promulgating a strong duty to charity could even stigmatize the acquisitive drive upon which the machinery of the general good depends. Certain it is that Locke’s chapter on property, where the self-interested foundation of his argument is most fully on display, makes no provision for charity. Even 75

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Locke, Essay 1.3.13; 2.7.3–4; 2.20.2; 2.21.41–42, 61; 2.27.17, 26. See also the essay “Morality” (in Political Essays, pp. 267–69), and the section entitled “Consciousness and moral motivation” in the previous chapter. In the Letter Concerning Toleration, Locke’s argument rests as much on a duty – the duty of each believer to come to his beliefs rationally, to take responsibility for his own salvation – as on a right of religious liberty (Letter Concerning Toleration, pp. 26, 37). See Bacon, New Organon, Proemium, Preface; cf. Locke, Essay, 4.12.11.

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the deserving poor, however defined, are completely unprovided for in Locke’s account of property and the state of nature.78

Justice and charity This will go some way toward explaining why Lady Masham felt compelled to defend Locke’s charitable nature. But the fact that Locke would have had reasons for excluding charity from his account of property does not establish that it has no place in his moral thought. If Locke believed, as Lady Masham tells us, that charity was indeed a moral principle, what place exactly does it have in his moral thought? What duties does it impose upon us, and how does Locke reconcile it with the strong elements of self-interest in his philosophy, and especially his account of property? A clue might be found by returning to the passage on charity in the First Treatise. Locke there says, we recall, that God “has given no one of his Children such a Property . . . but that he has given his needy Brother a Right to the Surplusage of his Goods” (§42). He then explains: As Justice gives every Man a Title to the product of his honest Industry, and the fair Acquisitions of his Ancestors descended to him; so Charity gives every Man a Title to so much out of another’s Plenty, as will keep him from extream want, where he has no means to subsist otherwise. (§42)

This explanation hinges on a distinction between “justice” and “charity.” The two are at odds, yet they are both valid moral principles. Locke’s formulation makes clear that he is aware of the tension between them, yet assigns each of them a place. This line of thought suggests that the account of property in the Second Treatise is an account of “justice,” whose silence on “charity” might be explained and excused by the division between the two moral domains. Is this 78

This is why I believe it is not quite enough to say that Locke ignores charity in his treatment of property because he believes that his new engine of prosperity will virtually eliminate poverty (cf. Buckle, Theory of Property, pp. 149–50, 157, 161; Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, p. 177; Strauss, Natural Right, p. 243). He does have great and justified faith in that engine. It is also true that he believes many of the traditional poor can and should be disciplined to labor (see his recommendations on the Poor Law, in Political Essays, pp. 182–98). But there will always be the old, the infirm, and the unlucky – those to whom he directed his own charity, in Lady Masham’s report.

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the explanation for which we have been looking? If so, it answers some questions, but raises others. We would need to know, for example, how the two moral domains are related, and of course, which principle prevails under what circumstances. The distinction between justice and charity, and their relationship in Locke’s mind, is illuminated in a short meditation he wrote in 1695 (that is, at a later date than the Two Treatises), entitled “Venditio.”79 Locke never published the piece, but it has received attention in recent years because of the light it sheds on our question. Its subject is the just or fair price in commerce, which Locke asserts to be the market price. Justice condemns any attempt to force the seller to sell below that price (pp. 340, 342). It is legitimate for a seller to realize a windfall profit if he finds a market where, due to shortage or any other influence (it could be the whim of fashion), his wares sell dear. This is true, Locke says, even if the shortage is a famine, and the merchant is selling food. Of course, justice does not require that the seller take his windfall; but if he sells below market price to accommodate the need of another, this is not justice, but charity. Charity, we conclude, is a more demanding moral standard than justice, but one to which the merchant cannot be held. It is praiseworthy, but not morally required. If our merchant happens upon a starving town, however, where the people cannot afford to pay the famine-inflated market price for his food, the situation changes. Here, Locke says, the merchant “offends against the common rule of charity” if he insists on the market price (p. 342). If he carries away his goods, and any of the people subsequently starves, Locke pronounces, he is “no doubt guilty of murder” (ibid.). This is strong language, and more than a little paradoxical. This merchant has abided by all the rules of justice, he has demanded no more than the market price, and yet is charged by Locke with murder! In both this and the passage on charity in the First Treatise, Locke is very precise in his language: though charity is a duty, it is not a duty of “justice.”80 Justice, in matters of property, is concerned only with respecting the possessions of others and with fair rules of trade, a standard relatively easily reconciled with self-interest. Charity is a more exacting moral standard, but one to which people cannot strictly 79 80

This piece can be found in Political Essays, pp. 339–43. Cf. John Dunn, “Justice and the Interpretation of Locke’s Political Theory,” Political Studies 16:1 (1968): 68–87 (pp. 74, 82–3); Fagiani, “Distributive Justice,” p. 164; Boyd, “Calvinist Origins,” pp. 47–49.

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be held – except in certain circumstances. We seem to have a twotiered moral theory, with justice occupying the lower (morally less demanding) tier. This in itself would not be novel. Thomas Aquinas did not go beyond moral common sense when he distinguished between perfect duties, which were morally obligatory, and imperfect ones, denoting actions that were praiseworthy but not obligatory – above and beyond the call of duty, as it were (Summa 2.2.99.6). More pertinent to Locke is the two-tiered theory developed by Grotius. As part of his new natural law, we recall, Grotius redefined justice or right “in the strict sense,” as a minimal moral standard. Justice in this sense was confined to the “not unjust,” injustice being what was “utterly repugnant to a rational and social nature” (JBP 1.2.1.3; cf. 1.1.3.1). Justice thus allowed all but grossly antisocial behavior. We could equate it with the principle of “no harm” that Pufendorf finds to be the floor of morality, and that Locke identifies with natural law at the beginning of the Second Treatise (§6). Grotius acknowledged the validity of moral principles beyond this, more expansive or demanding principles such as Aristotelian distributive justice, but denied that they were obligatory, or part of justice in the strict sense (1.1.8–10; 1.2.1.3; 1.2.6.2).81 “Sociability” amounted in the first instance to no more than a minimal duty to respect the rights of others (1.2.1.5; 2.1.4.1).82 But sociability led also to higher moral imperatives, which could trump the lower. Individual rights could be eclipsed by the superior right of society, in certain cases (1.1.6; 1.2.1.2; 1.4.2). For Grotius, therefore, a pioneer of the morality of individual rights, those rights reflected a new and lower moral standard, but one that could and should be supplemented by higher moral concerns, concerns connected with the common good. The lower standard, protection of the individual suum, was the core concern of government, though again, sociability provided an entr´ee for others. Locke’s Second Treatise may be read as a work resting almost entirely on Grotius’s lower ground, on justice defined in the minimal sense of respect for others’ rights. This minimalism is signaled at the outset, when Locke identifies natural law with the no-harm principle. The basis of natural law, he tells us, is the preservation of 81 82

Cf. Locke, Second Treatise §54; Buckle, Theory of Property, p. 31; Zuckert, New Republicanism, pp. 139–41; Forde, “Hugo Grotius,” pp. 640–41. Cf. Pufendorf, JNG 2.2.9; Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, p. 72; Tully, Discourse on Property, p. 86; Buckle, Theory of Property, p. 71.

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all mankind, but the morality Locke draws from this principle is the slightest that could possibly be drawn from such a principle: men are duty-bound only to refrain from harming or destroying one another (§6). In Chapter Five, certain limits are placed on the accumulation of property, limits rooted in the principle of the common good. Yet these limits too – spoilage, and the “enough and as good” proviso – are duties only to do no harm, and include no duty to assist those in need. Locke has reasons for adopting this approach in the Second Treatise, beyond those reviewed above. He wishes to render rights secure in the political and economic realms in a way they were not for Grotius or Pufendorf. This requires that they be largely immune (in the political and economic realms) from eclipse by other, communal or “sociable” moral principles. Such principles can too readily be invoked to violate individual rights, as the examples of Grotius and Pufendorf (not to mention large swaths of subsequent history) show. “Justice” deals with individual right exclusively; defending justice, thus understood, becomes the sole or almost the sole purpose of government. As Locke says in the Second Treatise of Government, the protection of property (property understood broadly as rights) is the raison d’ˆetre of civil government (§§3, 87–88, 123, 124, 127, 131, 138). This is the recipe for classical liberalism and its distinctive individualism. And yet, the basis of all of this for Locke remains the higher-order moral imperative to further the good of mankind as a whole. This is the origin of our paradox of charity, which now becomes part of a larger issue in Locke’s philosophy. We concluded earlier that, though property is instrumental to a larger good that justifies it, property rights are secured by the fact that they are the only approved means to that good. A parallel logic leads us now to the suggestion that Locke’s defense of rights in politics has this character as well: the common good is best served by government that is confined to defending individual right, and is severely limited in the claims it can make against individual right based on a higher-order communal claim. Natural law therefore dictates that it is illegitimate for any government to overstep these bounds. This is Locke’s innovation within the tradition inaugurated by Grotius. Rights become essentially indefeasible in the realm of “justice” or politics, even if they are ultimately grounded in a prior principle of the common good. Though rights are not the bedrock of Locke’s moral system, they remain largely immune, in the political and economic

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realms, from infringement in the name of the kinds of “sociable” principles that Grotius and Pufendorf allowed. If Locke’s system of rights-under-natural-law is “utilitarian,” we would at least have to call it “rights utilitarianism.”83 Locke’s limitation of government and economics to concerns of justice (in its narrow sense) makes him a principal founder of liberalism. His prominence in that role, though, has led many to the false conclusion that justice so understood defines the limit of Locke’s moral horizon. The fact that other moral concerns have been expelled from politics does not mean that there are no other moral concerns. The fact that natural law limits government largely to enforcement of “justice” does not mean that justice is the limit of natural law. The arguments we have been reviewing are largely confined to Locke’s political and economic thought, giving that thought its distinctly individualistic or rights-centric or “uncharitable” character. When we look at Locke’s writings as a whole, we are struck by how atypical the Second Treatise is with regard to these concerns. In the previous chapter, we saw that the Essay Concerning Human Understanding is virtually silent on the 83

Cf. Simmons, Theory of Rights, pp. 54–55, 61, 78, 337; Strauss, Natural Right, p. 235n. Utilitarianism is typically differentiated from liberalism by the fact that it allows the sacrifice of individual interests if that advances overall social utility. “Rights utilitarianism” is the theory that a regime of largely indefeasible individual rights leads to the greatest social good, even though in isolated instances the respect for rights will lead to a socially harmful result. I do not mean to imply too close a relationship between Locke and later utilitarians; his full moral theory has more the character of deontology. See Nathan Tarcov, Locke’s Education for Liberty (University of Chicago Press, 1983); Simmons, Theory of Rights, pp. 40, 45, 57–58, 100; Myers, Only Star and Compass, pp. 12, 248–49; Peter Berkowitz, Virtue and the Making of Modern Liberalism (Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 81. Some interpreters have used something like my line of argument to claim that Locke is not devoted to individual rights at all, granting virtually unlimited power to the community (see C. B. Macpherson, “The Social Bearing of Locke’s Political Theory,” The Western Political Quarterly 7:1 [1954]: 1–22 [p. 2]; Laslett, “Introduction,” p. 105; Kendall, Majority Rule; Tully, Discourse on Property, pp. 99, 161–65; cf. Grant, Liberalism, p. 99). My argument is that Locke gives individual rights much higher status, as the sole allowable means to the common good in politics and economics. I also differ from Simmons, whose parallel “rule-consequentialist” interpretation allows property rights to be more easily overridden by charity (Theory of Rights, pp. 50–51, 223, 291, 327–36). Simmons mentions the possibility that Locke’s theory is tiered in the way I argue, but does not develop the point (Theory of Rights, pp. 328–29; cf. p. 63). He accuses Locke of being less charitable than his philosophic principles require (Theory of Rights, p. 331).

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subject of “rights,” presenting morality almost exclusively in terms of natural law and duty.84 We have noted already that Some Thoughts Concerning Education is similarly reticent about “rights.” Locke would be somewhat chagrined, I believe, were he to learn that, more than three centuries after his writing all these works, the Second Treatise of Government has become the definitive, indeed exhaustive, statement of his philosophy for all but a few readers. It is not that the Second Treatise is a falsification of Locke’s views. It is the definitive statement of his views on the fundamental issues of politics.85 Yet for that very reason, it presents a truncated version of Locke’s moral philosophy or moral outlook as a whole. The point is made with great clarity in the Letter Concerning Toleration. As is well known, Locke there makes a sharp distinction between the political and the ecclesiastical realms. His argument is formulated more broadly, though, resting on a distinction between the political and the moral realms in general. Politics is confined to the worldly interests of “Life, Liberty, Health, and Indolency of Body,” as well as material possessions (p. 26). This is not the whole of morality, however, as Locke hastens to add: Covetousness, Uncharitableness, Idleness, and many other things are sins, by the consent of all men, which yet no man ever said were to be punished by the Magistrate. The reason is, because they are not prejudicial to other mens Rights, nor do they break the publick Peace of Societies. (p. 44)

The gist of this passage, for our purposes, is this: Locke’s restrictions on government action exclude it not only from religious affairs, but much of what Locke considers legitimate morality – including “charitableness” in individuals. Government’s role is limited to safeguarding rights and keeping the public peace; but Locke is far from believing that these are the limits of morality itself. The morality of “Rights,” as he describes it here, is a partial morality. The account of natural law he provides at the beginning of the Second Treatise limits it to the principle of no harm, something we found puzzling in the light of its broad grounding in the good of all mankind. But, to repeat, Locke does not there say that “no harm” is the limit of natural law, or of morality per se. Even government, it turns out, is not to be wholly confined to this part of morality. Locke’s proposals on the Poor Law 84 85

Locke, Essay 2.21.42–70; Schouls, Reasoned Freedom, pp. 63, 111, 125, 152. That it is not an “exhaustive” presentation of his views on politics he tells us himself in the “Preface” to the Two Treatises of Government.

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suggest a limited role for government in relief of the needy (and in forcing them to labor, which was depicted as a duty in the Second Treatise §35).86 He might well have favored government enforcement of other duties that go beyond no harm, such as the duties of parents. Still, when writing of politics and economics, Locke writes within a limited moral horizon, which is not the horizon of the natural law as such (cf. Questions, pp. 125–27). Readers who know Locke solely or primarily from his political works risk getting a false impression of him, the impression that Lady Masham strove to rebut. Unfortunately, Locke never wrote anything laying out his understanding of the natural law, insofar as that law goes beyond mere “justice.” Friends urged him to write such a work, by way of completing the teaching of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, but he never did.87 We do not know what degree of “Covetousness, Uncharitableness, Idleness” and similar vices constitutes violations of the natural law. Aside from suggesting, in “Venditio” and the passage in the First Treatise, that a kind of “right of necessity,” and corresponding duty on the part of the well-off, asserts itself in certain extreme situations, Locke says little. In the final analysis, so far as I can tell, Locke does not provide us with any systematic account of how “justice” and “charity” relate to one another.

Equality versus rationality? Final discussion of this issue must be postponed to the next chapter, where we will concentrate on Locke’s educational treatise, and what it teaches us about Lockean morality. For now, there remain some paradoxes of Locke’s moral teaching that we have glimpsed, but not fully confronted. These deal broadly with the Lockean understanding of equality. There is no shortage of scholarly commentary on the principle of equality in Locke, so what follows will be limited to a discussion 86

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Locke drafted a model Poor Law in 1697 that makes provision for the poor a government responsibility, at least in part (in Political Essays, pp. 182–98). In other respects the proposal is quite harsh. Simmons (Theory of Rights, p. 335) correctly points out that we must be wary of drawing too much from this essay, as it was commissioned of Locke in an official capacity, which may have dictated its parameters. In A Third Letter for Toleration, Locke suggests some power in the magistrate to punish “corrupt manners” and “debaucheries” (pp. 416; 116–19, 202–24, 469). See note 48 in the previous chapter, and associated text.

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of equality insofar as the foregoing analysis of Locke’s philosophy places it in a distinctive light. For Locke, the principles of freedom and equality are intertwined, or even reciprocal. Locke’s initial statement in the Second Treatise of Government makes them sides of a coin, alternative ways of stating the single moral precept that no human being has a natural right to rule over another human being (§4).88 Discussion of one of these principles therefore inevitably implicates the other. Charity, as we have seen, poses a challenge to individualist freedom, deriving as it does from a more communal or sociable moral principle, and representing a title to goods different from individual labor. Other parts of Locke’s theory, as we have also seen, seem to place equality in jeopardy. Paradoxes emerge when we compare the treatment of these two principles in the Second Treatise to their treatment in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The Second Treatise makes individual liberty sacrosanct in ways that it was not for Grotius or Pufendorf, for example, or for Hobbes. Freedom is enshrined as a right or a package of rights. If these rights are not the bedrock of Locke’s moral system, they are integral to it. Yet, it is characteristic of the Second Treatise to present liberty and rights as rather low or humble things, as a mere “fence” to individual preservation (§§17–18, 23). This is reflective of the lower ground on which the Second Treatise is built, with natural law largely confined to the no-harm principle, and government largely limited to protecting freedom as a safeguard of individual material interests. The Essay, by contrast, describes morality in terms of subjection to law, virtually excluding any mention of the “rights” that are so prominent in the Second Treatise.89 The Essay presents a much richer account of freedom, making freedom (or the proper use of freedom) “a perfection of our nature” (2.21.48; cf. 1.1.1; 2.21.51, 53). As we saw in the previous chapter, reason entails the ability to suspend appetite, to conduct a review and consideration of true happiness, and to shape appetite (or unease) in accordance with law. Our duty, according to the Essay, is to undertake this self-formation. In more modern 88

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To be precise, Locke says that, in the state of nature, “power and jurisdiction” among men is “reciprocal.” This distinguishes Locke’s state of nature from that of Hobbes, allowing for enforcement of the law of nature in the state of nature, even by third parties. See the discussion in the section “Consciousness and moral motivation” in the previous chapter.

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terminology, freedom in the Essay is positive freedom, compared to the largely negative freedom of the Second Treatise.90 As such, its relation to the principle of equality is much more problematic. Any form of perfectionism or positive freedom naturally sets the stage for a moral hierarchy, determined by the degree to which individuals conform to the perfection that constitutes the lynchpin of morality. The accounts of freedom and law in the Essay and the Second Treatise are not incompatible, but they present very different faces. It is not immediately apparent how they are to form a single moral vision. If law rather than right is the foundation of Locke’s argument in both the Second Treatise and the Essay, as I have argued, this resolves some of the tension. Rights themselves are a product of the natural law principle that seeks the preservation of mankind. Yet this only aggravates the problem of equality and perfectionism in Locke: to the extent that the Second Treatise places law prior to right, it too contains a perfectionist element. And indeed it does. The Second Treatise explains at length that children are not entitled to freedom until they develop sufficient rationality to become aware of and follow the law of nature (Chapter Six). In a statement that would be at home in the Essay, Locke there says, “we are born Free, as we are born Rational” (§61). That is, we are rational and free in potentia. The same is true of equality: children “are not born in [the] state of equality, though they are born to it” (§55). In the Second Treatise, the duties attached to rational freedom and equality are less demanding than in the Essay. They are less self-perfection than industry, the pursuit of material sufficiency and comfort, while heeding the no-harm principle. But even this is enough to create a gradient of inequality. We recall Locke’s statement that God gave the earth to the “Industrious and rational,” to the exclusion of the “Quarrelsom and Contentious” (Second Treatise §34). Still more striking is the argument, made at multiple points in the Second Treatise, that individuals who egregiously disregard the law of nature forfeit their rights. In some of the most memorable language of that work, 90

The concepts of “positive” and “negative” liberty were distinguished by Isaiah Berlin in the essay, “Two Concepts of Liberty” (Berlin, Liberty, ed. Henry Hardy [Oxford University Press, 2002], pp. 166–217). Positive liberty is the liberty to do only the right or moral thing, negative liberty is freedom of choice within wide limits. Some versions of positive liberty, that of Rousseau for example, revolve much more around citizenship and duty to the community. This is virtually absent from Locke’s Essay. See Rousseau, Social Contract 1.6, 1.8, 4.2.

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Locke declares that these violators may be treated as beasts, savage lions or tigers, even destroyed if necessary (§§11, 8; cf. §§16, 172). The right to punish such offenders is the one case in the Second Treatise of man gaining a natural jurisdiction over man – a natural inequality or hierarchy – just as reason gives man dominion over irrational beasts (§8, cf. First Treatise §30). Though men are “equal by nature,” then, it is also true, paradoxically, that equality must be merited or earned. However discordant this may be to our sense of Locke as an egalitarian, it dovetails well with the “metaphysical” teaching of the Essay, which asserts that human beings have moral standing not as human beings, but as rational creatures. By that logic, a rational monkey would have standing, an irrational human would not. Defiance of natural law, which is defiance of reason itself, could then forfeit moral standing, forfeit the rights along with the responsibilities of a moral creature. What we need to know is, in both works, how severe is the gradient of inequality entailed by Locke’s argument? Where does the threshold of culpable irrationality, of forfeiture of right, lie? Conversely, how difficult is it to earn the status of a rational equal? And what proportion of the adult population, in Locke’s view, fails to earn that status? Interpreters of Locke have not reached a consensus on this issue.91 Locke’s political philosophy would certainly seem to rest on a virtually universal human sharing of rights. Yet all must also acknowledge the strikingly inegalitarian elements in his thought. In order not to mistake ourselves in this matter, we must bear in mind what “egalitarianism” means for Locke (as for Grotius, and Hobbes, and Pufendorf), and what it does not. Equality consists first and foremost in the fact that neither wisdom, nor extraordinary virtue, nor any other human perfection, constitutes a natural “title to rule” 91

The volume of writing that addresses Locke and equality cannot be canvassed here. Regarding our specific issue, Peter Schouls has argued that Locke believes humans to be only potentially bearers of rights, since they must demonstrate a certain level of rationality in order actually to acquire rights (Reasoned Freedom, pp. 125, 135–36). See also Myers, Only Star and Compass, pp. 39–41, 57, 214–15. Michael Zuckert and Jeremy Waldron argue that equality is much broader for Locke, since the mere potential for rationality, the nearly universal possession of rational capacity, entitles one to the moral respect represented by rights. See Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, pp. 141–50; Jeremy Waldron, “Response to Critics,” Review of Politics 67:3 (2005): 495–513 (pp. 503–4); Zuckert, “Locke – Religion – Equality,” p. 430. See also Simmons, Theory of Rights, pp. 79–85, 99–101, 113n.

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over others without their consent, as the classics held.92 We must never forget that the modern understanding of, and argument for, equality was forged as a response to these premodern claims. Extraordinary virtue or merit, Locke says, may give a “just precedency,” but confer no “jurisdiction or dominion” (Second Treatise §54). However we decide the questions now before us, this is the fundamental sense in which Locke (and the other modern thinkers) will always have to be considered “egalitarian”: those who are far above the threshold of equality (however defined) gain no authority by it. All those above that threshold, however, by Locke’s argument, gain jurisdiction over those below it. This jurisdiction is necessary to Locke’s argument that all have a right to punish violators of the natural law in the state of nature, an argument that distinguishes Locke from some of the other moderns.93 This jurisdiction represents a real inequality, but we would like to know how great, or how pervasive, it is. In the Second Treatise, Locke (eventually) tells us that, in the state of nature, the “greater part” of mankind are found to be “no strict Observers of Equity and Justice” (§123). Has this greater part failed to attain the rationality that entitles them to rights? Do they fall into the category of beasts who may be destroyed at will? This would place Locke’s principle of equality in extreme jeopardy. Things do not seem to be so dire, however. Though the moral failings of this part of mankind compel the formation of government, they are not all capital offenses. Part of the natural law of punishment, as Locke presents it, is the principle that “lesser breaches” of the law do not merit being killed like a beast (§12). There is a gradient of irrationality, of natural jurisdiction, of inequality, even among those who have fallen below the threshold of full moral rationality. Nor is their irrationality necessarily irremediable. Locke tells us the root of their misbehavior is self-interested bias, and neglect of the study of natural law (§124). As a result, he says, they “are not apt to allow of it as a Law binding to them in the application of it to 92

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See, e.g., Plato, The Laws of Plato, trans. Thomas L. Pangle (University of Chicago Press, 1988), 690b–c; Aristotle, Politics 3.17. Of course, this does not mean that the classics believed these titles could or should be acted upon in the ordinary course of politics. Locke calls this a “strange doctrine” in Second Treatise §13 because this natural power to enforce the law, and the limited natural jurisdiction it confers, separates his theory from some of his predecessors’. Hugo Grotius is an interesting if partial exception (see JBP 2.20.3.1).

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their particular Cases” (ibid.). This suggests not ignorance of the law of nature so much as a failure on the part of these individuals to apply it fairly, that is, equally to themselves and others. They seem to recognize the fundamental principle of natural law, and presumably will apply it properly when their own interests are not at stake. What they have not done, what Lockean reason demands of them, is to take an objective viewpoint, the viewpoint of mankind at large, and appreciate that their right is truly no greater than the right of any other. For them, and for many who violate the law in the state of nature, admonition may be all they need. Locke subsequently stipulates that one purpose of the social contract and municipal law is to clarify and make explicit the natural law, for the benefit of those apt to “mis-cite, or misapply it” in their own cases (§136). The educative effect of civil law, then (together, of course, with its enforcement power), may be enough to bring a great many of these derelicts into the fold of rational equals. One reason for the failure of individuals to follow the law of nature in the state of nature, surely, is its vagueness. One reason for the establishment of civil society is the need to provide uniform and definitive interpretation of the natural law, in its specific applications. For although the charge of government is only to apply natural law (Second Treatise §12), the vagueness of that law is such that, without authoritative interpretation, disputes could well arise between two individuals both of whom are sincerely applying “natural law” as they see it (cf. §136). Locke goes so far as to say that, despite the existence of the natural law, in the state of nature, “there wants an established, settled, known law, received and allowed by common consent to be the standard of right and wrong” (§124). Since this statement is seemingly at odds with Locke’s claim that the natural law is “intelligible and plain” to all (§12), and impinges on our question of the rational equality of all, we need to dwell on it a bit. The fundamental principle of the law of nature is “the peace and preservation of all mankind,” as Locke tells us repeatedly (Second Treatise §§7, 11, 171, 182). This gives us a general principle of egalitarian fairness, according to Locke, but does it give us anything more precise? Honoring the right of the Indian to the apple he has picked, or others’ right to life and limb, are easy cases. But what does the “preservation of all mankind” mandate in difficult or ambiguous cases? The relation of “justice” to “charity,” which we explored earlier, represents one class of such cases. Even within justice narrowly understood, what

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about the rights to water in a stream, or innocent passage over terrain, or myriad other cases that may arise even in the state of nature? Locke gives us relatively little guidance on these matters. In connection with the rules of punishment, he tells us “it would be beside my present purpose, to enter here into the particulars of the law of nature” (§12); it seems always to have been beside his present purpose.94 Perhaps he wished to avoid the controversy that a novel teaching would inspire, if revealed in detail. Perhaps it is his view that the law of nature is nothing more than the one fundamental principle, the preservation or utility of mankind. Individual precepts of the law would then be mere corollaries derived from this, and might not warrant treatment as “natural laws” unto themselves. This would be not unlike the natural law theories of Aquinas, Pufendorf, and Hobbes, to mention only those with whom we are familiar.95 In the case of the first two of these, this entailed that the application of natural law was variable, depending upon circumstances. Such an approach would militate against too detailed a discussion of “the particulars of the law of nature.” But Locke’s natural law is less flexible than that of Aquinas and Pufendorf. Slavery or absolutism, for example, are excluded under all circumstances (except criminal forfeiture of life), and religious toleration is required. Property is an institution established directly by natural law. These Lockean precepts derive from a distinctive Lockean view of the human common good (and divine will). What we seem to lack is a systematic

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It may not be fair to tax Locke with evasion here. Some of the more tedious portions of Hugo Grotius’s Law of War and Peace are devoted to working out such details of the natural law (To whom do alluvial deposits belong? The downstream landholder, or the upstream owner of the soil that was washed away? JBP 2.3.16–18). Thomas Hobbes undertook a less detailed exposition of the laws of nature, listing nineteen such laws (Leviathan, Chs. 14–15), but Locke never even went that far. On this point, see Yolton, Compass of Human Understanding, p. 172; Rabieh, “The Reasonableness of Locke,” p. 941. Patrick Coby draws a set of specific precepts of Locke’s law of nature (“Is Locke a Hobbesian?” pp. 3–5). This is useful, but goes only part of the way toward specifying the natural law. The first two of these differ from Locke in identifying not one but multiple root principles of natural law. These principles differ in rank, allowing for a lower tier of natural law (rooted in preservation), and a higher (rooted in rational sociability). Hobbes and Locke identify a single principle, rooted in preservation; but since for Locke it is the preservation of mankind as a whole, this results in a two-tiered natural law mimicking to some extent the sociability of the earlier theories, as I have argued.

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account of how the fundamental principle, the peace and preservation of mankind, leads to these distinctively Lockean conclusions. Yet, according to Locke, the misapprehension or misapplication of this principle may forfeit one’s status as a rational equal. Perhaps we should approach this problem by asking the question, what exactly does Locke expect ordinary people to understand of the law of nature?96 What degree of understanding will elevate them to the status of equals? We must bear in mind that for Locke, morality is fundamentally a matter of knowledge. In the Second Treatise, natural law is universally accessible, but only to one who will “consult” his reason and become a “studier” of the law (§12; §6). Knowledge of the natural law comes only from reasoning: it is not “conscience” in the traditional Christian sense; it is not innate. The Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which begins with an extended attack on the notion of innate ideas (1.2–4), makes the same point explicitly regarding moral ideas: they must be found out by reason (1.3).97 As to the character of this knowledge, the Second Treatise of Government and the Essay Concerning Human Understanding give somewhat different accounts. The Essay speaks forcefully of the “due consideration” we are morally bound to exercise, in pursuit of our own true happiness (2.21.46–67). This is the substance of the Essay’s perfectionism, but the Essay does not make clear how mentally arduous this “due consideration” is. The principal example of neglected consideration in the Essay is alcoholism, which suggests that it is not terribly arduous. Still, strikingly inegalitarian statements may be found in the Essay. In one place, Locke asserts that “there is a greater distance between some men and others,” in respect of their understandings, “than between some men and some beasts” (4.20.5).98 He entertains the possibility that these differences are due to defects in “the organs of the body 96

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I give a more extended treatment of this question in the essay, “What Does Locke Expect Us to Know?,” The Review of Politics 68:2 (2006): 232–58. The present treatment differs in some respects from that one. See also Essay 2.21.46. Similarly, Locke asserts in “Of the Conduct of the Understanding” (p. 323) that the will is completely subject to the understanding. Locke notes at another point that some animals seem to have as much “reason” as “some that are called men” (3.6.12). The bearing of this on our question is ambiguous, since it is tied up with Locke’s dismissal of the notion of a human “species,” and may refer to “naturals” who are not moral agents, being “called men” on the basis of a species notion that neglects rationality.

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particularly adapted to thinking,” or in “natural differences of men’s souls themselves.” Or, he says, they could be due merely to lack of practice or exercise – and declines to decide the matter, as “not necessary to our present purpose” (4.20.5). Yet it would seem to be quite necessary to our ultimate assessment of Locke’s egalitarianism. Fortunately, Locke does resolve this issue, in an egalitarian sense, in “Of the Conduct of the Understanding,” an essay originally intended as a final chapter for the Essay Concerning Human Understanding.99 The essay begins by conceding that there are great differences in the natural intellectual endowments of men, differences that no amount of practice or education can erase. Those endowments are scattered across the classes of society, and among uncivilized peoples such as the Native Americans (p. 325). In Europe, those with the leisure have a kind of duty to develop a real mental acuity, Locke maintains – and this essay, he says, is addressed primarily to them (p. 340). Grasp of the rational fundamentals, however, is within the capacity of ordinary “plowmen” and other unleisured people (p. 342). So far as mental adequacy is concerned, then, all ordinary human individuals are at or above the threshold of equality. This will only resolve our difficulty, however, if two other conditions are met. First, the moral knowledge Locke requires of us must be simple and straightforward enough for the capacities of these ordinary individuals, that the grasp of the “fundamentals” is enough. The statements just cited imply that it is, but we shall find some reasons to doubt this. Second, however accessible the knowledge is, individuals must still exercise their intellects to develop it, must become “studiers” of the law of nature. If otherwise capable individuals fail to develop a proper understanding of natural law, and violate it as a result, they will forfeit their status as equals. Both the Second Treatise and the Essay give prominent attention to classes of people who fail of their duty to develop moral knowledge. In “Of the Conduct of the Understanding,” Locke notes that we are “born to” the estate of “reasonable creatures,” but do not automatically qualify for that status (p. 337). The formulation echoes the statement in the Second Treatise that children are “born to” the state of equality, though not “born in” it (§55) – they must develop their rationality in order to attain equality. The statement in 99

This essay was apparently begun in 1797, and would have been appended to later editions of the Essay (which first appeared in 1690).

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the “Conduct,” more soberingly, applies to adults as well as children. Civil law, as Locke notes, must stipulate an age at which individuals are presumed to be rational, and endow them with full rights at that age (§59), but that does not affect our question. The capacity for moral rationality is different from the actual development of that capacity. We return, then, to the question, what exactly does it take for a human being to attain the status of a rational equal? What does Locke expect the ordinary liberal citizen to know of the natural law? And how many actually develop the requisite knowledge? Locke tells us in the Essay that morality is a “demonstrative science” capable of certainty, yet, as we saw in the previous chapter, Locke himself never produced this demonstration, at least not in full.100 In The Reasonableness of Christianity, Locke says that a scientific moral demonstration, even were it produced, would have little practical effect. Ordinary people would not be able to follow such a demonstration, he sensibly says, and draws the conclusion that the “greatest part” of mankind “cannot know, and therefore they must believe,” when it comes to the real foundations of morality (pp. 157–58). This most pessimistic of Lockean statements on moral knowledge seems to destroy any prospects for equality along the lines we have been seeking. Even more, it has led some to conclude that Locke ultimately abandoned the rationalist moral-theological project of the Essay and the Two Treatises of Government as a failure, and retreated to faith at the end of his life.101 The Reasonableness of Christianity is one of Locke’s last works. Yet, before we abandon hope for Locke’s account of rational equality, we should consider that Locke continued to produce revised editions of the Essay, affirming and even augmenting its rationalism, after the appearance of Reasonableness.102 Moreover, the Essay itself, as we 100 101

102

See the section of Chapter 2 entitled “Locke and moral ‘demonstration’.” See Richard Ashcraft, “Faith and Knowledge in Locke’s Philosophy,” in John Locke: Problems and Perspectives, ed. John Yolton (Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 194–223 (p. 218); John Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke: An Historical Account of the Argument of the Two Treatises of Government (Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 18, 198; Yolton, Compass of Human Understanding, p. 179. For a more complete treatment of this issue, see Forde, “Natural Law,” pp. 405–8. The Reasonableness of Christianity was published in 1695. The last edition of the Essay that appeared during Locke’s lifetime was published in 1699 with a 1700 publication date (Locke died in 1704). This edition, the fourth, added the chapter “Of Enthusiasm” (4.19), which is one of Locke’s most forceful statements of the need for reason to oversee religious belief.

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noted a few moments ago, speaks of the great mental gulf between some human beings and others (4.20.5). In a pronouncement remarkably similar to the pessimistic statement of Reasonableness, the Essay notes that, due to “the natural and unalterable state of things in this world,” most people are condemned to an “invincible ignorance” of the foundations of their opinions, in morals and many other things (4.20.2–3; cf. 1.4.22; 2.21.47–53, 67). We conclude that Locke, while making morality dependent on knowledge, paradoxically takes the view that common morality is not, and cannot be, based on complete knowledge. We might begin sorting out this problem by noting that when Locke speaks of the “invincible ignorance” of moral demonstration in which most people live, he is using a term of art. “Invincible” ignorance, in moral casuistry, is ignorance of facts or propositions that, while knowable in principle, cannot be discovered or learned by a given individual without greater effort than can be reasonably expected of him. It is thus guiltless ignorance.103 In the passages just cited from Reasonableness and the Essay, Locke notes the reasons for the ignorance in question, primarily such things as the necessity that most people attend to material provision, rather than the subtleties of philosophy. This, of course, aggravates rather than solves our problem, unless there is a form of moral knowledge available to such individuals with relatively little effort, which will give them access to the natural or moral law within the meaning of the Second Treatise and the Essay, and so lift them to the threshold of equality. Locke does have a simplified form of moral knowledge in mind, one he relies on heavily. He certainly does not expect the common man to plumb the philosophic “moral demonstration” of which he speaks. He himself never produced such a demonstration, and indicates that one does not currently exist.104 It is fair to say that the common man’s 103

104

For example, a person fires a shot, which ricochets off a post and kills a bystander. In principle, this could have been predicted; but the shooter cannot reasonably be expected to have anticipated it. A lesser charge of “negligent homicide” might be warranted, but not murder. See the article “Ignorance” in the Catholic Encyclopedia (www.newadvent.org/cathen/07648a.htm). See also the sermon by Richard Hooker, “A Learned Discourse of Justification, Works, and how the Foundation of Faith is Overthrown” (http://elvis.rowan.edu/kilroy/CHRISTIA/old library/ch-by-author.htm). See The Reasonableness of Christianity, pp. 149–58, and the section, “Locke and moral ‘demonstration’” in the previous chapter.

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ignorance of this demonstration is “invincible.” The “due consideration” Locke describes as our duty in the Essay, then, must not require knowledge of the demonstration. We can see this from the way Locke proceeds in the Essay. Anyone may conclude, for example, that habitual drunkenness is contrary to our true happiness, without possessing the full moral demonstration. Similarly, the basic principles of natural law in the Second Treatise – that I have a right to the fruits of my labor, that others have the same right, that we must respect the equality of all, and so on – are indeed “intelligible and plain” to all (§12), and require little philosophy. The simple syllogism laid out in that context – that, “being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions” (§6) – does not require deep speculation. It is like Cicero’s example of the theater seats: anyone is free to take an unoccupied seat, but once the seat is taken, all understand that it would be morally wrong for another to take it from the first occupant.105 Or, at a cocktail reception, all may help themselves to a tray of canap´es, but once you put one on your plate, it is wrong for me to take it. Everyone understands this, and very few do not abide by it. According to Locke, we arrive at this understanding by a kind of reasoning, but it is so reflexive that it might almost be described as a kind of moral common sense. And, by the argument of the Second Treatise, all who heed it fulfill the requirements for human equality. As we noted earlier, the failure of natural law in the state of nature might stem more from biased application of it than from ignorance. If this is true, Lockean equality rests on a simple set of principles, graspable by virtually every human being. Yet (inevitably), things are not quite so easy. There is the problem of the vagueness of natural law, mentioned above. It may require some acuity to apply the simple principles to complex circumstances. Locke may not expect or require this additional mental effort, leaving it to civil law to guide us. A more thorny issue stems from Locke’s concession that the majority must live in ignorance of the true foundations of their moral beliefs. For it is true indeed that the simple principles just outlined have hidden philosophic foundations, foundations moreover that might be controverted. Human equality, the major premise of Locke’s simple syllogism, has been contested by some of the greatest philosophic minds 105

Marcus Tullius Cicero, On Ends (De Finibus), trans. H. Rackham. Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914), 3.20.67. This example is cited by Grotius in his treatment of property, JBP 2.2.1.

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of the past. Locke’s citizen may simply take this premise as “selfevident,” needing no further justification. The moral consequences of human equality are also contestable, as the squabbling among Locke’s progeny sufficiently attests. Locke’s egalitarianism (along with other premises) leads him, as we noted earlier, to a distinctive view of the peace and preservation of all mankind, and thus of natural law. That individualistic right is a lynchpin of morality under natural law, that property and the limitless accumulation of property are endorsed by it, all proceed from a kind of moral demonstration that is presumably not to be grasped by all Lockean citizens. Then there are the theological underpinnings. Many Christians of Locke’s day, and for ages past, would be surprised to learn that the biblical injunction “be fruitful and multiply” signifies, among other things, God’s approval of the limitless acquisition of wealth (First Treatise §33; Second Treatise §§46–50). Many of those same Christians were unaware that toleration was a religious duty, much less “the chief characteristical mark of the true church.”106 These are all propositions to which Lockean citizens should subscribe (perhaps must subscribe), but few will grasp their foundations. For most of those citizens, inevitably, religion will provide the foundation of their morality. For Locke himself, theology is the indispensable philosophic foundation, as we saw in the previous chapter. It is critical that citizens believe in Locke’s liberal god, rather than the austere and intolerant god of some traditions. Yet how much theological sophistication can he expect or demand of the average citizen? In “Of the Conduct of the Understanding,” Locke emphasizes the need to get religious notions right, especially for those with little leisure. “One day of seven,” he admonishes, all have the time to apply themselves to the study of divinity (p. 342). But one wonders, amid the religious controversies that raged in Locke’s day (as well as before and after), how an illiterate or semi-literate plowman is to come to his own, rational beliefs on any of the contested points. Locke makes a case, in such works as The Reasonableness of Christianity and the Letter Concerning Toleration, for a simplified and latitudinarian version of Christianity, whereby adherence to a few basic beliefs is all that is required, all other precepts being indifferent. He makes the case in other works for a god who endorses self-interest and honest 106

Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration, p. 23.

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gain. These notions have come to predominate in the Christian world in the ages since Locke’s writing; but is this because Christians have become the “rational creatures” Locke speaks of, holding only those principles they have weighed and approved for true (“Conduct,” pp. 342, 347, 358; Essay 1.4.22; 4.20.6), or because Locke, his allies and followers, have set the cultural background for them? In the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, where Locke asserts that all our moral concepts are “mixed modes,” he emphasizes the consequence that he who defines the mixed modes by which others live essentially sets the moral horizon for them (e.g., 2.31.3, 6; 4.4.8; 4.20.9–10). On these terms, Locke has unquestionably been a “moral legislator” for our society. Are we then simply his intellectual slaves? Are our minds just the storehouses for Locke’s lumber, in the memorable image of the “Conduct of the Understanding” (p. 393)? Locke would reject this suggestion. It is true that few citizens in the societies he helped found could give a full, rational account of the foundations of their beliefs, but Locke never expected this. What he expected of them was assent to a simple set of rational propositions. He does speak of propositions that the mind immediately assents to once presented with them, though the individual did not himself devise the proof (Essay 1.2.18–23; 2.1.10; 2.4.16, 19). It may be that, once an individual has formed the proper notion of human equality, many moral propositions become evident to him, even if that precise notion of equality was acquired ultimately from John Locke. Locke also says that probability rather than certainty is all we have in most matters, and that this is “sufficient to govern all our concernments” (1.1.5). It may be that, though certainty is in principle possible in moral demonstration, common moral beliefs remain in the realm of probability. Under these conditions, it could be Locke’s view that, despite their ignorance of the philosophic foundations of their beliefs, common individuals in Locke’s moral horizon do hold their beliefs rationally, within a more limited meaning of the term. This must remain somewhat speculative, since Locke did not definitively pronounce himself on all the issues in play here. He did, however, outline and recommend a moral education in one work, an education designed not for a philosopher but for an ordinary (if leisured) citizen. We should turn to Some Thoughts Concerning Education for some final insights into Locke’s overall moral and educational project.

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4

Conclusion: Some Thoughts Concerning Education and Lockean happiness

I have put off discussion of some of the most important and difficult issues in Locke’s philosophy to this chapter and its discussion of Some Thoughts Concerning Education. The relation of personal happiness to other-regarding duty, the relation of the minimal duty of no harm to more extensive duties of charity, the issue of how much knowledge of theology and natural law Locke expects of citizens in his liberal regime – these have all been left as partially resolved puzzles, awaiting our exploration of Locke’s educational treatise. This was unfair, insofar as it suggested that Some Thoughts Concerning Education is a kind of culmination of Locke’s entire moral-philosophical oeuvre, where he tied up all the loose ends of his other works. It was intended by Locke to be no such thing. The work began as private advice to a friend regarding the upbringing of his son,1 and though Locke subsequently published it, the work’s educational recommendations are constrained ´ by practical and rhetorical limitations in a way that Rousseau’s Emile, for example, is not. Still, because of its subject, the work necessarily addresses the issues that have puzzled us, and sheds important light on those issues, light that we have not been able to get from Locke’s other works. Some Thoughts Concerning Education does not shy away from these issues: it builds explicitly on the twin foundational principles that personal happiness is the necessary and proper motive of all human beings, while the preservation of mankind as a whole imposes moral duties on all. It means to teach a “skill of living well,” which will somehow combine these principles (§70). The work also contains Locke’s only systematic account of the virtues. A brief review of the puzzles we have encountered in the foregoing chapters is in order, to remind ourselves of the problems involved. The Essay Concerning Human Understanding makes an extensive argument that the essence of morality is subjection to law. At bottom, 1

Some Thoughts Concerning Education, dedicatory letter to Edward Clarke.

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morality is duty, rooted in divine mandate, and the Essay makes little or no use of the notion of individual rights in its presentation. Yet, that duty is tied inextricably to individual interest. Personal happiness, Locke says, is necessarily the motivation of every conscious creature, such that any duty imposed on such a creature must serve that creature’s happiness. Locke argues that this is indeed the case: following our duty is also the path to our true happiness. The Second Treatise of Government, while retaining the priority of law to right (I have argued), makes individual right pivotal to morality. Yet duty plays a key role, most conspicuously as a corollary of right: I have a duty to respect the rights of others, not to harm or steal from them, for example. These duties (like the rights) Locke traces to the fundamental principle of natural law, which is to serve the peace and preservation of mankind, a “communal” principle (as I have called it) of the common good. Very little is said about personal happiness; it is certainly not identified as the crux of morality. Enjoying my rights and keeping my honest gains will obviously contribute to my happiness; but will respecting the rights of others do so? The Second Treatise does not answer this question, even while pointing to it: “law, in its true notion,” Locke says there, “is not so much the limitation, as the direction of a free and intelligent agent to his proper interest, and prescribes no farther than is for the general good of those under that law” (§57). But this is to beg the question. What happens in cases when the “proper interest” of the intelligent agent and the “general good” conflict? On the other side, the Essay, while linking moral law strongly to personal happiness, says little or nothing about duties to others, even minimal duties of no harm. Lockean liberalism minimizes this problem by minimizing the demands of duty, and building politics (and economics) on the broad common ground between private and public interest. Locke even broadens that ground by defining the public interest as no more than the aggregation of private, material interests (and not, for example, spiritual orthodoxy). But this will not eliminate the problem entirely. To argue that the love of money is the root of much social good is not to deny that it is also the root of much evil, when it motivates dishonest gain. To show that public and private interest overlap, even to augment that overlap, is not to eliminate the difference between the two. In an unpublished fragment entitled “Ethica,” Locke suggests that “to love our neighbor as ourself” will maximize our happiness,

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as doing good to our neighbor will then enhance our own pleasure.2 This might go a long way toward solving our problem, but Locke does not pursue anything like this line of argument in any completed work, unless it is Some Thoughts Concerning Education. The tension between private good and moral duty is only aggravated by the second puzzle we uncovered in the foregoing chapters, the problematic relation of justice and charity in Locke’s work. Lockean liberalism limits politics almost entirely to “justice,” the province of individual rights and the minimal duties of “no harm.” Yet (I have argued), this is not the whole of Lockean morality, which includes a real “charitable” component. To the extent that Locke demands of us (as human beings, if not as citizens) positive service to others beyond the no-harm principle, it will make more difficult the reconciliation of moral action with private interest and personal happiness. Some Thoughts Concerning Education, due to its theme, cannot avoid providing some kind of resolution to the problem. The pupil whom Locke is educating in this treatise must be led to morality and happiness both. The upbringing Locke provides must reveal something of the extent of moral duty Locke expects of individuals, the happiness appropriate to human beings, and how these things come together in a properly lived life. The work as a whole thus provides a more rounded view than the Second Treatise alone of the cultural transformation that Lockean liberalism contemplates.

Fundamental principles in Some Thoughts Concerning Education The fundamental moral and philosophical principles on which Locke builds in Some Thoughts Concerning Education are explicitly the same as those found in his other works. The work makes no reference to natural law, but does take the preservation of mankind to be the defining principle of morality. This principle is presented unequivocally as the basis of morality, and the origin of natural duties, as well as rights: “truly, if the preservation of all mankind, as much as in him lies, were everyone’s persuasion, as indeed it is everyone’s duty, and the true principle to regulate our religion, politics, and morality by, the 2

“Ethica A” (Political Essays, p. 319). See also John Colman, John Locke’s Moral Philosophy (Edinburgh University Press, 1983), pp. 200–201.

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world would be much quieter and better natured than it is” (§116). The Second Treatise built on this same principle, and also made it the basis of duties to others. These duties were minimized, however, and individual “rights” made much more prominent, in accordance with the purpose of that work. Some Thoughts Concerning Education is strikingly reticent on the subject of rights, coming closer to the Essay Concerning Human Understanding in this regard. At the same time, Some Thoughts Concerning Education explicitly adopts the individualist, if not egoist, principles that “good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature,” that “the happiness that all men so steadily pursue consist[s] in pleasure,” and that “power and riches, nay virtue itself, are valued only as conducing to our happiness” (Some Thoughts §§54, 143). These principles formed the “hedonistic” underpinnings of rational motivation in the Essay (2.21.41; 3.27.17). Some Thoughts Concerning Education, then, consciously sets itself the task of reconciling these underpinnings with a morality having a significant element of other-regarding duty.3 In another echo of the Essay, Locke proclaims that rational control of the appetites is the essence of virtue. This is one of the most-repeated refrains of Some Thoughts Concerning Education (§§33, 45, 52, 107, 200). The Essay warned us about the appetites: “if they were left to their full swing, they would carry men to the overturning of all morality” (1.13). The ability to subordinate and thwart appetite is therefore the most important lesson of childhood, and Locke gives it ample attention in his educational treatise, giving the work a (to some) surprisingly austere cast. The child must develop a habit and facility of self-mastery, based partly on a distinction between the true needs of nature and mere “wants of fancy” (§107). Children should be inured to a certain amount of physical hardship (§§5–14, 107);4 if they demand furnishings of a certain material, or a certain color, Locke admonishes, “they should be sure to go without it” (§107).5 The purpose of this discipline is to give children “the art of stifling their desires,” that they may “consult and make use of their reason, before they give allowance 3 4 5

See Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, pp. 5, 77, 100–101, 105, 210; Marshall, Resistance, Religion and Responsibility, 315. Locke mentions that this regimen would apply less to daughters (§6). Locke softens this point immediately after stating it: all innocent or indifferent delights should be allowed the child (see also §53).

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to their inclinations,” that they be able to cross their appetites, when “reason advises” and “duty dictates” (§§107, 52). In accordance with this, and with the Essay, Locke says that “the right improvement and exercise of our reason being the highest perfection that a man can attain to in this life,” its cultivation should be carefully attended to in a child (§122). But what, exactly, could be expected of the “reason” of a child? Parental authority, we were told in the Second Treatise, is predicated precisely on children’s lack of reason, and consequent lack of the moral self-restraint that reason brings (Chapter Six). Some Thoughts Concerning Education adds important nuance to that teaching, but does not overthrow it. Despite the many references to children being brought to consult their reason before appetite, for example, Locke’s education relies heavily on reputation rather than reason, especially in the early stages. Since (we recall) reward and punishment are the only proper inducements to a rational creature, and Locke’s stated goal is to achieve education with little or no corporal punishment (§§47, 52, 107), the rewards and punishments to be relied on are “esteem and disgrace” (§56). Children are extremely sensitive to this, he tells us; indeed, they are “the most powerful incentives to the mind, when once it is brought to relish them” (§57). Let the concern for reputation be established in children, Locke goes so far as to say, and the work of education is done. This is the “true principle, which will constantly work, and incline them to the right” (§58). Even in the wider world, Locke says, reputation is a fair guide to action, representing in effect “the testimony and applause that other people’s reason, as it were by a common consent, gives to virtuous and well-ordered actions” (§61). This part of Locke’s educational approach, and the reasons Locke gives for it, raise some obvious questions. One that is less obvious is the apparent implication that human beings are sociable in some fundamental sense, rather than the simple individualists that classical liberalism is often assumed to postulate. Rousseau, in his educational work, provides the model for an education based upon a more solitary view of human nature. Reliance on public repute is anathema to Rousseau’s education, in its early stages.6 Locke, by contrast, 6

´ See Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979), pp. 4, 84, 89, 184–85, 214; “Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men,” First Part (in

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maintains that in addition to the concern with reputation, all human beings are “a sort of chameleons,” who mimic the manners of those around them (§67, 145). Locke cites this as a reason to isolate his pupil from other boys, whose manners are likely to be bad, but the underlying principle seems to be an undeniable kind of sociability.7 Of course, Hobbes too argued that human beings are “sociable,” in the sense of being greatly concerned with public esteem and repute. In Hobbes, this concern is hyper-competitive, indeed contributes to the war of all against all (Leviathan, Chs. 10–11, 13). Locke’s presentation of the “sociable” elements of human nature is not devoid of Hobbesian elements. He tells us that children naturally love dominion – love it even more than liberty – and that this love of dominion is “the first original of most vicious habits, that are ordinary and natural” (§103). Locke finds the appetite for domination in the “peevish, sullen” moods even of infants, when they do not get their way, as well as the striving for “mastery” among older children (§§104, 109). These descriptions could have come from the pen of Hobbes. What Locke says, though, is that this innate desire for domination can, and must, be thwarted. Any child who begins a contest for mastery must by no means be allowed to prevail (§109). Curbing the drive for dominion, moreover, will allow a very different side of nature to emerge. Once children see the “respect, love, and esteem” they gain by displaying “deference, complaisance, and civility” to others (so long as the parents make sure they “lose no superiority by it”), they will take more pleasure in this than in domination (§109). From this seed, properly cultivated, will spring “good breeding,” which is the culmination of Locke’s moral and social education, and ultimately his solution to the tension between duty and happiness. We note two things about this procedure. First, though Locke’s moral psychology is heavily rationalist, the essence of virtue being the control of appetite by reason, this control is prepared by a kind of pre-rational habituation. This is necessary because the appetites are “innate practical principles,” while reason develops late (Essay 1.3.3).

7

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The First and Second Discourses, trans. Roger D. and Judith R. Masters [New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964], pp. 75–228), pp. 104–41. See also the short essay “Reputation,” where Locke maintains that esteem and disgrace are the “principal spring” of human action (Political Essays, pp. 270–71).

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Second, although the child is directed by concern for esteem and reputation to begin with, the goal of Locke’s education is to produce a sincere and ingenuous devotion to virtue. How this is to come about we will consider in due course. A separate problem with Locke’s reliance on reputation cannot be resolved in this way, though, if reputation or, more broadly, public opinion, remains the sole standard of virtue by which the child, and then the adult, guides his conduct. “Chameleons” may be corrupted by concern for repute, as well as cured, as Locke’s decision to isolate his pupil from other boys indicates. Locke goes so far as to suggest that “school boys” typically develop a corrupt culture of “malapertness, tricking or violence,” since they are inadequately supervised (§70). In the same context, Locke notes that exposure to the world at large is likely to give the child a tincture of that “rudeness and vice, which is so everywhere in fashion” (ibid.) Reputation may represent the judgment of “other people’s reason” (§61), but this is obviously insufficient. Even apart from vicious manners, it is by no means clear that public judgment in Locke’s day stood for religious toleration, for example, or a Lockean interpretation of Scripture overall. Locke informs us that the civility even of gentlemen in England in his day is lacking in some key particulars (§145). Accordingly, Locke pauses to note in the midst of his discussion of the use of reputation that reputation is not the “true principle and measure of virtue.” That measure is rather the “knowledge of a man’s duty, and the satisfaction it is to obey his Maker, in following the dictates of that light God has given him” (§61). Locke, we recall, emphasizes that the child must learn to subordinate his appetites to reason. This may be “other people’s reason” to begin with (especially his parents’ and tutor’s reason), but Locke is clear that it must ultimately become his own reason (§§45, 52, 61). As we learned at the end of the previous chapter, Locke holds each of us to a duty to use our reason to settle our fundamental moral convictions, and not simply to follow public opinion. What progress then does Locke’s pupil make toward this moral knowledge? As the statement just quoted indicates, theology plays a key role in this, though not entirely a conventional role. The pupil obeys his Maker, by “following the dictates of that light,” i.e., reason, that he has been given (§61). The theology that Locke initially gives his pupil is far from complex, though he insists that it contains a “true notion” of God: an “independent supreme Being, Author, and Maker of all things, from whom we receive all our good, who loves us, and

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gives us all things,” who “made and governs all things, hears and sees everything, and does all manner of good to those that love and obey him” (§136). Locke mentions nothing about immortality, and portrays God as a rewarder of the good while remaining silent about divine punishment for the wicked. Not only is this simple theology appropriate for youths; Locke comments that it would be better if most people rested content with such simple notions, rather than trying to fathom a divine nature which in the end is unknowable (§136). Religious toleration, we note, would also be served by widespread adherence to such a simple, “generic” creed. This simple creed, of course, has nothing that is distinctively Christian. Locke does eventually have the child learn the Lord’s Prayer, “the creed,” and the Ten Commandments (§157). Even at that juncture, though, Locke pointedly says that reading the Bible is more likely to give young minds false or confused notions of divinity than to give them true religion. He proposes a simplified catechism rather than biblical readings (§159). The child will eventually read “moral discourses” from the Bible, but these will do no more than reinforce the moral lessons and habits he has learned from his earlier education (§185). Theology, then, will be a buttress (if a vital buttress) to moral lessons learned from reason and experience, rather than directly from theology. This accords with Locke’s approach to these issues overall. But what are the lessons Locke’s pupil learns? What is the morality Locke promulgates here, which is presumably most attuned to the liberal order he desires to create? In the present context, Locke assigns his pupil Cicero’s On Duties, so he may “be informed in the principles and precepts of virtue, for the conduct of his life” (§185). Yet Cicero’s morality seems to differ significantly from the liberal morality of Locke. Locke also gives his pupil Grotius, or (“which is perhaps the better of the two”) Pufendorf (§186). All three of these authors held sociability to be a source of moral duty, in one way or another.

The moral lessons of Some Thoughts Concerning Education We recall the elements of sociability that are at least implicit in Locke’s approach to education (or to the understanding of human nature that underlies that approach). We recall as well Locke’s statement in Some Thoughts that “the preservation of all mankind, as much as in him

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lies,” is “everyone’s duty, and the true principle to regulate our religion, politics, and morality by” (§116). These non-individualist and duty-based arguments take Locke somewhat outside the circle of liberal thought as often understood. What is not clear is what duties Locke takes these to mandate, or exactly how or why we are to be concerned for others. The Second Treatise draws a minimal precept of “no harm” from this mandate. The educational treatise’s strong statement on the duty to preserve all mankind appears in the midst of a discussion of children’s tendency to the vice of cruelty. They are “apt” to abuse small animals that they get in their power, “with a seeming kind of pleasure” (§116). Yet Locke “cannot persuade” himself that such cruelty is natural; it must be a product of custom and bad example, including the example of history (§116).8 Thus “fashion and opinion” makes that a pleasure, “which in itself neither is, nor can be any” (§116). The statement recalls Locke’s argument from the Essay that morality proceeds from a proper shaping of desire and unease, and that certain desires, however common they may be, run counter to the “eternal law and nature of things” (2.21.56). In Some Thoughts, Locke does not say that the tendency toward cruelty, or domination, or any vice, is to be attributed to original sin.9 As the antithesis of concern for the preservation of mankind, cruelty could be considered the archetypical crime or vice for Locke, as for many modern thinkers.10 Any tendencies toward cruelty must be carefully guarded against, for, Locke says, cruelty toward inferior creatures prepares the way to cruelty toward men. The path to the contrary virtue must be prepared in the first place by preventing any cruelty toward animals (§116). But in the second place, Locke says, it is essential that parents teach their children civility, and compassionate behavior toward their social inferiors (§117). Social rank is obviously the reality for Locke’s intended pupil, but it is an obstacle to the development of humane sentiment. It is all too likely to give rise to a haughty pride that nurtures cruelty and oppression, while Locke would have 8

9 10

But cf. §102. Even Hobbes, after all, denied that cruelty was natural to man (Leviathan, Ch. 6). Montaigne also regarded it as a cardinal vice (“De la cruaut´e,” Essais, 2.11, in Oeuvres compl`etes, ed. Albert Thibaudet and Marice ´ Rat [Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1962], pp. 400–15). The word “sin” appears nowhere in this work. The signature contemporary treatment of this theme is Judith Shklar’s Ordinary Vices (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1985).

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children take a “gentle, courteous, affable carriage” toward servants and others of lower rank, whom “fortune” has placed below them (§117). “Children should not be suffered to lose the consideration of human nature in the shufflings of outward conditions,” Locke admonishes (§117). That is, they are to absorb the lesson of human equality, to see the common humanity behind social rank. Equality was the fundamental principle from which natural law or the duty to preserve mankind was derived in the Second Treatise. There, Locke spoke as if that principle, properly reflected on or taken to heart, would generate not only knowledge of, but compliance with the natural law.11 Here, Locke’s educational procedure suggests that the simple principle of equality, if sincerely embraced by the child, will of itself foster humanitarian fellow-feeling, and prevent haughtiness and cruelty. Locke’s procedure in teaching justice is instructive as well, particularly when compared with the teaching of the Second Treatise on that subject. As with the other virtues, Locke begins his instruction in justice by playing on the child’s sensitivity to the esteem and approval of his parents, by appealing to a positive kind of pride. “The first tendency to any injustice that appears,” he writes, “must be suppressed with a show of wonder and abhorrence in the parents and governors” (§110; cf. §84). Such tendencies are inevitable, since “selflove” precedes “reason or reflection,” which for Locke is the source of morality. The fact that real knowledge of morality is inaccessible to pre-rational children is one reason Locke relies so heavily on esteem and disgrace at the beginning of education. Esteem and disgrace are to root proper notions and habits before the age of reason fully arrives. Among the virtues, justice is a particularly difficult case, because it depends upon the notion of property, including how property rights are acquired – that is, upon a grasp of the complex, mental “mixed mode” of “property” (§110; Essay 4.3.18). Once a proper foundation is laid, parents may gradually teach children certain “rules and cases of justice, and rights concerning meum and tuum,” the beginnings of a rational view of the subject (§110). Children who are intractable to these lessons, Locke says, must be given “rougher remedies” (ibid.). They should have some possession of theirs taken away, to make them understand the sting of injustice, and to “make them sensible what little 11

That is, violations of the law proceed from a failure to “study” it properly. See Second Treatise §§6, 12, 124, and the relevant portion of the previous chapter.

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advantage they are like to make by possessing themselves unjustly of what is another’s, whilst there are in the world stronger and more men than they” (ibid.). We must dwell on this thought a moment. Locke here represents a rational argument for justice, but an essentially Hobbesian one. It is based on the child’s vulnerability, and appeals only to his narrow self-interest. Is this to be the basis of the child’s, perhaps even the adult’s, adherence to justice? By no means. This “Hobbesian” lesson is an extreme measure, designated for a refractory few. It does not represent the way Locke wishes children, or adults, to think about property and justice. Rather than shunning injustice on the basis of a narrow calculus of self-interest, they should be imbued with “an ingenuous detestation of this shameful vice” (§110). This, he says, is both a different, and a better, fence against injustice than “any considerations drawn from interest” (§§66, 67, 117).12 At least for the majority of children (and perhaps for the refractory few, once their selfishness is curbed), Locke would lay the pre-rational foundations of justice in liberality. The first thing children should learn regarding material possessions, Locke asserts, is how to part with them, “easily and freely” (§110). Parents foster this by compensating children for any losses, ensuring that their children always profit by being liberal. Of course, a profitable liberality hardly deserves the name, but Locke’s purpose is to develop habits, and a bent of mind, that will later make children truly liberal, deriving independent pleasure from generosity to others. Even in the early stages of this education, Locke says that the child’s gain from liberality will be twofold: greater plenty (guaranteed by the parents), and “a return of kindness” from those they benefit and others who observe their liberality (§110). By the time children learn that liberality is often a material sacrifice, they will find it rewarding on its own terms. They will learn that it brings the goodwill of their beneficiaries and the esteem of society at large, but they will also, according to Locke, discover the pleasure that acts of liberality bring of themselves.13 Of course, if reputation is their reward, we could still understand their liberality as mercenary.14 I 12 13

14

Cf. §143; Tarcov, Education for Liberty, p. 195. ´ Rousseau argues in Emile that Locke’s approach to teaching liberality will never produce any but a sham or mercenary version of it (pp. 103–104). Locke clearly thinks that genuine liberality can spring from this root, indicating, it would seem, that there is a natural foundation for it. Cf. Myers, Star and Compass, p. 192.

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believe we will find, though, that Locke believes a true liberality, and a true regard for others, will emerge from his education. Children will have developed “good-nature” – a phrase he regularly uses to describe the well-formed character in general – and will “take pleasure, and pique themselves in being kind, liberal, and civil to others,” apart even from reputation (§110).15 Locke’s procedure may be surprising to readers of the Second Treatise. The apostle of natural, exclusive property rights teaches children liberality before property, and as an educational matter at least, lays the foundations of justice in this other-regarding, “charitable” virtue, rather than an exact accounting of property rights. The virulence with which Locke condemns illiberality might even take us by surprise: “Covetousness, and the desire of having in our possession and under our dominion more than we have need of, being the root of all evil, should be early and carefully weeded out” (§110). This quasi-biblical rhetoric is hardly what we would have expected from the Locke of the Second Treatise. Where that work portrayed “the desire of having in our possession and under our dominion more than we have need of” as productive of the greatest social good, it is here productive of the greatest social evil, due to its association with the vice of “covetousness.” Are these two assessments of property contradictory? They certainly do reflect divergent rhetorical purposes. The Second Treatise outlines a political morality based on individual rights, with minimal natural law duties to others. It shows how self-interested action based on those rights is the most effective guarantor of the social good, without fully explaining why it is rational for self-interested individuals to abide by even the limited duties of no harm. Some Thoughts Concerning Education, on the other hand, is primarily concerned with motivation to duty, to duty understood moreover in a more expansive way. The moral horizon of the work is broader than that of the Second Treatise, more reflective of Locke’s moral outlook as a whole. Locke’s goal here is the formation of an individual who is to find personal happiness as a useful member of society, even while going beyond the mere demands of “justice.” Still, we should note that even in his Jeremiad against 15

For “good-nature,” see also §§67, 116, 139, 145. Of course, gaining private gratification from liberality could also, in some understandings, make it mercenary. If so, I am afraid we will not be able to acquit Locke (and a great many other moral philosophers) of being “mercenary.”

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“covetousness,” Locke does not say that the desire of having more than we need always leads to evil. It is, however, a dangerous seed to allow to take root in pre-rational children. Covetousness, after all, is only one form that the desire to have more can take – a particularly vicious form. Locke links it to “dominion” here, associating it with a separate vice, one Locke considers most dangerous (cf. §103). Even with allowances, though, it is striking that Locke weaves liberality into the very foundation of the child’s concern with property, as a means of counteracting the natural tendency of the love of property to become predatory or “covetous.” Locke does not speak of “charity” here, nor does he describe liberality as a duty, but his goal is clearly the formation of a liberal, charitable character. Here if anywhere, in the teaching of justice, one might expect Locke to emphasize the subject of rights. Yet, like the Essay and unlike the Second Treatise, Some Thoughts Concerning Education is strikingly reticent about rights. One might expect that Locke would fill his pupil with proud thoughts of his rights, and instill in him a fierce desire to defend them. One might expect that Locke would foster these traits in the liberal citizen – it would doubtless advance the political project of securing limited government against the encroachments of power. An educational curriculum constructed by some of the American Founders, or the more militantly Whiggish among Locke’s contemporaries, might well have had this character.16 Locke’s does not. Locke does give his pupil lessons about the “natural rights” of men from Grotius or Pufendorf (§186), but he does not place great emphasis on this. When Locke mentions rights in this work, it is more often to teach his pupil to respect the rights of others, rather than to assert his own (§§110, 141, 186). Courage or fortitude is promoted more as an aid to doing one’s duty than defending one’s rights (§115). Fencing is discouraged partly because it might make a young man too apt to quarrel over slights (§199).17 As illustrated by his approach to 16

17

See Lorraine Smith Pangle and Thomas L. Pangle, The Learning of Liberty: The Educational Ideas of the American Founders (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1993). I believe there are only two references to “rights” in the relevant sense in this work. The first is connected to justice, where an understanding of the “rights” of people to their property is said to require sophisticated concepts beyond the grasp of children (§110). In the other, Locke assigns Pufendorf to his pupil, so as to give him an understanding of the “natural rights of men” (§186). These references are clearly significant, but we must also acknowledge that the vast

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liberality and property, Locke seems much more concerned that an education centered on rights will lead to domineering self-assertion. The more prominent theme of Locke’s education is the necessity of curbing self-assertion. The way Locke links justice to liberality, moreover, suggests that at least psychologically, justice and beneficence are closely bound. It may well be the case that respect for the rights of others necessarily involves a certain element of liberality, rather than simple egoistic calculation, or that egoistic calculation by itself cannot in Locke’s view produce a reliable or genuine respect for the rights of others. Hobbesian calculation may be a restraint on the injustice of especially refractory children, but it is not justice as Locke wishes to cultivate it. It is not typical at all of the “good nature” that Locke promotes as the educational ideal in Some Thoughts Concerning Education. This is seen most clearly in the culmination of Locke’s moral education, a trait or collection of traits he calls “civility” and “good breeding.” These specifically social virtues enhance the warmth and pleasure of the life of virtue in society (§§94, 134). Civility and good breeding, more than the other virtues, turn Lockean individuals into social creatures, though of a distinctive sort.

Varieties of civility “Civility” in itself, of course, does not guarantee warmth, or even ingenuousness. Hobbesian civility, “compleasance,” brings with it a regulation of pride and even a willingness to overlook slights, but all is grounded in the narrow calculus of self-interest (Leviathan, Chs. 14– 15). Christian civility, at the opposite end of the spectrum, would be a self-abnegating service to others, a form of Christian charity. What is the character of Lockean civility? Civility was the virtue that Lady Masham said Locke’s contemporaries had failed to appreciate in him and in his teaching. She said that Locke specifically recommended the essays of Pierre Nicole on the subject.18 Locke thought Nicole interesting or significant enough to translate three of his essays.19 Nicole’s

18 19

bulk of Locke’s moral education passes without reference to rights. Locke speaks much more frequently of “duties” (those of parents as well as children: §§34, 37, 52, 61, 106, 113, 115, 116, 167). See the beginning of the previous chapter. The translations may be found in Yolton, Locke as Translator.

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understanding of civility might be called multi-tiered, in that he identified, and advocated, different types or levels of civility. In one of the essays translated by Locke, “Of the Means to Conserve Peace Amongst Men,” Nicole asserts that true civility comes only from a sincere and selfless love of others, from Christian charity and a suppression of personal vanity.20 We best advance social peace, he admonishes, by stifling our pride, while indulging that of others. Nicole’s professed goal, pursued tirelessly in this essay (and others21 ), is to transform his readers into Christians who sincerely love others and serve them selflessly. But if we cannot muster this – and Nicole knows that the world will never conform entirely to his ideal – we should aim for “human civility” (1.13–14). If we cannot do positive good, we should at least adhere to a principle of no harm. Since social peace on the basis of true mutual love is not in the offing, we should seek in our relations with others to avoid their aversion or hatred. We should be less assertive of our own opinions, more tolerant of others. We should adhere strictly to the conventional rules of politeness that prevail where we are (1.15–38). We must bear in mind that men are prideful creatures, alert to every slight, perceived or real. We should humor their pride, within the limits of reason (1.72, 75). Not only “charity,” but “justice” requires this, Nicole asserts (1.85). The social peace toward which we are to direct our efforts under the regime of “human civility” comes not from gaining men’s love, but avoiding their enmity (1.74). Still, our own motive in social relations is to be Christian charity, or at least as much of it as we personally can muster. We are not aspiring merely to “manage” men, Nicole admonishes; we are genuinely to “respect” them (1.68).22 Our motive in benefiting others is not simply to be benefited in return, but to serve them sincerely (2.46). “Human civility,” then, falls short of true, Christian civility; it is interested more in avoiding harm than doing good. Its motive, though, remains a genuine regard for others. In a separate essay, however, Nicole makes the remarkable suggestion that there is a third kind of civility that truly serves others, yet is compatible with venal self-love, 20 21

22

“Treatise concerning the way of preserveing peace with men” (trans. John Locke, in Yolton, Locke as Translator, pp. 115–259). See also “Of Rash Judgments” (in Nicole, Moral Essays, Vol. I, pp. 181–208), “Of Christian Civility” (Vol. II, pp. 137–49), and “Of the Knowledge of ones Self,” Vol. III, pp. 1–77). Locke does not translate “manage” (m´enager).

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and indeed may proceed from such self-love. In “Of Charity, and Self-Love,” Nicole first stipulates that the reign of corrupt self-love is “absolute” in all human hearts, unless God has placed something better there.23 This is a cause of strife, but it may also, paradoxically, lead to peace. Just as fear of death is the “first tie of Civil Society,” Nicole here says, so men may discover that the best way to gratify their self-love, and their consequent desire to be loved by others, is by gratifying others (§6). Their motive is the opposite of charitable, it is selfishly to “rule” in the minds of others for their own benefit (§35). Yet this sly kind of self-love might induce us to perform almost the same services that true, charitable civility would have us perform for others. “Harmless” self-love of this type, guided by reason to its own true interest, might pervade an entire society, Nicole adds, and that society would appear as orderly, civil, and just as any (§41). Nicole here seems to take up a hint from Pascal, who noted that concupiscence could effectively imitate charity.24 Nicole makes bold to develop this suggestion into a full-blown regime of civil pride, if we may put it so. Both Pascal and Nicole took great care to distinguish this regime from true virtue, true charity, and true civility.25 They were both aligned with Jansenism, after all, and therefore adherents of a strict and self-abnegating interpretation of Christianity. To that extent, they are worlds apart from Hobbes, who built a regime of civility exclusively and unapologetically on prudent self-love. Together, these examples help to frame the question, what is the true character of Locke’s civility? Which of these “civilities” is closer to Locke’s: the sincere but limited “human civility” depicted in “Of the Means to Conserve Peace Amongst Men,” or the purely calculating, “Hobbesian” civility found in “Of Charity, and Self-Love”? When Locke recommended Nicole to his compatriots on the subject of civility, which civility did he have in mind? We might find a hint in Locke’s choice of essays to translate. 23 24

25

Presumably by an individual act of grace. Nicole, “Of Charity, and Self-Love” (Moral Essays, Vol. III, pp. 78–112), §§1–3. Pascal, Pens´ees, trans. W. F. Trotter, in Great Books of the Western World (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952, Vol. XXXIII, pp. 169–352), numbers 451–53. Pascal and Nicole may both have taken the idea from Augustine. See Paul Rahe, Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville & the Modern Project (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 42–43. Pascal, Pens´ees, numbers 451–53; Nicole, “Of Charity, and Self-Love,” §§12–17; “Of Christian Civility,” §59.

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He translated only three, and apparently intended to publish them, as a way to advance “truth and virtue,” until he was forestalled by the appearance of a complete edition of Nicole in English.26 The first essay translated by Locke is a strongly Jansenist meditation on “the Weakness of Man.” It emphasizes the vanity of human life, but also outlines a theory of human knowledge and its limitations that comports in many ways with Locke’s epistemology.27 In the second essay Locke translated, Nicole offers several natural proofs of the existence of God. This translation is significant, inasmuch as Locke’s failure to endorse any of these proofs in his own writings underscores his dissatisfaction with the available natural proofs of God, or at least of a providential god.28 The third essay Locke translated was “Of the Means to Conserve Peace amongst Men,” outlining the sincere, even charitable “human civility,” but limited in scope. He did not translate “Of Charity, and Self-Love,” the essay in which Nicole develops the strongly self-interested or “Hobbesian” version of civility into a social regime.29

Lockean civility Locke’s choice of essays to translate is not conclusive for our question, obviously. Yet it accords with what we have seen more broadly of Locke’s morality, which goes beyond the minimal rules of “justice,” beyond the moral horizon of the social contract, in the direction of 26 27

28

29

Yolton, Locke as Translator, pp. 1–2. It may be, of course, that Locke would have translated more than three essays, but for this same circumstance. Yolton, Locke as Translator, pp. 1–114. See also Yolton’s foreword, p. xiii. In addition to being a Jansenist, Nicole was a follower of Descartes; along with Antoine Arnauld, he wrote the immensely influential Cartesian work, Logic or the Art of Thinking, the “Port-Royal Logic.” Locke wrote in his private journal that he found Nicole’s proofs to be flawed (Marshall, Resistance, Religion and Responsibility, p. 137). One of Nicole’s proofs Locke did adopt, though in modified form: the inference of a creating intelligence from the existence of intelligence or consciousness in ourselves. As I suggested earlier, Locke seems to have regarded this proof, though valid, as insufficient to support the providential theology that he needs. Damaris Masham specified that Locke recommended Nicole’s “third discourse” on civility (Marshall, Resistance, Religion and Responsibility, p. 179). This probably refers to the essay Locke translated, but since Nicole’s essays were numbered differently in different editions, and Locke owned several editions, it is difficult to pin this down. In his own translation, “Of the Means to Conserve Peace Amongst Men” was placed third.

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charity or sincere civility. Locke is neither Puritan nor Jansenist, for, among other things, he asserts that all rational creatures are blamelessly self-concerned, and endorses the impulse to acquisition. Yet there are remarkable resemblances between passages of Locke, and Nicole’s presentation of “human civility” in the essay on “the Means to Conserve Peace.” This civility gladly and sincerely serves others, though with a charity less extensive than Christianity might teach. Part of this essay by Nicole reads almost like a pr´ecis of Locke’s presentation of civility and good breeding in Some Thoughts Concerning Education.30 Locke goes beyond Nicole in one respect, as is suggested by a key mistranslation in his rendition of Nicole’s essay. Where Nicole wrote of “civilit´e humaine,” distinguishing it from true, Christian civility, Locke simply translates “civility,” civility tout court (§13). For Locke, this civility is not a mere shadow of some true civility that loves the neighbor more than self; it is the true civility. This civility is not fundamentally self-abnegating, it is fully compatible with individual happiness in this life; it is even motivated by this happiness. God himself does not expect more, inasmuch as he knows that personal happiness is necessarily the motive of any conscious, rational creature (Essay 2.21.41–43, 51, 62; 2.27.17–18, 26). “Power and riches, nay virtue itself, are valued only as conducing to our happiness,” Locke has told the father of his pupil in Some Thoughts, and Locke’s educational curriculum aims to make good on that implicit promise. Civility is an extension of the humanity or fellow-feeling that Locke wants children to develop from a sense of the equality of men. Both qualities are cultivated in part by preventing haughty behavior toward social inferiors, especially servants (§117). Locke first invoked the sense of egalitarian humanity to prevent cruelty in children; now, under his husbandry, it blossoms into a civility that consists in “respect and good will to all people” (§67; 143, 144). Locke emphasizes that this good will is not to be mere outward show, but a sincere warmth toward others (§§67, 143). It is like the true liberality that is to blossom after the habit of liberality has been instilled in children, partly by artifice (§110). “Affectation,” the feigning of this warmth where it is lacking, is 30

Some Thoughts Concerning Education was written some twenty years after Nicole’s Essays began to appear. On the relation between Nicole and Locke, particularly Some Thoughts Concerning Education, see Ayers, Epistemology and Ontology, Vol. II, p. 186; Marshall, Resistance, Religion and Responsibility, pp. 179, 180–86; Parker, Biblical Politics, pp. 21, 53.

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particularly condemned by Locke (§66).31 It is essential that children develop a real, not a counterfeit, concern for others, and gain real pleasure from benefiting them, for only a sincere civility will fulfill the functions Locke designs for it (§§93, 141–44).32 We cannot but be pleased with a humane, friendly, civil temper wherever we meet with it. A mind free and master of itself and all its actions, not low and narrow, not haughty and insolent, not blemished with any great defect, is what everyone is taken with . . . This seems to me to be that beauty which shines through some men’s actions . . . when by a constant practice, they have fashioned their carriage, and made all those little expressions of civility and respect which nature or custom has established in conversation, so easy to themselves that they seem not artificial or studied, but naturally to follow from a sweetness of mind and a well-turned disposition.(§66)

This solicitude for others is not entirely natural – it must be practiced – but it can and should become entirely sincere.33 As with the practice of liberality, we cannot but conclude that there is a solid foundation for it in Lockean human nature. This benevolent disposition is called by Locke “sweetness of mind” (§66), “good nature and kindness” (§67), or simply “good-nature” (§§67, 110, 116, 139, 145), and it is the heart of Lockean social virtue. Complete civility – the “internal civility of the mind” – is supplemented or completed by what Locke calls good breeding. Good breeding is the graceful and natural expression of internal civility, a “gloss” on civility – and all the other virtues (§93). Since the goal of Locke’s education is not only to produce virtue, but to form a character that gains, and gives, pleasure in the social setting, good breeding is appropriately its capstone. As Locke says, good breeding is the “first and most taking of the social virtues” (emphasis added: §143; cf. §67). It is breeding that makes the virtues “acceptable” in society, where they might otherwise appear as pedantry, rusticity, or obsequiousness.34 It is in this context that Locke affirms that “power and riches, nay 31 32 33 34

Tarcov, Education for Liberty, p. 109. Tarcov, Education for Liberty, pp. 137–41, 193–97; Steven Forde, “Natural Law,” pp. 403–405; “Expect Us to Know,” pp. 249–54. Tarcov, Education for Liberty, p. 138. “Courage, in an ill-bred man, has the air, and escapes not the opinion, of brutality: learning becomes pedantry; wit, buffoonery; plainness, rusticity; good-nature, fawning: and there cannot be a good quality in him, which want of breeding will not warp, and disfigure to his disadvantage” (§93).

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virtue itself, are valued only as conducing to our happiness” (§143). If the reconciliation of sociable virtue with individual happiness is a key problem of Locke’s philosophy, Some Thoughts Concerning Education suggests that good breeding is its solution. The first or fundamental principle of good breeding, as Locke presents it, is “Not to think meanly of ourselves, and not to think meanly of others” (§141). The former leads to a kind of obsequious bashfulness, the other to an array of disrespectful behaviors that cannot but offend. Like civility, of which it is an expression, good breeding rests on a fundamentally egalitarian viewpoint. Locke here emphasizes, as he hadn’t before, that the man of breeding insists on his own equal standing as well, but breeding clearly avoids any claims to superiority, in the manner of Aristotle’s magnanimous man, for example.35 “We ought not to think so well of ourselves, as to stand upon our own value; and assume to ourselves a preference before others, because of any advantage we may imagine we have over them,” Locke says. The man of good breeding sincerely embraces the Lockean principle of human equality. Breeding requires us “modestly to take what is offered, when it is our due” (§142). If less is offered than we merit, apparently, we are to consider that we nonetheless have no right to assume a preference over others on those grounds. Of course, the addressee of Some Thoughts Concerning Education does have privileged standing as a result of his lineage, which will partially dictate what is appropriate behavior for him. Breeding, as opposed to simple civility, is the graceful expression of internal civility. Locke describes it as the “language” by which civility of mind expresses itself, and so must operate within the conventions and norms of its time, place, and station (§143). The point of breeding is to put everyone with whom one deals at ease, to make them pleased with one’s company, which pleases oneself in turn. A society composed of such people will be based on mutual regard, and easy, pleasant intercourse. Each will take pleasure in accommodating and gratifying others. We must not conclude, though, that the culmination of Locke’s education is simply a life of pleasant banter. The civility or egalitarian benevolence toward others 35

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Joe Sachs (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2002), 4.3. In other respects, there are intriguing parallels between Aristotle’s magnanimity and Locke’s good breeding. Both, for example, are additions to virtue that heighten virtue’s luster.

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on which it is built extends far beyond complementing people on their stylish clothing. It is a general good will to all mankind that stands ready to assist others, sometimes at a personal cost. Liberality was one manifestation of this that Locke took particular care to instill. Some Thoughts Concerning Education is suffused with the belief that such beneficence is not only compatible with but vital to the individual’s happiness in society. The good will it earns from others, and just as importantly, the satisfaction one can learn to take in beneficence itself, are lasting rewards that the properly raised child, and later the adult, learns especially to relish. It is not inapt that the two authors Locke recommends most highly for ethical and moral instruction are Cicero and Pufendorf, though these choices, especially Cicero, seem jarring to those who know only the Locke of the Second Treatise (§§185–86). Cicero teaches a morality of duty rather than one centered on individual rights, rooted in a teleological view of human rationality and sociability. We explored in Chapter 2 the ways that Locke’s philosophical underpinnings differ from these. Regarding the moral teaching itself, we noted earlier that Some Thoughts Concerning Education speaks more of “duty” than of “rights.” Yet it, like Locke’s other works, conspicuously refrains from appealing to a “sociable” human nature, and of course Locke is committed to building his quasi-sociable morality on a hedonistic (and therefore necessarily individualist) base.36 The pleasure and repute (and, often, reciprocal benefit) that the civil and well-bred individual gains from sociable virtue are therefore vital. If these rewards make beneficence itself “selfish,” it is quite a broad form of selfishness. In Locke’s view, the pleasure that the properly formed character gains from beneficence does not detract from the heartfelt character of that beneficence. Indeed, the pleasure cannot be had unless the beneficence is heartfelt. This constitutes the real link between sociable virtue and individual happiness in the work, the bridge that liberal theory typically has most difficulty constructing. Virtue at its heart is the restraint and denial of desire by reason, Locke told us (§§33, 36, 38), a restraint that can only be justified by returns of greater happiness. The self-regarding virtues, such as moderation and fortitude, produce their rewards intrinsically. The other-regarding virtues do so as well, but only after a more elaborate 36

See Tarcov, Education for Liberty, pp. 5, 77, 100–101, 105, 210; Marshall, Resistance, Religion and Responsibility, p. 315.

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preparation. In the unpublished fragment entitled “Ethica,” Locke wrote that “to love our neighbor as ourself” will maximize our happiness, as doing good to our neighbor will then enhance our own pleasure.37 It is not clear that Some Thoughts Concerning Education instills quite that degree of love for others – or that that would be fully compatible with the rest of Locke’s philosophy. But the educational treatise does rely on something like that logic, what could almost be described as an extension of the self to share in the pleasure of others.38 Locke’s is not the Christian civility of Pierre Nicole, based on self-abnegating duty, nor is it the purely mercenary civility of Nicole’s “Of Charity, and Self-Love.” It is rather an expansion of the circle of personal pleasure, accomplished in part by cultivating a sincere concern for others.

Lockean happiness Locke’s overarching argument in Some Thoughts Concerning Education is that a child raised according to the principles he there lays out will live not only virtuously, but happily. Virtue is “the first and most necessary of those endowments that belong to a man,” Locke says, “absolutely requisite to make him valued and beloved by others, acceptable or tolerable to himself” (§135). “Wisdom” Locke defines in this context as the general ability to manage one’s life well; in Aristotelian fashion, he says it is inseparable from virtue, being diametrically opposed to “cunning,” which attempts to gain its ends by trickery and deceit (§140). These, together with breeding, constitute the “skill of living well” (§90). “A Wise and Good Man can hardly want either the Opinion or Reality of being Great and Happy,” Locke concludes (§90). What Some Thoughts Concerning Education aims to teach above all is the true art of living. In another striking echo of Aristotle, Locke repeatedly refers to the well-lived life of virtue as a thing of beauty (§§66, 82, 93). He even uses the beauty of virtue and breeding as a means of attracting his pupil to it (§82). Aristotle famously identified beauty or nobility (τό 37 38

“Ethica A” (Political Essays, p. 319). Peter Myers (Star and Compass, pp. 123–24) makes the argument for “self-extension.” I believe though that this extension goes beyond mere concern for reputation and the preservation of peace to something more genuinely warm.

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καλὸν) as the heart of morality, as well as the motive for moral action, but this is not, and cannot be, Locke’s view.39 In The Reasonableness of Christianity, he castigates the ancient philosophers for relying so on the beauty of virtue. This may have brought virtue admiration, Locke explains, but left virtue “unendowed” (p. 162). That endowment, as Locke’s psychology stipulates, must consist of rewards and punishments, including rewards and punishments in the next life.40 As we noted earlier, Some Thoughts Concerning Education does assert that divine will is the true source and measure of right and wrong (§§61, 136). Yet as we also noted earlier, the work makes remarkably little use of divinity in its education, and even less of divine rewards and punishments. Though divine will may be the true source of moral law and the “foundation” of virtue (§136), our pupil’s virtue is rooted in habituation and the experiences his education has given him (§185). And the reward of virtue on which Locke relies, for the youth and the adult alike, is the earthly happiness it brings. The Aristotelian account of virtue, whatever Locke says of the ancient philosophers in general, also made it the path to true happiness. Aristotle buttressed this claim with an analysis of human nature, and the argument that virtue was the active expression or the “beingat-work” of that nature.41 This supposes of course that human nature has a structure, one that makes it possible rationally to distinguish higher from lower, better from worse, appetites. Virtue, in this understanding, is the fulfillment or perfection of that nature, which would reasonably enough also make it the path to true happiness. Although Locke’s virtue is also based upon a rational screening of the appetites, and is also designed to lead to happiness, Locke makes no equivalent arguments to bolster this claim. Some Thoughts Concerning Education rather operates on a kind of supposition, as we have had occasion to notice before, that “good-nature,” a kind of benevolence to others, is natural to us, and will express itself if the contrary inclinations are 39

40 41

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 3.6–8, 2.8, 4.1, 2, 9.7–8. There are questions, of course, concerning exactly what Aristotle meant by this, and whether it is his true or final teaching on the subject. Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity, pp. 161–63; Essay 1.3.6, 11, 13; 2.28.5–6. This is Joe Sachs’s translation of ἐνέργεια. For the argument that virtue serves happiness (ἐυδαι␮oνία), see Nicomachean Ethics 4, 7, 10, 13; 3.2; 7.13; 10.7). Aristotle also asserts, like Locke, that intellect or mind (νoυ̑ ς) always chooses what is best for itself (9.8).

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properly managed or suppressed. At a certain point, evidently (as with Aristotle’s morally serious man), the contrary inclinations will scarce be felt. It is unreasonable, of course, to expect Locke to provide a philosophic apparatus equivalent to Aristotle’s, in a work intended as an educational handbook for the general public. Yet there are deeper reasons for Locke’s silence on this score. As we saw in Chapter 2, Locke’s epistemological foundations make such an appeal to human nature impossible.42 If there are morally better and worse appetites, they are better or worse only in comparison to a rule (or law, or “mixed mode”) imposed from without. This is the philosophical reason for Locke’s reliance on God. In order to bring moral behavior in line with happiness in this life, Locke must also suppose that our nature has been fashioned in line with the moral law. This is indeed the supposition Locke makes.43 This allows us to proceed empirically, determining by experience whether and in what ways morality serves our happiness. If we ask, then, pursuant to the questions at the end of the Chapter 3, what Locke’s pupil knows that makes him moral, we would have to say first that what he knows is that human beings are equal, regardless of the station fortune has placed them in. From this root Locke has made many virtues grow, including the culminating virtue of civility. Eventually the pupil also learns the pleasure of being sociable and civil. Locke does assign him readings in morals and ethics, but emphasizes that the child by that point already has the essentials of virtue and wisdom, from the experiences his upbringing has given him (§§147, 185). That is partly the product of artifice – making sure that liberality profits him, praising him for good behavior, and so forth – but the good nature that emerges from it is sincere. The reading Locke assigns – Cicero, Pufendorf, and (selections from) the Bible – will, Locke says, deepen the maturing mind’s moral understanding. He mentions specifically lessons regarding “the natural rights of men,” and “the original and foundations of society,” that take place beyond the pages of Some Thoughts Concerning Education (§§110, 186). Yet, he says, such readings will only profit one whose mind is “well-disposed” beforehand, and indeed may do more harm than good to a disposition not so formed (§147). Good disposition has been formed by the 42 43

See the section “Consciousness and moral motivation” in Chapter 2. See the discussion of these issues in Chapter 2, note 37 and associated text.

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foundational and experiential lessons that Locke concentrates on in the treatise. Locke also takes care to implant appropriate notions of divinity, providing to begin with a simple theology that supports (or, perhaps more importantly, does not undermine) the morality that Locke teaches. This morality, and this theology, may in truth be anchored in duty, that duty grounded in turn in the fundamental moral imperative of “the preservation of all mankind,” but the child is not taught to think in terms of duty primarily.44 The child is not told that it is his duty to be good-natured, or civil, or liberal. Rather, an “ingenuous detestation” of vice is instilled in him (§110), as well as an appreciation for the pleasures that a life of civil relations with one’s fellows affords. When the child, and then the adult, develops mature civility, and good breeding, other-regarding virtue truly finds its reward. The “knowledge” on which the child’s virtue is based in Some Thoughts Concerning Education, then, comes from some reading of philosophy, some reading of the Bible, and a simple theology. But Locke makes clear that it consists mostly of experience of the pleasures that sociable virtue makes possible.45

Epilogue: Locke and Benjamin Franklin The upbringing of this citizen in Some Thoughts Concerning Education, then, rests more on experience than scholarship. Locke’s great American disciple, Benjamin Franklin, acted in the same spirit when he offered his Autobiography as an educational tool for future generations of democratic and liberal citizens. The Autobiography was immensely influential in American culture for at least a century after Franklin’s death. It was also translated into many languages, which 44

45

That is, though Locke presents morality more as duty than right in the work (e.g., §§52, 61, 115, 116, 167), this is not how he addresses the child. He notes in more than one place that imposing tasks as “duties” is more likely to provoke resistance in children, since it seems to infringe on “that natural freedom they extremely affect” (§76). This is to be avoided, as pedagogically counterproductive (§§73, 76, 148). As we noted earlier, Locke does not have the child spoken to about his “rights” either (see note 17, and text, above). Might such talk lead to domineering assertiveness? Locke does advise further study for gentlemen specifically in a memorandum published posthumously, “Some Thoughts Concerning Reading and Study for a Gentleman” (in Political Essays, pp. 348–55).

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spread its influence abroad. A glance at Franklin’s educational project, alongside Locke’s, will shed light on what Locke intended to achieve, as well as what he did achieve (partly through such disciples as Franklin). Franklin’s Autobiography shows us a life of civility, toleration, accommodation of others, and public service, combined with the pursuit of honest gain and prudent attention to self-interest. Franklin makes no attempt to provide philosophical grounding for this. Rather, he presents a compelling portrait – what we might almost call a case study – of how such a life can be a supremely happy life, and how departures from it detract from personal happiness. The approach is literary, as it were, rather than philosophic, because the securest foundation of virtue, in Franklin’s eyes, is experience of the happiness that comes with it. If readers find Franklin’s to be not only an admirable, but an enviable life, and Franklin provides sufficient guidance in how we might shape our characters and our behavior to live similar lives, such a work could have great and salutary influence.46 The intended achievement of Some Thoughts Concerning Education is to resolve the tension between personal happiness or self-interest on the one hand, and other-regarding duty rooted in the good of mankind on the other. For the liberal citizen whose character is molded to civility and good breeding in the way Locke describes, the solution seems quite plausible. Yet, given the near-constant supervision this education seems to require (not to mention the isolation from children who are not so reared), one must wonder whether Locke has solved this problem in a way that may be spread across a whole society. The rare qualities of the tutor Locke needs even make one wonder whether average parents are capable of bringing their children to Lockean virtue (§§76, 90, 93–94). This is what the success of liberalism as a political system would seem to require. It may be that a general culture of equality and industry, as Locke teaches them, combined with widespread belief in some version of the Lockean theology, will naturally produce a culture of citizens 46

Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography (in Benjamin Franklin, Writings, with notes by J. A. Leo Lemay [New York: Library of America, 1987], pp. 1305–1469). On the Autobiography as an educational document, see Steven Forde, “Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography and the Education of America,” American Political Science Review 86:2 (1992): 357–68; Steven Forde, “Benjamin Franklin: A Model American and an American Model,” in History of American Political Thought, ed. Bryan-Paul Frost and Jeffrey Sikkenga (New York: Lexington Books, 2003), pp. 80–92; Pangle and Pangle, Learning of Liberty, Chs. 4, 14.

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who follow the teachings of reason as Locke sees them. They will respect the rights of their fellows, gladly accommodate others, and will even be charitable. The great care Locke must take to cultivate these very traits in Some Thoughts Concerning Education, however, suggests they do not arise so spontaneously. Care must be taken because of the contrary pull of some undeniably natural impulses: narrow selfishness and the natural human desire for dominion (§§45, 103–10; cf. Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1.3.13). Franklin is certainly aware of natural human tendencies that are contrary to the sociable virtues. He too devotes significant attention to controlling them. But he doesn’t have the luxury of recruiting a proper tutor for each of his “pupils,” or isolating them from the improper influences of the world. The closest he came to enjoying such a luxury was a pair of proposals he penned for a public school in Philadelphia.47 As a boarding school, this projected academy offered a certain amount of isolation from the wider society, and Franklin’s proposal makes some effort to take advantage of that isolation (pp. 327–29). He also places a Rector over the school, who is to be a man of “good Morals” as well as learning (p. 327). These are conscious attempts to avoid baleful influences and provide wholesome ones. Much of the curriculum consists, necessarily under the circumstances, of subjects that will be useful to the pupils in commerce and trade. A good part of it, though, is dedicated to forming character, along lines precisely like those Locke brings under the heading of “civility.” The study of history, for example, will teach the “Beauty and Usefulness of virtue of all Kinds, Publick Spirit, Fortitude, &c.” (p. 336). It will reveal the advantages of social order and government, the difference between “Liberty” and “Licentiousness,” and will serve to inculcate sound, that is, Lockean, political principles (p. 337). Suffusing the whole of this education, Franklin says at the conclusion of his proposal, is the cultivation of “that Benignity of Mind, which shows itself in searching for and seizing every Opportunity to serve and to oblige” (p. 342). This sentiment, indeed this very language, is clearly borrowed from Locke’s educational treatise, his treatment of “civility” in particular. These qualities, Franklin adds in an even more explicit nod to Locke, 47

“Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania” (Writings, pp. 323–44), p. 342; see also “Idea of the English School (Writings, pp. 348–54). In what follows, citations to these works will be inserted in the text. Italics and capitalization are all from the original.

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are the foundation of “what is called Good Breeding” (p. 342).48 The ability and inclination to serve mankind, country, friends, and family, he tells us, is “the great Aim and End of all Learning” (ibid.). Franklin’s proposals reveal his mind on important educational issues, and his kinship to Locke. They did lead to the establishment of a pair of schools (one a “charity school”), to which was added an institution of higher education that eventually became the University of Pennsylvania. These academies doubtless had the salutary effect Franklin hoped for,49 but his true educational project is much broader, requiring the spread of this ethic to an entire population, many of them with very little formal schooling. Locke also concerned himself, explicitly, with the formation of all ranks and stations, but his treatise is tailored for gentlemen. This is not only because the treatise was originally written for a gentleman and his son, but also with the view, as Locke says at the opening of the work, that if gentlemen are properly formed, “they will quickly bring all the rest into order.”50 For Franklin, living in an egalitarian society where the very suggestion of deference to rank would be indignantly rebuffed, there can be no thought of forming society by creating an educated elite whom the people would regard as exemplars. Franklin knew the mind of his people, and even catered to their anti-elitism: “A Plowman on his Legs is higher than a Gentleman on his Knees,” sneered Poor Richard.51 The homespun sayings of Poor Richard were a conscious part of Franklin’s educational project. Franklin says he included these sayings in Poor Richard’s Almanac (many of them adapted from other authors) not 48

49

50

51

Though this language is clearly Lockean, Franklin here cites George Turnbull’s 1742 educational treatise, Observations upon Liberal Education, in All its Branches (http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com staticxt& staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=892&Itemid=28). Turnbull acknowledges copying parts of his treatise verbatim from Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education. Franklin also cites Locke’s Some Thoughts in his proposals. The actual institutions did not follow Franklin’s model in every particular, retaining more of the traditional classical and theological curriculum than he had wished (for a brief history, see www.archives.upenn.edu/histy/features/1700s/penn1700s.html) Some Thoughts Concerning Education, dedicatory letter to Edward Clarke. The treatise was originally written at the solicitation of Clarke, who was concerned with the education of his son. Franklin, Writings, p. 1238; see also pp. 977–78. See also Luigi Bradizza, “Elite Education and the Viability of a Lockean Society,” Review of Politics 70:4 (2008): 547–71 (pp. 566–67).

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only to entertain, but also to instruct the “common People,” who purchased few other books (p. 1397). Poor Richard is best known for championing the humble virtues of industry and frugality, for these virtues of economic self-sufficiency must come first for those, like most of Franklin’s fellow Americans, who must labor for a living. They are the precondition of other, higher virtues. For it is as hard for a man in want to be always honest, Poor Richard tells us, as “it is hard for an empty Sack to stand upright.”52 One might think that such simple virtues as industry and frugality would come naturally to Poor Richard’s audience, who after all are under the pressure of necessity. A certain reading of Locke’s Second Treatise similarly suggests that human rationality of itself will create the virtues of industry and gainful labor. Once money comes into use, the Treatise tells us, a man “will begin presently to enlarge his Possessions,” as the rational response to the new opportunities offered by it (§49). On the other hand, as we saw at the end of the previous chapter, Locke is acutely aware that human beings do not always follow their reason. In the Second Treatise, the “Industrious and Rational” are counterbalanced by the “Quarrelsom and Contentious” (§34). Locke makes significant efforts to assist the cause of reason – all of his published works may be seen as part of that effort to make humanity more rational. Locke’s works are mostly directed, however, at the literate, comfortable classes. As to the poor, though Locke himself was quite charitably disposed toward the industrious poor, he did not devote much attention to rendering the poor more industrious. Aside from his hope that the education of gentlemen would improve others by example, Locke’s proposed Poor Law is the sole example of his addressing the issue directly. The proposal treats recalcitrant beggars notoriously harshly, but the proposal’s principal intent is to get all the able-bodied poor involved in productive labor.53 It is Franklin who systematically 52

53

Autobiography, pp. 1397, 1258. Industry and frugality, then, although the signature virtues of Poor Richard, are not the whole of Franklin’s moral teaching, though some critics have taken them to be. On this aspect of Franklin’s educational project, see Ralph Lerner, “Dr. Janus,” in his Revolutions Revisited: Two Faces of the Enlightenment(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), pp. 3–18; Forde, “Education of America,” pp. 358–9. Locke is even willing to force rate-payers to hire the unemployed on a rotating basis, as a kind of poor-relief tax. See “An Essay on the Poor Law” (Political Essays, pp. 182–98), pp. 188–89. As we noted in the previous chapter (note

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undertakes to educate the poor to industry, through Poor Richard’s Almanac and other vehicles. Franklin’s America, we must always bear in mind, was a place of much greater economic opportunity for the poor than was Locke’s England. Yet Franklin knew from personal experience that industry, frugality, and the other virtues required to take advantage of this opportunity were not necessarily practiced by those who needed them most. He could be quite harsh on those who, through laziness or folly, failed to heed his advice. Though charity is godlike, he wondered to a correspondent, may not excessively generous poor relief cut against “the order of God and Nature, which perhaps has appointed Want and Misery as the proper Punishments” for “Idleness and Extravagancy”?54 Franklin was certainly not opposed to charity, but making Americans frugal and industrious was the only way to advance their private good and the general prosperity both. Franklin took upon himself, in a way that Locke did not, to shape the attitudes of common citizens in such a way as to help bring this about. Both poles of Franklin’s educational project – Poor Richard aimed at the lower rungs of society, the Pennsylvania school at the higher – are discussed in his Autobiography. To these we should also add the rarer class of individuals who must become the leaders of the new society, though their leadership must proceed somewhat by stealth. This is the closest that Franklin can come to tailoring his education to each of his pupils. The Autobiography stands as Franklin’s signature educational achievement, aimed at all of society, aimed at different audiences simultaneously, and giving the richest view of Franklin’s didactic purposes. If Poor Richard stereotypically advances the humble “shopkeeper’s virtues,” Franklin’s Autobiography reveals those virtues to be the mere first stage of a richer and more complete moral

54

86), one must be wary of drawing too much from this essay, as Locke wrote it in an official capacity, and that may have dictated its parameters. See also the short entries from Political Essays, pp. 257–58, 326–28. On Locke’s general attitude toward the poor and labor, see Bradizza, “Elite Education,” p. 567; Horne, Property Rights and Poverty, pp. 63–65; Marshall, Resistance, Religion and Responsibility, pp. 323–25; Simmons, Theory of Rights, pp. 317–28; Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality, p. 186; Strauss, Natural Right, p. 243. Franklin, Writings, p. 469. The correspondent is Peter Collinson (letter of May 9, 1753). Franklin says he has heard that the poor of Protestant nations in Europe are more industrious than those of Catholic nations, and speculates that it might be due to more generous poor relief in the latter.

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education, the preconditions of a richer and more fulfilling moral life. Economic self-sufficiency is necessarily the first concern of most Americans, but Franklin hopes that it provides the platform for other, higher virtues. The didactic intent of the Autobiography is signaled explicitly in two letters from friends that Franklin placed at the beginning of Part Two, pleading with him to complete and publish the work, as a means of shaping the young and “rising” American nation (pp. 1373; 1373–79). The foundations of morality, as Franklin presents it in the Autobiography, are Lockean: virtue is commanded, and vice forbidden, only because the one is beneficial to us, the other harmful, “all the Circumstances of things considered.” If Scriptural revelation is a legitimate moral rule, it is (only) because it conforms to this principle.55 As Locke put it in the Second Treatise of Government, the fundamental and divinely mandated principle of natural law is the “preservation of mankind,” which includes, centrally, the provision (by labor) of the “Conveniences of Life” (§34; cf. §§26, 49; First Treatise §§33, 41). Or, more broadly, “law, in its true notion, is not so much the limitation, as the direction of a free and intelligent Agent to his proper Interest, and prescribes no farther than is for the general Good of those under the Law: could they be happier without it, the law, as a useless thing, would of itself vanish” (§57). It is then just a corollary, when Franklin concludes that self-denial is not the essence of virtue. This seems to run counter to Locke’s claim that the suppression and mastery of appetite is essential to virtue, but the difference is merely apparent.56 Locke and Franklin share the view that most appetites are to be indulged, and only some suppressed – indeed, that properly screened appetite is the guide to proper living. When Franklin says that self-denial is not the essence of virtue, he is merely making the very Lockean point that (contra some of the more austere varieties of Christianity) self-denial is not its defining characteristic. Virtue requires indeed the suppression of some desires; but only for the sake of realizing others, and attaining true or long-term happiness. For both authors, virtue is beneficial to us, and productive of happiness, in an entirely this-worldly sense. Or, even more strongly:

55 56

Franklin, Autobiography, pp. 1359–60; cf. Writings, p. 1213 (from the sayings of Poor Richard). Franklin, “Self-Denial Not the Essence of Virtue” (Writings, pp. 242–44); Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education §§45, 52, 107.

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if virtue did not serve our happiness, we would not be bound by it.57 The virtues, however, need development. Franklin’s famous “Art of Virtue,” elaborated in Part Two of his Autobiography, responds to this need. The “art” is a methodical habituation to thirteen specific virtues, habituation in disciplining or suppressing contrary inclinations.58 It is an art within the reach of everyman, with no need of a tutor’s guidance, unless that tutor is Franklin himself. Franklin’s list of virtues leaves ample scope for self-interest – indeed, it mandates a kind of industrious self-service. But it also displays a characteristically Lockean combination of service to self with service to others (other individuals, or the social good more broadly). Frugality, one of the most seemingly self-centered virtues, is glossed by Franklin more sociably as, “Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself” (p. 1385). “Silence” is epitomized as “Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself” (p. 1384). “Sincerity” is explained with the double-edged “Use no hurtful deceit.” Deceit may be employed if it is productive of good to others, as we shall see. Justice, meanwhile, admonishes us to “Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty” (p. 1385). This may go beyond Locke in the direction of charity, depending on how Franklin understands the benefits we “owe” to others. A case could be made that Franklin understands them quite expansively. No one who reads the Autobiography can miss the centrality of public service to it. We see Franklin organizing a city militia, volunteer fire department, street-lighting and street-sweeping operations, a public library company, as well as the Pennsylvania School (pp. 1402–11, 1420–29). All these proceed from the moral principle, repeated tirelessly by Franklin, that one ought to do all the good within one’s power (pp. 475, 1317, 1322, 1382, 1396, 1417–18, 1421). Franklin does not go so far as to say that such beneficence is a duty, any more than Locke says in Some Thoughts Concerning Education that civility or liberality are duties. Locke does say in the introductory 57

58

This point is implicit in Franklin’s assertion that we are commanded to virtue not for its own sake but because it is beneficial to us. For the philosophic roots of Locke’s position, see the section of Chapter 2 entitled “Consciousness and moral motivation.” Franklin, Autobiography, pp. 1373–94. For a very different view of Franklin’s dedication to virtue than that presented here, see Jerry Weinberger, Benjamin Franklin Unmasked: On the Unity of His Moral, Religious, and Political Thought (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2005), especially Ch. 2.

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letter to that work that it is “every man’s indispensable duty, to do all the service he can to his country” – thus explaining his own writing – but it is not clear that any of the moral precepts in the work that follows, including civility or good breeding, require a benevolence that extends beyond one’s own acquaintance, or those with whom one comes in contact.59 Though Franklin’s public-spirited works are not presented as obligatory, they clearly are the works of virtue, and they benefit a much wider public. For those in a position to perform public service, it may well be that “justice,” according to Franklin, makes such service a duty. Franklin did not undertake public service systematically, he tells us, until he accumulated sufficient means and sufficient leisure to retire from business (p. 1420). It may be, then, that Franklin has a multi-tiered understanding of virtue. Poor Richard’s simple virtues of economic self-reliance are intended especially for those of few means, while duties of public service are an obligation of sorts for those with the wealth and leisure. Even the simple virtues serve the public, after all, in the way Locke explained: they advance the general prosperity, while (just as importantly) preventing one from becoming a burden to others or to society. A similar gradation might be inferred from Locke. Productive labor is a duty to all – Locke excoriates rich and poor alike who fail of this60 – while charity of various sorts might be a duty to those of leisure and means.61 If Locke and Franklin have similar understandings of this matter, we would still have to say that Franklin makes a more conscious effort to educate his public in both poles of virtue. Where Locke seems to rely primarily on rational self-interest to motivate labor (perhaps supplying coercive measures when this fails), Franklin undertakes a systematic campaign of exhortation and cajoling. He does this in part because of 59

60 61

Locke speaks broadly of the child being made fit to do what “duty” requires, but this duty is not said to include public obligations (as opposed to familial ones, or the duty to pursue happiness aright). One likely exception is found early in the book, where the subject is physical culture: the child must be hardened to varied conditions and regimens, because “a gentleman, in any age, ought to be so bred as to be fitted to bear arms and be a soldier” (§15). At §116, duty is linked to Locke’s overall principle of natural law, the preservation of mankind (see also §115). See for example the essay “Labour,” unpublished by Locke (Political Essays, pp. 326–28); Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics, p. 323. Of course, this will never be a “perfect” duty, like respecting the rights of others. See also the discussion of Locke’s two-tiered morality in the previous chapter, and relevant citations.

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his awareness that those in whose interest it is to labor and be frugal may well fail to act in their own best interest without at least a push from outside. Franklin published a compendium of Poor Richard’s sayings, under the name of “The Way to Wealth,” which became an international best-seller in its own right.62 It is presented as a harangue by one “Father Abraham” to a spendthrift crowd, witnessed by Poor Richard; at its conclusion, Poor Richard notes, “The People heard it, and approved the Doctrine, and immediately practised the contrary, just as if it had been a common Sermon” (p. 1302). The self-deprecating humor is typical of Franklin, but here it also reflects a conviction that folly is often stronger than reason in human nature, and that harangues are not sufficient to overcome it. The “Art of Virtue” is to be one remedy for such folly, providing a method by which correct habits may be cultivated. Such a method, Franklin pointedly notes, is an improvement on mere “sermonizing” (pp. 1384, 1392). As to those who fall prey to folly nonetheless, though Franklin is capable of harsh words his attitude is generally one of indulgent bemusement. In the Autobiography, he proposes rewriting a couplet of Alexander Pope, from “Immodest Words admit of no Defence; / For Want of Modesty is Want of Sense,” to “Immodest Words admit but this Defence, / That Want of Modesty is Want of Sense” (pp. 1322– 23). Want of sense is in some measure excusable, because inevitable. Franklin forgives himself some of his youthful improprieties on the grounds that “Youth, Inexperience, & the Knavery of others” made some indiscretion inevitable (p. 1360). The Autobiography’s account of the “Art of Virtue,” which begins with Franklin’s youthful aspiration to achieve “moral Perfection” (p. 1383), ends with the decision to settle for the “speckled axe” of a somewhat tarnished virtue (p. 1390). Moral perfection (even defined as humbly as Franklin defines it) is not fully worth the continuous struggle with contrary inclinations, Franklin suggests. He goes on to suggest that, even if achieved, it might amount to “a kind of Foppery in Morals,” which might actually interfere with a comfortable sociable life. Franklin concludes, wryly, that “a benevolent Man should allow a few Faults in himself, to keep his Friends in Countenance” (p. 1390). 62

“Father Abraham’s Speech,” sometimes called “The Way to Wealth,” is found in Franklin, Writings, pp. 1294–1303. See also Lorraine Smith Pangle, The Political Philosophy of Benjamin Franklin (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), pp. 13, 82; Weinberger, Franklin Unmasked, p. 279.

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This conclusion accords perfectly with Locke’s dictum in Some Thoughts Concerning Education that “Power and riches, nay virtue itself, are valued only as conducing to our happiness” (§143). Whether Locke would agree with the conclusion Franklin has just drawn from this dictum (albeit with an unknown degree of irony), is less certain. Most revealing, perhaps, is Franklin’s discussion of the virtue of “humility,” which along with the story of the speckled axe, forms the climax (or anti-climax) of Franklin’s account of virtue. Franklin disarmingly tells us, almost as an afterthought, that his original list contained only twelve virtues. When a Quaker friend told him that he was “generally thought proud,” overly assertive and peremptory in conversation, Franklin added “humility” to the list (p. 1392). By discipline and habituation, he eventually developed a humble manner, though “with some violence to natural Inclination” (p. 1393). This virtue, the one he had not thought to put on his list initially, is the only one that Franklin characterizes as so contrary to nature: “In reality there is perhaps no one of our natural Passions so hard to subdue as Pride” (ibid.). Or, as Poor Richard put it, pride is the last vice a “good man” is rid of (p. 1254). By the account of the Autobiography, Franklin’s Quaker friend was not mistaken: at least in his early life, Franklin had a bad habit of combative debate – aggravated, he indicates, by the books of “polemic divinity” he found in his father’s library (pp. 1317–18). However natural its roots, though, this vice is a principal block to the life of happy and benevolent sociability that Franklin espouses. “Disputatiousness” unnecessarily makes enemies, and sours social relations. As a result, Franklin says, “persons of good sense” seldom fall into this vice, “except lawyers, university men, and men of all sorts that have been bred at Edinborough.”63 Franklin’s account of humility presents a striking parallel to Locke. Locke warns in Some Thoughts Concerning Education against the polemical vice of “dispute,” abrupt contradiction in conversation. It is, Locke says, an expression of overbearing pride, and a severe breach of civility (§145). As such, we may associate it with the love of “dominion” that Locke finds to be the root of those vices that are “ordinary and natural” (§103). Disputatiousness, Locke tells us, subverts one of the true aims of conversation, which is to exchange views and to learn. Not that we are to meekly agree to everything we hear; that would 63

Franklin, Autobiography, p. 1318; cf. pp. 1325, 1432.

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equally subvert those aims. But when objections are registered, Locke advises, it should be “by way of inquiry, not instruction” (§145). In Franklin’s account, disputatiousness also thwarts “the chief Ends of Conversation,” which are “to inform, or to be informed, to please or to persuade (p. 1322). In his own case, despite his strong inclinations the other way, he habituated himself to express his opinions more diffidently, as “I imagine it to be so; or it is so, if I am not mistaken” (ibid.). Franklin concludes his account of pride and humility, though, in a way that Locke would probably not. “I cannot boast of much Success in acquiring the Reality of this Virtue,” he says, “but I had a good deal with regard to the Appearance of it” (p. 1393; cf. p. 1322). That is, his modest and diffident mode of conversation, and the other ways that Franklin’s “humility” expressed itself, were to some extent mere masks, covering a pride that remained below. Yet, we come to realize, that was perfectly adequate, because humility, like all the virtues, is not an end in itself but a means to cordial social relations and personal happiness. Franklin’s humility is “sincere” in the sense that it employs no “hurtful deceit.” His “civility” doubtless falls within the Lockean description of a “general good will and regard for all people” (Some Thoughts §143). Whether it falls within Locke’s prescription of disingenuousness is less clear (cf. Some Thoughts §66). Franklin’s (covert) indulgence of his own pride is not simply another example of the concessions he makes to human folly. It is rooted also in a conviction that pride is not simply a bad thing. The very writing of an Autobiography, he confesses at the beginning of that work, bespeaks a certain amount of “vanity” (p. 1308). But, he continues, he gives the vanity of others “fair quarter” wherever he meets with it, “being persuaded that it is often productive of good to the possessor, and to others that are within his sphere of action” (ibid.). If Franklin’s vanity helped to produce the Autobiography, the pride or self-esteem of others may motivate them likewise to good. The self-assertive republican pride of his fellow-Americans could not be wholly unwelcome to Franklin the revolutionary. As one of those who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their “sacred honor” to that cause, Franklin necessarily appreciates the healthy side of pride. If that egalitarian pride has some useful political consequences, it simultaneously complicates another part of Franklin’s project. Franklin goes beyond Locke in his attention to what we might call the arts of sociability and leadership in a democratic and egalitarian

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context. The problem exemplified by “disputatiousness” is augmented in a culture of perfect equality, where anything that is apt to raise one above one’s fellows, even spearheading projects for the public good, is likely to arouse resentment and resistance. Franklin discovered this while advancing his own projects for militias, fire companies, schools, libraries, and the like. Whereas the nobility or gentry of an earlier day, or a less egalitarian culture, might have been presumptively given a leader’s role, Franklin encountered resistance for even the most publicly beneficial project. He discovered, when soliciting cooperation and support for such projects, that if he presented them forthrightly as his own, people were reluctant to support them, simply because it would add to Franklin’s reputation. If he presented the same project (fictitiously) as the idea of “a number of friends,” however, envy was forestalled and the scheme proceeded smoothly (p. 1381). This ruse, which Franklin recommends to all who would lead in an egalitarian society, is once again completely “sincere,” in that it employs no “hurtful deceit.”64 Locke emphasizes that civility in children entails their being solicitous and accommodating to each other, and good breeding in adults is especially careful not to give offense to any, to consider their pride (§§109–10, 143). In Franklin’s more egalitarian world, the arts of sociability must navigate still more carefully. Franklin goes perhaps a step further than Lockean civility requires, by suggesting that we should not only curb or disguise our own pride, but should give sway to the pride of others. As part of the description of “Moderation” in his catalogue of virtues, Franklin includes “forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve” (p. 1385). This specifically social and sociable part of moderation bids us give some indulgence to the flaws of others, even to the point of “injury.” Locke maintains that “the very end and business of good-breeding is to supple the natural stiffness, and so soften men’s tempers, that they may bend to a compliance, and accommodate themselves to those they have to do with” (§143). Franklin’s accommodation gives some scope even to the stiffness and distemper of others, believing that pride must be indulged, even when it goes somewhat too far. 64

Franklin, Autobiography, p. 1385. For more complete discussions of Franklin’s formula for leadership in an egalitarian society, see Forde, “Model American,” pp. 85–88; Pangle, Political Philosophy of Franklin, pp. 117–26.

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If Franklin seems remarkably easy-going in his devotion to virtue, it is because of his understanding of the foundations of morality. We recall Franklin’s conviction that self-denial is not the essence of virtue, and that virtue is, and must be, beneficial to us. This leads him naturally to an ethic that would restrict no natural impulse, unless its indulgence would have harmful consequences, to the agent, to others, or to society at large. Essentially, it brings all moral strictures before the bar of the individual and social good – understood in a wholly this-worldly way – and forces them to justify themselves there. This is a recognizably Lockean procedure, inasmuch as Locke too roots morality in the (this-worldly) general advantage of mankind. In Franklin’s view, the blanket condemnation of pride fails this test, so he substitutes a qualified praise of pride, and a verisimilitude humility. It is not surprising that Franklin’s moral code appeared downright libertine to many of his more straitlaced countrymen.65 Probably the best-known example is his definition of the virtue of chastity: “Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation” (1385). The loopholes might be more extensive than the barriers in the virtue, as Franklin defines it. He does not specify how large a dose of venery is required for “health,” but it is fair to say that animal health is not taken into account by the Puritan understanding of sexual morality. Franklin allows occasional indulgence even beyond that limit. The only extra-personal good we are required to take account of in his view of “chastity” is the “peace or reputation” of other individuals – not a social good, strictly speaking. Franklin evidently does not believe that a relaxation of sexual mores will threaten the health or cohesion of society at large. He does not so much as mention the institution of marriage in this context.66 It is likely that not only Puritans, but John Locke, would balk at so easygoing an interpretation of sexual morality. Locke’s differences, though, would spring from a different assessment of the requirements of individual and social happiness, not from anything more fundamental in his philosophical approach. The disagreement would be “empirical,”

65

66

This was notoriously true of John Adams. See James Srodes, Franklin: The Essential Founding Father (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2002), p. 347; Weinberger, Franklin Unmasked, pp. 1, 85. Franklin does strongly endorse marriage in general, as a way of advancing both social and personal happiness. See Writings, pp. 302, 368, 372, 1371.

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we might say, based upon considered judgments concerning the social and personal consequences of loosening the strings of chastity.67 Given his understanding of virtue, it is not surprising that Franklin relies very little on religion in his “Art of Virtue.” The scheme was “not wholly without religion,” he says, but appealed to it little (p. 1391). This is partly to avoid controversy: “I would not have any thing in it that should prejudice any one, of any sect, against” the scheme, he says (ibid.). A desire to advance the spirit of toleration doubtless informs Locke’s similar slighting of religion in his educational treatise.68 To the extent that Franklin’s plan relies on religion, he emphasizes that it uses a “generic” creed, one that incorporates the “essentials of every Religion.” Those essentials do not include the divinity of Jesus, but do include rewards and punishments in another life, together with the precept that “the most acceptable service of God is doing Good to Man.”69 One might suppose that the other-regarding virtues Franklin endorses are dependent on otherworldly rewards and punishments, but Franklin (unlike so many of his pious contemporaries) does not strongly link them. Throughout his oeuvre, he emphasizes service to others, but rarely if ever connects them in any way to otherworldly incentives. No one who reads the Autobiography can miss its message of public service, from street-sweeping or lamp-lighting to organizing militias and serving as a legislative delegate; but while describing these many undertakings, Franklin never mentions the divine favor they might bring. In the Autobiography, he describes a particular service he did for the visiting minister, George Whitefield. Whitefield assured Franklin of heavenly reward in return, as the service was done for Christ’s sake, but Franklin rebuffed him: “it was not for Christ’s sake, but for your sake” (p. 1408). Though Whitefield prayed earnestly for Franklin’s conversion to a proper faith, Franklin tells us he “never had the Satisfaction of believing that his Prayers were heard” (ibid.). Franklin evidently let Whitefield know, and he is certainly letting his readers know, that he himself remained staunchly outside the theological mainstream of his day. Franklin may wish to avoid antagonizing 67

68 69

Even at that, we might note that Locke allows that “marriage,” at least as established by natural law, lasts no longer than the nonage of the children it produces (Second Treatise §§79–80; 58, 60, 63, 69). See p. 205 above. Franklin, Autobiography, pp. 1396, 1391, 1382, 1408; Writings, pp. 180, 342, 342n, 1179; but see p. 845.

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believers of any sect, but he is willing to risk doing so in order to get his audience to focus on what he considers the few essentials of religion, and become tolerant of any who adhere to those. Locke, writing generations before Franklin, would certainly not be so bold, though he was willing enough to stake out unorthodox positions on certain theological issues.70 In other respects, Franklin follows quite closely the model established by Locke for the place of religion in a liberal, that is, a tolerant society. That place is to support the social morality on which liberal society rests. Locke makes this point most succinctly and unmistakably in his Letter Concerning Toleration (e.g., pp. 23, 25). Franklin makes clear that the support of social morality is an essential, perhaps even the essential, point of religion properly understood.71 This is not necessarily to say that Franklin regards religion as nothing more than a tool of social order. His teaching is based, though, on an interpretation of divine will and divine providence that is focused almost exclusively on the peace and comforts of this life, and is oriented toward the common good of mankind thus understood. This theology descends directly from Locke. Both Locke and Franklin make otherworldly rewards and punishments essential to religion. They would seem to be essential as motivations to morality, as both authors hold happiness to be the deepest motivation of human beings, and it is difficult to argue that moral behavior always leads to personal happiness in this life. I have argued that Locke relies on these for deep philosophic reasons as well. Yet neither Locke nor Franklin relies significantly on otherworldly incentives in his educational approach. We return to the problem with which this chapter began, the problem of squaring the individual and the common good, without relying on the otherworldly. The key to moral education, as both Locke and Franklin see it, is bringing people to taste the 70

71

Locke’s position on original sin is clearly unorthodox, and the same could be argued concerning his interpretation of the biblical injunction to “be fruitful and multiply,” as I have argued. Even The Reasonableness of Christianity, which might be Locke’s most orthodox work, takes a distinctly “latitudinarian” approach to Christianity. On these subjects see (among many others) Marshall, Resistance Religion and Responsibility, Part III; Myers, Star and Compass, pp. 46–50, 182–86; Parker, Biblical Politics, pp. 14, 17, 37, 51; Schouls, Reasoned Freedom, pp. 193–202; John Dunn, Political Thought of John Locke, pp. 188–98. Franklin, Autobiography, pp. 1340, 1382, 1396. See also Franklin, Writings, p. 756.

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pleasures of a life of sociable virtue. Locke’s educational curriculum gives its charges a “knowledge of virtue” gained “more by practice than rules,” as he tells us (Thoughts §185). The well-bred individual takes positive pleasure in pleasing and serving others (§§110, 143). Franklin also educates by experience, though, if the Autobiography is the model, that experience is vicarious on our part. It was Poor Richard who said “Experience keeps a dear school, yet Fools will learn in no other,” and Franklin hopes to spare us some of that expense.72 As I suggested earlier, the Autobiography is the closest Franklin ever came to presenting an argument that service to others is fully compatible with one’s own self-interest. And it is not so much an argument as a drama. If we agree that the life presented there was a happy life, that service to others was part of that happiness, and that such a life is within our reach, we have all the proof we need of the compatibility of virtue and happiness, and all the motivation we need to emulate Franklin. There is one problem with Franklin’s model that we have not yet dealt with, a problem he allegedly shares with Locke. Rousseau is perhaps the best-known leveler of the charge that the culture spawned by liberal individualism creates a false happiness, masking the misery of a society in which inauthenticity reigns, and all are forced to wear masks, to be in appearance ingratiating, but secretly concerned only with their own selfish good. We accommodate one another, and society proceeds smoothly, but it is based fundamentally on lies. We applaud and flatter each other, keeping our true thoughts to ourselves.73 The result cannot be happiness, but only misery. We may see this too as a version of our opening problem, the problem of squaring the individual and the social good in the new society that Locke and Franklin are building. If we are fundamentally individualist rather than social creatures, and if morality itself bids us tend to our own interests first, is it not a falsification of our nature to force us to accommodate one another? We may do so out of necessity or self-interest – this is the fundamental thought behind the “social contract” – but this accommodation could never contribute directly to 72 73

Franklin, Writings, p. 1230. Rousseau makes this case in his “Discourse on the Sciences and Arts” (in First and Second Discourses, together with the Replies to Critics, ed. and trans. Victor Gourevitch [New York: Harper & Row, 1986], pp. 1–27), and the “Preface to Narcissus” (ibid., pp. 96–111).

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our personal happiness. Franklin does not explicitly subscribe to the social contract philosophy (he does not subscribe to much in the way of philosophic doctrines74 ), but the problem of inauthenticity might loom larger in Franklin than in Locke. If Locke was an indirect target of Rousseau’s ire, Franklin’s prominent detractors include such figures as Max Weber and D. H. Lawrence, who charged him with a bourgeois flattening of the human soul.75 Franklin himself seems to give credence to the charges of inauthenticity when he admits that he acquired humility only with violence to his natural inclinations, and that this humility, which was so instrumental to his success, was not real humility but only the appearance thereof. As Franklin puts it at one point in the Autobiography, he “put on” the guise of the “humble Enquirer & Doubter,” rather than the combative dogmatist (p. 1321). His modest and ingratiating manner of conversation was, throughout his life, a mask he donned to make social intercourse more pleasant – and to increase his influence over others. He bids us all to do the same. A certain reading of Locke’s educational treatise would create a similar impression. Locke asserts that his education as a whole is dedicated to suppressing and controlling appetites, in favor of “reputation” (§185). One task of “Good-breeding” is to “soften” the “natural stiffness” of men’s tempers (§143). Breeding curbs our impulses and preferences in order to accommodate others, even where the curbing is dictated by nothing more solid than the social conventions of a particular time and place (ibid.). What must be suppressed above all is the pride that leads to such faults as abrupt contradiction in speech. The love of dominion, as the root of certain “vicious habits, that are ordinary and natural,” is to be suppressed altogether (§103). We might well conclude that both Locke and Franklin force us to wear masks, to go through life as someone – or a collection of people – who are 74

75

I make this argument at greater length in “Benjamin Franklin and the Theory of Social Compact,” in The American Founding and the Social Compact, ed. Ronald J. Pestritto and Thomas G. West (New York: Lexington Books, 2003, pp. 255–76). Franklin expresses his skepticism regarding “metaphysical reasonings” in Autobiography, p. 1359; see also his letter to Benjamin Vaughan of November 9, 1779 (in Writings, pp. 1015–17), p. 1016. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), pp. 48–50; D. H. Lawrence, “Benjamin Franklin,” in Critical Essays on Benjamin Franklin, ed. Melvin H. Buxbaum (Boston, MA: Hall, 1987).

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not our true selves. We are well advised to adopt the appearance of sociability, but it is disingenuous, only an appearance.76 I have argued that this is an incorrect reading of Locke, ultimately because Locke’s view of human nature is less individualistic than is sometimes supposed, and his moral theory is more “communal.” In Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Locke says that civility, the “sweetness of mind” that is one of his primary educational goals, is to be wholly without “affectation” (§62). This is possible only if there is a real basis in human nature for it. Such civility does not come “naturally,” in the sense of “spontaneously”; but no advocate of a sociable morality and a sociable human nature has been unaware of contrary impulses that education must control. Locke refrains from appealing to “sociability” in his own theory, and for a reason; but his view is not devoid of sociable elements. Nor does the fact that some appetites must be restrained or suppressed, and others built up, entail that the resulting character is “unnatural,” or that its possessor is wearing a mask or is inauthentic. Aristotle’s argument in the Ethics could be described in exactly the same terms. Aristotle, Locke, and Franklin all argue that a properly pruned or trained human nature is the only truly happy human nature. Franklin presents a more difficult case because he openly admits to disingenuousness in the central social virtue of humility, admits that he developed it only with violence to natural inclination. He suggests indeed that true humility is unattainable by human beings, since pride is ineradicable. “Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down . . . it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself” (Autobiography, p. 1393). And if he did succeed in eliminating it at last, Franklin confesses, “I should probably be proud of my Humility” (p. 1394). Humility and compleasance must always be to some degree a sham. Yet Franklin is serenely content with this result. While Locke insists that solicitousness toward others must be unaffected and sincere, Franklin is happy with appearances. This may be sufficient from a social point of view – social relations will be equally smooth whether compleasance is sincere or affected – but personal happiness would seem to require a sincere warmth toward others rather than one that is merely put on. Many commentators have noted that Franklin is such a master of masks that it is difficult to discern what, ultimately, is behind 76

See Myers, Only Star and Compass, p. 192.

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all the fac¸ades.77 If Franklin is falsely modest toward his friends and acquaintances, what stock can we put in the face he shows to us? And how can we believe that the life of sociable virtue he touts brought even him happiness? Yet somehow, this does not ring true. Rousseau might regard Franklin’s life as a life of inauthentic misery, but no one who reads Franklin’s Autobiography with an open mind can fail to come away with the sense that Franklin’s life was a happy life, an enviable life. We believe him when he tells us that his cultivation of the virtues brought him not only prosperity, but happiness (p. 1391). His cultivation of the appearance of humility contributed greatly to that happy life. What we need to realize, perhaps, is that for Franklin, the somewhat feigned character of his humility does not detract from the genuine warmth of his relations with others. One sees, not only from the Autobiography, but from his ample correspondence, that Franklin developed many and close friendships. The fact that he may have bit his tongue occasionally in his conversations with these people does not mean that his affection for them, and the gratifications he got from his relations with them, were not genuine. We might say, in Locke’s terms, that Franklin’s “sweetness of mind” toward other human beings was disingenuous and unaffected, even if some of his conversational habits were not. In that respect, he was a paragon of civility and good breeding, within Locke’s meaning of those terms. As with Locke, Franklin shows us a human nature that is sociable enough that genuine pleasure and happiness can be gotten by paring back unsociable parts of our nature, to allow the sociable parts to flourish.78 He, and Locke, might say that there is no life that fulfills the Rousseauian fantasy of a completely authentic existence with no conflicts or tensions. Equally important, from our point of view, is Franklin’s attempt to show how a character of happy sociability could be cultivated by the broad mass of society. Both Franklin and Locke are dedicated to a vision of society in which individualism, including broad freedom of the individual to do as he pleases, and moral title to pursue his own self-interest, is combined with a community of benevolence and mutual regard. If one of the signature problems of liberalism is to reconcile 77 78

See Lerner, “Dr. Janus”; Pangle, Political Philosophy of Franklin, pp. 78–81; Weinberger, Franklin Unmasked, Chs. 7–8. See also Pangle, Political Philosophy of Franklin, pp. 90–94.

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an individualist society, premised on self-interest, with service to the common good, Locke’s educational treatise, together with Franklin’s example, show more clearly than any purely theoretical treatise, how this may be done. From the individual’s own point of view, they show how a life of affable sociability and service to the common good can serve personal happiness, and therefore personal self-interest. Franklin would wholeheartedly agree with Locke’s statement that he who has learned to get along smoothly and affably with others in society has found the “true art of living in the world” (Some Thoughts §143). He would add works of public service, for those in a position to perform them. Liberalism, as these two authors see it, does not confine itself to a narrow and merely economic understanding of individual self-interest, but opens up to a broader field of sociable human fulfillment.

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Index

absolute certainty 49 absolute monarchy 103, 105, 171, 190–91 abstraction 87–88 as defining moral creature 113–14 Advancement of Learning 37–38, 58 affectation 215 afterlife 135 agent intellect 27 alchemy 53–55 alcoholism 120–21, 122, 127, 134, 191, 195 Anaxagoras 50 angels, traits of 111 anthropic principle 42 appetite 118–19, 185 and reason 120–21, 204 and virtue 201–02, 203 appropriation 160–61, 167, 174 Aquinas, Thomas 7, 26–28, 142, 157–58 Aristotelian Scholasticism 36, 110 Aristotle 25 Aristotle 3–4, 21–22, 37–38, 55–56, 142, 164, 220–21 and Aristotelian tradition 18–28 elements 51–52 human intellect 38 logic 37–38 and nature 59–60 and physical world 51–52 and Socratic philosophy 21–22 Art of Virtue 229 The Art of Virtue 231, 236 assent, and knowledge 91–92 atomism 2, 27, 40–41, 47, 50–51, 55–56 see also corpuscular theory attributes of objects 80–81 attributive justice 165

Autobiography 222–23, 227–28, 229, 231, 233, 236, 238, 239, 241 Bacon, Francis 2, 16, 17, 23, 36–45, 58, 77–78, 130 Baconian project 45 Barbeyrac, Jean 97 beauty and morality 219 of virtue 219–20 benignity of mind 224 Boethius 28 Boyle, Robert 2, 3, 18, 51, 53–56, 59–62, 65–66, 68, 69–70 Cambridge Platonists 59, 106 camera obscura mind 75–76 categories 83 certain modes 98 certainty 7, 49 and probability 90–96 and science 100 changelings 72–73 changes of kind 22–23 charity 11, 136–37, 148, 173, 177–78, 200 and justice 178–84 and property 148–56 chastity 235–36 children appetite and reason 204 civility in 206, 234 and concern for others 216 cruelty of 206–07, 215 and divinity 222 and dominion 203 and duty 222 and equality 192, 207 esteem and disgrace 207 and freedom 186–87

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Index and justice 207–11 and liberality 208–09 and Lockean virtue 223 and moral understanding 221–22 and reason 202 and reputation 204 rights of 143–45 and virtue 219 Christian civility 211–12, 219 Christian Scholasticism 21–22, 38 see also Scholasticism Christian Virtuoso 62 chrysopoeia 54–55 Chymists see alchemy Cicero 134, 218 civil society, and rights 145 civility 12–13, 136–37, 142, 206, 211, 223, 240 in children 206, 234 Lockean 214–19, 221 varieties of 211–14 co-eternal extrinsic principle, and God 101 Coelum 43 common possession 157–58 communal ownership 151, 155–56 communal/common-good principle 143, 180–81 compact 165–66, 171 compleasance 211 complete civility 216–17 complex ideas 79 compound beings 42 compound objects 50 concupiscence 213 conflict, and self-preservation 141–43 conscience 74 consciousness and moral motivation 116–30 and soul 112–13 consent 169, 171–73 Considerations and Experiments concerning the Origins of Forms and Qualities 51, 55, 57–58, 61, 64–66 constructivist meaning 89 contemplative life 130 contractual justice 165 Conveniences of Life 174, 228 corporeity 110–11

255 corpuscular theory 2, 55–56, 66–67, 72, 73, 78 see also atomism corruption 22 of terrestrial objects 27–28 covetousness 12, 209 Cudworth, Ralph 106 De Anima 25 decay of terrestrial objects 27–28 deceit 229, 234 Democritus 16, 27 demonstrative certainty 7 demonstrative knowledge 92–93 demonstrative morality 108–10 demonstrative science, and morality 6, 108–10, 193 Descartes, Ren´e 77–78, 91 deserving poor 136 disputatiousness 232–33, 234 distributive justice 165 divine see under God dominion 203, 224, 232 drunkenness 120–21, 122, 127, 134, 191, 195 due consideration 195 duty 180, 199 and justice 230 morality of 218 and productive labor 230 to repay 150 and virtue 229–30 Duty of Man and Citizen 168 ecclesiastical/political distinction 183 economic self-reliance 230 education 11–12, 210–11 see also Some Thoughts Concerning Education egalitarian benevolence 217 egalitarian fairness 189 egalitarian humanity 215 egalitarianism 187–88, 192, 196 see also equality elements 51–52, 53–55 The Elements of Universal Jurisprudence 96 empirical knowledge 92–93, 129 empirically rooted probability, and rights 132

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256 empiricism 76 Bacon’s 44 and knowledge 14, 19, 26, 29 epistemology 2, 14, 17–18, 19, 20, 49, 70–71, 214 equality 9, 138–39, 187–88, 207 of all 168–69, 195 and morality 221 principles of 195–96 and rationality 184–97 Essais de Morale 136–37 Essay Concerning Human Understanding 2–3, 5, 6–7, 14–16, 18, 40, 51, 65, 72, 75, 134–35, 137, 154, 176–77, 182, 184, 192, 198–99 Improvement of our Knowledge 128 Locke’s intention in 15–16 Of Power 118, 120, 127, 128 and Second Treatise 8–10, 126, 138–39, 185–86, 191 essences 47, 51–52, 72–73, 80–81, 83–85, 91, 96, 111–13 essential traits 83–85 eternal law of good and evil 122 and nature of things 127 Ethica 219 Ethics 240 evil and pain 119–23 Exercises Against the Aristotelians 46–47 existence 5, 81 as particular 81–82 experience 25 expletive justice 165 fabric of nature 43, 64 faith 193–94 family 143–45 Filmer, Robert 15, 146, 151 first notions of the mind 38–39 First Treatise of Government 10, 137, 145–48, 152, 173, 174, 178, 179 folly and reason 231 Foppery in Morals 231 form 4, 19–20, 59 and abstraction 39

Index Aristotle’s 23, 51–52 as creation of God 27–28 and God’s actions 30–31 of heat 58 and human art 23 human form 32–33 and man’s end 34 as independent entities 32–33 intellection of 27 of man 26 and mode 58–59 and morality 69 and natural law 69–70 and nature 20 number of 52–53 Ockham on 30–31 and perfection 5–6 precise status of 21–22 qualities of 53–55, 57–58 and reality 36–37 species-forms 53 and thinghood 23–24 Forms and Qualities see Considerations and Experiments concerning the Origins of Forms and Qualities Franklin, Benjamin 12–13, 222–42 and anti-elitism 225–26 Autobiography see Autobiography and happy life 222–23 humility 232, 233, 240–41 on laziness 227 list of virtues 229 and the poor 226–27 Poor Richard sayings 225–26, 227–28, 230, 231, 238 on religion 236–37 school proposals 224–25 The Way to Wealth 231 A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature 51, 59–61, 62, 67 free-market principles 176 freedom 186–87 frugality 229 Gassendi, Pierre 46–51, 63–64, 77–78 generation 22 Genesis, and species 65 genetics 64

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Index geometry 91 God absolute and inordinate power 103–04 actions of 30–31 and co-eternal extrinsic principle 101 as creator 27–28, 34–35, 62, 101 demonstrative account of 108–10 and human benefit 174 and human nature 103–04 law, divine 8 as moral law 102 legislation, divine 106–07 as man’s owner 153, 154 and morality 105–07 and natural law 101–03 and nature 59–60, 61–64 omnipotence, divine 104 plan for man, divine 145–48 power, divine and creation 34–35 and human comprehension 31 and voluntarism 34 power of 34–35 proof of existence 135 and property 151, 162, 176 and propagation of children 145–48, 162, 196 sanction, divine 1 sovereignty of 172 and species 64 and suicide 153 and voluntarism 101 and wealth accumulation 196 see also religion; theology good breeding 12, 211, 216–17, 239 good of mankind 181–82 good nature 211, 216, 220 good and pleasure 119–23 goods of nature 150 government of the passions 128 gravity 47, 48, 60–61 Grotius, Hugo 98–99, 101, 106, 158–60, 164–73, 175, 180 happiness 127–28, 185, 191, 198, 199, 201 and law 199 Lockean 219–22

257 and morality 11, 133–35, 138 and natural law 133 and virtue 219–21 harm 168–69, 173 heathen philosophers 123 heliocentric theory 47 Hobbes, Thomas 98–99, 100, 108, 142 on family 143–44 moral teaching 119–23 natural law 139, 141–43 Hooker, Richard 140 human appetite 142 human benefit, and God 174 human bodies, and appetites 117–18 human civility 212 human consciousness 77–78, 116–30 human equality see equality human eros 128 human essences 111–13 human form 32–33 human freedom 171–73 human intellect 38 human intelligence, and property 99 human knowledge 76 human labor, and wealth 175–76 human mind and form of nature 20–21, 38–39 and religion 39–40 human nature, and natural law 164 human perfection 86 human rationality see rationality human traits 26 human understanding 40 human will 118–19, 171–73 humanity 74, 133 humility 232, 233, 240–41 ideas 19, 76–77, 78–79, 91 and reality 131–32 idols of the mind 38–39, 43 ignorance, as natural condition 167 immaterial forms 3–4 imperfect duty 11, 180 Improvement of our Knowledge 128 individual happiness 12 individual liberty 185 individual natural right 126–28 individual preservation 185

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258 individual rights 1, 8, 10, 173 and property 148 and welfare 177 see also rights individualist philosophical approach 139 individualist principles 201, 241–42 inductivism, Bacon’s 44 Industrious and Rational, and Quarrelsom and Contentious 226 inertia 48 influence of matter 24 ingenuous detestation of vice 222 innate ideas 29 innate moral ideas 75 insensible parts 73 intellective soul 32 intellectual substances 16 internal civility of the mind 216–17 introspective logic 77 intuitive knowledge 92–93 invincible ignorance 194 irrationality, and misbehaviour 188–89 Isagoge 28 John XXII, Pope 35 just precedency 188 justice 173, 207, 210 and charity 178–84 and duty 230 and liberality 211 Kant, Immanuel 130–34 Kingdom of Darkness 4 knowledge and assent 91–92 degrees of 92–93 of forms and essences 24–25 moral 16, 18, 192 and morality 191 and opinion 92 and probability 92 rubbish affecting 14–16 of virtue 238 law of nature see natural law law of opinion 124 Lawrence, D. H. 239 legal justice 165

Index Leibniz, Gottfried 4 Letter Concerning Toleration 135, 137, 139, 183, 196, 237 Leviathan 108, 142, 144, 211 liberal individualism 238 liberalism 1, 136–37, 139, 170–71, 173, 199, 200 and equality 138–39 Locke as principal founder of 182–83 liberality 12 and children 208–09 and justice 211 liberty 118, 139, 185, 186 and licentiousness 224 life, liberty and estate 10 Locke, John and Bacon see Bacon and Boyle see Boyle and form see form and Franklin see Franklin and God see God and Hobbes see Hobbes and Kant 130–34 and morality see morality and nature see nature new science see new science and property see property and species see species see also Essay Concerning Human Understanding Lockean civility 214–19, 221 Lockean happiness 219–22 magic 44, 58 magnetism 48, 80 man, as political 142 mankind good of 181–82 preservation of 9–10, 12, 143, 177, 186 man’s end, and human form 34 Masham, Lady Damaris 136, 138, 163, 178, 184, 211 material beings 130 material elements 23 mathematics and certainty 91, 93, 94–95 and modes 90, 93 modes 105 origins 49–50

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Index matter 24, 53–55, 57–58, 66 matter, building blocks of 42 medieval Scholasticism 16 see also Scholasticism mental adequacy 192 mental constructs, and morality 7–8 mental enslavement 90 Metaphysics 22, 25, 27 metaphysics 44, 58 mind, as tabula rasa 75–76 mixed modes 6–7, 18, 74, 86–90, 96, 105, 108, 122–24, 132, 147, 197, 207 modes as ideas 87–88 of mathematics 90, 93 of matter 57–59, 66 and moral entities 98–99 of motion 88 monsters 67, 69, 72, 73, 86 moral agents 112, 117, 133 moral beliefs foundations of 195 and probability 197 moral categories 89–90 moral chaos 90 moral code 139 moral concepts 197 moral demonstration 104–11, 114–16, 135, 194 moral duty, and private good 200 moral education 117–18, 237–38 moral entities 98–99, 100 moral ideas, as mixed modes 86–90 moral knowledge 16, 18, 192 moral law 108, 130 as divine law 102 and laws of nature 132 moral modes 7, 96–104, 169–70 moral motivation, and consciousness 116–30 moral principles 180 moral science 130 moral teaching 137 moral theory, and God 105–07 moral understanding 221–22 moral virtues 165 morality and alcoholism 120–21, 122, 127, 134, 191 basis for 6–7

259 and beauty 219 and certainty 93 defended by Locke 17 as demonstrative 6, 108–10, 193 and divine law 8 of duty 218 and equality 221 Essay and Second Treatise compared 8–10, 126, 138–39, 185–86, 191 Foppery in Morals 231 and form 69 and happiness 133–35 and human form 107–08 of individual rights 180 and Kant 130–34 and knowledge 191 as a law 100–01, 126 and law 185, 198–99 liberal 136–37 and mental constructs 7–8 and mixed modes 6–7, 18, 108, 132 and modes 105 and natural science 96 and nature 36 no-harm principle 168–69, 173, 180–81, 183–84, 185, 206–07 in Of Power 118, 120, 127 and personal happiness 11, 120 and pleasure 120 religious foundation of 196–97 and right 199 of Rights 183 and Scholasticism 16 as science and business of mankind 128 sociable 169 and species 5–6 and theology 204–05 true ground of 107–08 as true science 129 two-tiered 11 motion theory 48 natural disasters 67 natural law 1, 8, 35, 69–70, 124–26, 139–41, 143, 154, 164–73, 180, 184 background 156–63 and behavior 167

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Index

260 natural law (cont.) communal elements 11 as demanding 175 as divine law 8 duties imposed by 143 and happiness 133 and human nature 164 and institutions 171–73 as mode 132 and morals 132 new natural law 164–73 people’s understanding of 191–92 preservation of mankind 9–10, 12, 143, 177, 186, 189, 190, 200–01, 205, 222, 228 and property 156–63 of punishment 188–89, 190 vagueness of 189 natural order 36 natural regularity 72 natural rights 126–28, 210 of men 221–22 see also rights natural theology 135 natural-law family 145 nature and civil society 142 comprehensive view of 68 as cosmical mechanism 61 fabric of 43, 64 form of 20–21 and God 59–60, 61–64 as great automaton 61 laws of 62–63 levels of 43–45 as matter and motion 107 meaningful knowledge of 20–21 of moral entities 98 and morality 107 and new science 63–64 and order 129 order of 19–20 as ordered whole 21 and philosophy 131 recognition of 20 and science 63–64 of a thing 66 nature’s god 146 neo-Aristotelian Scholasticism 18 new natural law 164–73

New Organon 37–38, 39–40, 41, 44, 46 new science 2, 4, 5, 16–17, 40, 60–62, 63–64, 68, 69, 135 Newton, Isaac 2, 4, 48 Nicole, Pierre 136–37, 211–12, 213–14, 215, 219 Nicomachean Ethics 26 no-harm principle 168–69, 173, 180–81, 183–84, 185, 206–07 nominal essences 84, 85, 91, 96 nominalism 5, 28, 31, 32–34, 46, 73, 85–86 noumenal rational beings 130 obligation 147 to mutual love 140 Ockham, William of 26, 29–36, 39 on existence 81 moral philosophy 34–35 and natural law 124–25 nominalism 34 principles of 36 voluntarism 34 Ockham’s razor 30, 31 Of the Conduct of the Understanding 192 Of Power 118, 120, 127, 128 Of Property 148 Of the Wisdom of the Ancients 41, 43, 44 old philosophy 128–30, 131 On the Duty of Man and Citizen According to Natural Law 96, 97 On the Law of Nature and Nations 96, 97 opinion, and knowledge 92 order of nature 19–20, 129 Organon 37–38 original sin 104 pain and evil 119–23 parental duty 143–45 particulars 36–37 paternal power 9–10 peace 212, 213 perceptions 25 perceptual experience 26 perfect duty 180

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Index perfect right 165–66 perfectionist view 128 Peripatetics 37 person 112 personal happiness see happiness phenomenal material beings 130 Physics 24, 27–28 physics 44 Plato 4, 21–22 pleasure and good 119–23 political authority 125–26 political society, and sociability 169–71 political/ecclesiastical distinction 183 Politics 26–28 politics, rights in 181–82 Poor Law proposals 226 Poor Richard sayings 225–26, 227–28, 230, 231, 238 Porphyry 28 Port-Royal Logic 76 positive freedom 186–87 possessive individualism 12 Posterior Analytics 25 power, of parents 143–45 preservation of mankind 9–10, 12, 143, 177, 186, 189, 190, 200–01, 205, 222, 228 pride 232, 233, 235 primary qualities 51 principles of the world 64 private good, and moral duty 200 probability and certainty 90–96 and knowledge 92 productive labor, and duty 230 propagation of children 145–48, 162, 196 property 103, 104, 173–78, 207, 209 appropriation of 160–61 and charity 148–56 and children 207 common possession 157–58 communal ownership 151, 155–56, 157–58, 161–62 and consent 158 excess accumulation of 155 and individual rights 148, 156 as moral mode 99 moral obligation to respect 158

261 and natural law 156–63 as necessary to human life 157 and political order 165–66 protection 180–81 respect for 166 right of necessity 162 rights 9–10, 11, 12, 35, 169 Roman law 158 and sociability 169 spoilage 155 use-right of 155 virtues of 175–76 prosperity 177–78 Proteus 43 public/private interest 199–200 Pufendorf, Samuel 7–8, 96–104, 124–25, 132, 146, 160–61, 163, 166–73, 218 punishment 188–89, 190 pursuit of happiness 127–28 qualities 75–81 Quodlibet 32 rational beings 130 rational belief 197 rational cultivation 138 rational perfection 138 rational self-interest 230 rationality 9, 186, 197, 226 and equality 184–97 real essence 85 reality 36–37 reason and children 202 and folly 231 The Reasonableness of Christianity 193–94, 196, 220 recognition 20 relativity of desire 120 religion 236–37 as foundation of morality 196–97 rational belief 197 and weakness of human mind 39–40 see also God reputation 204 resemblances 83 restraint of desire 218 right of necessity 177 right reason 35

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262 right to rule 185 rights 1, 8, 9–10, 11, 12, 35, 126–28, 136–37, 143–45, 147, 165–66, 210 and empirically rooted probability 132 as moral quality 165–66 of necessity 184 in politics 181–82 rights utilitarianism 181–82 rights-bearing subject 127 rights-under-natural-law 181–82 Rorty, Richard 90 Ross, David 25 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 202, 238, 241 Royal Society 2, 45–46, 50, 55, 91 The Sceptical Chymist 53, 63–64 Scholastic Aristotelianism 26 Scholastic realism 28 Scholastic rubbish, affecting knowledge 14–16, 83 Scholasticism 2, 3–4, 6, 16, 21–22, 36, 38 intellectual miscarriages of 59 and Socratic philosophy 21–22 science 16 of bodies 91 and certainty 100 and nature 63–64 new science 2, 4, 5, 16–17, 40, 60–62, 63–64, 68, 69, 135 scientific epistemology 17–18, 70–71 see also epistemology Second Treatise of Government 7, 8, 10–11, 12, 15, 106, 125, 137, 138–42, 143, 144, 145, 148–56, 173–78, 180–81, 182, 183, 185, 228 and Essay 8–10, 126, 138–39, 185–86, 191 secondary qualities 51 self 116 self-assertion 136–37, 211 self-concern 117, 118–19, 133, 176–77 self-control 128 self-defense 167 self-denial 228–29, 235 self-esteem 168, 233

Index self-interest 1, 140–41, 167, 179, 229, 230 self-love 207, 212–13, 219 self-ownership 153–55 self-preservation 140–43, 146, 150, 167, 168, 185 self-reliance 230 self-sacrifice 141 sensation and ideas 75 sense perception 86 senses experience 25, 27 and information 79–80 primary and secondary qualities 78–79 reliability of 77–78 and species 80–81 sensitive knowledge 92–93 sensory intuitions 29 simple ideas 78–79 sincerity 229 skepticism 14, 49, 50, 77–78 skill of living well 198, 219 slavery 103, 105, 190–91 snow analogy 81–82 sociability 12, 168–71, 180, 203, 205, 240 sociable morality 169 social contract 238 social morality 237 Socrates 20, 21–22 Some Thoughts Concerning Education 11–12, 97, 117–18, 119, 124, 135, 137, 139, 143, 166, 210–11, 222, 223, 232 fundamental principles in 200–05 moral lessons of 205–09, 211 “Some Thoughts Concerning Reading and Study for a Gentleman” 97 soul and consciousness 112–13 sovereign right 172 Spagyrists see alchemy species 3–4, 5–6, 16, 17, 42, 68–69, 107 Boyle on 65–66 concepts 32, 83–86, 87 form and perfection 5–6 and Genesis 65 and genus animal 32 and human soul 32

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Index man 6, 74, 85, 86 and morality 5–6 and nature 19–20 as non-intrinsic to nature 69 perpetuation of 64–66 problem of 61–62 rational view 72 and science 95–96 seeded by God 64, 72 and senses 80–81 speculative hypotheses 49 Spinoza, Benedict de 132 spoilage 155, 180–81 Sprat, Thomas 45–46, 50, 55, 69 Stillingfleet, Bishop Edward 77 strange doctrine 143, 188 structure 41 substance 75–80, 81, 97, 112 suicide 153 Summa 27–28, 32 summum bonum 119, 121, 122, 123, 128–30 sweetness of mind 216, 240 tabula rasa mind 75–76 theology, and morality 204–05 thinghood 23–24, 42, 43 things, nature of 66 title to goods 150 title to rule 187 toleration 196 true art of living 219 true knowledge 24–25 true science 4, 37, 129 Two Treatises of Government 97, 109, 135, 139–48 see also First Treatise; Second Treatise two-tiered theory (Grotius) 180 two-tiered theory (Locke) 180

263 understanding 128 universals 25, 32–33, 81 use-right of property 155 utilitarianism 182 vacuum 56 Venditio 179, 184 via antiqua 29, 36 via moderna 29, 36 vice, ingenuous detestation of 222 virtue as duty 229–30 beauty of 219–20 and children 219 and excellency 119 and happiness 219–21 and self-denial 228–29 visible nature 42 voluntarism 30–31, 34–35 and God 101 Pufendorf on 96–104 voluntarist Christianity 106 vulgarly received notion of nature (neo-Aristotelian Scholasticism) 18 war, and man 139–43 way of ideas 77 The Way to Wealth 231 wealth accumulation 196 Weber, Max 239 Whitefield, George 236 William of Ockham see Ockham, William of wisdom 219 Wisdom see Of the Wisdom of the Ancients workmanship of the understanding 82

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