© 2004 by Ron Yezzi
John Locke (1632-1704)
A. Life
1. His father was a Puritan lawyer who supported Parliament against King Charles I.
2. He was educated at Oxford University and eventually took a degree in medicine.
a. He studied philosophy and also became acquainted with scientific method through friendship, and apparently some experimentation, with Robert Boyle.
3. In 1667, he became personal physician to the first Earl of Shaftesbury, who had extensive political connections.
a. He served as secretary to the Council on Trade and Plantations (Colonies), when the Earl was president of the Council.
b. He helped draft a constitution for Carolina (which apparently was never fully implemented)--the Earl being a founder and proprietor of the colony.
c. Shaftesbury, accused of revolutionary activities, eventually had to flee to Holland where he died in 1683.
4. Because of suspicions generated by his association with the Earl, in 1683, Locke also fled to Holland.
5. After the ascension of James II (1685) and Monmouth’s rebellion (early 1680s), Locke was condemned and England sought his extradition from Holland.
a. The extradition never occurred.
6. He was one of the plotters of the “Glorious Revolution of 1688” that brought William of Orange to the throne of England.
a. He was not one of the chief strategists; but he was close enough to return to England on the same ship that brought the new Queen Mary there.
7. In 1690, he published the Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Two Treatises of Government.
a. He had worked on the Essay for some twenty years and revised it
several more times before his death.
b. The Two Treatises were published
anonymously and Locke only admitted authorship publicly in his will.
c. In part, the Two Treatises
provided a defense of “The Glorious Revolution.”
8. He was well known to influential persons in England and held several offices—a commissioner of appeals and a commissioner of trade and plantations.
9. His philosophical reputation nearly matched Newton’s scientific reputation; and he was generally regarded as a person of the highest integrity and judgment.
B. Philosophical Significance
1. He had a greater influence on British Empiricism than Francis Bacon or Hobbes.
a. By directly confronting Descartes’ position on innate ideas and providing
an alternative based upon the origin of ideas in sense experience, he gave
more direction to British Empiricism.
b. Put differently, Descartes’
influence was too great to be ignored; Locke both took his philosophy
seriously and offered a detailed alternative.
1) Hobbes had written down and sent his objections to the
Meditations to Descartes; but he never saw a need to develop his
own philosophy as an antithesis to Descartes’.
c. Whereas Hobbes’ tendency to take
extreme positions produced strong inclinations to refute his position, Locke’s
moderation attracted support.
2. His Essay Concerning Human Understanding (although overly long and rather dully written) is one of the great works in the history of western philosophy. Books II and IV are especially important.
a. Book II deals with the origin and nature of ideas.
b. Book IV deals with knowledge and degrees of assent (opinion, belief).
3.He gives special attention to varying degrees of assent with respect to knowledge and opinion--including differing degrees of probability.
4. By arguing that substance is a complex idea inferred from simple ideas rather than being directly experienced, he produced a significant problem for philosophers to deal with.
5. His Second Treatise on Government is a political classic and provided a major foundation for democracy in England and the United States.
6. His Letters on Toleration defended religious freedom (although he excluded atheists on the grounds that, without some God, they could not be trusted).
C. Major Philosophical Positions
1. Locke’s Schema of Ideas from Book II of the Essay:
a. Rejection of Descartes’ Innate Ideas
1) All ideas
can be suitably explained without reference to their being innate. In the case
of colors, it would be impertinent to suggest that they are innate when God
has given sight by which to see them.
2) Even
the most general maxims, such as the principle of contradiction, are not
universally assented to; hence there is no reason to judge such maxims to be
innate. For example children and mentally impaired persons do not know them.
3) If it is
argued that innate ideas are potentially known, but not always actualized, one
might as well say that all ideas are innate.
4) If reason
is necessary to become aware of innate ideas, there is no way of being sure
that they are innate as opposed to being merely ideas produced through human
reasoning.
5) There is
no reason to think that children come into the world with a storehouse of
ideas. Rather they get their ideas through experience. For example, they would
have no notion of scarlet or green if they had only been acquainted with black
and white.
6) Even the
idea of an incomprehensible supreme being, God, can be conceived as a complex
idea arising through extrapolation from simpler ideas.
b. Ideas arise from sensation
(sensible qualities such as yellow, cold, hard, bitter) or reflection
(operations of our minds such as thinking, reasoning, willing).
1) There is no reason to think that the mind (soul) is always thinking—for
example, there is no reason to say that we are thinking while we are asleep
(especially when we have no recollection of dreaming).
2) The first ideas originate in sensation; but ideas of reflection (which
begin with perceptions, the consciousness of sensations) are the origin of
knowledge.
3) Simple ideas of sensation are uncompounded appearances that the mind can
neither create nor destroy and is therefore passive with respect to them.
4) Judgments of reflection can change ideas of sensation—for example, if
judgment constructs a whole three-dimensional figure from a flat image of
sensation.
5)Perceptions, the
simplest ideas of reflection exist in all animals and separate them from
entities such as vegetables.
c. Ideas
of Primary Qualities, Secondary Qualities, and Powers
1) The primary qualities of bodies—for example, bulk, shape, motion—are
inseparable from the bodies themselves, so they remain in bodies regardless
whether we sense them or not.
2) Secondary qualities—for example, colors, sounds, tastes—are the effects of
primary qualities operating on our senses.
3) Powers operate so as to make things different than they were before—for
example, the power of the sun to bleach something white or the power of fire
to melt lead.
4) Secondary qualities would disappear or become unnecessary if we could
discern the primary qualities of the smallest parts of matter (e.g. atoms)
that constitute them.
d. Modes are
always dependencies or affections of substances—such as triangular, gratitude,
murder, beauty.
e. Substances
constitute a substratum that we infer as existing to support ideas (which
cannot subsist of themselves). They may be material
(bodies) or spiritual (spirits, minds).
1) The ideas of primary qualities, secondary qualities, and powers make up
the complex idea of a material substance.
2) Just as seeing and hearing tell us that bodies exist outside us, there is a
spiritual substance within us that does the seeing and hearing. Thinking and
willing are the particular ideas associated with a spirit.
3) The personal identity of the self depends upon consciousness.
2. Knowledge and the Grounds of Assent
a. Knowledge is the perception of agreement or disagreement between
two ideas. There are four kinds of agreement or disagreement: identity or
diversity, relation, coexistence of necessary connection, real existence.
“Thus, ‘blue is not yellow’ is of identity. ‘Two triangles upon equal bases
between two parallels are equals’ is of relation. ‘Iron is susceptible of
magnetic impressions’ is of coexistence. ‘God is’ is of real existence.”
b.
Knowledge is a term associated with certainty, for Locke--as opposed to
opinions that are probable.
c. We
possess intuitive knowledge of our own existence, demonstrative knowledge
of God’s existence, and sensory knowledge of
particular things (although he grants that the third is not as certain as
the first two but still “deserves the name of knowledge”).
d. Faith should not be opposed to Reason.
1) Reason is natural revelation; and revelation is natural reason enlarged
through God’s communication.
2) Faith cannot overrule Reason because the acceptance of faith over reason
casts doubts on all our natural faculties—which are the most excellent part of
God’s creation.
e. Revelation can overrule Opinion
(probabilities); but reason must determine what is or is not revelation and
also what the meaning of significance of revelation is.
f. Enthusiasm (such as claims of a
vision) is unreliable because (a) the firmness of passionate conviction is
unreliable as a source of knowledge and (b) enthusiasm rejects needed rational
testing of its claims.
g. Our knowledge is limited, although
we constantly hope to increase it.
1) The reasons for the limitations include our shortage of simple ideas
through sensations (relative to all that can be known), the remoteness of many
things that exist, the minuteness of many things, and our inability or failure
to recognize all the relations of the ideas we possess.
2) There is no science (knowledge) of physical bodies, because there will
never be adequate ideas of all these bodies—although probable opinions are
possible.
3. God
a. Knowledge of God’s existence is more certain than the existence of
anything outside ourselves.
b. Proof: Since beings like
ourselves, any other beings, and knowledge itself
cannot come from nothing, there must be some eternal being powerful enough and
knowledgeable enough to produce what exists. So it is certain that God exists.
1) It is “senselessly arrogant” to suppose that the knowledge and wisdom of
human beings can be the product of ignorance and chance.
2) Incognitive matter is incapable of ever
producing a cognitive being through its own power. Matter cannot be cognitive
either as an individual particle or as a system of particles.
3) Even if there were an “infinite number of eternal finite cogitative beings”
(say in the form of atoms—RY), they could never produce the “order, harmony,
and beauty which are found in nature.” (Essay, Book IV, Ch. X)
4. Free Will and Determinism
a. Will is the power of the mind (1) to consider or to abstain from
considering any idea or (2) to prefer to move or to be at rest. (Essay,
Bk. II, Ch. XXI)
b. Asking whether or not there is
a free will is an improper question--like asking whether virtue is square or
sleep is swift. Liberty is a power that belongs to agents; it is not an
attribute or modification of the will.
c. We are not at liberty to
will or not to will, because we cannot refrain from willing.
d. Liberty is the power in an agent
to do or refrain from an action according to the preferences of the mind.
e. “A man standing on a
cliff is at liberty to leap twenty yards downwards into the sea, not because
he has a power to do the contrary action, which is to leap twenty yards
upwards, for that he cannot do. But he is therefore free because he has
a power to leap or not to leap. But if a greater force than his either holds
him fast, or tumbles him down, he is no longer free in that case, because the
doing or abstaining of that particular action is no longer in his power.” (Essay,
Bk. II, Ch. XXI)
f. Will is not the same as
desire; but it is desire, as an uneasiness of mind because of an absent
perceived good, that determines the will in regard to our actions.
5. Morality
a. Although Locke wrote no treatise on morality, aside from his treatises
on government, there are some indications of his moral position.
b. There are some moral truths known
with certainty—namely, there can be no injustice without property, no
government allows absolute liberty, murder deserves death—although the
application of these truths may be subject to error.
c. His law of nature in the state of
nature (see the account of his political philosophy below) establishes a basic
moral principle.
d. He recognizes desire—with respect
to pleasure, pain, or happiness—as the basic motivation of the will.
6. Political Philosophy
a. In the First Treatise on Government, he refutes Sir Robert
Filmer’s arguments in support of absolute monarchy
and the divine right of kings. The Second Treatise is considered the
more important one, by far.
b. The State of Nature (sometimes
talked about as if it actually existed and sometimes as if it is a
hypothetical construct):
1) All human beings are free and equal.
2) The Law of Nature,
known through reason: “No one ought to harm another in his life, health,
liberty, or possessions.”
3) Enforcement of the Law of Nature is left to the individual in the state of
nature. Enforcement requires proportionate punishment, although this is
difficult to achieve in practice because there will be so many different
interpretations of appropriate enforcement. This practical problem is the main
reason for establishing a civil society.
a) An example of proportionate punishment: You can shoot a thief who enters
your house because of your fear of what the person also might do (beyond
thievery).
4) When they enter into civil society, persons surrender this right of
individual enforcement to legitimized authority.
c. Property
1) Government exists, first and foremost, to protect the rights of
property—which includes one’s own person as well as physical possessions.
2) Land is there for everyone’s common use until such time as people acquire a
right to property.
3) People acquire this right to property by their labor--the greater their
labor, the greater their right to property.
a) Prior to the use of money, this right to property was properly confined
pretty much to what persons needed and could use.
b) Money extends the use of property because it is not perishable. In valuing
money though, people come tacitly to accept considerable inequality in
society, since there will be differing degrees of accumulation of money. So
while money is useful, it also is corrupting in some sense.
d. The
Lockean view of property provides a way of explaining how European
settlers may have looked upon the acquiring of property in the Americas.
Native Americans were only entitled to the land they had improved with their
labor; and since there was a huge amount of land and the Native Americans did
not seem to have done much to improve even a small part of it with their labor
(in the European view), it was there for the settlers to acquire.
e. The Social Compact
1) Since the people enter into political society to better enforce a previous
moral obligation--namely, the Law of Nature--by establishing a legitimate
authority to interpret and enforce it more fairly and efficiently than
individuals can, the people retain ultimate sovereignty.
2) If the legislative or executive branches do not serve the basic purpose for
entering into political society, they lose their legitimacy.
3) Persons become members of a political society by their own act of consent,
either explicit or implicit--with children not having to make a decision about
this before adulthood.
a) Implicit Consent: If you accept the benefits of the society, there is a
point at which you tacitly become a member of the society.
4) A conquered person, whose life is spared, is still in a state of war and
therefore owes no allegiance to the conqueror.
f. Some Differences
with Hobbes
1) Whereas there is no common morality in the state of nature for Hobbes,
Locke holds that the Law of Nature, establishing morality, holds within the
state of nature itself. So a common morality does not require a covenant for
Locke.
2) Whereas the Law of Nature holds within the state of nature for Locke, the
first two laws of nature provide the means for getting out of the state of
nature for Hobbes.
3) For Hobbes, justice and injustice only exist after there is a covenant and
there also is a common power sufficient to keep people in fear of
transgressing the covenant. For Locke, justice and injustice, as well as
individual means of enforcement, are present in the state of nature.
4) Whereas citizens in Hobbes’ commonwealth give sovereignty to some common
power and this sovereign power is above the law (in the sense that it cannot
break the covenant), the people in Locke’s civil society retain the right of
sovereignty and can depose those who exercise authority over them
illegitimately.
5) Whereas a conqueror who spares your life has a
right to your allegiance for Hobbes, Locke recognizes no such right.
6) How one enters into a social contract and owes allegiance is much more
dependent on individual choice for Locke than for Hobbes. For example,
children when they become adults are able to choose whether or not they want
to belong to the civil society for Locke, whereas Hobbes presumes that they
have already taken on allegiance by reason of the benefits they enjoyed by
growing up in the society.
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Last updated 4/26/04
© Copyright 2004 by Ron Yezzi