Locke's greatest philosophical work, An Essay Concerning HumanUnderstanding, is generally seen as a defining work ofseventeenth-century empiricist epistemology and metaphysics. The moralphilosophy developed in this work is rarely taken up for criticalanalysis, considered by many scholars of Locke's thought to be tooobscure and confusing to be taken too seriously. The view is not onlyseen by many commentators as incomplete, but it carries a degree ofrationalism that cannot be made consistent with our picture of Lockeas the arch-empiricist of his period. While it is true that Locke'sdiscussion of morality in the Essay is not as well-developed asmany of his other views, there is reason to think that morality wasthe driving concern of this great work.
For Locke, morality is the onearea apart from mathematics wherein human reasoning can attain a levelof rational certitude. For Locke, human reason may be weak withregards to our understanding of the natural world and the workings ofthe human mind, but it is exactly suited for the job of figuring outhuman moral duty. By looking at Locke's moral philosophy, as it isdeveloped in the Essay and some of his earlier writings, wegain a heightened appreciation for Locke's motivations in theEssay, as well as a more nuanced understanding of the degree ofLocke's empiricism. Further than this, Locke's moral philosophy offersus an important exemplar of seventeenth-century natural law theory,probably the predominant moral view of the period.
There are two main stumbling blocks to the study of Locke's moralphilosophy. The first regards the singular lack of attention thesubject receives in Locke's most important and influential publishedworks; not only did Locke never publish a work devoted to moralphilosophy, but he dedicates little space to its discussion in theworks he did publish. The traditional moral concept of natural lawarises in Locke's Two Treatises of Government (1690) servingas a major plank in his argument regarding the basis for civil law andthe protection of individual liberty, but he does not go into anydetail regarding how we come to know natural law nor how we might beobligated, or even motivated, to obey it.
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In his Essay ConcerningHuman Understanding (first edition 1690; fourth edition 1700,hereafter referred to as the Essay) Locke spends little timediscussing morality, and what he does provide in the way of a moralepistemology seems underdeveloped, offering, at best, the suggestionof what a moral system might look like rather than a fully-realizedpositive moral position. This brings us to the second major stumblingblock: What Locke does provide us by way of moral theory in theseworks is diffuse, with the air of being what J.B. Schneewind hascharacterized as “brief, scattered and sometimes puzzling”(Schneewind 1994, 200). This is not to suggest that Locke says nothingspecific or concrete about morality.
Locke makes references,throughout his works, to morality and moral obligation. However, twoquite distinct positions on morality seem to emerge from Locke's worksand it is this dichotomous aspect of Locke's view that has generatedthe greatest degree of controversy. The first is a naturallaw position, which Locke refers to in the Essay, butwhich finds its clearest articulation in an early work from the 1660s,entitled Essays on the Law of Nature. In this work, we findLocke espousing a fairly traditional rationalistic natural lawposition, which consists broadly in the following three propositions:first, that moral rules are founded on divine, universal and absolutelaws; second, that these divine moral laws are discernible by humanreason; and third, that by dint of their divine authorship these rulesare obligatory and rationally discernible as such. On the other hand,Locke also espouses a hedonistic moral theory, in evidence in hisearly work, but developed most fully in the Essay. Thislatter view holds that all goods and evils reduce to specific kinds ofpleasures and pains. The emphasis here is on sanctions, and howrewards and punishments serve to provide morality with its normativeforce.
Both elements find their way into Locke's published works, and,as a result, Locke seems to be holding what seem to be incommensurableviews. The trick for Locke scholars has been to figure out how, oreven if, they can be made to cohere. The question is not easilysettled by looking to Locke's unpublished works, either, since Lockealso seems to hold a natural law view at some times and a hedonisticview at others.One might conclude, with J.B. Schneewind, among others, that Locke'sattempts at constructing a morality were unsuccessful. Schneewind doesnot mince words when he writes the following: “Locke's failuresare sometimes as significant as his successes. His views on moralityare a case in point” (Schneewind 1994, 199). Schneewind arguesthat the two strands of Locke's moral theory are irreconcilable, andthat this is a fact Locke must have realized.
This view is indeed anapt representation of the frustration many readers have felt withLocke's moral theory. Locke's eighteenth-century apologist, CatharineTrotter Cockburn thought Locke provided a promising, but incomplete,starting point for a positive moral system, imploring, in her work“A Defense of Mr. Locke's Essay of HumanUnderstanding,”I wish, Sir, you may only find it enough worth your notice, to inciteyou to show the world, how far it falls short of doing justice to yourprinciples; which you may do without interrupting the great businessof your life, by a work, that will be an universal benefit, and whichyou have given the world some right to exact of you. Who is there socapable of pursuing to a demonstration those reflections onthe grounds of morality, which you have already made?(Cockburn 1702, 36)Locke's friend William Molyneux similarly implored Locke to make goodon the promise found in the Essay.
In a letter written toLocke on September 16 th, 1693, Molyneux presses Locke towork on a moral treatise once he has finished editing the secondedition of his Essay, writing as follows:I am very sensible how closely you are engaged, till you havedischarged this Work off your Hands; and therefore will not venture,till it be over, to press you again to what you have promis'd in theBusiness of Man's Life, Morality. (Locke 1742, 53)Several months later, in December of the same year, Molyneux concludesa letter by asking Locke about what other projects he currently has onthe go “amongst which, I hope you will not forget yourThoughts on Morality” (Locke 1742, 54).Locke never did produce such a work, and we might well wonder if hehimself ever considered the project a “failure”. There isno doubt that morality was of central importance to Locke, a fact wecan discern from the Essay itself; there are two importantfeatures of the Essay that serve to enlighten us regardingthe significance of this work in the development of Locke's moralviews.
First of all, morality seems to have inspired Locke to writethe Essay in the first place. In recounting his originalinclination to embark on the project, he recalls a discussion with“five or six friends”, at which they discoursed “ona Subject very remote from this” (Locke 1700, 7).
According toLocke, the discussion eventually hit a standstill, at which point itwas agreed that in order to settle the issue at hand it would first benecessary to, as Locke puts it, “examine our own Abilities, andsee, what Objects our Understandings were, or were not fitted to dealwith” (Locke 1700, 7). This was, he explains, his first entranceinto the problems that inspired the Essay itself. But, whatis most interesting for our purposes is just what the remote subjectwas that first got Locke and his friends thinking about fundamentalquestions of epistemology. James Tyrell, one of those who attendedthat evening, is a source of enlightenment on this matter—helater recalled that the discussion concerned morality and revealedreligion.
But, Locke himself refers to the subjects they discussedthat fateful evening as ‘very remote’ from the matters ofthe Essay. That may well be, but it is also true that Locke,in the Essay, identifies morality as a central feature ofhuman intellectual and practical life, which brings us to the secondimportant fact about Locke's view of morality. Locke writes, in theEssay, that “Morality is the proper Science, andBusiness of Mankind in general” ( Essay, 4.12.11; thesenumber are, book, chapter and section, respectively, from Locke'sEssay). For a book aiming to set out the limits and extent ofhuman knowledge, this comes as no small claim. We must, Locke writes,“know our own Strength” ( Essay, 1.1.6)and turn our attention to those areas in which we can have certainty,i.e., “those things which concern our Conduct”( Essay, 1.1.6).
The amount of attention given to the questionof morality itself would seem to belie its primacy for Locke. TheEssay is certainly not intended as a work of moralphilosophy; it is a work of epistemology, laying the foundations forknowledge. However, a very big part of the programme involvesidentifying what true knowledge is and what it is we as humans canhave knowledge about, and morality is accorded a distinctive andfairly exclusive status in Locke's epistemology as one of “theSciences capable of Demonstration” ( Essay, 4.3.18). Theonly other area of inquiry accorded this status is mathematics;clearly, for Locke, morality represents a unique and defining aspectof what it means to be human. We have to conclude, then, that theEssay is strongly motivated by an interest in establishingthe groundwork for moral reasoning. However, while morality clearlyhas a position of the highest regard in his epistemological system,his promise of a demonstrable moral science is never realized here, orin later works.It seems we can safely say that the subject of morality was a weightyone for Locke.
However, just what Locke takes morality to involve issubstantially more complicated an issue. There are two broad lines ofinterpretation of Locke's moral views, which I will briefly outlinehere.The first interpretation of Locke's moral theory is what we might callan incompatibility thesis: Locke scholars Laslett, Aaron, von Leyden,among others, hold that Locke's natural law theory is nothing morethan a relic from Locke's early years, when he wrote the Essays onthe Law of Nature, and represents a rogue element in the matureempiricistic framework of the Essay. For these commentators,the two elements found in the Essay seem not onlyincommensurable, but the hedonism seems the obvious andstraightforward fit with Locke's generally empiricistic epistemology.The general view is that Locke's rationalism seems, for all intentsand purposes, to have no significant role to play, either in theacquisition of moral knowledge or in the recognition of the obligatoryforce of moral rules.
These fundamental aspects of morality seem to betaken care of by Locke's hedonism. Worse than this, however, is thatthe two views rely on radically different epistemological principles.The conclusion tends to be that Locke is holding on to moralrationalism in the face of serious incoherence.
The incompatibilitythesis is supported by the fact that Locke seems to emphasize the roleof pleasure and pain in moral decision-making, however it hasdifficulty making sense of the presence of Locke's moral rationalismin the Essay and other of Locke's later works (not to mentionthe exalted role he gives to rationally-deduced moral law). Added tothis, even in Locke's early work, he seems to hold both positionssimultaneously. Aaron and von Leyden both throw up their hands.According to von Leyden, in the introduction to his 1954 edition ofLocke's Essays on the Law of Nature,the development of Locke's hedonism and certain other views held byhim in later years made it indeed difficult for him to adherewhole-heartedly to his doctrine of natural law. (Locke 1954, 14)In a similar vein, Aaron writes:Two theories compete with each other in Locke's mind. Both areretained; yet their retention means that a consistent moral theorybecomes difficult to find.
(Aaron 1971, 257)Yet, it is curious that Locke neither claimed to find these strandsincompatible, nor ever abandoned his rationalistic natural law view.It seems unlikely that this view would be nothing more than aconfusing hangover from earlier days. Taking seriously Locke'scommitment to both is therefore a much more charitable approach, andone that takes seriously Locke's clear commitment to the benefits ofrationally-apprehending our moral duties.
An approach along theselines is one we might call a compatibility approach to the question ofLocke's moral commitments. John Colman and Stephen Darwall are twoLocke scholars who have argued that Locke's view is neither plaguedwith tensions nor incoherent. Their common view is that the twoelements of Locke's theory are doing different work. Locke's hedonism,on this compatibility account, is intended as a theory of moralmotivation, and serves to fill a motivational gap between knowingmoral law and having reasons to obey moral law.
Locke introduceshedonism in order to account for the practical force of theobligations arising from natural law. As Darwall writes,what makes God's commands morally obligatory i.e., God's authorityappearsto have nothing intrinsically to do with what makesthem rationally compelling. (Darwall 1995, 37).Thus, on this account, reason deduces natural law, but it ishedonistic considerations alone that offer agents the motivatingreasons to act in accordance with its dictates.This interpretation convincingly makes room for both elements inLocke's view. A central feature of this interpretation is itsattention to the legalistic aspect of Locke's natural law theory.
ForLocke, the very notion of law presupposes an authority structure asthe basis for its institution and its enforcement. The law carriesobligatory weight by virtue of its reflecting the will of a rightfulsuperior. That it also carries the threat of sanctions lendsmotivational force to the law.A slight modification of the compatibility account, however, bettercaptures the motivational aspect of Locke's rationalistic account:Locke does, at times suggest that rational agents are not onlyobligated, but motivated, by sheer recognition of the divine authorityof moral law. It is helpful to think of morality as carrying bothintrinsic and extrinsic obligatory force for Locke. On the one handmoral rules obligate by dint of their divine righteousness, and on theother hand by the threat of rewards and punishments. The suggestionthat morality has an intrinsic motivational force appears in theEssays on the Law of Nature and is retained by Locke in someof his final published works.
It is, however, a feature of his viewthat gets somewhat underappreciated in the secondary literature, andfor understandable reasons—Locke tends to emphasize hedonisticmotivations. Why this is will be discussed in.At this point, however, it suffices to say that Locke's theory doesnot have the motivational gap that the compatibility thesissuggests—hedonism serves as a ‘back-up’ motivationaltool in the absence of the right degree of rational intuition of one'smoral duty.In order to get a complete understanding of Locke's moral theory, itis useful to begin with a look at Locke's natural law view,articulated most fully in his Essays on the Law of Nature(written as series of lectures he delivered as Censor of MoralPhilosophy at Christ Church, Oxford). Two predominant features ofLocke's natural law theory are already well-developed in this work:the rationalism and the legalism. According to Locke, reason is theprimary avenue by which humans come to understand moral rules, and itis via reason we can draw two distinct but related conclusionsregarding the grounds for our moral obligations: we can appreciate thedivine, and thereby righteous, nature of morality and we canperceive that morality is the expression of a law-makingauthority.In the Essays on the Law of Nature, Locke writes that“all the requisites of a law are found in natural law”(Locke 1663–4, 82).
But, what, for Locke, is required forsomething to be a law? Locke takes stock of what constitutes law inorder to establish the legalistic framework for morality: First, lawmust be founded on the will of a superior. Second, it must perform thefunction of establishing rules of behavior. Third, it must be bindingon humans, since there is a duty of compliance owed to the superiorauthority that institutes the laws (Locke 1663–4, 83). Naturallaw is rightly called law because it satisfies theseconditions.
For Locke, the concept of morality is best understood byreference to a law-like authority structure, for without this, heargues, moral rules would be indistinguishable from socialconventions.
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The Supreme Philosophy Of Man The Laws Of Life Pdf Printable
Moisture stain on jacket. Light moisture soiling of boards. Secure packaging for safe delivery. The Supreme Philosophy of Man: The Laws of Life by Alfred Armand Montapert Dust jacket in acceptable condition. Second printing. Cover and binding are worn but intact. A reading copy in fair condition.
Dust jacket now wrapped with protective mylar cover. Some chipping and tearing at jacket edges. Moisture stain on jacket. Light moisture soiling of boards. Secure packaging for safe delivery.