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Le travail en question, XVIIIe-XXe siècles.
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John Locke: Philosophy and Political Theory
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2013
Extract
The relationship of the world of ideas to the world of events would appear to be securely established today. It is generally acknowledged that ideas “have consequences,” and that in turn they are themselves consequences of events. But recent preoccupation with this problem has perhaps obscured an equally fruitful field of investigation, namely, that of the horizontal relationship among ideas in different areas of thought. I propose to examine here the relationship and the consistency between John Locke's general philosophy and his political theory. In the main, this task resolves itself into a comparison and correlation of the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Locke's chief philosophical work, with his Second Treatise of Civil Government, his principal work in political theory; but I have made use also of other writings.
My problem has been considerably complicated by Lock's failure to commit himself unequivocally on several of the most crucial questions to be discussed. He frequently used imprecise language, and, regrettably, sometimes made plainly contradictory statements. These lapses reflect a deep-seated unwillingness in Locke to pursue a line of thought to an unattractive conclusion, both in philosophy and in political theory.
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References
1 Gough, J. W. (ed.), The Second Treatise of Civil Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration (Oxford, 1946)Google Scholar; Treatise, 127. All citations of the Treatise or of A Letter Concerning Toleration are to this edition. Numerals refer to sections, not to pages, of the Treatise.
2 Gough, J. W., in Ch. 3 of John Locke's Political Philosophy: Eight Studies (Oxford, 1950)Google Scholar, points out some limitations on Locke's devotion to this doctrine.
3 Treatise, 149. Cf. Gough, Locke's Political Philosophy, Ch. 7.
4 See Weldon, T. D., States and Morals: a Study in Political Conflicts (New York and London, 1947)Google Scholar.
5 Treatise, 135.
6 Ibid., 6.
7 Ibid., 135.
8 Ibid., 176.
9 Ibid., 98.
10 A compromise formula is suggested, in characteristically vague terms, in the last sentence of Treatise, 96.
11 If this were not so, natural law in Locke would be comparable to Rousseau's general will, and Locke would be as vulnerable as Rousseau to accusations of lending involuntary theoretical support to totalitarian systems of government (“forcing men to be free,” etc.). Such an accusation has, in fact, been leveled by a dissenter, Kendall, Willmoore, in “John Locke and the Doctrine of Majority Rule,” Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, Vol. 26, Urbana, 1941, pp. 112–113Google Scholar, and passim. For criticism of Kendall's position, see Gough, Locke's Political Philosophy, Ch. 2. Cf. also Gierke, Otto, Natural Law and the Theory of Society, 1500 to 1800 (SirBarker, Ernest trans.; Cambridge, 1934), Vol. 1, p. 128Google Scholar.
12 Fraser, Alexander Campbell (ed.), An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (2 vols.; Oxford, 1894)Google Scholar, II, xx, 2. All citations of the Essay are to this edition (in which perhaps it should be noted that the Introduction is not Chapter i of Book I). Numerals refer to books, chapters, and sections.
13 Ibid., II, xxviii, 5. I am omitting, here and elsewhere, Locke's prolific italics.
14 Ibid., II, xxi, 55.
15 Ibid., I, ii, 6.
16 Ibid., II, vii, 3.
17 Ibid., II, xxviii, 8. Cf. Fraser's note to this passage, Vol. 1, p. 475, n. 5.
18 Ibid., II, xxi, 72 (italics Locke's).
19 But cf. Essay II, xxviii, 11: “nothing … so directly and visibly secures and advances the general good of mankind in this world, as obedience to the laws he [God] has set them …” (italics mine).
20 History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1876), Vol. 2, p. 137Google Scholar.
21 Treatise, 135.
22 For example, Sabine, George H., History of Political Theory (New York, 1937), p. 530Google Scholar: “Locke's philosophy as a whole presented the anomaly of a theory of the mind and a procedure in describing it which was generally empirical, joined to a theory of the sciences and a procedure in political science which was rationalist.” I should say, rather, that Locke throughout his thinking was partly empirical and partly rationalist, no doubt reflecting the dual legacy of Bacon and Descartes.
23 Essay, IV, iv, 7.
24 Ibid., IV, iii, 18.
25 Ibid., I, ii, 13. Cf. Gough, , Locke's Political Philosophy, pp. 11–12Google Scholar.
26 This explanation of “the light of nature” has recently been discovered among Locke's manuscripts in the Lovelace Collection. See Gough, , Locke's Political Philosophy, pp. 12–15Google Scholar; and cf. Essay, I, ii, 1: “moral principles require reasoning and discourse, and some exercise of the mind, to discover the certainty of their truth.”
27 Essay, IV, xvii, 11.
28 For example, the subject occupies the whole of Book IV, Ch. vii.
29 It will be recalled that science in the seventeenth century was commonly called “natural philosophy.”
30 Letter of Locke to Molyneux, Jan. 20, 1693, in Locke's, Works (London, 1794), Vol. 8, pp. 464–465Google Scholar.
31 Letter to the Earl of Peterborough, 1697, cited in King, Lord, The Life of John Locke (London, 1830), Vol. 1, p. 9Google Scholar.
32 Elements of Natural Philosophy (Whitehaven, 1764), p. 55Google Scholar.
33 Essay, II, xxiii, 14Google Scholar. In Locke's epistemology, as will be shown below, simple ideas corresponded to single units of sense data. Locke is saying here that our understanding of the assembly of atoms into larger bodies is a result of the mental process of collecting simple ideas. Cf. Essay, II, xxiv, 1–3Google Scholar.
34 Cf. Woodbridge, F. J. E., “Some Implications of Locke's Procedure,” in Essays in Honor of John Dewey (New York, 1929), p. 417Google Scholar.
35 Treatise, 4. The limitation imposed by the last clause in the quotation is the subject of the discussion above, p. 387.
36 Ibid., 95–96. Note the use of such concepts as motion and force, borrowed from the natural sciences.
37 In an early writing, An Essay Concerning Toleration, Locke altered a passage describing men as “growing into a commonwealth” to read “entering into a commonwealth.” Gough, , Locke's Political Philosophy, pp. 188–189, and especially n. 1, p. 189Google Scholar.
38 A Letter Concerning Toleration, p. 129. (Note that this is not the Essay referred to in n. 37.) Northrop, F. S. C., in The Meeting of East and West (New York, 1946), p. 83Google Scholar, offers an ingenious but possibly facile linking of atomism with Locke's teaching on property.
39 See in this connection the reference to Locke in Randall, J. H. Jr., “David Hume: Radical Empiricist and Pragmatist,” in Hook, Sidney and Konvitz, Milton R. (eds.), Freedom and Experience: Essays Presented to Horace M. Kallen (Ithaca and New York, 1947), p. 292Google Scholar.
40 Cf. Santayana, George, Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy (Cambridge, 1933), p. 7Google Scholar.
41 Essay, IV, iii, 21Google Scholar.
42 Ibid., IV, iii, 16.
43 Ibid., II, xiii, 25.
44 For Locke's teaching on primary and secondary qualities, see Essay, II, viii, 8–15Google Scholar.
45 Ibid., II, xxix, 16.
46 Ibid., IV, iii, 25.
47 Ibid., II, xxiii, 11.
48 Ibid., IV, vi, 10.
49 Cited in Gibson, A. G., The Physician's Art: an Attempt to Expand John Locke's Fragment De Arte Medica (Oxford, 1933), p. 20Google Scholar (spelling modernized).
50 Essay, IV, iii, 6Google Scholar.
51 Ibid., IV, iii, 26.
52 Letter of Locke to Edward Clarke, Feb. 8, 1686, cited in Rand, Benjamin (ed.), The Correspondence of John Locke and Edward Clarke (London, 1927), p. 156Google Scholar. Cf. the almost identically phrased passage in “Some Thoughts Concerning Education,” Works, Vol. 8, pp. 182–183Google Scholar.
53 Essay, IV, xi, 8Google Scholar.
54 Ibid., Introduction, 5.
55 Ibid., IV, xii, 10. Cf. ”Some Thoughts Concerning Education,” Works, Vol. 8, p. 186Google Scholar: “the incomparable Mr. Newton has shown, how far mathematics applied to some parts of nature, may, upon principles that matter of fact, justify, carry us in the knowledge of some … particular provinces, of the incomprehensible universe.”
56 Ibid., IV, xii, 12.
57 Treatise, 242.
58 Ibid., 132.
59 Ibid., 214.
60 Essay, IV, xvi, 4Google Scholar.
61 Ibid., II, xxxiii, 5.
62 Ibid., II, xxxiii, 16.
63 “Some Thoughts concerning Education,” Works, Vol. 8, p. 27Google Scholar.
64 Essay, II, xiii, 28Google Scholar.
65 It seems justifiable to ask whether Locke does not, however, to some extent jeopardize his whole teaching on toleration by treating error as objectively determinable, suggesting the existence of correspondingly objective truth.
66 Essay, III, iii, 11Google Scholar.
67 Locke taught that all that men could know about substances was their “nominal essence,” not their “real essence”; the realists believed that men could know the latter too. (See Essay, III, iii, 15–17Google Scholar.)
68 Ibid., III, ix, 13.
69 Ibid., III, x, 12.
70 Locke indicated something of the connection between nominalism and toleration, especially on matters of politics or religion: “it would become us to be charitable one to another in our interpretations or misunderstandings of … ancient writings; which … are liable to the unavoidable difficulties of speech…. And in discussions of religion, law and morality … there will be the greatest difficulty” (Essay, III, ix, 22Google Scholar). For an excellent brief discussion of the political implications of nominalism and realism (or, as he prefers to call it, “essentialism”), see Popper, K. R., The Open Society and Its Enemies (London, 1945), Vol. 2, pp. 8–20Google Scholar.
71 Essay, II, xxiii, 12Google Scholar. This passage recalls, of course, Locke's general acquiescence in the extent of human understanding.
72 Treatise, 157.
73 “Some Thoughts Concerning Education,” Works, Vol. 8, 175Google Scholar.
74 Essay, IV, xvi, 11Google Scholar.
75 He did allow for reapportionment of seats in the legislature to avoid the development of what have since been called “rotten boroughs” (Treatise, 157–158).
76 Smith, Norman Kemp, John Locke (1632–1704) (Manchester, 1933), p. 16Google Scholar.
77 Cf. Sabine, George H., History of Political Theory, p. 529Google Scholar: “It is exceedingly difficult to understand exactly what Locke believed to be the philosophical justification for his theory of natural rights, or in other words to see how he meant to unite his political theory with his general philosophical position.”
78 On the question of Locke as an “apologist” for the Glorious Revolution, recently much debated, see the judicious appraisal of Gough, Locke's Political Philosophy, Ch. 6. Some of my final paragraph was suggested by Driver, C. H., in “John Locke,” in Hearnshaw, P. J. C. (ed.), The Social and Political Ideas of Some English Thinkers of the Augustan Age, A.D. 1650–1750 (London, 1928), p. 86Google Scholar.
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