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John Locke (b. 1632, d. 1704) was a British philosopher, Oxford academic and medical researcher. Locke’s monumental An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) is one of the first great defenses of modern empiricism and concerns itself with determining the limits of human understanding in respect to a wide spectrum of topics. It thus tells us in some detail what one can legitimately claim to know and what one cannot. Locke’s association with Anthony Ashley Cooper (later the First Earl of Shaftesbury) led him to become successively a government official charged with collecting information about trade and colonies, economic writer, opposition political activist, and finally a revolutionary whose cause ultimately triumphed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Among Locke’s political works he is most famous for The Second Treatise of Government in which he argues that sovereignty resides in the people and explains the nature of legitimate government in terms of natural rights and the social contract. He is also famous for calling for the separation of Church and State in his Letter Concerning Toleration . Much of Locke’s work is characterized by opposition to authoritarianism. This is apparent both on the level of the individual person and on the level of institutions such as government and church. For the individual, Locke wants each of us to use reason to search after truth rather than simply accept the opinion of authorities or be subject to superstition. He wants us to proportion assent to propositions to the evidence for them. On the level of institutions it becomes important to distinguish the legitimate from the illegitimate functions of institutions and to make the corresponding distinction for the uses of force by these institutions. Locke believes that using reason to try to grasp the truth, and determine the legitimate functions of institutions will optimize human flourishing for the individual and society both in respect to its material and spiritual welfare. This in turn, amounts to following natural law and the fulfillment of the divine purpose for humanity.

1.1 Locke’s Life up to His Meeting with Lord Ashley in 1666

1.2 locke and lord shaftesbury 1666 to 1688, 1.3 the end of locke’s life 1689–1704, 2.2 book ii, 2.3 book iii, 2.4 book iv, 2.5 knowledge and probability, 2.6 reason, faith and enthusiasm, 3. locke’s major works on education, 4.1 the second treatise of government, 4.2 human nature and god’s purposes, 4.3 of war and slavery, 4.4 of property, 4.5 the social contract theory, 4.6 the function of civil government, 4.7 rebellion and regicide, 5. locke and religious toleration, primary sources, secondary sources, other internet resources, related entries, 1. historical background and locke’s life.

John Locke (1632–1704) was one of the greatest philosophers in Europe at the end of the seventeenth century. Locke grew up and lived through one of the most extraordinary centuries of English political and intellectual history. It was a century in which conflicts between Crown and Parliament and the overlapping conflicts between Protestants, Anglicans and Catholics swirled into civil war in the 1640s. With the defeat and death of Charles I, there began a great experiment in governmental institutions including the abolishment of the monarchy, the House of Lords and the Anglican church, and the establishment of Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate in the 1650s. The collapse of the Protectorate after the death of Cromwell was followed by the Restoration of Charles II—the return of the monarchy, the House of Lords and the Anglican Church. This period lasted from 1660 to 1688. It was marked by continued conflicts between King and Parliament and debates over religious toleration for Protestant dissenters and Catholics. This period ends with the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in which James II was driven from England and replaced by William of Orange and his wife Mary. The final period during which Locke lived involved the consolidation of power by William and Mary, and the beginning of William’s efforts to oppose the domination of Europe by the France of Louis XIV, which later culminated in the military victories of John Churchill—the Duke of Marlborough.

Locke was born in Wrington to Puritan parents of modest means. His father was a country lawyer who served in a cavalry company on the Puritan side in the early stages of the English Civil War. His father’s commander, Alexander Popham, became the local MP, and it was his patronage which allowed the young John Locke to gain an excellent education. In 1647 Locke went to Westminster School in London.

From Westminster school he went to Christ Church, Oxford, in the autumn of 1652 at the age of twenty. As Westminster school was the most important English school, so Christ Church was the most important Oxford college. Education at Oxford was medieval. Locke, like Hobbes before him, found the Aristotelian philosophy he was taught at Oxford of little use. There was, however, more at Oxford than Aristotle. The new experimental philosophy had arrived. John Wilkins, Cromwell’s brother in law, had become Warden of Wadham College. The group around Wilkins was the nucleus of what was to become the English Royal Society. The Society grew out of informal meetings and discussion groups and moved to London after the Restoration and became a formal institution in the 1660s with charters from Charles II. The Society saw its aims in contrast with the Scholastic/Aristotelian traditions that dominated the universities. The program was to study nature rather than books. [ 1 ] Many of Wilkins associates were people interested in pursuing medicine by observation rather than the reading of classic texts. Bacon’s interest in careful experimentation and the systematic collection of facts from which generalizations could be made was characteristic of this group. One of Locke’s friends from Westminster school, Richard Lower, introduced Locke to medicine and the experimental philosophy being pursued by the virtuosi at Wadham.

Locke received his B.A. in February 1656. His career at Oxford, however, continued beyond his undergraduate days. In June of 1658, Locke qualified as a Master of Arts and was elected a Senior Student of Christ Church College. The rank was equivalent to a Fellow at any of the other colleges, but was not permanent. Locke had yet to determine what his career was to be. Locke was elected Lecturer in Greek at Christ Church in December of 1660 and he was elected Lecturer in Rhetoric in 1663. At this point, Locke needed to make a decision. The statutes of Christ Church laid it down that fifty five of the senior studentships should be reserved for men in orders or reading for orders. Only five could be held by others, two in medicine, two in law and one in moral philosophy. Thus, there was good reason for Locke to become a clergyman. Since his graduation Locke had been studying medicine. Locke decided to become a doctor.

John Wilkins had left Oxford with the Restoration of Charles II. The new leader of the Oxford scientific group was Robert Boyle. He was also Locke’s scientific mentor. Boyle (with the help of his astonishing assistant Robert Hooke) built an air pump which led to the formulation of Boyle’s law and devised a barometer as a weather indicator. The work on the air pump led to a controversy with Thomas Hobbes because Boyle’s explanations of the working of the air pump were incompatible with Hobbes’ micro-corpuscular theory. This controversy continued for ten years. Boyle was, however, most influential as a theorist. He was a mechanical philosopher who treated the world as reducible to matter in motion. But he had no micro-corpuscular account of the air.

Locke read Boyle before he read Descartes. When he did read Descartes, he saw the great French philosopher as providing a viable alternative to the sterile Aristotelianism he had been taught at Oxford. In writing An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Locke adopted Descartes’ ‘way of ideas’; though it is transformed so as to become an organic part of Locke’s philosophy. Still, while admiring Descartes, Locke’s involvement with the Oxford scientists gave him a perspective that made him critical of the rationalist elements in Descartes’ philosophy.

In the Epistle to the Reader at the beginning of the Essay Locke remarks:

The commonwealth of learning is not at this time without master-builders, whose mighty designs, in advancing the sciences, will leave lasting monuments to the admiration of posterity: but everyone must not hope to be a Boyle or a Sydenham; and in an age that produces such masters as the great Huygenius and the incomparable Mr. Newton, with some others of that strain, it is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge …. (N: 9–10; all quotations are from the Nidditch edition of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding [N])

Locke knew all of these men and their work. Locke, Boyle and Newton were all founding or early members of the English Royal Society. It is from Boyle that Locke learned about atomism (or the corpuscular hypothesis) and it is from Boyle’s book The Origin of Forms and Qualities that Locke took the language of primary and secondary qualities. Sydenham was an English physician and Locke did medical research with him. Sydenham championed careful observation of disease and rejected appeal to underlying causes. Both Boyle and Newton did work on colors that did not involve micro-corpuscular explanations. Locke read Newton’s Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis while in exile in Holland, and consulted Huygens as to the soundness of its mathematics. Locke and Newton became friends after Locke’s return from Holland in 1688. It may be that in referring to himself as an ‘under-labourer’, Locke is not only displaying a certain literary modesty, he is contrasting the positive discoveries of these men, with his own attempt to show the inadequacies of the Aristotelian and Scholastic and to some degree the Cartesian philosophies. There are, however, many aspects of Locke’s project to which this image of an under-labourer does not do justice (see Jolley 1999: 15–17). While the corpuscular philosophy and Newton’s discoveries clearly influenced Locke, it is the Baconian program of producing natural histories that Locke makes reference to when he talks about the Essay in the Introduction. He writes:

It shall suffice to my present Purpose, to consider the discerning Faculties of a Man, as they are employ’d about the Objects, which they have to do with: and I shall imagine that I have not wholly misimploy’d my self in the Thoughts I shall have on this Occasion, if in this Historical, Plain Method, I can give any Account of the Ways, whereby our Understanding comes to attain those Notions of Things, and can set down any Measure of the Certainty of our Knowledge…. (I.1.2, N: 43–4—the three numbers, are book, chapter and section numbers respectively, followed by the page number in the Nidditch edition)

The ‘Historical, Plain Method’ is apparently to give a genetic account of how we come by our ideas. Presumably this will reveal the degree of certainty of the knowledge based on such ideas. Locke’s own active involvement with the scientific movement was largely through his informal studies of medicine. Dr. David Thomas was his friend and collaborator. Locke and Thomas had a laboratory in Oxford which was very likely, in effect, a pharmacy. In 1666 Lord Ashley, one of the richest men in England, came to Oxford in order to drink some medicinal waters there. He had asked Dr. Thomas to provide them. Thomas had to be out of town and asked Locke to see that the water was delivered. As a result of this encounter, Ashley invited Locke to come to London as his personal physician. In 1667 Locke did move to London becoming not only Lord Ashley’s personal physician, but secretary, researcher, political operative and friend. Living with him Locke found himself at the very heart of English politics in the 1670s and 1680s.

Locke’s chief work while living at Lord Ashley’s residence, Exeter House, in 1668 was as Ashley’s physician. Locke used his medical training to organize a successful operation on Ashley. This was perhaps the most carefully documented operation in the 17th century. Locke consulted doctors across the country to determine what the best practices were for this operation and made cleanliness a priority. In doing so he saved his patron’s life and thus changed English history.

Locke had a number of other jobs. He worked as secretary of the Board of Trade and Plantations and Secretary to the Lords Proprietors of the Carolinas. Lord Ashley was one of the advocates of the view that England would prosper through trade and that colonies could play an important role in promoting trade. Ashley persuaded Charles II to create a Board of Trade and Plantations to collect information about trade and colonies, and Locke became its secretary. In his capacity as the secretary of the Board of Trade Locke was the collection point for information from around the globe about trade and colonies for the English government. Among Ashley’s commercial projects was an effort to found colonies in the Carolinas. In his capacity as the secretary to the Lords Proprietors, Locke was involved in the writing of the fundamental constitution of the Carolinas. There is some controversy about the extent of Locke’s role in writing the constitution. [ 2 ] In addition to issues about trade and colonies, Locke was involved through Shaftesbury in other controversies about public policy. There was a monetary crisis in England involving the value of money, and the clipping of coins. Locke wrote papers for Lord Ashley on economic matters, including the coinage crisis.

While living in London at Exeter House, Locke continued to be involved in philosophical discussions. He tells us that:

Were it fit to trouble thee with the history of this Essay, I should tell thee, that five or six friends meeting at my chamber, and discoursing on a subject very remote from this, found themselves quickly at a stand, by the difficulties that rose on every side. After we had awhile puzzled ourselves, without coming any nearer a resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my thoughts that we took a wrong course; and that before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with. This I proposed to the company, who all readily assented; and thereupon it was agreed that this should be our first inquiry. Some hasty and undigested thoughts, on a subject I had never before considered, which I set down against our next meeting, gave the first entrance into this Discourse; which having been thus begun by chance, was continued by intreaty; written by incoherent parcels; and after long intervals of neglect, resumed again, as my humour or occasions permitted; and at last, in a retirement where an attendance on my health gave me leisure, it was brought into that order thou now seest it. (Epistle to the Reader, N: 7)

James Tyrrell, one of Locke’s friends was at that meeting. He recalls the discussion being about the principles of morality and revealed religion (Cranston 1957: 140–1). Thus the Oxford scholar and medical researcher came to begin the work which was to occupy him off and on over the next twenty years.

In 1674 after Shaftesbury had left the government, Locke went back to Oxford, where he acquired the degree Bachelor of medicine, and a license to practice medicine, and then went to France (Cranston 1957: 160). In France Locke went from Calais to Paris, Lyons and on to Montpellier, where he spent the next fifteen months. Much of Locke’s time was spent learning about Protestantism in France. The Edict of Nantes (promulgated by Henry IV in 1598) was in force, and so there was a degree of religious toleration in France. Louis XIV was to revoke the edict in 1685 and French Protestants were then killed while some 400,000 went into exile.

While Locke was in France, Shaftesbury’s fortunes fluctuated. In 1676 Shaftesbury was imprisoned in the tower. His imprisonment lasted for a year. In 1678, after the mysterious murder of a London judge, informers (most notably Titus Oates) started coming forward to reveal a supposed Catholic conspiracy to assassinate the King and put his brother on the throne. This whipped up public anti-Catholic frenzy. Though Shaftesbury had not fabricated the conspiracy story, nor did he prompt Oates to come forward, he did exploit the situation to the advantage of his party. In the public chaos surrounding the sensational revelations, Shaftesbury organized an extensive party network, exercised great control over elections, and built up a large parliamentary majority. His strategy was to secure the passage of an Exclusion bill that would prevent Charles II’s openly Catholic brother from becoming King. Although the Exclusion bill passed in the Commons it was rejected in the House of Lords because of the King’s strong opposition to it. As the panic over the Popish plot receded, Shaftesbury was left without a following or a cause. Shaftesbury was seized on July 21, 1681 and again put in the tower. He was tried on trumped-up charges of treason but acquitted by a London grand jury (filled with his supporters) in November.

At this point some of the Country Party leaders began plotting an armed insurrection which, had it come off, would have begun with the assassination of Charles and his brother on their way back to London from the races at Newmarket. The chances of such a rising occurring were not as good as the plotters supposed. Memories of the turmoil of the civil war were still relatively fresh. Eventually Shaftesbury, who was moving from safe house to safe house, gave up and fled to Holland in November 1682. He died there in January 1683. Locke stayed in England until the Rye House Plot (named after the house from which the plotters were to fire upon the King and his brother) was discovered in June of 1683. Locke left for the West country to put his affairs in order the very week the plot was revealed to the government and by September he was in exile in Holland. [ 3 ]

While in exile, Locke finished An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and published a fifty-page advanced notice of it in French. (This was to provide the intellectual world on the continent with most of their information about the Essay until Pierre Coste’s French translation appeared in 1704.) He also wrote and published his Epistola de Tolerentia in Latin. Richard Ashcraft, in his Revolutionary Politics and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1986) suggests that while in Holland, Locke was not only finishing An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and nursing his health, he was closely associated with the English revolutionaries in exile. The English government was much concerned with this group. They tried to get a number of them, including Locke, extradited to England. Locke’s studentship at Oxford was taken away from him. In the meanwhile, the English intelligence service infiltrated the rebel group in Holland and effectively thwarted their efforts—at least for a while. While Locke was living in exile in Holland, Charles II died on Feb. 6, 1685, and was succeeded by his brother, who became James II of England. Soon after this, the rebels in Holland sent a force of soldiers under the Duke of Monmouth to England to try to overthrow James II. The revolt was crushed, and Monmouth was captured and executed (Ashcraft 1986). For a meticulous, if cautious review, of the evidence concerning Locke’s involvement with the English rebels in exile see Roger Woolhouse’s Locke: A Biography (2007).

Ultimately, however, the rebels were successful. James II alienated most of his supporters, and William of Orange was invited to bring a Dutch force to England. After William’s army landed, James II, realizing that he could not mount an effective resistance, fled the country to exile in France. This became known as the Glorious Revolution of 1688. It is a watershed in English history. For it marks the point at which the balance of power in the English government passed from the King to the Parliament. Locke returned to England in February 1689.

After his return from exile, Locke published An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and The Two Treatises of Government . In addition, Popple’s translation of Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration was also published. It is worth noting that the Two Treatises and the Letter Concerning Toleration were published anonymously. Locke took up residence in the country at Oates in Essex, the home of Sir Francis and Lady Masham (Damaris Cudworth). Locke had met Damaris Cudworth in 1682 and became involved intellectually and romantically with her. She was the daughter of Ralph Cudworth, the Cambridge Platonist, and a philosopher in her own right. After Locke went into exile in Holland in 1683, she married Sir Francis Masham. Locke and Lady Masham remained good friends and intellectual companions to the end of Locke’s life. During the remaining years of his life, Locke oversaw four more editions of the Essay and engaged in controversies over the Essay most notably in a series of published letters with Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester. In a similar way, Locke defended the Letter Concerning Toleration against a series of attacks. He wrote The Reasonableness of Christianity and Some Thoughts on Education during this period as well.

Nor was Locke finished with public affairs. In 1696 the Board of Trade was revived. Locke played an important part in its revival and served as the most influential member on it until 1700. The new Board of Trade had administrative powers and was, in fact, concerned with a wide range of issues, from the Irish wool trade and the suppression of piracy, to the treatment of the poor in England and the governance of the colonies. It was, in Peter Laslett’s phrase “the body which administered the United States before the American Revolution” (Laslett 1954 [1990: 127]). During these last eight years of his life, Locke was asthmatic, and he suffered so much from it that he could only bear the smoke of London during the four warmer months of the year. Locke plainly engaged in the activities of the Board out of a strong sense of patriotic duty. After his retirement from the Board of Trade in 1700, Locke remained in retirement at Oates until his death on Sunday 28 October 1704.

2. The Limits of Human Understanding

Locke is often classified as the first of the great English empiricists (ignoring the claims of Bacon and Hobbes). This reputation rests on Locke’s greatest work, the monumental An Essay Concerning Human Understanding . Locke explains his project in several places. Perhaps the most important of his goals is to determine the limits of human understanding. Locke writes:

For I thought that the first Step towards satisfying the several Enquiries, the Mind of Man was apt to run into, was, to take a Survey of our own Understandings, examine our own Powers, and see to what Things they were adapted. Till that was done, I suspected that we began at the wrong end, and in vain sought for Satisfaction in a quiet and secure Possession of Truths, that most concern’d us whilst we let loose our Thoughts into the vast Ocean of Being , as if all the boundless Extent, were the natural and undoubted Possessions of our Understandings, wherein there was nothing that escaped its Decisions, or that escaped its Comprehension. Thus Men, extending their Enquiries beyond their Capacities, and letting their Thoughts wander into those depths where they can find no sure Footing; ’tis no Wonder, that they raise Questions and multiply Disputes, which never coming to any clear Resolution, are proper to only continue and increase their Doubts, and to confirm them at last in a perfect Skepticism. Wheras were the Capacities of our Understanding well considered, the Extent of our Knowledge once discovered, and the Horizon found, which sets the boundary between the enlightened and the dark Parts of Things; between what is and what is not comprehensible by us, Men would perhaps with less scruple acquiesce in the avow’d Ignorance of the one; and employ their Thoughts and Discourse, with more Advantage and Satisfaction in the other. (I.1.7, N: 47)

Some philosophers before Locke had suggested that it would be good to find the limits of the Understanding, but what Locke does is to carry out this project in detail. In the four books of the Essay Locke considers the sources and nature of human knowledge. Book I argues that we have no innate knowledge. (In this he resembles Berkeley and Hume, and differs from Descartes and Leibniz.) So, at birth, the human mind is a sort of blank slate on which experience writes. In Book II Locke claims that ideas are the materials of knowledge and all ideas come from experience. The term ‘idea’, Locke tells us “…stands for whatsoever is the Object of the Understanding, when a man thinks” (I.1.8, N: 47). Experience is of two kinds, sensation and reflection. One of these—sensation—tells us about things and processes in the external world. The other—reflection—tells us about the operations of our own minds. Reflection is a sort of internal sense that makes us conscious of the mental processes we are engaged in. Some ideas we get only from sensation, some only from reflection and some from both.

Locke has an atomic or perhaps more accurately a corpuscular theory of ideas. [ 4 ] There is, that is to say, an analogy between the way atoms or corpuscles combine into complexes to form physical objects and the way ideas combine. Ideas are either simple or complex. We cannot create simple ideas, we can only get them from experience. In this respect the mind is passive. Once the mind has a store of simple ideas, it can combine them into complex ideas of a variety of kinds. In this respect the mind is active. Thus, Locke subscribes to a version of the empiricist axiom that there is nothing in the intellect that was not previously in the senses—where the senses are broadened to include reflection. Book III deals with the nature of language, its connections with ideas and its role in knowledge. Book IV, the culmination of the previous reflections, explains the nature and limits of knowledge, probability, and the relation of reason and faith. Let us now consider the Essay in some detail.

At the beginning of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Locke says that since his purpose is “to enquire into the Original, Certainty and Extent of human knowledge, together with the grounds and degrees of Belief, Opinion and Assent” he is going to begin with ideas—the materials out of which knowledge is constructed. His first task is to “enquire into the Original of these Ideas…and the ways whereby the Understanding comes to be furnished with them” (I.1.3, N: 44). The role of Book I of the Essay is to make the case that being innate is not a way in which the understanding is furnished with principles and ideas. Locke treats innateness as an empirical hypothesis and argues that there is no good evidence to support it.

Locke describes innate ideas as “some primary notions…Characters as it were stamped upon the Mind of Man, which the Soul receives in its very first Being; and brings into the world with it” (I.2.1, N: 48). In pursuing this enquiry, Locke rejects the claim that there are speculative innate principles (I.2), practical innate moral principles (I.3) or that we have innate ideas of God, identity or impossibility (I.4). Locke rejects arguments from universal assent and attacks dispositional accounts of innate principles. Thus, in considering what would count as evidence from universal assent to such propositions as “What is, is” or “It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be” he holds that children and idiots should be aware of such truths if they were innate but that they “have not the least apprehension or thought of them”. Why should children and idiots be aware of and able to articulate such propositions? Locke says:

It seems to me a near Contradiction to say that there are truths imprinted on the Soul, which it perceives or understands not; imprinting if it signify anything, being nothing else but the making certain Truths to be perceived. (I.2.5, N: 49)

So, Locke’s first point is that if propositions were innate they should be immediately perceived—by infants and idiots (and indeed everyone else)—but there is no evidence that they are. Locke then proceeds to attack dispositional accounts that say, roughly, that innate propositions are capable of being perceived under certain circumstances. Until these circumstances come about the propositions remain unperceived in the mind. With the advent of these conditions, the propositions are then perceived. Locke gives the following argument against innate propositions being dispositional:

For if any one [proposition] may [be in the mind but not be known]; then, by the same Reason, all Propositions that are true, and the Mind is ever capable of assenting to, may be said to be in the Mind, and to be imprinted: since if any one can be said to be in the Mind, which it never yet knew, it must be only because it is capable of knowing it; and so the Mind is of all Truths it ever shall know. (I.2.5, N: 50)

The essence of this argument and many of Locke’s other arguments against dispositional accounts of innate propositions is that such dispositional accounts do not provide an adequate criterion for distinguishing innate propositions from other propositions that the mind may come to discover. Thus, even if some criterion is proposed, it will turn out not to do the work it is supposed to do.

When Locke turns from speculative principles to the question of whether there are innate practical moral principles, many of the arguments against innate speculative principles continue to apply, but there are some additional considerations. Practical principles, such as the Golden Rule, are not self-evident in the way such speculative principles as “What is, is” are. Thus, one can clearly and sensibly ask reasons for why one should hold the Golden Rule true or obey it (I.3.4, N: 68). There are substantial differences between people over the content of practical principles. Thus, they are even less likely candidates to be innate propositions or to meet the criterion of universal assent. In the fourth chapter of Book I, Locke raises similar points about the ideas which compose both speculative and practical principles. The point is that if the ideas that are constitutive of the principles are not innate, this gives us even more reason to hold that the principles are not innate. He examines the ideas of identity, impossibility and God to make these points.

In Book I Locke says little about who holds the doctrine of innate principles that he is attacking. For this reason he has sometimes been accused of attacking straw men. John Yolton has persuasively argued (Yolton 1956) that the view that innate ideas and principles were necessary for the stability of religion, morality and natural law was widespread in England in the seventeenth century, and that in attacking both the naive and the dispositional account of innate ideas and innate principles, Locke is attacking positions which were widely held and continued to be held after the publication of the Essay . Thus, the charge that Locke’s account of innate principles is made of straw, is not a just criticism. But there are also some important connections with particular philosophers and schools that are worth noting and some points about innate ideas and inquiry.

At I. 4. 24. Locke tells us that the doctrine of innate principles once accepted “eased the lazy from the pains of search” and that the doctrine is an inquiry stopper that is used by those who “affected to be Masters and Teachers” to illegitimately gain control of the minds of their students. Locke rather clearly has in mind the Aristotelians and scholastics at the universities. Thus Locke’s attack on innate principles is connected with his anti-authoritarianism. It is an expression of his view of the importance of free and autonomous inquiry in the search for truth. Ultimately, Locke holds, this is the best road to knowledge and happiness. Locke, like Descartes, is tearing down the foundations of the old Aristotelian scholastic house of knowledge. But while Descartes focused on the empiricism at the foundation of the structure, Locke is focusing on the claims that innate ideas provide its first principles. The attack on innate ideas is thus the first step in the demolition of the scholastic model of science and knowledge. Ironically, it is also clear from II.1.9. that Locke sees Descartes’ claim that his essence is to be a thinking thing as entailing a doctrine of innate ideas and principles.

In Book II of the Essay , Locke gives his positive account of how we acquire the materials of knowledge. Locke distinguishes a variety of different kinds of ideas in Book II. Locke holds that the mind is a tabula rasa or blank sheet until experience in the form of sensation and reflection provide the basic materials—simple ideas—out of which most of our more complex knowledge is constructed. While the mind may be a blank slate in regard to content, it is plain that Locke thinks we are born with a variety of faculties to receive and abilities to manipulate or process the content once we acquire it. Thus, for example, the mind can engage in three different types of action in putting simple ideas together. The first of these kinds of action is to combine them into complex ideas. Complex ideas are of two kinds, ideas of substances and ideas of modes. Substances are independent existences. Beings that count as substances include God, angels, humans, animals, plants and a variety of constructed things. Modes are dependent existences. These include mathematical and moral ideas, and all the conventional language of religion, politics and culture. The second action which the mind performs is the bringing of two ideas, whether simple or complex, by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them. This gives us our ideas of relations (II.12.1, N: 163). The third act of the mind is the production of our general ideas by abstraction from particulars, leaving out the particular circumstances of time and place, which would limit the application of an idea to a particular individual. In addition to these abilities, there are such faculties as memory which allow for the storing of ideas.

Having set forth the general machinery of how simple and complex ideas of substances, modes, relations, and so forth are derived from sensation and reflection, Locke also explains how a variety of particular kinds of ideas, such as the ideas of solidity, number, space, time, power, identity, and moral relations arise from sensation and reflection. Several of these are of particular interest. Locke’s chapter on power gives rise to a discussion of free will and voluntary action (see the entry on Locke on freedom ). Locke also made a number of interesting claims in the philosophy of mind. He suggested, for example, that for all we know, God could as easily add the powers of perception and thought to matter organized in the right way as he could add those powers to an immaterial substance which would then be joined to matter organized in the right way. His account of personal identity in II. xxvii was revolutionary. (See the entry on Locke on personal identity) . Both of these topics and related ones are treated in the supplementary document: Some Interesting Issues in Locke’s Philosophy of Mind

In what follows, we focus on some central issues in Locke’s account of physical objects. (See also the entry Locke’s philosophy of science , which pursues a number of topics related to Locke’s account of physical objects that are of considerable importance but largely beyond the scope of this general account of Locke’s philosophy.) These include Locke on knowledge in natural philosophy, the limitations of the corpuscular philosophy and Locke’s relation to Newton.

Locke offers an account of physical objects based on the mechanical philosophy and the corpuscular hypothesis. The adherents of the mechanical philosophy held that all material phenomena can be explained by matter in motion and the impact of one body on another. They viewed matter as passive. They rejected the “occult qualities” and “causation at a distance” of the Aristotelian and Scholastic philosophy. Robert Boyle’s corpuscularian hypothesis treated the material world as made up of particles. Some corpuscularians held that corpuscles could be further divided and that the universe was full of matter with no void space. Atomists, on the other hand, held that the particles were indivisible and that the material world is composed of atoms and the void or empty space in which the atoms move. Locke was an atomist.

Atoms have properties. They are extended, they are solid, they have a particular shape and they are in motion or rest. They combine together to produce the familiar stuff and physical objects, the gold and the wood, the horses and violets, the tables and chairs of our world. These familiar things also have properties. They are extended, solid, have a particular shape, and are in motion and at rest. In addition to these properties that they share with the atoms that compose them, they have other properties such as colors, smells, tastes that they get by standing in relation to perceivers. The distinction between these two kinds of properties goes back to the Greek atomists. It is articulated by Galileo and Descartes as well as Locke’s mentor Robert Boyle.

Locke makes this distinction in Book II Chapter 8 of the Essay and using Boyle’s terminology calls the two different classes of properties the primary and secondary qualities of an object. This distinction is made by both of the main branches of the mechanical philosophy of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Both the Cartesian plenum theorists, who held that the world was full of infinitely divisible matter and that there was no void space, and the atomists such as Gassendi, who held that there were indivisible atoms and void space in which the atoms move, made the distinction between these two classes of properties. Still, the differences between these two branches of the mechanical philosophy affect their account of primary qualities. In the chapter on Solidity (II.4) Locke rejects the Cartesian definition of body as simply extended and argues that bodies are both extended and impenetrable or solid. The inclusion of solidity in Locke’s account of bodies and of primary qualities distinguishes them from the void space in which they move.

The primary qualities of an object are properties which the object possesses independent of us—such as occupying space, being either in motion or at rest, having solidity and texture. The secondary qualities are powers in bodies to produce ideas in us like color, taste, smell and so on that are caused by the interaction of our particular perceptual apparatus with the primary qualities of the object. Our ideas of primary qualities resemble the qualities in the object, while our ideas of secondary qualities do not resemble the powers that cause them. Locke also distinguishes a second class of secondary properties that are the powers that one substance has to effect another, e.g. the power of a fire to melt a piece of wax.

There has been considerable scholarly debate concerning the details of Locke’s account of the distinction. Among the issues are which qualities Locke assigns to each of the two categories. Locke gives several lists. Another issue is what the criterion is for putting a quality in one list rather than another. Does Locke hold that all the ideas of secondary qualities come to us by one sense while the ideas of primary qualities come to us through two or is Locke not making the distinction in this way? Another issue is whether there are only primary qualities of atoms or whether compounds of atoms also have primary qualities. And while Locke claims our ideas of primary qualities resemble the primary qualities in objects, and the ideas of secondary qualities do not resemble their causes in the object, what does ‘resemble’ mean in this context? Related to this issue is how we are supposed to know about particles that we cannot sense. It seems clear that Locke holds that there are certain analogies between the middle sized macroscopic objects we encounter in the world, e.g. porphyry and manna for example, and the particles that compose these things. Maurice Mandelbaum called this process ‘transdiction’. These analogies allow us to say certain things about the nature of particles and primary and secondary qualities. For example we can infer that atoms are solid and that heat is a greater rate of motion of atoms while cold is a slower motion. But these analogies may not get us very far in grasping the necessary connections between qualities in nature. Yet another issue is whether Locke sees the distinction as reductionistic. If what we mean by reductionistic here is that only the primary qualities are real and these explain the secondary qualities then there does not seem to be a clear answer. Secondary qualities surely are nothing more than certain primary qualities that affect us in certain ways. This seems to be reductionistic. But on Locke’s account of “real ideas” in II.30 both the ideas of primary and secondary qualities count as real. And while Locke holds that our ideas of secondary qualities are caused by primary qualities, in certain important respects the primary qualities do not explain them. Locke holds that we cannot even conceive how the size, figure and motion of particles could cause any sensation in us. So, knowing the size, figure and motion of the particles would be of no use to us in this regard (see IV.3.11–40, N: 544–546).

Locke probably holds some version of the representational theory of perception, though some scholars dispute this. On such a theory what the mind immediately perceives are ideas, and the ideas are caused by and represent the objects which cause them. Thus perception is a triadic relation, rather than simply being a dyadic relation between an object and a perceiver. Such a dyadic relational theory is often called naive realism because it suggests that the perceiver is directly perceiving the object, and naive because this view is open to a variety of serious objections. Some versions of the representational theory are open to serious objections as well. If, for example, one treats ideas as things, then one can imagine that because one sees ideas, the ideas actually block one from seeing things in the external world. The idea would be like a picture or painting. The picture would copy the original object in the external world, but because our immediate object of perception is the picture we would be prevented from seeing the original just as standing in front of a painting on an easel might prevent us from seeing the person being painted. Thus, this is sometimes called the picture/original theory of perception. Alternatively, Jonathan Bennett called it “the veil of perception” to emphasize that ‘seeing’ the ideas prevents us from seeing the external world. One philosopher who arguably held such a view was Nicholas Malebranche, a follower of Descartes. Antoine Arnauld, by contrast, while believing in the representative character of ideas, is a direct realist about perception. Arnauld engaged in a lengthy controversy with Malebranche, and criticized Malebranche’s account of ideas. Locke follows Arnauld in his criticism of Malebranche on this point (Locke, 1823, Vol. IX: 250). Yet Berkeley attributed the veil of perception interpretation of the representational theory of perception to Locke as have many later commentators including Bennett. A.D. Woozley puts the difficulty of doing this succinctly:

…it is scarcely credible both that Locke should be able to see and state so clearly the fundamental objection to the picture-original theory of sense perception, and that he should have held the same theory himself. (Woozley 1964: 27)

Just what Locke’s account of perception involves, is still a matter of scholarly debate. A review of this issue at a symposium including John Rogers, Gideon Yaffe, Lex Newman, Tom Lennon, and Vere Chappell at a meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association in 2003 and later expanded and published in the Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (2004, volume 85, issue 3) found most of the symposiasts holding the view that Locke holds a representative theory of perception but that he is not a skeptic about the external world in the way that the veil of perception doctrine might suggest.

Another issue that has been a matter of controversy since the first publication of the Essay is what Locke means by the term ‘substance’. The primary/secondary quality distinction gets us a certain ways in understanding physical objects, but Locke is puzzled about what underlies or supports the primary qualities themselves. He is also puzzled about what material and immaterial substances might have in common that would lead us to apply the same word to both. These kinds of reflections led him to the relative and obscure idea of substance in general. This is an “I know not what” which is the support of qualities which cannot subsist by themselves. We experience properties appearing in regular clumps, but we must infer that there is something that supports or perhaps ‘holds together’ those qualities. For we have no experience of that supporting substance. It is clear that Locke sees no alternative to the claim that there are substances supporting qualities. He does not, for example, have a theory of tropes (tropes are properties that can exist independently of substances) which he might use to dispense with the notion of substance. (In fact, he may be rejecting something like a theory of tropes when he rejects the Aristotelian doctrine of real qualities and insists on the need for substances.) He is thus not at all a skeptic about ‘substance’ in the way that Hume is. But, it is also quite clear that he is regularly insistent about the limitations of our ideas of substances. Bishop Stillingfleet accused Locke of putting substance out of the reasonable part of the world. But Locke is not doing that.

Since Berkeley, Locke’s doctrine of the substratum or substance in general has been attacked as incoherent. It seems to imply that we have a particular without any properties, and this seems like a notion that is inconsistent with empiricism. We have no experience of such an entity and so no way to derive such an idea from experience. Locke himself acknowledges this point (I.4.18, N: 95). In order to avoid this problem, Michael Ayers has proposed that we must understand the notions of ‘substratum’ and ‘substance in general’ in terms of Locke’s distinction between real and nominal essences and particularly his doctrine of real essences developed in Book III of the Essay rather than as a separate problem from that of knowing real essences. The real essence of a material thing is its atomic constitution. This atomic constitution is the causal basis of all the observable properties of the thing, from which we create nominal essences. Were the real essence known, all the observable properties could be deduced from it. Locke claims that the real essences of material things are quite unknown to us. Locke’s concept of substance in general is also a ‘something I know not what’. Thus, on Ayers’ interpretation ‘substance in general’ means something like ‘whatever it is that supports qualities’ while the real essence means ‘this particular atomic constitution that explains this set of observable qualities’. Thus, Ayers wants to treat the unknown substratum as picking out the same thing as the real essence—thus eliminating the need for particulars without properties. This proposed way of interpreting Locke has been criticized by scholars both because of a lack of textural support, and on the stronger grounds that it conflicts with some things that Locke does say (see Jolley 1999: 71–3). As we have reached one of the important concepts in Book III, let us turn to that Book and Locke’s discussion of language.

Locke devotes Book III of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding to language. This is a strong indication that Locke thinks issues about language were of considerable importance in attaining knowledge. At the beginning of the Book he notes the importance of abstract general ideas to knowledge. These serve as sorts under which we rank all the vast multitude of particular existences. Thus, abstract ideas and classification are of central importance in Locke’s discussion of language and its importance for knowledge. Without general terms and classes we would be faced with the impossible task of trying to know a vast world of particulars.

There is a clear connection between Books II and III in that Locke claims that words stand for ideas. In his discussion of language Locke distinguishes words according to the categories of ideas established in Book II of the Essay . So there are ideas of substances, simple modes, mixed modes, relations and so on. It is in this context that Locke makes the distinction between real and nominal essences noted above. Perhaps because of his focus on the role that kind terms play in classification, Locke pays vastly more attention to nouns than to verbs. Locke recognizes that not all words relate to ideas. There are also the many particles, words that “…signify the connexion that the Mind gives to Ideas, or Propositions, one with another” (II.7.1, N: 471). Still, it is the relation of words and ideas that gets most of Locke’s attention in Book III.

Norman Kretzmann calls the claim that “words in their primary or immediate signification signify nothing but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them ” (III.2.2) “Locke’s main semantic thesis” (see Kretzmann 1968:179). This thesis has often been criticized as a classic blunder in semantic theory. Thus Mill, for example, wrote, “When I say, ‘the sun is the cause of the day’, I do not mean that my idea of the sun causes or excites in me the idea of day” (Mill 1843: bk 1, ch. 2, § 1). This criticism of Locke’s account of language parallels the “veil of perception” critique of his account of perception and suggests that Locke is not distinguishing the meaning of a word from its reference. Kretzmann, however, argues persuasively that Locke distinguishes between meaning and reference and that ideas provide the meaning but not the reference of words. Thus, the line of criticism represented by the quotation from Mill is ill founded.

In addition to the kinds of ideas noted above, there are also particular and abstract ideas. Particular ideas have in them the ideas of particular places and times which limit the application of the idea to a single individual, while abstract general ideas leave out the ideas of particular times and places in order to allow the idea to apply to other similar qualities or things. There has been considerable philosophical and scholarly debate about the nature of the process of abstraction and Locke’s account of it. Berkeley argued that the process as Locke conceives it is incoherent. In part this is because Berkeley is an imagist—that is he believes that all ideas are images. If one is an imagist it becomes impossible to imagine what idea could include both the ideas of a right and equilateral triangle. Michael Ayers has recently argued that Locke too was an imagist. This would make Berkeley’s criticism of Locke very much to the point. Ayers’ claim, however, has been disputed (see, for example, Soles 1999). The process of abstraction is of considerable importance to human knowledge. Locke thinks most words we use are general (III.1.1, N: 409). Clearly, it is only general or sortal ideas that can serve in a classificatory scheme.

In his discussion of names of substances and in the contrast between names of substances and names of modes, a number of interesting features of Locke’s views about language and knowledge emerge. Physical substances are atoms and things made up of atoms. But we have no experience of the atomic structure of horses and tables. We know horses and tables mainly by secondary qualities such as color, taste and smell and so on and primary qualities such as shape, motion and extension. So, since the real essence (the atomic constitution) of a horse is unknown to us, our word ‘horse’ cannot get its meaning from that real essence. What the general word signifies is the complex of ideas we have decided are parts of the idea of that sort of thing. These ideas we get from experience. Locke calls such a general idea that picks out a sort, the nominal essence of that sort.

One of the central issues in Book III has to do with classification. On what basis do we divide things into kinds and organize those kinds into a system of species and genera? In the Aristotelian and Scholastic tradition that Locke rejects, necessary properties are those that an individual must have in order to exist and continue to exist. These contrast with accidental properties. Accidental properties are those that an individual can gain and lose and yet continue in existence. If a set of necessary properties is shared by a number of individuals, that set of properties constitutes the essence of a natural kind. The borders between kinds are supposed to be sharp and determinate. The aim of Aristotelian science is to discover the essences of natural kinds. Kinds can then be organized hierarchically into a classificatory system of species and genera. This classification of the world by natural kinds will be unique and privileged because it alone corresponds to the structure of the world. This doctrine of essences and kinds is often called Aristotelian essentialism. Locke rejects a variety of aspects of this doctrine. He rejects the notion that an individual has an essence apart from being treated as belonging to a kind. He also rejects the claim that there is a single classification of things in nature that the natural philosopher should seek to discover. He holds that there are many possible ways to classify the world each of which might be particularly useful depending on one’s purposes.

Locke’s pragmatic account of language and the distinction between nominal and real essences constitute an anti-essentialist alternative to this Aristotelian essentialism and its correlative account of the classification of natural kinds. He claims that there are no fixed boundaries in nature to be discovered—that is there are no clear demarcation points between species. There are always borderline cases. There is debate over whether Locke’s view is that this lack of fixed boundaries is true on both the level of appearances and nominal essences, and atomic constitutions and real essences, or on the level of nominal essences alone. The first view is that Locke holds that there are no Aristotelian natural kinds on either the level of appearance or atomic reality. The second view holds that Locke thinks there are Aristotelian natural kinds on the atomic level, it is simply that we cannot get at them or know what they are. On either of these interpretations, the real essence cannot provide the meaning to names of substances. A.O. Lovejoy in the Great Chain of Being , and David Wiggins are proponents of the second interpretation while Michael Ayers and William Uzgalis argue for the first (Uzgalis 1988; Ayers 1991: II. 70).

By contrast, the ideas that we use to make up our nominal essences come to us from experience. Locke claims that the mind is active in making our ideas of sorts and that there are so many properties to choose among that it is possible for different people to make quite different ideas of the essence of a certain substance. This has given some commentators the impression that the making of sorts is utterly arbitrary and conventional for Locke and that there is no basis for criticizing a particular nominal essence. Sometimes Locke says things that might suggest this. But this impression should be resisted. Peter Anstey has characterized Locke’s conventionalism about classificatory terms as both constrained and convergent (Anstey 2011: 209, 212). Locke claims that while the making of nominal essences is the work of the understanding, that work is constrained both by usage (where words stand for ideas that are already in use) and by the fact that substance words are supposed to copy the properties of the substances they refer to. Locke says that our ideas of kinds of substances have as their archetype the complex of properties that produce the appearances we use to make our nominal essences and which cause the unity of the complex of ideas that appear to us regularly conjoined. The very notion of an archetype implies constraints on what properties (and hence what ideas) can go together. If there were no such constraints there could be no archetype. (For further discussion of the nominal-real essence distinction see the entry Locke on Real Essences) .

Let us begin with the usage of words. It is important in a community of language users that words be used with the same meaning. If this condition is met it facilitates the chief end of language which is communication. If one fails to use words with the meaning that most people attach to them, one will fail to communicate effectively with others. Thus one would defeat the main purpose of language. It should also be noted that traditions of usage for Locke can be modified. Otherwise we would not be able to improve our knowledge and understanding by getting more clear and determinate ideas.

In the making of the names of substances, there is a period of discovery as the abstract general idea is put together (e.g. the discovery of violets or gold) and then the naming of that idea and then its introduction into language. Language itself is viewed as an instrument for carrying out the mainly prosaic purposes and practices of everyday life. Ordinary people are the chief makers of language.

Vulgar Notions suit vulgar Discourses; and both though confused enough, yet serve pretty well for the Market and the Wake. Merchants and Lovers, Cooks and Taylors, have Words wherewith to dispatch their ordinary affairs; and so, I think, might Philosophers and Disputants too, if they had a mind to understand and to be clearly understood. (III.11.10, N: 514)

These ordinary people use a few apparent qualities, mainly ideas of secondary qualities to make ideas and words that will serve their purposes.

Natural philosophers (i.e. scientists) come along later to try to determine if the connections between properties which the ordinary folk have put together in a particular idea in fact holds in nature. Scientists are seeking to find the necessary connections between properties. Still, even scientists, in Locke’s view, are restricted to using observable (and mainly secondary) qualities to categorize things in nature. Sometimes, the scientists may find that the ordinary folk had erred, as when they called whales ‘fish’. A whale is not a fish, as it turns out, but a mammal. There is a characteristic group of qualities that fish have that whales do not have. There is a characteristic group of qualities that mammals have that whales also have. To classify a whale as a fish, therefore, is a mistake. Similarly, we might make an idea of gold that only included being a soft metal and gold color. If so, we would be unable to distinguish between gold and fool’s gold. Thus, since it is the mind that makes complex ideas (they are ‘the workmanship of the understanding’), one is free to put together any combination of ideas one wishes and call it what one will. But the product of such work is open to criticism, either on the grounds that it does not conform to already current usage or that it inadequately represents the archetypes that it is supposed to copy in the world. We engage in such criticism in order to improve human understanding of the material world and thus the human condition. This is the convergent character of Locke’s conventionalism. In becoming more accurate, the nominal essence converges on the real essence.

However, we should not forget the master-builders that Locke mentions at the beginning of the Essay . Stephen Gaukroger (2010) claims that Locke’s great achievement was to provide a philosophical justification for the kind of experimental philosophy that Boyle’s work on the air pump, and his and Newton’s work on colors, as well as Sydenham’s observational medicine. All of these had been attacked for not providing explanations in terms of matter theory. Thus, Locke is justifying the autonomy of experimental philosophy. Such experimental explanations depend solely on the relation between phenomena, even when there is some micro-corpuscular basis for the phenomena being explained. According to Gaukroger, this is Locke’s contribution to the collapse of mechanism. For the details of the problem and its solution, see Chapters 4 and 5 of Gaukroger (2010).

The distinction between modes and substances is surely one of the most important in Locke’s philosophy. In contrast with substances, modes are dependent existences—they can be thought of as the ordering of substances. These are technical terms for Locke, so we should see how they are defined. Locke writes:

First, Modes I call such complex Ideas , which however compounded, contain not in themselves the supposition of subsisting by themselves; such are the ideas signified by the Words Triangle, Gratitude, Murther, etc . (II.12.4, N: 165)

Locke goes on to distinguish between simple and mixed modes. He writes:

Of these Modes , there are two sorts, which deserve distinct consideration. First, there are some that are only variations, or different combinations of the same simple Idea , without the mixture of any other, as a dozen or score; which are nothing but the ideas of so many distinct unities being added together, and these I call simple Modes , as being contained within the bounds of one simple Idea . Secondly, There are others, compounded of Ideas of several kinds, put together to make one complex one; v.g. Beauty , consisting of a certain combination of Colour and Figure, causing Delight to the Beholder; Theft , which being the concealed change of the Possession of any thing, without the consent of the Proprietor, contains, as is visible, a combination of several Ideas of several kinds; and these I call Mixed Modes . (II.12.5, N: 165)

When we make ideas of modes, the mind is again active, but the archetype is in our mind. The question becomes whether things in the world fit our ideas, and not whether our ideas correspond to the nature of things in the world. Our ideas are adequate. Thus we define ‘bachelor’ as an unmarried, adult, male human being. If we find that someone does not fit this definition, this does not reflect badly on our definition, it simply means that that individual does not belong to the class of bachelors. Modes give us the ideas of mathematics, of morality, of religion and politics and indeed of human conventions in general. Since these modal ideas are not only made by us but serve as standards that things in the world either fit or do not fit and thus belong or do not belong to that sort, ideas of modes are clear and distinct, adequate and complete. Thus in modes, we get the real and nominal essences combined. One can give precise definitions of mathematical terms (that is, give necessary and sufficient conditions), and one can give deductive demonstrations of mathematical truths. Locke sometimes says that morality too is capable of deductive demonstration. Though pressed by his friend William Molyneux to produce such a demonstrative morality, Locke never did so. The entry Locke’s moral philosophy provides an excellent discussion of Locke’s views on morality and issues related to them for which there is no room in this general account. The terms of political discourse also have some of the same modal features for Locke. When Locke defines the states of nature, slavery, and war in the Second Treatise of Government , for example, we are presumably getting precise modal definitions from which one can deduce consequences. It is possible, however, that with politics we are getting a study that requires both experience as well as the deductive modal aspect.

In the fourth book of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Locke tells us what knowledge is and what humans can know and what they cannot (not simply what they do and do not happen to know). Locke defines knowledge as “the perception of the connexion and agreement or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our Ideas” (IV.1.1, N: 525). This definition of knowledge contrasts with the Cartesian definition of knowledge as any ideas that are clear and distinct. Locke’s account of knowledge allows him to say that we can know substances in spite of the fact that our ideas of them always include the obscure and relative idea of substance in general. Still, Locke’s definition of knowledge raises in this domain a problem analogous to those we have seen with perception and language. If knowledge is the “perception of … the agreement or disagreement … of any of our Ideas”—are we not trapped in the circle of our own ideas? What about knowing the real existence of things? Locke is plainly aware of this problem, and very likely holds that the implausibility of skeptical hypotheses, such as Descartes’ Dream hypothesis (he doesn’t even bother to mention Descartes’ malin genie or Evil Demon hypothesis), along with the causal connections between qualities and ideas in his own system is enough to solve the problem. It is also worth noting that there are significant differences between Locke’s brand of empiricism and that of Berkeley that would make it easier for Locke to solve the veil of perception problem than Berkeley. Locke, for example, makes transdictive inferences about atoms where Berkeley is unwilling to allow that such inferences are legitimate. This implies that Locke has a semantics that allows him to talk about the unexperienced causes of experience (such as atoms) where Berkeley cannot. (See Mackie’s perceptive discussion of the veil of perception problem, in Problems from Locke , 1976: 51 through 67.)

What then can we know and with what degree of certainty? We can know that God exists with the second highest degree of assurance, that of demonstration. We also know that we exist with the highest degree of certainty. The truths of morality and mathematics we can know with certainty as well, because these are modal ideas whose adequacy is guaranteed by the fact that we make such ideas as ideal models which other things must fit, rather than trying to copy some external archetype which we can only grasp inadequately. On the other hand, our efforts to grasp the nature of external objects are limited largely to the connection between their apparent qualities. The real essence of elephants and gold is hidden from us: though in general we suppose them to be some distinct combination of atoms which cause the grouping of apparent qualities which leads us to see elephants and violets, gold and lead as distinct kinds. Our knowledge of material things is probabilistic and thus opinion rather than knowledge. Thus our “knowledge” of external objects is inferior to our knowledge of mathematics and morality, of ourselves, and of God. We do have sensitive knowledge of external objects, which is limited to things we are presently experiencing. While Locke holds that we only have knowledge of a limited number of things, he thinks we can judge the truth or falsity of many propositions in addition to those we can legitimately claim to know. This brings us to a discussion of probability.

Knowledge involves the seeing of the agreement or disagreement of our ideas. What then is probability and how does it relate to knowledge? Locke writes:

The Understanding Faculties being given to Man, not barely for Speculation, but also for the Conduct of his Life, Man would be at a great loss, if he had nothing to direct him, but what has the Certainty of true Knowledge … Therefore, as God has set some Things in broad day-light; as he has given us some certain Knowledge…So in the greater part of our Concernment, he has afforded us only the twilight, as I may say so, of Probability, suitable, I presume, to that State of Mediocrity and Probationership, he has been pleased to place us in here, wherein to check our over-confidence and presumption, we might by every day’s Experience be made sensible of our short sightedness and liableness to Error… (IV.14.1–2, N: 652)

So, apart from the few important things that we can know for certain, e.g. the existence of ourselves and God, the nature of mathematics and morality broadly construed, for the most part we must lead our lives without knowledge. What then is probability? Locke writes:

As Demonstration is the shewing of the agreement or disagreement of two Ideas, by the intervention of one or more Proofs, which have a constant, immutable, and visible connexion one with another: so Probability is nothing but the appearance of such an Agreement or Disagreement, by the intervention of Proofs, whose connection is not constant and immutable, or at least is not perceived to be so, but is or appears, for the most part to be so, and is enough to induce the Mind to judge the Proposition to be true, or false, rather than the contrary. (IV.15.1, N: 654)

Probable reasoning, on this account, is an argument, similar in certain ways to the demonstrative reasoning that produces knowledge but different also in certain crucial respects. It is an argument that provides evidence that leads the mind to judge a proposition true or false but without a guarantee that the judgment is correct. This kind of probable judgment comes in degrees, ranging from near demonstrations and certainty to unlikeliness and improbability in the vicinity of impossibility. It is correlated with degrees of assent ranging from full assurance down to conjecture, doubt and distrust.

The new science of mathematical probability had come into being on the continent just around the time that Locke was writing the Essay . His account of probability, however, shows little or no awareness of mathematical probability. Rather it reflects an older tradition that treated testimony as probable reasoning. Given that Locke’s aim, above all, is to discuss what degree of assent we should give to various religious propositions, the older conception of probability very likely serves his purposes best. Thus, when Locke comes to describe the grounds for probability he cites the conformity of the proposition to our knowledge, observation and experience, and the testimony of others who are reporting their observation and experience. Concerning the latter we must consider the number of witnesses, their integrity, their skill in observation, counter testimony and so on. In judging rationally how much to assent to a probable proposition, these are the relevant considerations that the mind should review. We should, Locke also suggests, be tolerant of differing opinions as we have more reason to retain the opinions we have than to give them up to strangers or adversaries who may well have some interest in our doing so.

Locke distinguishes two sorts of probable propositions. The first of these have to do with particular existences or matters of fact, and the second that are beyond the testimony of the senses. Matters of fact are open to observation and experience, and so all of the tests noted above for determining rational assent to propositions about them are available to us. Things are quite otherwise with matters that are beyond the testimony of the senses. These include the knowledge of finite immaterial spirits such as angels or things such as atoms that are too small to be sensed, or the plants, animals or inhabitants of other planets that are beyond our range of sensation because of their distance from us. Concerning this latter category, Locke says we must depend on analogy as the only help for our reasoning. He writes:

Thus the observing that the bare rubbing of two bodies violently one upon the other, produce heat, and very often fire it self, we have reason to think, that what we call Heat and Fire consist of the violent agitation of the imperceptible minute parts of the burning matter…. (IV.16.12, N: 665–6)

We reason about angels by considering the Great Chain of Being; figuring that while we have no experience of angels, the ranks of species above us is likely as numerous as that below of which we do have experience. This reasoning is, however, only probable.

The relative merits of the senses, reason and faith for attaining truth and the guidance of life were a significant issue during this period. As noted above James Tyrrell recalled that the original impetus for the writing of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding was a discussion about the principles of morality and revealed religion. In Book IV Chapters 17, 18, and 19 Locke deals with the nature of reason, the relation of reason to faith and the nature of enthusiasm. Locke remarks that all sects make use of reason as far as they can. It is only when this fails them that they have recourse to faith and claim that what is revealed is above reason. But he adds:

And I do not see how they can argue with anyone or even convince a gainsayer who uses the same plea, without setting down strict boundaries between faith and reason. (IV.18.2, N: 689)

Locke then defines reason as

the discovery of the certainty or probability of such propositions or truths, which the mind arrives at by deduction made from such ideas, as it has got by the use of its natural faculties; viz, by the use of sensation or reflection. (IV.18.2, N: 689)

Faith, on the other hand, is assent to any proposition “…upon the credit of the proposer, as coming from God, in some extraordinary way of communication”. That is we have faith in what is disclosed by revelation and which cannot be discovered by reason. Locke also distinguishes between the original revelation by God to some person, and traditional revelation which is the original revelation “…delivered over to others in Words, and the ordinary ways of our conveying our Conceptions one to another” (IV.18.3, N: 690).

Locke makes the point that some things could be discovered both by reason and by revelation—God could reveal the propositions of Euclid’s geometry, or they could be discovered by reason. In such cases there would be little use for faith. Traditional revelation can never produce as much certainty as the contemplation of the agreement or disagreement of our own ideas. Similarly revelations about matters of fact do not produce as much certainty as having the experience oneself. Revelation, then, cannot contradict what we know to be true. If it could, it would undermine the trustworthiness of all of our faculties. This would be a disastrous result. Where revelation comes into its own is where reason cannot reach. Where we have few or no ideas for reason to contradict or confirm, these are the proper matters for faith.

…that Part of the Angels rebelled against GOD, and thereby lost their first happy state: and that the dead shall rise, and live again: These and the like, being Beyond the Discovery of Reason, are purely matters of Faith; with which Reason has nothing to do. (IV.18.8, N: 694)

Still, reason does have a crucial role to play in respect to revelation. Locke writes:

Because the Mind, not being certain of the Truth of that it evidently does not know, but only yielding to the Probability that appears to it, is bound to give up its assent to such Testimony, which, it is satisfied, comes from one who cannot err, and will not deceive. But yet, it still belongs to Reason, to judge of the truth of its being a Revelation, and of the significance of the Words, wherein it is delivered. (IV.18.8, N: 694)

So, in respect to the crucial question of how we are to know whether a revelation is genuine, we are supposed to use reason and the canons of probability to judge. Locke claims that if the boundaries between faith and reason are not clearly marked, then there will be no place for reason in religion and one then gets all the “extravagant Opinions and Ceremonies, that are to be found in the religions of the world…” (IV.18.11, N: 696).

Should one accept revelation without using reason to judge whether it is genuine revelation or not, one gets what Locke calls a third principle of assent besides reason and revelation, namely enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is a vain or unfounded confidence in divine favor or communication. It implies that there is no need to use reason to judge whether such favor or communication is genuine or not. Clearly when such communications are not genuine they are “the ungrounded Fancies of a Man’s own Brain” (IV.19.2, N: 698). This kind of enthusiasm was characteristic of Protestant extremists going back to the era of the civil war. Locke was not alone in rejecting enthusiasm, but he rejects it in the strongest terms. Enthusiasm violates the fundamental principle by which the understanding operates—that assent be proportioned to the evidence. To abandon that fundamental principle would be catastrophic. This is a point that Locke also makes in The Conduct of the Understanding and The Reasonableness of Christianity . Locke wants each of us to use our understanding to search after truth. Of enthusiasts, those who would abandon reason and claim to know on the basis of faith alone, Locke writes:

…he that takes away Reason to make way for Revelation, puts out the Light of both, and does much what the same, as if he would perswade a Man to put out his eyes, the better to receive the remote Light of an invisible Star by a Telescope. (IV.19.4, N: 698)

Rather than engage in the tedious labor required to reason correctly to judge of the genuineness of their revelation, enthusiasts persuade themselves that they are possessed of immediate revelation. This leads to “odd Opinions and extravagant actions” that are characteristic of enthusiasm and which should warn that this is a wrong principle. Thus, Locke strongly rejects any attempt to make inward persuasion not judged by reason a legitimate principle.

We turn now to a consideration of Locke’s educational works.

Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education and his Conduct of the Understanding form a nice bridge between An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and his political works. Ruth Grant and Nathan Tarcov write in the introduction to their edition of these works:

The idea of liberty, so crucial to all of Locke’s writings on politics and education, is traced in the Essay to reflection on the power of the mind over one’s own actions, especially the power to suspend actions in the pursuit of the satisfaction of one’s own desires until after a full consideration of their objects (II.21.47, N: 51–52). The Essay thus shows how the independence of mind pursued in the Conduct is possible. (G&T 1996: xvi)

Some Thoughts Concerning Education was first published in 1693. This book collected together advice that Locke had been giving his friend Edward Clarke about the education of Clarke’s son (and also his daughters) since 1684. In preparing the revision for the fourth edition of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Locke began writing a chapter called “The Conduct of the Understanding”. This became quite long and was never added to the Essay or even finished. It was left to Locke’s literary executors to decide what to do with it. The Conduct was published by Peter King in his posthumous edition of some of Locke’s works in 1706. As Locke was composing these works, some of the material from the Conduct eventually made its way into the Thoughts . Grant and Tarcov write that the Thoughts and the Conduct “complement each other well: the Thoughts focuses on the education of children by their parents, whereas the Conduct addresses the self-education of adults” (G&T 1996: vii). Though they also note tensions between the two that illustrate paradoxes in liberal society. The Thoughts is addressed to the education of the sons and daughters of the English gentry in the late seventeenth century. It is in some ways thus significantly more limited to its time and place than the Conduct . Yet, its insistence on the inculcating such virtues as

justice as respect for the rights of others, civility, liberality, humanity, self-denial, industry, thrift, courage, truthfulness, and a willingness to question prejudice, authority and the biases of one’s own self-interest

very likely represents the qualities needed for citizens in a liberal society (G&T 1996: xiii).

Locke’s Thoughts represents the culmination of a century of what has been called “the discovery of the child”. In the Middle Ages the child was regarded as

only a simple plaything, as a simple animal, or a miniature adult who dressed, played and was supposed to act like his elders…Their ages were unimportant and therefore seldom known. Their education was undifferentiated, either by age, ability or intended occupation. (Axtell 1968: 63–4)

Locke treated children as human beings in whom the gradual development of rationality needed to be fostered by parents. Locke urged parents to spend time with their children and tailor their education to their character and idiosyncrasies, to develop both a sound body and character, and to make play the chief strategy for learning rather than rote learning or punishment. Thus, he urged learning languages by learning to converse in them before learning rules of grammar. Locke also suggests that the child learn at least one manual trade.

In advocating a kind of education that made people who think for themselves, Locke was preparing people to effectively make decisions in their own lives—to engage in individual self-government—and to participate in the government of their country. The Conduct reveals the connections Locke sees between reason, freedom and morality. Reason is required for good self-government because reason insofar as it is free from partiality, intolerance and passion and able to question authority leads to fair judgment and action. We thus have a responsibility to cultivate reason in order to avoid the moral failings of passion, partiality and so forth (G&T 1996: xii). This is, in Tarcov’s phrase, Locke’s education for liberty.

We turn now to Locke’s political writings. (See the entry on Locke’s political philosophy , which focuses on five topics (the state of nature, natural law, property, consent and toleration) and goes into these topics in more depth than is possible in a general account and provides much useful information on the debates about them.)

4. The Two Treatises Of Government

Lord Shaftsbury had been dismissed from his post as Lord Chancellor in 1673 and had become one of the leaders of the opposition party, the Country Party. In 1679 the chief issue was the attempt by the Country Party leaders to exclude James, Duke of York from succeeding his brother Charles II to the throne. They wanted to do this because James was a Catholic, and England by this time was a firmly Protestant country. They had acquired a majority in the House of Commons through serious grass roots election campaigns, and passed an exclusion bill, but given the King’s unwillingness to see his brother excluded from the throne, the bill failed in the House of Lords. They tried a couple of more times without success. Having failed by parliamentary means, some of the Country Party leaders started plotting armed rebellion.

The Two Treatises of Government were published in 1689, long after the rebellion plotted by the Country party leaders had failed to materialize and after Shaftsbury had fled the country for Holland and died. The introduction of the Two Treatises was written after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and gave the impression that the book was written to justify the Glorious Revolution. We now know that the Two Treatises of Government were written during the Exclusion crisis in 1681 and may have been intended in part to justify the general armed rising which the Country Party leaders were planning.

There were serious obstacles to a rebellion to force James’ exclusion from the throne. The English Anglican gentry needed to support such an action. But the Anglican church from childhood on taught that: “…men’s political duties were exhaustively determined by their terrestrial superiors, that under grave conscientious scruples they might rightly decline to carry out those decrees of authority which were in direct breach of divine law, they could under no circumstances have a right to resist such authority”. (Dunn, 1968, 48) Since by 1679 it was abundantly clear that the King opposed excluding his brother from the throne, to favor exclusion implied “explicit and self-conscious resistance to the sovereign”. Passive resistance would simply not do. On the other hand, the royal policy “outraged their deepest religious prejudices and stimulated their most obscure emotional anxieties.” So, the gentry were deeply conflicted and neither of the choices available to them looked very palatable. John Dunn goes on to remark: “To exert influence upon their choice it was above all necessary to present a more coherent ordering of their values, to show that the political tradition within which the dissenters saw their conduct was not necessarily empirically absurd or socially subversive. The gentry had to be persuaded that there could be reason for rebellion which could make it neither blasphemous or suicidal.” (Dunn, 1968, 49) To achieve this goal Locke picked the most relevant and extreme of the supporters of the divine right of Kings to attack. Sir Robert Filmer (c 1588–1653), a man of the generation of Charles I and the English Civil War, who had defended the crown in various works. His most famous work, however, Patriarcha , was published posthumously in 1680 and represented the most complete and coherent exposition of the view Locke wished to deny. Filmer held that men were born into helpless servitude to an authoritarian family, a social hierarchy and a sovereign whose only constraint was his relationship with God. Under these circumstances, anything other than passive obedience would be “vicious, blasphemous and intellectually absurd.” So, Locke needed to refute Filmer and in Dunn’s words: “rescue the contractarian account of political obligation from the criticism of impiety and absurdity. Only in this way could he restore to the Anglican gentry a coherent basis for moral autonomy or a practical initiative in the field of politics.” (Dunn, 1968, 50)

The First Treatise of Government is a polemical work aimed at refuting the theological basis for the patriarchal version of the Divine Right of Kings doctrine put forth by Sir Robert Filmer. Locke singles out Filmer’s contention that men are not “naturally free” as the key issue, for that is the “ground” or premise on which Filmer erects his argument for the claim that all “legitimate” government is “absolute monarchy”—kings being descended from the first man, Adam, and their subjects being naturally slaves. Early in the First Treatise Locke denies that either scripture or reason supports Filmer’s premise or arguments. In what follows in the First Treatise , Locke minutely examines key Biblical passages.

While The Second Treatise of Government provides Locke’s positive theory of government, it also continues his argument against Sir Robert Filmer’s claims that monarchs legitimately hold absolute power over their subjects. Locke holds that Filmer’s view is sufficiently incoherent to lead to governments being established by force and violence. Thus, Locke claims he must provide an alternative account of the origin of government “lest men fall into the dangerous belief that all government in the world is merely the product of force and violence” ( Treatises II,1,4). Locke’s account involves several devices which were common in seventeenth and eighteenth century political philosophy—natural rights theory and the social contract. Natural rights are those rights which we are supposed to have as human beings before ever government comes into being. We might suppose, that like other animals, we have a natural right to struggle for our survival. Locke will argue that we have a right to the means to survive. When Locke comes to explain how government comes into being, he uses the idea that people agree that their condition in the state of nature is unsatisfactory, and so agree to transfer some of their rights to a central government, while retaining others. This is the theory of the social contract. There are many versions of natural rights theory and the social contract in seventeenth and eighteenth century European political philosophy, some conservative and some radical. Locke’s version belongs on the radical side of the spectrum. These radical natural right theories influenced the ideologies of the American and French revolutions.

Locke’s strategy for refuting Filmer’s claims that monarchs have absolute power over their subjects is to show that Filmer is conflating a whole variety of limited powers, all of which might be held by one man and thus give the false appearance that a king has absolute power over wives, children, servants and slaves as well as subjects of a commonwealth. When properly distinguished, however, and the limitations of each displayed, it becomes clear that monarchs have no legitimate absolute power over their subjects.

An important part of Locke’s project in the Second Treatise is to figure out what the role of legitimate government is, thus allowing him to distinguish the nature of illegitimate government. Once this is done, the basis for legitimate revolution becomes clear. Figuring out what the proper or legitimate role of civil government is would be a difficult task indeed if one were to examine the vast complexity of existing governments. How should one proceed? One strategy is to consider what life is like in the absence of civil government. Presumably this is a simpler state, one which may be easier to understand. Then one might see what role civil government ought to play. This is the strategy which Locke pursues, following Hobbes and others. So, in the first chapter of the Second Treatise Locke defines political power.

Political power , then, I take to be a right of making laws with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties, for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community, in the execution of such laws, and in the defence of the common-wealth from foreign injury; and all this only for the public good. ( Treatises, II, 1,3)

In the second chapter of The Second Treatise Locke describes the state in which there is no government with real political power. This is the state of nature. It is sometimes assumed that the state of nature is a state in which there is no government at all. This is only partially true. It is possible to have in the state of nature either no government, illegitimate government, or legitimate government with less than full political power. (See the section on the state of nature in the entry on Locke’s political philosophy.)

If we consider the state of nature before there was government, it is a state of political equality in which there is no natural superior or inferior. From this equality flows the obligation to mutual love and the duties that people owe one another, and the great maxims of justice and charity. Was there ever such a state? There has been considerable debate about this. Still, it is plain that both Hobbes and Locke would answer this question affirmatively. Whenever people have not agreed to establish a common political authority, they remain in the state of nature. It’s like saying that people are in the state of being naturally single until they are married. Locke clearly thinks one can find the state of nature in his time at least in the “inland, vacant places of America” ( Second Treatise V. 36) and in the relations between different peoples. Perhaps the historical development of states also went though the stages of a state of nature. An alternative possibility is that the state of nature is not a real historical state, but rather a theoretical construct, intended to help determine the proper function of government. If one rejects the historicity of states of nature, one may still find them a useful analytical device. For Locke, it is very likely both.

According to Locke, God created man and we are, in effect, God’s property. The chief end set us by our creator as a species and as individuals is survival. A wise and omnipotent God, having made people and sent them into this world:

…by his order and about his business, they are his property whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another’s pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for our’s. ( Treatises II,2,6)

It follows immediately that “he has no liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, yet when some nobler use than its bare possession calls for it” ( Treatises II.2.6). So, murder and suicide violate the divine purpose.

If one takes survival as the end, then we may ask what are the means necessary to that end. On Locke’s account, these turn out to be life, liberty, health and property. Since the end is set by God, on Locke’s view we have a right to the means to that end. So we have rights to life, liberty, health and property. These are natural rights, that is they are rights that we have in a state of nature before the introduction of civil government, and all people have these rights equally.

There is also a law of nature. It is the Golden Rule, interpreted in terms of natural rights. Thus Locke writes:

The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges everyone: and reason which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions…. ( Treatises II.2.6)

Locke tells us that the law of nature is revealed by reason. Locke makes the point about the law that it commands what is best for us. If it did not, he says, the law would vanish for it would not be obeyed. It is in this sense that Locke means that reason reveals the law. If you reflect on what is best for yourself and others, given the goal of survival and our natural equality, you will come to this conclusion. (See the section on the law of nature in the entry on Locke’s Political Philosophy.)

Locke does not intend his account of the state of nature as a sort of utopia. Rather it serves as an analytical device that explains why it becomes necessary to introduce civil government and what the legitimate function of civil government is. Thus, as Locke conceives it, there are problems with life in the state of nature. The law of nature, like civil laws can be violated. There are no police, prosecutors or judges in the state of nature as these are all representatives of a government with full political power. The victims, then, must enforce the law of nature in the state of nature. In addition to our other rights in the state of nature, we have the rights to enforce the law and to judge on our own behalf. We may, Locke tells us, help one another. We may intervene in cases where our own interests are not directly under threat to help enforce the law of nature. This right eventually serves as the justification for legitimate rebellion. Still, in the state of nature, the person who is most likely to enforce the law under these circumstances is the person who has been wronged. The basic principle of justice is that the punishment should be proportionate to the crime. But when the victims are judging the seriousness of the crime, they are more likely to judge it of greater severity than might an impartial judge. As a result, there will be regular miscarriages of justice. This is perhaps the most important problem with the state of nature.

In chapters 3 and 4, Locke defines the states of war and slavery. The state of war is a state in which someone has a sedate and settled intention of violating someone’s right to life (and thus all their other rights). Such a person puts themselves into a state of war with the person whose life they intend to take. In such a war the person who intends to violate someone’s right to life is an unjust aggressor. This is not the normal relationship between people enjoined by the law of nature in the state of nature. Locke is distancing himself from Hobbes who had made the state of nature and the state of war equivalent terms. For Locke, the state of nature is ordinarily one in which we follow the Golden Rule interpreted in terms of natural rights, and thus love our fellow human creatures. The state of war only comes about when someone proposes to violate someone else’s rights. Thus, on Locke’s theory of war, there will always be an innocent victim on one side and an unjust aggressor on the other.

Slavery is the state of being in the absolute or arbitrary power of another. On Locke’s definition of slavery, there is only one rather remarkable way to become a legitimate slave. In order to do so, one must be an unjust aggressor defeated in war. The just victor then has the option to either kill the aggressor or enslave them. Locke tells us that the state of slavery is the continuation of the state of war between a lawful conqueror and a captive, in which the conqueror delays taking the life of the captive, and instead makes use of him. This is a continued war because if conqueror and captive make some compact for obedience on the one side and limited power on the other, the state of slavery ceases and becomes a relation between a master and a servant in which the master only has limited power over his servant. The reason that slavery ceases with the compact is that “no man, can, by agreement pass over to another that which he hath not in himself, a power over his own life” ( Treatises II.4.24). Legitimate slavery is an important concept in Locke’s political philosophy largely because it tells us what the legitimate extent of despotic power is and defines and illuminates by contrast the nature of illegitimate slavery. Illegitimate slavery is that state in which someone possesses absolute or despotic power over someone else without just cause. Locke holds that it is this illegitimate state of slavery which absolute monarchs wish to impose upon their subjects. It is very likely for this reason that legitimate slavery is so narrowly defined. This shows that the chapter on slavery plays a crucial role in Locke’s argument against Sir Robert Filmer and thus could not have been easily dispensed with. Still, it is possible that Locke had an additional purpose or perhaps a quite different reason for writing about slavery.

There has been a steady stream of articles and books over the last sixty years arguing that given Locke’s involvement with trade and colonial government, the theory of slavery in the Second Treatise was intended to justify the institutions and practices of Afro-American slavery. If this were the case, Locke’s philosophy would not contradict his actions as an investor and colonial administrator. However, there are strong objections to this view. Had he intended to justify Afro-American slavery, Locke would have done much better with a vastly more inclusive definition of legitimate slavery than the one he gives. It is sometimes suggested that Locke’s account of “just war” is so vague that it could easily be twisted to justify the institutions and practices of Afro-American slavery. This, however, is also not the case. In the chapter “Of Conquest” Locke explicitly lists the limits of the legitimate power of conquerors. These limits on who can become a legitimate slave and what the powers of a just conqueror are ensure that this theory of conquest and slavery would condemn the institutions and practices of Afro-American slavery in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Nonetheless, the debate continues. One element of the debate has to do with Locke’s role in the writing of the Fundamental Constitutions of the Carolinas . David Armitage in his 2004 article “John Locke, Carolina and the Two Treatises of Government” argues that Locke was involved in a revision of the Fundamental Constitution of the Carolinas at the very time he was writing The Two Treatises of Government . The provision that “Every Freedman of the Carolinas has absolute power and authority over his negro slaves” remained in the document unchanged. In his 2016 book The Ashley Cooper Plan , Thomas Wilson gives a detailed account of Ashley Cooper’s intentions for the Carolina colony and how Cooper’s intent was thwarted by Barbadian slave owners who changed Carolina society from a society with slaves to a slave society. L. H. Roper, in his 2004 book Conceiving Carolina: Property, Planters and Plots 1662–1729 , offers a different account of what went wrong, focusing on conflicts over the trade in Indian slaves. James Farr’s article “Locke, Natural Law and New World Slavery” (2008) is one of the best statements of the position that Locke intended his theory of slavery to apply to English absolutism and not Afro-American slavery while noting that Locke’s involvement with slavery has ruined his reputation as the great champion of liberty Roger Woolhouse in his recent biography of Locke (Woolhouse 2007: 187) remarks that “Though there is no consensus on the whole question, there certainly seems to be ‘a glaring contradiction between his theories and Afro-American slavery’”.

Recently, there has been a debate over whose theory of slavery and absolutism Locke was attacking. Johan Olsthoorn and Laurens van Apeldoorn (2020) argue that Locke’s account of slavery and in particular, that no person can consensually establish absolute rule over themselves with all its consequences has little force against other classical contract theories, in particular those of Grotius and Puffendorf. Both Grotius and Puffendorf defended both absolutism and colonial slavery.

Felis Waldmann in “Slavery and Absolutism in Locke’s Two Treatises: A Response to Olsthoorn and van Apeldoorn” objects to a number of their claims finding others not relevant. Most notably, he objects to these claims: First, “Locke is working with an idiosyncratic conception of slavery and absolute rule repudiated by prominent early modern thinkers defending political absolutism.” Second: “Like Filmer, Locke maintains that absolute rulers may arbitrarily kill and maim their subjects at will, by dint of having a dominium in the latter’s lives.” Finally, he objects to the claim that: “Early modern natural lawyers, from Grotius onward, conceptualized slavery rather differently, insisting that enslaved people were not owned in the way we own things (which may be destroyed at will)” (Waldmann 7).

In brief, Waldmann’s response to the first claim is that Filmer accurately represented the Royalist position in the late 1670s and early 1680s and so Locke’s account is not a straw man. Thus, Locke is attacking Filmer’s account of slavery and not some weak and extreme version of the argument for absolutism that no one held. Waldmann suggests that the second claim magnifies this tendency of the two authors’ portrayal of Locke’s argument as not responding to the standard arguments for absolutism. Thus, Olsthoorn and van Apeldoorn attribute Filmer’s position to Locke. Waldmann concludes that the claims of Olsthoorn and van Apeldoorn that since Locke’s position on slavery was significantly different from those of Grotius and Puffendorf, it had little force against them is, in fact, the case. But he thinks this is of little importance since Locke was not arguing against them. One suggestion he considers plausible is that Locke is aiming his argument against the possibility of self-enslavement at Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes was recognized by his contemporaries as asserting both that one could by contract enslave oneself and that the king had dominium, over his subjects.

William Uzgalis, in his 2017 chapter “John Locke, Slavery and Indian Lands,” holds that Locke has two theories of slavery, one of them of legitimate slavery and the other of illegitimate slavery. Note that the authors discussed above simply don’t make this distinction. If they had, it would be plain that while Locke shares with Filmer the dominium conception of slavery that allows a master to kill or maim a slave, neither theory belongs to Filmer, and if Locke is correct about royal absolutism and given the character of the practices of the slave trade and colonial slavery, both absolutism at home and the slave trade and colonial slavery fall under the theory of illegitimate slavery. Neither Grotius, Puffendorf or Hobbes has an explicit theory of illegitimate slavery. Uzgalis also notes that Grotius and Puffendorf provided claims that Locke could have adopted had he wished to justify the slave trade and slavery in the colonies. Still, he denies them all, and with good reason. He would have substantially weakened his argument against the kind of absolutism he attributed to Filmer and the Stuarts had he done so. This suggests that he was crafting an alternative theory and not arguing against its competitors, with the exception, perhaps, of Hobbes.

Holly Brewer in her 2017 article “Slavery, Sovereignty, and ‘Inheritable Blood’, Reconsidering John Locke and the Origins of American Slavery” argues for a different approach to these questions. She presents evidence that the Stuart kings, and Charles II and his brother James, Duke of York, in particular, were not just interested in absolute government at home; they actively promoted the Royal Africa Company, the slave trade and slavery in the colonies as it provided considerable amounts of money to the royal coffers. James was the Governor (the President) of the Royal Africa Company and Admiral of the English fleet. Lord Shaftesbury, Locke’s patron, was the sub-governor, and Locke assisted him. Using the fleet, James attacked and captured Dutch forts on the coast of Africa to make bases for the Royal Africa Company and deprive the Dutch of them. The Stuarts minted guinea coins to celebrate these efforts. After becoming King, James continued as Governor of the Royal Africa Company. Thus Brewer underlines the similarities and connections between the absolutism Locke objected to at home and the slave trade and slavery in the colonies. She argues that the spread of slavery needs to be understood as an English imperial policy and not something that occurred in different times and places unconnected with one another. She also claims that while Locke was a member of King William III’s Board of Trade in the waning years of the seventeenth century, he sought to undo Stuart policies concerning slavery in the colonies.

Chapter 5 “Of Property” is one of the most famous, influential and important chapters in the Second Treatise of Government . Indeed, some of the most controversial issues about the Second Treatise come from varying interpretations of it. In this chapter Locke, in effect, describes the evolution of the state of nature to the point where it becomes expedient for those in it to found a civil government. So, it is not only an account of the nature and origin of private property but leads up to the explanation of why civil government replaces the state of nature (see the section on property in the entry on Locke’s political philosophy).

In discussing the origin of private property Locke begins by noting that God gave the earth to all men in common. Thus there is a question about how private property comes to be. Locke finds it a serious difficulty. He points out, however, that we are supposed to make use of the earth “for the best advantage of life and convenience” ( Treatises II.5.25). What then is the means to appropriate property from the common store? Locke argues that private property does not come about by universal consent. If one had to go about and ask everyone if one could eat these berries, one would starve to death before getting everyone’s agreement. Locke holds that we have property in our own person. And the labor of our body and the work of our hands properly belong to us. So, when one picks up acorns or berries, they thereby belong to the person who picked them up. There has been some controversy about what Locke means by “labor”. Daniel Russell claims that for Locke, labor is a goal-directed activity that converts materials that might meet our needs into resources that actually do (Russell 2004). This interpretation of what Locke means by “labor” connects nicely with his claim that we have a natural law obligation first to preserve ourselves and then to help in the preservation and flourishing of others.

One might think that one could then acquire as much as one wished, but this is not the case. Locke introduces at least two important qualifications on how much property can be acquired. The first qualification has to do with waste. Locke writes:

As much as anyone can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils, so much by his labor he may fix a property in; whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others. ( Treatises II.5.31)

Since originally, populations were small and resources great, living within the bounds set by reason, there would be little quarrel or contention over property, for a single man could make use of only a very small part of what was available.

Note that Locke has, thus far, been talking about hunting and gathering, and the kinds of limitations which reason imposes on the kind of property that hunters and gatherers hold. In the next section he turns to agriculture and the ownership of land and the kinds of limitations there are on that kind of property. In effect, we see the evolution of the state of nature from a hunter/gatherer kind of society to that of a farming and agricultural society. Once again it is labor which imposes limitations upon how much land can be enclosed. It is only as much as one can work. But there is an additional qualification. Locke says:

Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of land , by improving it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough, and as good left; and more than the as yet unprovided could use. So that, in effect, there was never the less for others because of his inclosure for himself: for he that leaves as much as another can make use of, does as good as take nothing at all. No body could consider himself injured by the drinking of another man, though he took a good draught, who had a whole river of the same water left to quench his thirst: and the case of land and water, where there is enough, is perfectly the same. ( Treatises II.5.33)

The next stage in the evolution of the state of nature involves the introduction of money. Locke remarks that:

… before the desire of having more than one needed had altered the intrinsic value of things, which depends only on their usefulness to the life of man; or had agreed, that a little piece of yellow metal, which would keep without wasting or decay, should be worth a great piece of flesh, or a whole heap of corn; though men had a right to appropriate by their labor, each one of himself, as much of the things of nature, as he could use; yet this could not be much, nor to the prejudice of others, where the same plenty was left to those who would use the same industry. ( Treatises II.5.37)

So, before the introduction of money, there was a degree of economic equality imposed on mankind both by reason and the barter system. And men were largely confined to the satisfaction of their needs and conveniences. Most of the necessities of life are relatively short lived—berries, plums, venison and so forth. One could reasonably barter one’s berries for nuts which would last not weeks but perhaps a whole year. And says Locke:

…if he would give his nuts for a piece of metal, pleased with its color, or exchange his sheep for shells, or wool for a sparkling pebble or diamond, and keep those by him all his life, he invaded not the right of others, he might heap up as much of these durable things as he pleased; the exceeding of the bounds of his property not lying in the largeness of his possessions, but the perishing of anything uselessly in it. ( Treatises II.5.146)

The introduction of money is necessary for the differential increase in property, with resulting economic inequality. Without money there would be no point in going beyond the economic equality of the earlier stage. In a money economy, different degrees of industry could give men vastly different proportions.

This partage of things in an inequality of private possessions, men have made practicable out of the bounds of society, and without compact, only by putting a value on gold and silver, and tacitly agreeing to the use of money: for in governments, the laws regulate the rights of property, and the possession of land is determined by positive constitutions. ( Treatises II.5.50)

The implication is that it is the introduction of money, which causes inequality, which in turn multiplies the causes of quarrels and contentions and increased numbers of violations of the law of nature. This leads to the decision to create a civil government. Before turning to the institution of civil government, however, we should ask what happens to the qualifications on the acquisition of property after the advent of money? One answer proposed by C. B. Macpherson in The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism is that the qualifications are completely set aside, and we now have a system for the unlimited acquisition of private property. This does not seem to be correct. It seems plain, rather, that at least the non-spoilage qualification is satisfied, because money does not spoil. The other qualifications may be rendered somewhat irrelevant by the advent of the conventions about property adopted in civil society. This leaves open the question of whether Locke approved of these changes. Macpherson, who takes Locke to be a spokesman for a proto-capitalist system, sees Locke as advocating the unlimited acquisition of wealth. James Tully, on the other side, in A Discourse of Property holds that Locke sees the new conditions, the change in values and the economic inequality which arise as a result of the advent of money, as the fall of man. Tully sees Locke as a persistent and powerful critic of self-interest. This remarkable difference in interpretation has been a significant topic for debates among scholars over the last forty years. Though the Second Treatise of Government may leave this question difficult to determine, one might consider Locke’s remark in Some Thoughts Concerning Education that

Covetousness and the desire to having in our possession and our dominion more than we have need of, being the root of all evil, should be early and carefully weeded out and the contrary quality of being ready to impart to others inculcated. (G&T 1996: 81)

Let us then turn to the institution of civil government.

Just as natural rights and natural law theory had a fluorescence in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, so did the social contract theory. Why is Locke a social contract theorist? Is it merely that this was one prevailing way of thinking about government at the time which Locke blindly adopted? The answer is that there is something about Locke’s project which pushes him strongly in the direction of the social contract. One might hold that governments were originally instituted by force, and that no agreement was involved. Were Locke to adopt this view, he would be forced to go back on many of the things which are at the heart of his project in the Second Treatise , though cases like the Norman conquest force him to admit that citizens may come to accept a government that was originally forced on them. Remember that the Second Treatise provides Locke’s positive theory of government, and that he explicitly says that he must provide an alternative to the view

that all government in the world is merely the product of force and violence, and that men live together by no other rules than that of the beasts, where the strongest carries it … . ( Treatises II, 1, 4)

So, while Locke might admit that some governments come about through force or violence, he would be destroying the most central and vital distinction, that between legitimate and illegitimate civil government, if he admitted that legitimate government can come about in this way. So, for Locke, legitimate government is instituted by the explicit consent of those governed. (See the section on consent, political obligation, and the ends of government in the entry on Locke’s political philosophy.) Those who make this agreement transfer to the government their right of executing the law of nature and judging their own case. These are the powers which they give to the central government, and this is what makes the justice system of governments a legitimate function of such governments.

Ruth Grant has persuasively argued that the establishment of government is in effect a two step process. Universal consent is necessary to form a political community. Consent to join a community once given is binding and cannot be withdrawn. This makes political communities stable. Grant writes: “Having established that the membership in a community entails the obligation to abide by the will of the community, the question remains: Who rules?” (1987: 114–115). The answer to this question is determined by majority rule. The point is that universal consent is necessary to establish a political community, majority consent to answer the question who is to rule such a community. Universal consent and majority consent are thus different in kind, not just in degree. Grant writes:

Locke’s argument for the right of the majority is the theoretical ground for the distinction between duty to society and duty to government, the distinction that permits an argument for resistance without anarchy. When the designated government dissolves, men remain obligated to society acting through majority rule. (1987: 119)

It is entirely possible for the majority to confer the rule of the community on a king and his heirs, or a group of oligarchs or on a democratic assembly. Thus, the social contract is not inextricably linked to democracy. Still, a government of any kind must perform the legitimate function of a civil government.

Locke is now in a position to explain the function of a legitimate government and distinguish it from illegitimate government. The aim of such a legitimate government is to preserve, so far as possible, the rights to life, liberty, health and property of its citizens, and to prosecute and punish those of its citizens who violate the rights of others and to pursue the public good even where this may conflict with the rights of individuals. In doing this it provides something unavailable in the state of nature, an impartial judge to determine the severity of the crime, and to set a punishment proportionate to the crime. This is one of the main reasons why civil society is an improvement on the state of nature. An illegitimate government will fail to protect the rights to life, liberty, health and property of its subjects, and in the worst cases, such an illegitimate government will claim to be able to violate the rights of its subjects, that is it will claim to have despotic power over its subjects. Since Locke is arguing against the position of Sir Robert Filmer who held that patriarchal power and political power are the same, and that in effect these amount to despotic power, Locke is at pains to distinguish these three forms of power, and to show that they are not equivalent. Thus at the beginning of chapter 15 “Of Paternal, Political and Despotic Power Considered Together” he writes:

THOUGH I have had occasion to speak of these before, yet the great mistakes of late about government, having as I suppose arisen from confounding these distinct powers one with another, it may not be amiss, to consider them together.

Chapters 6 and 7 give Locke’s account of paternal and political power respectively. Paternal power is limited. It lasts only through the minority of children, and has other limitations. Political power, derived as it is from the transfer of the power of individuals to enforce the law of nature, has with it the right to kill in the interest of preserving the rights of the citizens or otherwise supporting the public good. Legitimate despotic power, by contrast, implies the right to take the life, liberty, health and at least some of the property of any person subject to such a power.

At the end of the Second Treatise we learn about the nature of illegitimate civil governments and the conditions under which rebellion and regicide are legitimate and appropriate. As noted above, scholars now hold that the book was written during the Exclusion Crisis, and may have been written to justify a general insurrection and the assassination of the king of England and his brother. The argument for legitimate revolution follows from making the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate civil government. A legitimate civil government seeks to preserve its subjects’ life, health, liberty, and property insofar as this is compatible with the public good. Because it does this, it deserves obedience. An illegitimate civil government seeks to systematically violate the natural rights of its subjects. It seeks to make them illegitimate slaves. Because an illegitimate civil government does this, it puts itself in a state of nature and a state of war with its subjects. The magistrate or king of such a state violates the law of nature and so makes himself into a dangerous beast of prey who operates on the principle that might makes right, or that the strongest carries it. In such circumstances, rebellion is legitimate, as is the killing of such a dangerous beast of prey. Thus Locke justifies rebellion and regicide under certain circumstances. Presumably, this justification was going to be offered for the killing of the King of England and his brother had the Rye House Plot succeeded. Even if this was not Locke’s intention, it still would have served that purpose admirably.

The issue of religious toleration was of widespread interest in Europe in the seventeenth century, largely because religious intolerance with accompanying violence was so pervasive. The Reformation had split Europe into competing religious camps, and this provoked civil wars and massive religious persecutions. John Marshall, in his massive study John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture notes that the 1680s were the climactic decade for this kind of persecution. The Dutch Republic, where Locke spent years in exile, had been founded as a secular state which would allow religious differences. This was a reaction to the Catholic persecution of Protestants. However, once the Calvinist Church gained power, they began persecuting other sects, such as the Remonstrants, who disagreed with them. Nonetheless, The Dutch Republic remained the most tolerant country in Europe. In France, religious conflict had been temporarily quieted by the edict of Nantes. But in 1685, the year in which Locke wrote the First Letter concerning religious toleration, Louis XIV had revoked the Edict of Nantes, and the Huguenots were being persecuted. Though prohibited from doing so, some 200,000 emigrated, while probably 700,000 were forced to convert to Catholicism. People in England were keenly aware of the events taking place in France.

In England itself, religious conflict dominated the seventeenth century, contributing in important respects to the coming of the English Civil War, and the abolishing of the Anglican Church during the Protectorate. After the Restoration of Charles II, Anglicans in parliament passed laws that repressed both Catholics and Protestant sects such as Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers and Unitarians who did not agree with the doctrines or practices of the state Church. Of these various dissenting sects, some were closer to the Anglicans, others more remote. One reason, among others, why King Charles may have found Shaftesbury useful was that they were both concerned about religious toleration. They parted when it became clear that the King was mainly interested in toleration for Catholics, and Shaftesbury for Protestant dissenters.

One widely discussed strategy for reducing religious conflict in England was called comprehension. The idea was to reduce the doctrines and practices of the Anglican church to a minimum so that most, if not all, of the dissenting sects would be included in the state church. For those which even this measure would not serve, there was to be toleration. Toleration we may define as a lack of state persecution. Neither of these strategies made much progress during the course of the Restoration.

When Locke fled to Holland after the discovery of the Rye house plot, he became involved with a group of scholars advocating religious toleration. This group included Benjamin Furly, a quaker with whom Locke lived for a while, the noted philosopher Pierre Bayle, several Dutch theologians, and many others. This group read all the arguments for religious intolerance and discussed them in book and conversation clubs. Members of the group considered toleration not only for Protestants and Protestant dissenters but Jews, Moslems, and Catholics. A recent discovery of a page of Locke’s reflections on toleration of Catholics shows that Locke considered even the pros and cons of toleration for Catholics (Walmsley and Waldmann 2019). Some members of the group also wrote tolerationist articles and books. They helped each other get jobs. Some of their members founded journals that reviewed books and articles on religious, scientific, and other topics. The group took the notion of free speech, civility, and politeness in discourse seriously. They called themselves the ‘the Republic of Letters’ or in Locke’s phrase ‘the commonwealth of learning.’

What were Locke’s religious views and where did he fit into the debates about religious toleration? This is a quite difficult question to answer. Religion and Christianity in particular, is perhaps the most important influence on the shape of Locke’s philosophy. But what kind of Christian was Locke? Locke’s family were Puritans. At Oxford, Locke avoided becoming an Anglican priest. Still, Locke himself claimed to be an Anglican until he died and Locke’s nineteenth-century biographer Fox Bourne thought that Locke was an Anglican. Others have identified him with the Latitudinarians—a movement among Anglicans to argue for a reasonable Christianity that dissenters ought to accept. Still, there are some reasons to think that Locke was neither an orthodox Anglican or a Latitudinarian. Locke got Isaac Newton to write Newton’s most powerful anti-Trinitarian tract. Locke arranged to have the work published anonymously in Holland though in the end, Newton decided not to publish (McLachlan 1941). This strongly suggests that Locke too was by this time an Arian or unitarian. (Arius, c. 250–336, asserted the primacy of the Father over the Son and thus rejected the doctrine of the Trinity and was condemned as a heretic at the Council of Nicaea in 325. Newton held that the Church had gone in the wrong direction in condemning Arius.) Given that one main theme of Locke’s Letter on Toleration is that there should be a separation between Church and State, this does not seem like the view of a man devoted to a state religion. It might appear that Locke’s writing The Reasonableness of Christianity in which he argues that the basic doctrines of Christianity are few and compatible with reason make him a Latitudinarian. Yet Richard Ashcraft has argued that comprehension for the Anglicans meant conforming to the existing practices of the Anglican Church; that is, the abandonment of religious dissent. Ashcraft also suggests that Latitudinarians were thus not a moderate middle ground between contending extremes but part of one of the extremes—“the acceptable face of the persecution of religious dissent” (Ashcraft 1992: 155). Ashcraft holds that while the Latitudinarians may have represented the “rational theology” of the Anglican church, there was a competing dissenting “rational theology”. Thus, while it is true that Locke had Latitudinarian friends, given Ashcraft’s distinction between Anglican and dissenting “rational theologies”, it is entirely possible that The Reasonableness of Christianity is a work of dissenting “rational theology”.

Locke had been thinking, talking and writing about religious toleration since 1659. His views evolved. In the early 1660s he very likely was an orthodox Anglican. He and Shaftesbury had instituted religious toleration in the Fundamental Constitutions of the Carolinas (1669). He wrote the Epistola de Tolerantia in Latin in 1685 while in exile in Holland. He very likely was seeing Protestant refugees pouring over the borders from France where Louis XIV had just revoked the Edict of Nantes. Holland itself was a Calvinist theocracy with significant problems with religious toleration. But Locke’s Letter does not confine itself to the issues of the time. Locke gives a principled account of religious toleration, though this is mixed in with arguments which apply only to Christians, and perhaps in some cases only to Protestants. He excluded both Catholics and atheists from religious toleration. In the case of Catholics it was because he regarded them as agents of a foreign power. Because they do not believe in God, atheists, on Locke’s account: “Promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist” (Mendus 1991: 47). He gives his general defense of religious toleration while continuing the anti-Papist rhetoric of the Country party which sought to exclude James II from the throne.

Locke’s arguments for religious toleration connect nicely to his account of civil government. Locke defines life, liberty, health and property as our civil interests. These are the proper concern of a magistrate or civil government. The magistrate can use force and violence where this is necessary to preserve civil interests against attack. This is the central function of the state. One’s religious concerns with salvation, however, are not within the domain of civil interests, and so lie outside of the legitimate concern of the magistrate or the civil government. In effect, Locke adds an additional right to the natural rights of life, liberty, health and property—the right of freedom to choose one’s own road to salvation. (See the section on Toleration in the entry on Locke’s Political Philosophy.)

Locke holds that the use of force by the state to get people to hold certain beliefs or engage in certain ceremonies or practices is illegitimate. The chief means which the magistrate has at her disposal is force, but force is not an effective means for changing or maintaining belief. Suppose then, that the magistrate uses force so as to make people profess that they believe. Locke writes:

A sweet religion, indeed, that obliges men to dissemble, and tell lies to both God and man, for the salvation of their souls! If the magistrate thinks to save men thus, he seems to understand little of the way of salvation; and if he does it not in order to save them, why is he so solicitous of the articles of faith as to enact them by a law? (Mendus 1991: 41)

So, religious persecution by the state is inappropriate. Locke holds that “Whatever is lawful in the commonwealth cannot be prohibited by the magistrate in the church”. This means that the use of bread and wine, or even the sacrificing of a calf could not be prohibited by the magistrate.

If there are competing churches, one might ask which one should have the power? The answer is clearly that power should go to the true church and not to the heretical church. But Locke claims this amounts to saying nothing. For every church believes itself to be the true church, and there is no judge but God who can determine which of these claims is correct. Thus, skepticism about the possibility of religious knowledge is central to Locke’s argument for religious toleration.

Finally, for an account of the influence of Locke’s works, see the supplementary document: Supplement on the Influence of Locke’s Works

Locke’s Works

Oxford University Press is in the process of producing a new edition of all of Locke’s works. This will supersede The Works of John Locke of which the 1823 edition is probably the most standard. The new Clarendon editions began with Peter Nidditch’s edition of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1975. The Oxford Clarendon editions contain much of the material of the Lovelace collection, purchased and donated to Oxford by Paul Mellon. This treasure trove of Locke’s works and letters, which includes early drafts of the Essay and much other material, comes down from Peter King, Locke’s nephew, who inherited Locke’s papers. Access to these papers has given scholars in the twentieth century a much better view of Locke’s philosophical development and provided a window into the details of his activities which is truly remarkable. Hence the new edition of Locke’s works will very likely be definitive.

[N] An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , Peter H. Nidditch (ed.), 1975. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198243861.book.1/actrade-9780198243861-book-1
Some Thoughts Concerning Education , John W. Yolton and Jean S. Yolton (eds.), 1989. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198245827.book.1/actrade-9780198245827-book-1
Drafts for the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and Other Philosophical Writings: In Three Volumes , Vol. 1: Drafts A and B, Peter H. Nidditch and G. A. J. Rogers (eds.), 1990. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198245452.book.1/actrade-9780198245452-book-1
The Reasonableness of Christianity: As Delivered in the Scriptures , John C. Higgins-Biddle (ed.), 2000. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198245254.book.1/actrade-9780198245254-book-1
An Essay Concerning Toleration: And Other Writings on Law and Politics, 1667–1683 , J. R. Milton and Philip Milton (eds.), 2006. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780199575732.book.1/actrade-9780199575732-book-1
Vindications of the Reasonableness of Christianity , Victor Nuovo (ed.), 2012. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780199286553.book.1/actrade-9780199286553-book-1
volume 1, 1987. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198248019.book.1/actrade-9780198248019-book-1
volume 2, 1987. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198248064.book.1/actrade-9780198248064-book-1
Volume 1, 1991. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198245469.book.1/actrade-9780198245469-book-1
Volume 2, 1991,. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198248378.book.1/actrade-9780198248378-book-1
Vol. 1: Introduction; Letters Nos. 1–461 , 2010. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780199573615.book.1/actrade-9780199573615-book-1
Vol. 2: Letters Nos. 462–848 , 1976. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198245599.book.1/actrade-9780198245599-book-1
Vol. 3: Letters Nos. 849–1241 , 1978. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198245605.book.1/actrade-9780198245605-book-1
Vol. 4: Letters Nos. 1242–1701 , 1978. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198245612.book.1/actrade-9780198245612-book-1.
Vol. 5: Letters Nos. 1702–2198 , 1979. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198245629.book.1/actrade-9780198245629-book-1
Vol. 6: Letters Nos. 2199–2664 , 1980. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198245636.book.1/actrade-9780198245636-book-1
Vol. 7: Letters Nos. 2665–3286 , 1981. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198245643.book.1/actrade-9780198245643-book-1
Vol. 8: Letters Nos. 3287–3648 , 1989. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198245650.book.1/actrade-9780198245650-book-1

In addition to the Oxford Press edition, there are a few editions of some of Locke’s works which are worth noting.

An Early Draft of Locke’s Essay, Together with Excerpts from his Journal , Richard I. Aaron and Jocelyn Gibb (eds.), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936.
John Locke, Two Tracts of Government , Phillip Abrams (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967.
Locke’s The Two Treatises of Civil Government , Richard Ashcraft (ed.), London: Routledge, 1987.
[Axtell 1968], The Educational Writings of John Locke: A Critical Edition , James L. Axtell (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[Gay 1964], John Locke on Education , Peter Gay (ed.), New York: Bureau of Publications, Columbia Teachers College, 1964.
Epistola de Tolerantia: A Letter on Toleration , Latin text edited with a preface by Raymond Klibansky; English translation with an introduction and notes by J. W. Gough, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968.
[G&T 1996] “Some Thoughts Concerning Education” and “The Conduct of the Understanding” , Ruth W. Grant and Nathan Tarcov (eds), Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1996.
[Laslett 1960] Locke’s Two Treatises of Government , Peter Laslett (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960.
[Woozley 1964], An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , abridged, A.D. Woozley (ed.), London: Fontana Library, 1964.

Other Primary Sources

Boyle, Robert, 1675 [1979], “Some Physico-Theological Considerations About the Possibility of the Resurrection”, in Selected Philosophical Papers of Robert Boyle , M.A. Stewart (ed.), New York: Manchester University Press.
Mill, John Stuart, 1843, A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive , London: John W. Parker.

Biographies

King, Lord Peter, 1991, The Life of John Locke: with extracts from his correspondence, journals, and common-place books , Bristol: Thoemmes.
Fox Bourne, H.R., 1876, Life of John Locke , 2 volumes, New York: Harper & Brothers. Reprinted Scientia Aalen, 1969.
Cranston, Maurice, 1957, John Locke, A Biography , reprinted Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Woolhouse, Roger, 2007, Locke: A Biography , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Books and Articles

Aaron, Richard, 1937, John Locke , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Aarsleff, Hans, 1982, From Locke to Saussure: Essays on the Study of Language and Intellectual History , Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
–––, 1994 “Locke’s Influence”, in Vere Chappell (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Locke , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 252–289. doi:10.1017/CCOL0521383714.011
Alexander, Peter, 1985, Ideas Qualities and Corpuscles: Locke and Boyle on the External World , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Bibliographies

Hall, Roland, and Roger Woolhouse, 1983, 80 Years of Locke Scholarship: A Bibliographical Guide , Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.
Locke Studies (formerly The Locke Newsletter) , edited by Timothy Stanton, Heslington: University of York.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

“John Locke” , entry on Locke, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy .
Images of Locke , National Portrait Gallery, Great Britain.

Acknowledgments

The editors would like to thank Sally Ferguson for carefully proofreading the text.

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Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

Modern Philosophy

(5 reviews)

Walter Ott, University of Virginia

Publisher: BCcampus

Language: English

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Reviewed by Jeff Lavoie, Adjunct Professor, Middlesex Community College on 5/26/21

This book deals with the major texts from the "modern" time period; however, it is more of an anthology than it is a textbook. read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

This book deals with the major texts from the "modern" time period; however, it is more of an anthology than it is a textbook.

Content Accuracy rating: 4

While the majority of this book are well accepted translations, the introductions privided were accurate in my opinion.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

This is one of the selling points of this work as the author provides questions at the end of each section that engages the reader to grasp the key ideas presented. My only concern was that these were not applied to more recent topics.

Clarity rating: 4

This book is primarily an anthology of accesible texts; however, the author did not attempt to clarify them for introductory students.

Consistency rating: 5

The terms used are consistent with philosophical discourse.

Modularity rating: 4

Yes, this book is divided into clear sections of primary source material.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

This book is arranged chronologically which ensures a logical structure.

Interface rating: 5

There is nothing that distracts the reader though, personally, I am not a fan of multiple italicized sections.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

There were no major grammatical issues in this work.

Cultural Relevance rating: 3

This is an obvious issue in this text; however, to be fair this is not the author's "fault" as there is not much diversity in "modern philosophy" (acknowkedged anyways). It has only been over the past century where more diverse voices have entered the conversation.

Overall it is what it is- an anthology of modern philosophy.

Reviewed by Robert Morton-Ranney, Adjunct Faculty, Massachusetts Maritime Academy on 6/22/20

This book covers the area promised (also see Cultural comments below). Its best use could be as a companion text to other more explanatory material, especially if it is included in introductory classes. read more

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

Content Accuracy rating: 5

No difficulties were noted.

Texts as important as these will always be relevant.

Clarity rating: 5

The readings are laid out in a way that makes the book as a whole very easy to navigate. There are points at which a little more introductory explanation would be helpful. Aristotle’s prose, for instance, will seem quite dense to students coming at it for the first time.

Consistency rating: 4

As the Preface indicates, questions appear after some of the readings and these are very helpful. A question or more after each reading would be more helpful still.

Modularity rating: 5

The text is excellent at offering bite-sized chunks.

No apparent issues.

No difficulties.

It will be obvious, painfully so to many, that this is another text exclusively featuring white males. The relevant issues are formidable, but they must be recognized.

There are points in the learning process when there is no substitute for the real thing, and having significant works carefully culled does a great service.

Reviewed by Alyssa Adamson, Adjunct Instructor, Northeastern Illinois University on 4/8/20

Comprehensiveness rating: 3 see less

The beginning glossary and mini introduction to logic is useful, especially given that even in a focused class on the history of modern philosophy, this course may be student’s first philosophy class and text. It is great to warm the students up with some of these specialized terms even before reading since they will become central to so many of the thinkers included in the text. Getting the analytic versus synthetic distinction will pay off loads by the time you get to Kant’s Prolegomena. Having students get strong on argument structures before jumping into Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, etc. will be really helpful. I haven’t always done this focused work in the beginning of teaching Modern Philosophy (as I would if I was teaching Critical Thinking or Logic) so this aspect of this text is helpful.

One of my favorite aspects of this texts is that is offers links to free full texts of all the books explicitly covered, as well and books it does not cover (e.g. main texts from Aristotle and Aquinas). This is easy since there are decent translations of those are already in the public domain, but students so not always know this fact. This will be useful for students doing extra reading or research for papers and/or exams.

There is a handy background chapter that gives an overview of Aristotle and Aquinas to set up Descartes. When I’ve taught this in the past I have done a similar version of this on my own, but it is nice that it is already baked into the book. There are short introductory notes and small but well-selected excerpts from Aristotle’s Categories, Physics, and Posterior Analytics. Then from Aquinas, there are short introductions and excerpts from On the Eternity of the World, Summa Contra Gentiles, and Summa Theologicae.

This text offers the “hits” of primary texts from Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. Most of the texts are helpfully abridged but a few are left unabridged e.g. Descartes’ Meditations, Hume’s Enquiry, and Kant’s Prolegomena. It is strange that Leibniz, Hobbes, and Rousseau are missing, but instructors can add other figures that they fit depending on their course’s focus on political philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, aesthetics, etc. Unfortunately, there are no early modern European women philosophers nor interlocutors of the male philosophers included here (e.g. Anne Conway, Elizabeth of Bohemia, Damaris Masham, Mary Wollstonecraft). While “new” in a sense to many philosophers as new material is just now coming out on his work and life, the text also leaves out Anton Wilhelm Amo the Ghanian philosopher who got a PhD in philosophy in Germany writing a critique of Descartes in 1734.

My only other complaint with what the text provides are its short introductions to each of the philosophers. They are very short introductions and do not go into the social and political milieu of the philosophers which would greatly help students to understand the context of these texts. Hopefully teachers using this book will have the background knowledge to offer the social and political backdrop of each of the texts as well as be able to situate the debates and questions in a global context. Even if the focus is on modern European philosophy, it did not happen in a vacuum, but rather within in the context of European colonization of the Americas and Africa, conquest, the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, and intra-European wars which did set the conditions and questions for scientific and philosophical knowledge production. This is an issue with most (maybe all) modern philosophy textbooks—not something special to this one—but it is worth mentioning nonetheless.

This text appears to present as accurately as possible the concepts and figures it introduces, even if these introductions are sometimes too short in my opinion and miss setting up the boarder social and political contexts of the philosophers and debates. The translations it uses are fine and up-to-date.

This text would be relevant to any lower or upper level undergraduate modern philosophy course or even in an introduction to philosophy course. Because of the nature of classic philosophy texts, there shouldn’t be anything “out-of-date” besides the omissions of thinkers as mentioned in the comprehensiveness section.

There are no major issues with clarity in the text. While the introductions and summaries of the materials included are short, they are clearly written and should be understood by undergraduate students. But again, longer background summaries and introductions will head off confusions students will have with the potential lack of historical background knowledge.

The book provides a survey of many different thinkers, so each section will in some sense be a self-contained whole on that particular thinker’s writings, but the presentation and supplemental material are consistent.

One of my favorite things about this text is the way it breaks down all the chapters into manageable sections and includes reading comprehension questions and exercises after each main section. Not many modern philosophy compilation textbooks are “modular” in this way so this is a really helpful aspect of this text. Because there is no attempt to flesh out a long background narrative, you can pick and choose easily which sections of the book you want to cover without missing any links in some narrative chain. This is both a strength and a weakness, good because it leaves you space to organize your course as you wish, a weakness if you do want to try to situate the thinkers in some kind of historical analysis.

There is a small set of questions asking for students to identify analytic versus synthetic statements after the glossary which is fine but could be expanded to cover more of the terms presented in the glossary. Teachers can make their own quizzes to expand assessment of the mini-logic part of the introduction to also include working on coming up with valid and invalid arguments and identifying normative versus descriptive claims.

The Glossary of Philosophical Positions and the Glossary of Principles I am certain will have students flipping back to them as the course moves through this text. I really appreciate that these elements are in the front and not the back of the book so that they can be addressed upfront in outlining the issues and debates in modern philosophy. Otherwise the book is organized historically from Descartes to Kant, which makes sense. Teachers that want to move thematically can easily remix the order.

Easy to use interface, I especially liked the hyperlinks to free versions of the full-texts of the included and not wholly included philosophy books.

No notable grammatical errors.

Cultural Relevance rating: 1

As mentioned in the comprehensiveness section, while this is a book focusing on European modern philosophy it is missing any women European philosophers who were important interlocutors with the male philosophers included. It does not include any non-European (or even Spanish or Portuguese) philosophers of the same historical moment. The other missing aspect is grounding the main philosophical debates in a social, political, and global context. There are collections that include thinkers listed here like Locke, Hume, and Kant on race and gender specifically that can be used as supplements to this text. It should be problematized that many (if not all) of the philosophers included in this book did not think women or non-European peoples could be fully rational, philosophy, or even human—and that many of them had philosophical arguments (even if they were bad ones) about these points and not merely accidentally contingent outdated views. Looking at the difference between the sexism and/or racism of rationalists versus empiricists can be an interesting discussion after studying the texts included in this book supplemented with some of their other texts that more directly address issues of gender and race.

Something that could be added to future versions of this text could be one or two concluding chapters that would touch on how ideas, concepts, and debates in modern philosophy have persisted in the present and/or informed contemporary philosophers. This could easily be done by the instructor, but it also wouldn’t be bad to add some contemporary resources for students at the end of the book.

Reviewed by Aaron Boyden, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Rhode Island College on 5/21/18

The book is focused on the early modern period, and generally presents the usual suspects. It does seem to devote more attention to the empiricists than to the rationalists; maybe a little Leibniz would have been a good addition to improve the balance? I did like the inclusion of Aristotle and Aquinas as background to help understand the beginnings of the period. I also liked that the entirety of Descartes’ Meditations was included, as I think that work is one of those that particularly suffers from the loss of context when heavily excerpted.

It is primarily a collection of classic texts. There do not seem to be any particular problems with the translations, and the additional material used to introduce the classic texts seems accurate enough.

The classic texts are not going to change, and the book is mostly a collection of those. The discussions of the issues raised by the classic texts is mostly focused on long-standing, well-established interpretations, rather than the latest scholarly fashions. It seems likely to be useful for a long time.

A lot of the supplemental material was quite brief. This was perhaps out of a desire to let the classic texts speak for themselves, but of course the classic texts are in many cases quite difficult, and I thought some of the supplemental material was perhaps too brief to be entirely helpful.

Since it is a compilation of classic texts, of course the various original authors are quite diverse in their concerns and styles. The organization varied somewhat in that some texts were excerpted and how much cutting and reorganization was done with the excerpted texts varied, but the choices of when and how to do that seemed reasonably well motivated. The supplemental material was consistent.

While there is (as there should be) an attempt to highlight some of the connections between the various items included, there does not seem to be any attempt to force things into an overall narrative; it seems well designed for use by instructors who wish to pick and choose which parts to employ.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

I’m not sure how useful the glossary of philosophical positions at the start was; I felt like that material could have been better distributed later in the text as the particular issues arose. Otherwise, the order seems to be primarily chronological, which is reasonable enough for a compilation of classic texts.

No notable problems with the interface.

No notable problems with grammar.

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

That it is focused on early modern Western philosophy has some inevitable consequences. There are ways it could have tried to be more inclusive (maybe discussing the objections of Elisabeth of Bohemia in the Descartes section) or connected the discussion to a broader world context (e.g. look at theories of possible Buddhist influence on Hume). But presumably the interest in the early modern texts is primarily motivated by their subsequent influence, and this text covers the most influential texts and discusses the issues that turned out to be influential.

Reviewed by Jim Sharp, Adjunct Professor, Colorado State University - Pueblo on 2/1/18

This book serves primarily as a reader in western philosophy during the modern period, covering major thinkers from Descartes to Kant. In addition, excerpts from Aristotle and Aquinas are supplied in a background chapter. The book does an excellent job of providing substantial primary material from the philosophers mentioned above, as well as Spinoza, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume.

Although this selection of philosophers is not exhaustive, clearly the selections presented here represent the major themes and trends in western philosophical thought during this time period. The selections chosen provide good entry points into study of significant areas of philosophy: metaphysics, methodology, epistemology, and the nature of the mind/body connection.

The authors have supplied brief, helpful introductory notes to each figure and specific text which accurately place the excerpts in relationship to one another and identify the major themes being dealt with in each one.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

Since the focus of the work is on primary source readings, it is likely to maintain its relevance for many years. The introductory notes are mostly focused on the identification of topics addressed in the selections, and therefore avoid the problems and distractions that might be raised by bringing in scholarly questions and controversies of the moment. Such issues could easily be addressed within course discussions by a knowledgeable instructor where they are relevant to the selected excerpts.

The text is clear and succinct. The introductory chapter provides clear definitions and explanations of a variety of relevant philosophical terms, making the work as a whole accessible for general education and introductory courses aimed at students who may not have already had exposure to the subject.

Since the book presents selections from eight different philosophers, whose work was written over a span of more than a dozen centuries, there are significant variations in terminology, style and constructions of arguments to be found. The introductory notes within the selections, as well as the questions supplied in each section, are designed to help students see the connections between each philosopher and bridge the differences between each thinker's work.

The modular nature of the text is one of its most useful strengths. Selections from each philosopher are divided into manageable chunks, with helpful discussion and constructive questions at the end of each section. These questions are designed to make students think through the material they have just read, and allow them to check their own understanding of the material at frequent intervals.

The selections are presented in chronological order, which is appropriate to a work like this one which explores the history and development of particular ideas. The notes and commentary supplied, along with the questions for understanding, provide background for the connections between the selections. The background chapter presenting selections from Aristotle and Aquinas supplies the necessary historical details to relate their thoughts to the later modern period which is the focus of the text.

Interface rating: 4

The interface is clear, self-explanatory, and includes useful links between sections which allow the reader to move from one excerpt to another when connections are being made between multiple selections. There seem to be a small number of older links which should have been edited out, but nothing which hinders the usefulness of the text and its links.

The grammar of the text was fine and free of errors or confusion.

Since this is a text that is focused on western philosophy, it has a clear cultural location. The selections given reflect the cultural and historical contexts of the various authors, and must be read with that in mind. The focus of the work is on the history and development of philosophical ideas, and the supplemental text and introductory materials reflect that focus. Arguably, the authors could have supplied some discussion of the historical and cultural context of western philosophy, but such discussion is not demanded by a text of this nature.

Overall, this text is an excellent reader in modern western philosophy. It could be a valuable resource for an introductory course, or a good supplemental text in a readings or seminar course for more advanced students of philosophy.

2. Minilogic and Glossary
3. Background to Modern Philosophy
4. René Descartes (1596–1650)
5. Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677)
6. John Locke's (1632–1704) Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)
7. George Berkeley (1685–1753)
8. David Hume's (1711–1776) Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
9. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)

Ancillary Material

About the book.

This is a textbook in modern philosophy. It combines readings from primary sources with two pedagogical tools. Paragraphs in italics introduce figures and texts. Numbered study questions (also in italics) ask students to reconstruct an argument or position from the text, or draw connections among the readings. And I have added an introductory chapter (Chapter 0 – Minilogic and Glossary), designed to present the basic tools of philosophy and sketch some principles and positions. The immediate goal is to encourage students to grapple with the ideas rather than passing their eyes over the texts. This makes for a better classroom experience and permits higher-level discussions. Another goal is to encourage collaboration among instructors, as they revise and post their own versions of the book.

About the Contributors

Walter Ott is an associate professor in Corcoran Department of Philosophy at the University of Virginia.

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The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy

Paul Guyer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy , Cambridge University Press, 2006, 736pp., $75.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780521823036. Purdue University

Reviewed by Jacqueline Mariña, Purdue University

This volume contains an impressive collection of essays on some of the most important aspects of Kant's philosophy. Contributors include both senior Kant scholars, as well as some of the ablest younger scholars in the field. The book is meant to "supplement, rather than supplant" the earlier Companion to Kant, published in 1992. The essays cover a wider range of material in Kant's philosophy than the earlier volume, offering a more extensive treatment of Kant's moral and political philosophy, as well as a more in-depth treatment of issues in Kant's theoretical philosophy. A specific aim of the collection is to situate Kant's thought in relation to that of his predecessors, as well as to briefly indicate the reception and effective history of his thought. This is done in relation to each of the topics covered. The historical contextualization of the problems Kant addressed does much to illuminate the critical philosophy in its own terms and to avoid anachronistic readings of Kant's project. The brief discussions of the reception of Kant's ideas at the end of each essay help the reader to understand ways in which Kant's thought impacted the history of philosophy. Substantive questions such as the tenability of Kant's doctrines given developments in science, logic, and mathematics are also often addressed, as are comparisons of Kant's ideas with important philosophers of the twentieth century such as Quine.

The first nine chapters of the book are devoted to Kant's theoretical philosophy. In the first chapter, "A Priori," Philip Kitcher discusses Kant's understanding of the a priori , seeking to delineate "a conception of a priori knowledge that both emerges from Kant's official definition and relates to the issues of 'truths of reason' that occupied Kant's predecessors" (37). He critiques Kant's claim that the "marks" of the a priori are necessity and universality, and then compares Kant's understanding of the function of the a priori with Chomsky's "generative grammar." In the second chapter, "Kant on the perception of space and time," Gary Hatfield assesses the background to Kant's understanding of space and time by exploring the views of Descartes, Leibniz, Wolff, and Crusius; follows the development of Kant's own views (including an exposition of Kant's arguments in the transcendental aesthetic); and surveys the reception of Kant's views during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Two of the most informative and illuminating essays in this section follow, namely Lisa Shabel's "Kant's philosophy of mathematics" and Beatrice Longuenesse's "Kant on a priori concepts." Both essays follow Kant's arguments closely and do an excellent job of demonstrating both the plausibility of Kant's views on the subject and how they relate to the rest of the critical philosophy. In her chapter on mathematics, Shabel first compares Kant's philosophy of mathematics with that of his rationalist predecessors, who believed that the truth of mathematical propositions could be explained through conceptual analysis alone. For Kant, on the other hand, mathematical propositions are not analytic but are synthetic. Shabel links Kant's understanding of mathematical and geometrical judgments as synthetic with his claim that mathematical concepts must be constructed in pure intuition: for Kant "the key to mathematical demonstration is the mathematician's ability to produce figures via construction according to a priori concepts" (99). It is only through the actual act of constructing the figure in pure intuition that properties of the figure -- not contained in its concept alone -- are able to emerge; this is the sense in which the judgments of geometry are synthetic. Shabel proceeds to discuss how Kant envisions mathematical judgments to be a priori , having the marks of necessity and universality even though the figures constructed in pure intuition are singular. Given her exposition of Kant's analysis of mathematical judgments as synthetic a priori, she then discusses how Kant's philosophy of mathematics informs his transcendental idealism.

The following chapter by Beatrice Longuenesse deals with Kant's too often neglected metaphysical deduction. This is a superb piece of work. In it Longuenesse briefly details the historical development of Kant's views on the relation between logic and ontology, from his early assumption that logical principles are also ontological to his later denial of this identity in his distinction between logical and real relations. It is this distinction that sets up the problem for the critical philosophy, namely, the question of how logic is capable of capturing fundamental features of the world. Longuenesse analyzes Kant's all-important distinction between general and transcendental logic, and how it redefines how we are to understand "the grip our intellect can have on the structural features of the world" (135). She argues that this new way of conceiving the relation between logic and ontology grounds Kant's metaphysical deduction of the categories. Important in this regard is the fact that Kant's distinction between the two kinds of access that we have to reality -- spontaneity and receptivity -- lies at the bottom of Kant's separation of logic and ontology. Kant's initial distinctions thus set up the problem that he is to solve in both the metaphysical and transcendental deductions and the proofs of the principles of the pure understanding. This fundamental problem has to do with how the functions of judgment can be applicable to what is given through intuition. Longuenesse then gives an extended analysis of Kant's understanding of concepts as resting on functions ("the unity of the action of ordering different representations under a common one" A 68/B93), and how this view of concepts structures his understanding of judgment. The rest of the chapter strives to illuminate Kant's contention that "the same function that gives unity to different representations in a judgment also gives unity to the mere synthesis of different representations in an intuition… ." (A 79/B104-5). Very briefly, Longuenesse argues that Kant's table of logical forms

can only have emerged from Kant's painstaking reflections about the relation between the forms according to which we relate concepts to other concepts, and thus to objects … and forms according to which we may combine manifolds in intuition so that they may fall under concepts… . (146)

Longuenesse's discussion is compact, illuminating and to the point, a must-read for anyone who hopes to understand the metaphysical deduction.

In chapter five, "Kant's philosophy of the cognitive mind," Patricia Kitcher develops Kant's theory of the mind. She first provides a brief history of how the mind was conceived in the philosophy of Descartes, Locke, Leibniz and Hume, discusses Hume's influence on Kant's theory of the mind, explores Kant's early understanding of the mind, and then reconstructs Kant's understanding of the mind through an analysis of his arguments in the transcendental deduction. Here she makes some very interesting suggestions concerning the question of personal identity in Kant. Arthur Melnick reconstructs Kant's analogies of experience in the sixth chapter, "Kant's proofs of substance and causation," and then proceeds to show how Kant's arguments can be used against Quine's doctrine of "ontological relativity." In chapter seven, "Kant and transcendental arguments," Ralph C. S. Walker discusses how Kant's arguments led to the development of "transcendental arguments," whose purpose is to answer the skeptical challenge. He provides an analysis of the nature of such arguments, and then concludes that Kant's own method of transcendental argumentation undermines his idealism.

The significance of Kant's transcendental dialectic is explored by Karl Ameriks in the eighth chapter, "The critique of metaphysics." In it Ameriks discusses Kant's critique of the older metaphysical systems that purported to give rationalist proofs for the existence and character of the soul, the world, and God, exploring both the structure of the dialectic and the question of just how much metaphysics it annihilated. Two issues are addressed in this regard, idealism and the unconditioned. Ameriks stresses that Kant's idealism is merely of the "formal" variety, and provides a useful discussion of how Kant conceived of the relation between appearances and things in themselves. The fourth section of the chapter contains an illuminating analysis of Kant's understanding of the unconditioned and how it relates to the ideas of the older metaphysics. Ameriks argues that at the core of Kant's critique of the older metaphysics is his claim that "with all possible perceptions, you always remain caught up in conditions, whether in space or time, and you never get to the unconditioned" (A 483/ B511). The error of dogmatism is then that it tries to "determine the in itself by making spatio-temporal features ('forms of sensibility') into something unconditioned" (289). The charge is directly relevant to the philosophies of Kant's predecessors, namely, those of Leibniz, Berkeley and Hume. In the last part of the chapter, Ameriks summarizes five major reactions to Kant's notion of the unconditioned.

The last chapter in this section is Michael Friedman's "Philosophy of natural science." Friedman details Kant's engagement with the natural sciences during both the pre-critical and critical periods, with an eye to determining the centrality of Kant's commitment to Newtonian physical theory and Euclidian geometry to his critical enterprise as a whole. A major concern of the chapter is with Kant's Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. Friedman contends that Kant is committed to both the synthetic a priori status of Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics, but the fact that both have been supplanted in contemporary science does not vitiate the lasting significance of the critical philosophy.

Missing from this section on Kant's theoretical philosophy is a discussion of the structure of the transcendental deduction itself, as well as a discussion of Kant's refutation of idealism, two very important issues for a proper understanding of the first Critique . To be sure, the earlier Companion to Kant included a discussion of the transcendental deduction, but an updated article on the deduction showing how it works with the metaphysical deduction, as well as with the analogies of experience would have been helpful. On the whole, however, the section contains important material for a proper understanding of Kant's theoretical philosophy and the watershed role it played in modern philosophy.

The second section of the book explores Kant's practical and political philosophy, as well as his philosophy of religion. It begins with an essay by Allen Wood, "The Supreme Principle of Morality." In keeping with this chapter's title, Wood discusses the nature and function of Kant's supreme principle of morality and his formulation of it as a "categorical imperative." He argues convincingly that the principle's most developed and universal form is Kant's formula of the autonomy of the will (FA), and that only this formula unites Kant's two other formulations of the categorical imperative within itself. The latter part of the essay explores the claims made by Klaus Reich in his 1939 article in Mind concerning Kant's sources in Cicero and in the Stoic philosopher Panaetius of Rhodes. This is an enormously illuminating article. It is followed by another excellent piece (chapter 11) by Henry Allison, "Kant on freedom of the will." Allison notes the different conceptions of freedom to which Kant refers, focusing on the "nature of and relation between freedom as spontaneity and as autonomy." Because both ways of understanding freedom involve independence from natural causality, Allison then also treats freedom in both senses in their relation to Kant's transcendental idealism. He provides a revealing analysis of Kant's theory in relation to his predecessors, Leibniz, Wolff, and, most interesting of all, Crusius (the foremost opponent of Wolffianism in Germany and someone who greatly influenced Kant). The later part of the chapter details the influence of Kant's thought on Fichte, Hegel and Schopenhauer.

The next three essays deal with Kant's political philosophy. In his chapter "Mine and Thine," Robert Pippin examines how Kant ties the principle of right with his moral theory in his Doctrine of Right, arguing that Kant justifies the state's authority through his claim that only through such authority can property rights be established. The next chapter by Jane Kneller, "Kant on Sex and the Marriage Right," is an intelligent and sensitive exploration of Kant's position on marriage. Kneller offers a partial defense of Kant's claims regarding marriage from a feminist perspective, and contextualizes his views in terms of the historical and political realities of the time as well as their philosophical background. In chapter 14, "Kant's theory of peace," Pauline Kleingeld offers an analysis of Kant's normative theory of international relations. Does Kant believe that a non-coercive league of states is the only feasible form of international cooperation, or does he advocate a much stronger international federation of states with the authority to coercively enforce a common law? Kleingeld provides strong arguments for her claim that Kant "advocates the establishment of a noncoercive league of states;" however, he does so because "he regards it as the only possible road to the ultimate ideal, a state of states" (483). This section provides excellent discussions of Kant's political philosophy in the context of the Enlightenment, and is a welcome corrective to treatments of Kant that ignore his engagement with important political issues.

In Chapter 15, Lara Denis details Kant's understanding of virtue. She first gives a short exposition of how virtue has been understood in the history of philosophy and then situates Kant's views in relation to his predecessors. Denis lists six characteristics of Kant's understanding of virtue: (a) virtue is the disposition to act out of respect for the moral law; (b) it is moral self-constraint (c) requiring strength. This is because (d) we are finite rational agents having inclinations that do not necessarily coincide with the moral law, and as such (e) virtue is the moral disposition in conflict. Lastly, (f) Kant distinguishes between noumenal and phenomenal virtue. This chapter also includes an interesting analysis of the role emotions play in moral action; it is a useful exposition of the way that Kant understands virtue, although more could have been done in the way of analysis to answer Kant's critics.

Paul Guyer provides an in-depth analysis of Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment in chapter 16. He suggests that it can be illuminating to read the third critique in light of a protracted argument with Hume; in this light he analyzes three principal topics in the third Critique, namely: (a) Kant's suggestion that the systematicity of the empirical laws of nature can ground their necessity; (b) the problem of how to ground the universal validity of judgments of taste, and lastly (c) the moral significance of a teleological conception of nature. The first part of the chapter is devoted to an informative discussion of Hume on causal necessity, taste, and the arguments from design, and the second part examines what Kant has to say on each of these questions. One of the most thought-provoking parts of the essay is Guyer's discussion of Kant's take on the relation between the scientific goal of understanding the products of nature in mechanistic terms and judgments concerning the final, moral end of nature, especially in regard to Kant's "antinomy of teleological judgment." Regarding this antinomy, Guyer notes,

the real resolution of the antinomy seems to be the two-leveled, transcendental idealist solution that we must conceive of the designer of nature as existing outside of the appearances of nature and as accomplishing his purposes through the uniformly mechanistic laws of nature. (572)

The idea is fascinating, and Guyer's suggestion leaves the reader hoping for more of an in-depth development. However, Guyer then goes on suggest that "it is unlikely that many will be convinced that we must conceive of nature as morally purposive unless they are already starting from a theological point of view… " (577). Guyer's criticism overlooks the fact that Kant's argument is that it is the moral law within us that compels us to hope that the world is ultimately ordered in such a way that it is hospitable to the human development of virtue. Kant's argument for why we must think of nature as morally purposive does not have a theological starting point (although it may lead to some theological conclusions). Nevertheless, Guyer's discussion on this subject nicely complements his introductory chapter drawing attention to the two core themes of Kant's philosophy, namely "the starry heavens above and the moral law within me," and highlights the importance of this largely undeveloped theme in Kant's philosophy.

This issue is once again picked up in Fred Beiser's piece, "Moral faith and the highest good." The chapter explores aspects of Kant's philosophy of religion, focusing on Kant's doctrine of moral faith through a discussion of three interrelated themes: (a) the ideal of the highest good; (b) the postulates of God and immortality, and (c) the concept of rational faith. Beiser's intention is to defend the pivotal role moral faith plays in Kant's philosophy. To this end, he provides an in-depth analysis of Kant's understanding of the highest good -- the central and driving concept behind Kant's notion of moral faith -- first situating Kant's take on the concept in relation to the development of the concept in the history of philosophy. Beiser notes Kant's rejection of the secular alternatives of the Aufklärung, namely Epicureanism and Stoicism, and Kant's reaffirmation of the traditional Christian view. He provides an interesting discussion of Kant's understanding of the highest good in light of Augustine's City of God, and affirms that the precedent for Kant's argument can be found in both Augustine and Leibniz. Beiser defends the intelligibility of Kant's metaphysical commitments on practical rational grounds, stressing that Kant's doctrine of the highest good and his arguments regarding the conditions of its possibility arise from the "deeper problems he [Kant] is attempting to address, namely, that these ideals [moral precepts] cannot have their binding force unless we make definitive constitutive assumptions about the moral structure of the world" (620). Beiser is certainly correct to stress that it is these questions regarding the character of the phenomenal nature in which we exist, and its relation to the imperatives of morality revealing our membership in an intelligible world, that drive Kant's understanding of the highest good and the moral faith attendant upon it. He is less successful in providing a close analysis of the details of Kant's arguments concerning why the morally committed individual also needs to make certain assumptions about the ultimate structure of nature as a whole. Nevertheless, this chapter provides a valuable guide to Kant's understanding of moral faith, and it correctly outlines the structure of Kant's argument: it is our commitment to the moral law that leads us to affirm that the natural world must have an ethico-teleological goal.

The volume concludes, fittingly, with Manfred Kuehn's "Kant's critical philosophy and its reception -- the first five years." In this chapter, Kuehn provides an overview of the different responses to Kant's thought by his contemporaries, and shows how these responses influenced the direction of Kant's thought. Kuehn focuses specifically on the developments from 1781 to 1786, the period during which Kant's first Critique first appeared and then became increasingly popular. This is an informative essay in the early Wirkungsgeschichte of Kant's thought. The end of the volume contains a very useful selective bibliography focusing on recent books and collections of articles; it contains an inclusive list of books in English and the most important works in French and German.

Overall, this is an excellent volume, certainly one of the best and fullest collections of essays on Kant in the English language, covering a wide range of issues in Kant scholarship. It will be helpful to students and Kant scholars alike, both presenting issues in Kant's philosophy with clarity and rigor as well as showcasing ways of understanding Kant and his philosophical significance by the most prominent of his English speaking interpreters.

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The spirit of modern philosophy : an essay in the form of lectures

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The Spirit of Modern Philosophy

Index page: The Spirit of Modern Philosophy (1892).djvu

This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.

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THE SPIRIT OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY

IN THE FORM OF LECTURES

JOSIAH ROYCE

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Boston and New York

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

The Riverside Press, Cambridge

Lecture I: General Introdution

PART I. STUDIES OF THINKERS AND PROBLEMS.

Lecture II: The Periods of Modern Philosophy; Characteristics of the First Period; Illustration by Means of the Religious Aspect of Spinozism

Lecture III: The Rediscovery of the Inner Life; From Spinoza to Kant

Lecture IV: Kant

Lecture V: Fichte

Lecture VI: The Romantic School in Philosophy

Lecture VII: Hegel

Lecture VIII: Schopenhauer

Lecture IX: The Rise of the Doctrine of Evolution

PART II. SUGGESTIONS OF DOCTRINE.

Lecture X: Nature and Evolution; The Outer World and Its Paradox

Lecture XI: Reality and Idealism; The Inner World and Its Meaning

Lecture XII: Physical Law and Freedom; The World of Description and the World of Appreciation

Lecture XIII: Optimism, Pessimism and the Moral Order

Headers applying DefaultSort key

1.1 What Is Philosophy?

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

Identify sages (early philosophers) across historical traditions.
Explain the connection between ancient philosophy and the origin of the sciences.
Describe philosophy as a discipline that makes coherent sense of a whole.
Summarize the broad and diverse origins of philosophy.

It is difficult to define philosophy. In fact, to do so is itself a philosophical activity, since philosophers are attempting to gain the broadest and most fundamental conception of the world as it exists. The world includes nature, consciousness, morality, beauty, and social organizations. So the content available for philosophy is both broad and deep. Because of its very nature, philosophy considers a range of subjects, and philosophers cannot automatically rule anything out. Whereas other disciplines allow for basic assumptions, philosophers cannot be bound by such assumptions. This open-endedness makes philosophy a somewhat awkward and confusing subject for students. There are no easy answers to the questions of what philosophy studies or how one does philosophy. Nevertheless, in this chapter, we can make some progress on these questions by (1) looking at past examples of philosophers, (2) considering one compelling definition of philosophy, and (3) looking at the way academic philosophers today actually practice philosophy.

Historical Origins of Philosophy

One way to begin to understand philosophy is to look at its history. The historical origins of philosophical thinking and exploration vary around the globe. The word philosophy derives from ancient Greek, in which the philosopher is a lover or pursuer ( philia ) of wisdom ( sophia ). But the earliest Greek philosophers were not known as philosophers; they were simply known as sages . The sage tradition provides an early glimpse of philosophical thought in action. Sages are sometimes associated with mathematical and scientific discoveries and at other times with their political impact. What unites these figures is that they demonstrate a willingness to be skeptical of traditions, a curiosity about the natural world and our place in it, and a commitment to applying reason to understand nature, human nature, and society better. The overview of the sage tradition that follows will give you a taste of philosophy’s broad ambitions as well as its focus on complex relations between different areas of human knowledge. There are some examples of women who made contributions to philosophy and the sage tradition in Greece, India, and China, but these were patriarchal societies that did not provide many opportunities for women to participate in philosophical and political discussions.

The Sages of India, China, Africa, and Greece

In classical Indian philosophy and religion, sages play a central role in both religious mythology and in the practice of passing down teaching and instruction through generations. The Seven Sages, or Saptarishi (seven rishis in the Sanskrit language), play an important role in sanatana dharma , the eternal duties that have come to be identified with Hinduism but that predate the establishment of the religion. The Seven Sages are partially considered wise men and are said to be the authors of the ancient Indian texts known as the Vedas . But they are partly mythic figures as well, who are said to have descended from the gods and whose reincarnation marks the passing of each age of Manu (age of man or epoch of humanity). The rishis tended to live monastic lives, and together they are thought of as the spiritual and practical forerunners of Indian gurus or teachers, even up to today. They derive their wisdom, in part, from spiritual forces, but also from tapas , or the meditative, ascetic, and spiritual practices they perform to gain control over their bodies and minds. The stories of the rishis are part of the teachings that constitute spiritual and philosophical practice in contemporary Hinduism.

Figure 1.2 depicts a scene from the Matsya Purana, where Manu, the first man whose succession marks the prehistorical ages of Earth, sits with the Seven Sages in a boat to protect them from a mythic flood that is said to have submerged the world. The king of serpents guides the boat, which is said to have also contained seeds, plants, and animals saved by Manu from the flood.

Despite the fact that classical Indian culture is patriarchal, women figures play an important role in the earliest writings of the Vedic tradition (the classical Indian religious and philosophical tradition). These women figures are partly connected to the Indian conception of the fundamental forces of nature—energy, ability, strength, effort, and power—as feminine. This aspect of God was thought to be present at the creation of the world. The Rig Veda, the oldest Vedic writings, contains hymns that tell the story of Ghosha, a daughter of Rishi Kakshivan, who had a debilitating skin condition (probably leprosy) but devoted herself to spiritual practices to learn how to heal herself and eventually marry. Another woman, Maitreyi, is said to have married the Rishi Yajnavalkya (himself a god who was cast into mortality by a rival) for the purpose of continuing her spiritual training. She was a devoted ascetic and is said to have composed 10 of the hymns in the Rig Veda. Additionally, there is a famous dialogue between Maitreyi and Yajnavalkya in the Upanishads (another early, foundational collection of texts in the Vedic tradition) about attachment to material possessions, which cannot give a person happiness, and the achievement of ultimate bliss through knowledge of the Absolute (God).

Another woman sage named Gargi also participates in a celebrated dialogue with Yajnavalkya on natural philosophy and the fundamental elements and forces of the universe. Gargi is characterized as one of the most knowledgeable sages on the topic, though she ultimately concedes that Yajnavalkya has greater knowledge. In these brief episodes, these ancient Indian texts record instances of key women who attained a level of enlightenment and learning similar to their male counterparts. Unfortunately, this early equality between the sexes did not last. Over time Indian culture became more patriarchal, confining women to a dependent and subservient role. Perhaps the most dramatic and cruel example of the effects of Indian patriarchy was the ritual practice of sati , in which a widow would sometimes immolate herself, partly in recognition of the “fact” that following the death of her husband, her current life on Earth served no further purpose (Rout 2016). Neither a widow’s in-laws nor society recognized her value.

In similar fashion to the Indian tradition, the sage ( sheng ) tradition is important for Chinese philosophy . Confucius , one of the greatest Chinese writers, often refers to ancient sages, emphasizing their importance for their discovery of technical skills essential to human civilization, for their role as rulers and wise leaders, and for their wisdom. This emphasis is in alignment with the Confucian appeal to a well-ordered state under the guidance of a “ philosopher-king .” This point of view can be seen in early sage figures identified by one of the greatest classical authors in the Chinese tradition, as the “Nest Builder” and “Fire Maker” or, in another case, the “Flood Controller.” These names identify wise individuals with early technological discoveries. The Book of Changes , a classical Chinese text, identifies the Five (mythic) Emperors as sages, including Yao and Shun, who are said to have built canoes and oars, attached carts to oxen, built double gates for defense, and fashioned bows and arrows (Cheng 1983). Emperor Shun is also said to have ruled during the time of a great flood, when all of China was submerged. Yü is credited with having saved civilization by building canals and dams.

These figures are praised not only for their political wisdom and long rule, but also for their filial piety and devotion to work. For instance, Mencius, a Confucian philosopher, relates a story of Shun’s care for his blind father and wicked stepmother, while Yü is praised for his selfless devotion to work. In these ways, the Chinese philosophical traditions, such as Confucianism and Mohism, associate key values of their philosophical enterprises with the great sages of their history. Whether the sages were, in fact, actual people or, as many scholars have concluded, mythical forebearers, they possessed the essential human virtue of listening and responding to divine voices. This attribute can be inferred from the Chinese script for sheng , which bears the symbol of an ear as a prominent feature. So the sage is one who listens to insight from the heavens and then is capable of sharing that wisdom or acting upon it to the benefit of his society (Cheng 1983). This idea is similar to one found in the Indian tradition, where the most important texts, the Vedas, are known as shruti , or works that were heard through divine revelation and only later written down.

Although Confucianism is a venerable world philosophy, it is also highly patriarchal and resulted in the widespread subordination of women. The position of women in China began to change only after the Communist Revolution (1945–1952). While some accounts of Confucianism characterize men and women as emblematic of two opposing forces in the natural world, the Yin and Yang, this view of the sexes developed over time and was not consistently applied. Chinese women did see a measure of independence and freedom with the influence of Buddhism and Daoism, each of which had a more liberal view of the role of women (Adler 2006).

A detailed and important study of the sage tradition in Africa is provided by Henry Odera Oruka (1990), who makes the case that prominent folk sages in African tribal history developed complex philosophical ideas. Oruka interviewed tribal Africans identified by their communities as sages, and he recorded their sayings and ideas, confining himself to those sayings that demonstrated “a rational method of inquiry into the real nature of things” (Oruka 1990, 150). He recognized a tension in what made these sages philosophically interesting: they articulated the received wisdom of their tradition and culture while at the same time maintaining a critical distance from that culture, seeking a rational justification for the beliefs held by the culture.

Connections

The chapter on the early history of philosophy covers this topic in greater detail.

Among the ancient Greeks, it is common to identify seven sages. The best-known account is provided by Diogenes Laërtius, whose text Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is a canonical resource on early Greek philosophy. The first and most important sage is Thales of Miletus . Thales traveled to Egypt to study with the Egyptian priests, where he became one of the first Greeks to learn astronomy. He is known for bringing back to Greece knowledge of the calendar, dividing the year into 365 days, tracking the progress of the sun from solstice to solstice, and—somewhat dramatically—predicting a solar eclipse in 585 BCE. The eclipse occurred on the day of a battle between the Medes and Lydians. It is possible that Thales used knowledge of Babylonian astronomical records to guess the year and location of the eclipse. This mathematical and astronomical feat is one of Thales’s several claims to sagacity. In addition, he is said to have calculated the height of the pyramids using the basic geometry of similar triangles and measuring shadows at a certain time of day. He is also reported to have predicted a particularly good year for olives: he bought up all the olive presses and then made a fortune selling those presses to farmers wanting to turn their olives into oil. Together, these scientific and technical achievements suggest that at least part of Thales’s wisdom can be attributed to a very practical, scientific, and mathematical knowledge of the natural world. If that were all Thales was known for, he might be called the first scientist or engineer. But he also made more basic claims about the nature and composition of the universe; for instance, he claimed that all matter was fundamentally made of up water. He also argued that everything that moved on its own possessed a soul and that the soul itself was immortal. These claims demonstrate a concern about the fundamental nature of reality.

Another of the seven sages was Solon , a famed political leader. He introduced the “Law of Release” to Athens, which cancelled all personal debts and freed indentured servants, or “debt-slaves” who had been consigned to service based on a personal debt they were unable to repay. In addition, he established a constitutional government in Athens with a representative body, a procedure for taxation, and a series of economic reforms. He was widely admired as a political leader but voluntarily stepped down so that he would not become a tyrant. He was finally forced to flee Athens when he was unable to persuade the members of the Assembly (the ruling body) to resist the rising tyranny of one of his relatives, Pisistratus. When he arrived in exile, he was reportedly asked whom he considered to be happy, to which he replied, “One ought to count no man happy until he is dead.” Aristotle interpreted this statement to mean that happiness was not a momentary experience, but a quality reflective of someone’s entire life.

Beginnings of Natural Philosophy

The sage tradition is a largely prehistoric tradition that provides a narrative about how intellect, wisdom, piety, and virtue led to the innovations central to flourishing of ancient civilizations. Particularly in Greece, the sage tradition blends into a period of natural philosophy, where ancient scientists or philosophers try to explain nature using rational methods. Several of the early Greek schools of philosophy were centered on their respective views of nature. Followers of Thales, known as the Milesians , were particularly interested in the underlying causes of natural change. Why does water turn to ice? What happens when winter passes into spring? Why does it seem like the stars and planets orbit Earth in predictable patterns? From Aristotle we know that Thales thought there was a difference between material elements that participate in change and elements that contain their own source of motion. This early use of the term element did not have the same meaning as the scientific meaning of the word today in a field like chemistry. But Thales thought material elements bear some fundamental connection to water in that they have the capacity to move and alter their state. By contrast, other elements had their own internal source of motion, of which he cites the magnet and amber (which exhibits forces of static electricity when rubbed against other materials). He said that these elements have “soul.” This notion of soul, as a principle of internal motion, was influential across ancient and medieval natural philosophy. In fact, the English language words animal and animation are derived from the Latin word for soul ( anima ).

Similarly, early thinkers like Xenophanes began to formulate explanations for natural phenomena. For instance, he explained rainbows, the sun, the moon, and St. Elmo’s fire (luminous, electrical discharges) as apparitions of the clouds. This form of explanation, describing some apparent phenomenon as the result of an underlying mechanism, is paradigmatic of scientific explanation even today. Parmenides, the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, used logic to conclude that whatever fundamentally exists must be unchanging because if it ever did change, then at least some aspect of it would cease to exist. But that would imply that what exists could not exist—which seems to defy logic. Parmenides is not saying that there is no change, but that the changes we observe are a kind of illusion. Indeed, this point of view was highly influential, not only for Plato and Aristotle, but also for the early atomists, like Democritus , who held that all perceived qualities are merely human conventions. Underlying all these appearances, Democritus reasoned, are only atomic, unchanging bits of matter flowing through a void. While this ancient Greek view of atoms is quite different from the modern model of atoms, the very idea that every observable phenomenon has a basis in underlying pieces of matter in various configurations clearly connects modern science to the earliest Greek philosophers.

Along these lines, the Pythagoreans provide a very interesting example of a community of philosophers engaged in understanding the natural world and how best to live in it. You may be familiar with Pythagoras from his Pythagorean theorem, a key principle in geometry establishing a relationship between the sides of a right-angled triangle. Specifically, the square formed by the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the two squares formed by the remaining two sides. In the figure below, the area of the square formed by c is equal to the sum of the areas of the squares formed by a and b. The figure represents how Pythagoras would have conceptualized the theorem.

The Pythagoreans were excellent mathematicians, but they were more interested in how mathematics explained the natural world. In particular, Pythagoras recognized relationships between line segments and shapes, such as the Pythagorean theorem describes, but also between numbers and sounds, by virtue of harmonics and the intervals between notes. Similar regularities can be found in astronomy. As a result, Pythagoras reasoned that all of nature is generated according to mathematical regularities. This view led the Pythagoreans to believe that there was a unified, rational structure to the universe, that the planets and stars exhibit harmonic properties and may even produce music, that musical tones and harmonies could have healing powers, that the soul is immortal and continuously reincarnated, and that animals possess souls that ought to be respected and valued. As a result, the Pythagorean community was defined by serious scholarship as well as strict rules about diet, clothing, and behavior.

Additionally, in the early Pythagorean communities, it was possible for women to participate and contribute to philosophical thought and discovery. Pythagoras himself was said to have been inspired to study philosophy by the Delphic priestess Themistoclea. His wife Theano is credited with contributing to important discoveries in the realms of numbers and optics. She is said to have written a treatise, On Piety , which further applies Pythagorean philosophy to various aspects of practical life (Waithe 1987). Myia, the daughter of this illustrious couple, was also an active and productive part of the community. At least one of her letters has survived in which she discusses the application of Pythagorean philosophy to motherhood. The Pythagorean school is an example of how early philosophical and scientific thinking combines with religious, cultural, and ethical beliefs and practices to embrace many different aspects of life.

How It All Hangs Together

Closer to the present day, in 1962, Wilfrid Sellars , a highly influential 20th-century American philosopher, wrote a chapter called “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man” in Frontiers of Science and Philosophy . He opens the essay with a dramatic and concise description of philosophy: “The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term.” If we spend some time trying to understand what Sellars means by this definition, we will be in a better position to understand the academic discipline of philosophy. First, Sellars emphasizes that philosophy’s goal is to understand a very wide range of topics—in fact, the widest possible range. That is to say, philosophers are committed to understanding everything insofar as it can be understood. This is important because it means that, on principle, philosophers cannot rule out any topic of study. However, for a philosopher not every topic of study deserves equal attention. Some things, like conspiracy theories or paranoid delusions, are not worth studying because they are not real. It may be worth understanding why some people are prone to paranoid delusions or conspiratorial thinking, but the content of these ideas is not worth investigating. Other things may be factually true, such as the daily change in number of the grains of sand on a particular stretch of beach, but they are not worth studying because knowing that information will not teach us about how things hang together. So a philosopher chooses to study things that are informative and interesting—things that provide a better understanding of the world and our place in it.

To make judgments about which areas are interesting or worthy of study, philosophers need to cultivate a special skill. Sellars describes this philosophical skill as a kind of know-how (a practical, engaged type of knowledge, similar to riding a bike or learning to swim). Philosophical know-how, Sellars says, has to do with knowing your way around the world of concepts and being able to understand and think about how concepts connect, link up, support, and rely upon one another—in short, how things hang together. Knowing one’s way around the world of concepts also involves knowing where to look to find interesting discoveries and which places to avoid, much like a good fisherman knows where to cast his line. Sellars acknowledges that other academics and scientists know their way around the concepts in their field of study much like philosophers do. The difference is that these other inquirers confine themselves to a specific field of study or a particular subject matter, while philosophers want to understand the whole. Sellars thinks that this philosophical skill is most clearly demonstrated when we try to understand the connection between the natural world as we experience it directly (the “manifest image”) and the natural world as science explains it (the “scientific image”). He suggests that we gain an understanding of the nature of philosophy by trying to reconcile these two pictures of the world that most people understand independently.

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The Spirit of Modern Philosophy: An Essay in the Form of Lectures (1892) Paperback

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The Essence of Buddhist Philosophy: a Journey into the Depths of Existence

This essay about Buddhist philosophy explores its core tenets, including the Four Noble Truths, impermanence, interconnectedness, and mindfulness. It highlights how these concepts offer insights into the nature of suffering and the human condition, providing a practical guide for living a meaningful and fulfilling life. Through mindfulness practices and ethical conduct, individuals can cultivate wisdom and compassion, ultimately transcending the limitations of the ego to find inner peace and liberation from suffering.

How it works

In the vast expanse of human thought and spirituality, few philosophies have resonated as deeply and enduringly as Buddhism. Rooted in the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, this ancient tradition offers profound insights into the nature of existence and the human condition. Embarking on a journey through the core tenets of Buddhism unveils a tapestry of wisdom that continues to inspire seekers of truth and inner peace across the ages.

At the heart of Buddhist philosophy lies the profound recognition of suffering as an inherent aspect of human existence.

Known as dukkha, this pervasive sense of dissatisfaction and discontent arises from the ceaseless craving and attachment that characterize much of human experience. Whether it manifests as physical pain, emotional turmoil, or existential angst, suffering permeates the fabric of life, casting a shadow over even the most fleeting moments of joy.

Yet, within the depths of suffering lies the seed of liberation. The Four Noble Truths, articulated by the Buddha, illuminate the path to freedom from suffering. These truths serve as signposts along the journey of self-discovery, inviting individuals to confront the root causes of their suffering with courage and clarity. Through the transformative power of insight and introspection, practitioners come to understand that liberation is not a distant ideal but a tangible possibility in the here and now.

Central to the Buddhist path is the cultivation of mindfulness – a state of present-moment awareness that serves as a gateway to profound insight and inner peace. Through mindfulness practices such as meditation and contemplation, individuals learn to observe the fluctuations of their minds with non-judgmental awareness, cultivating a deep understanding of the impermanent and interconnected nature of reality. In the stillness of mindful awareness, the ceaseless chatter of the ego begins to fade, revealing the profound truth of our interconnectedness with all beings and the natural world.

Impermanence, or anicca, lies at the very heart of Buddhist philosophy. This fundamental principle asserts that all phenomena, from the grandest cosmic events to the most mundane everyday experiences, are subject to constant change and flux. Nothing remains static or permanent; everything is in a perpetual state of becoming. Embracing impermanence allows individuals to release their grip on the fleeting pleasures of the world and find solace in the timeless flow of existence.

In the intricate web of existence, interconnectedness – or pratityasamutpada – weaves the threads of causality that bind all phenomena together. According to this profound teaching, nothing exists in isolation; every thought, word, and action sends ripples through the fabric of reality, shaping the course of our lives and the destiny of the cosmos. Recognizing our interconnectedness with all beings fosters a deep sense of compassion and empathy, inspiring us to act with kindness and generosity towards others.

The Buddhist path is not merely a theoretical framework but a practical guide for living a life of meaning and purpose. The Eightfold Path, comprising ethical conduct, mental discipline, and wisdom, offers a roadmap for navigating the complexities of human existence with grace and integrity. By cultivating virtues such as compassion, generosity, and wisdom, individuals align themselves with the fundamental principles of reality, paving the way for a life of profound fulfillment and inner peace.

In conclusion, the teachings of Buddhism offer a profound and timeless wisdom that speaks to the deepest aspirations of the human spirit. Through its exploration of suffering, impermanence, interconnectedness, and mindfulness, Buddhism provides a roadmap for transcending the limitations of the ego and discovering the boundless potential of our true nature. As we embark on this journey of self-discovery and transformation, may we find solace in the timeless truths that have illuminated the path of countless seekers throughout the ages.

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A Historical Novel Charts the Inner Life of the Philosopher al-Ghazali

Ahmed vall dine’s fictional account of the 12th-century intellectual invites a reinterpretation of our own times.

After more than two months of arduous toil, a middle-aged man with tattered clothes and bleeding feet finally stands before the gates of the ancient city. His drained appearance belies the tranquility he feels inside, running down to the very depths of his soul. “How long does one have to travel to find oneself?” he wonders, and “Why was it necessary to undertake such a journey simply to move from one side of one’s heart to the other?” The seeker stares in awe at the majestic walls of Damascus, revered for keeping out the invading hordes that stood before it in siege for 20 long years. But alas, he realizes, “no walls are more impenetrable than those of the heart!” And will history remember someone who strove for 20 years so that his heart might finally open to the light?

With this enticing opening scene, Ahmed Vall Dine’s latest novel takes the reader on a journey into the inner world of one of the most celebrated figures in Islamic history: the 12th-century philosopher and spiritual savant, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali. Vall Dine is a veteran correspondent for Al Jazeera, but the Mauritanian writer’s interests stretch beyond the newsroom and deep into the archive, bridging the present with the past. “Danishmand” (“The Wise Master”) is his fifth book; his first — published in 2012 — was an autobiographical account of his incarceration in Moammar Gadhafi’s prison cells during the Arab Spring. (The English translation, “In Gaddafi’s Clutches,” has just been published by Dar Arab in the United Kingdom.) The 2012 memoir was followed by two novels in quick succession, published in 2018 and 2019. In 2021, Vall Dine returned to his journalistic roots and published a book-length essay on the rise and fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Poetry has always been regarded as the repository of Arab historical memory; it is the “Diwan al-Arab.” Still very much appreciated among Arabic speakers, poetry is nevertheless no longer the dominant form of literary expression. The Arab world’s encounter with modernity not only introduced new forms of living, but new forms of literary expression as well, and the historical novel has rapidly gained prominence in modern Arabic literature. Contemporary Arab writers have increasingly embraced the genre to revisit the past, but it finds its best expression when the creative reimagining of the past is effectively utilized to stimulate reflection and offer commentary on the present.

With “Danishmand,” Vall Dine once again returns to the historical fiction genre and reimagines a tumultuous chapter in the Islamic past in a way that makes us think about our present predicament. In his first foray — “Al-Hadaqi” (2018) — Vall Dine explored the life and times of the ninth-century Iraqi polymath Abu Uthman Amr ibn Bahr al-Jahiz, who lived and wrote in the Abbasid Golden Age. Al-Jahiz is still revered and widely read in the Arab world today but remains an obscure figure in Anglophone literary circles, enjoying the attention of only a small group of academics and scholars of Arabic literature.

In contrast, al-Ghazali is arguably one of the most scrutinized figures in the Islamic intellectual tradition and is equally renowned in the West. His works were translated and studied in Latin Christendom, and while he is fortunately not one of the five Muslims confined to hell in Dante’s “Inferno,” he is mentioned in the “Convivio,” the Florentine poet’s reflection on the various disciplines of knowledge prevalent in his time. Rene Descartes, the 17th-century father of modern epistemology, is believed to have possessed a Latin translation of al-Ghazali’s autobiography, “The Deliverance From Error” (“Al-Munqidh min al-Dalal”), which was annotated in his own hand. On this basis, historians of philosophy have suggested that Islamic thought influenced European philosophy well beyond the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Al-Ghazali’s books still enjoy wide circulation, and countless studies have been written on his life and thought, including novels (in Arabic and Persian). To this respectable legacy, Vall Dine now adds another work of historical fiction, carefully composed in consummate Arabic prose.

Apart from the opening prologue that is set in the middle of the story — on the brink of the looming quest — the book unfolds chronologically, following the life trajectory of the young orphan boy, Muhammad, from the dusty streets of the small town of Tabaran in the district of Tus, in 12th-century Khorasan, to the major centers of Nishapur, Isfahan, Baghdad, Damascus and Jerusalem. The unfolding narrative ultimately follows the path back to the final resting place of the wise master in his hometown in northeastern Iran, not too far from present-day Mashhad.

Part 1 of the novel — “Al-Yatim” (“The Orphan”) — opens with two young boys, Muhammad and his brother Ahmad, striving to scratch out a meager existence along with their recently widowed mother. Their father has left a small inheritance for the boys’ education with a loyal friend, but these funds have been depleted and the dying man summons them to discuss their future. The family friend expresses regret over not being able to provide for them himself due to his own state of abject poverty and failing health. Nonetheless, he has found a way for the boys to receive a religious education, one that will provide for them materially and fulfill their deceased father’s wish for his sons to become scholars. He arranges for them to be enrolled at a religious seminary that provides food, accommodation and clothing for its students. On weekends, the boys are able to visit their mother, now relieved of the burden of providing for her sons. The young Muhammad’s prodigious intellect instantly sets him apart from his peers and his teachers predict a bright future for him. In time, Muhammad is able to secure a scholarship to study at the great Nizamiyyah Seminary in Nishapur, under one of the foremost scholars of the age, Abu al-Maali al-Juwayni.

In the second part of the novel — “Danishmand” (“The Wise Master”) — the precocious student has grown into a great scholar whose reputation begins to rival that of his recently deceased teacher, al-Juwayni. His success draws the attention of the great Seljuk Vizier Abu Ali Hasan ibn Ali Tusi, known by the honorific Nizam al-Mulk (“Organizer of the Realm”), founder and patron of the eponymous Nizamiyyah schools. Al-Ghazali is thus drawn into the world of politics and court intrigue. The caliph in Baghdad is no more than a titular figure: True power resides in the hands of Seljuk Sultan Malik Shah, son of the great Alp Arslan. Nizam al-Mulk served Alp Arslan and pledged loyalty and service to the murdered sultan’s 19-year-old heir. Now, almost two decades later, the Seljuk realm is relatively secure and Nizam al-Mulk is at the height of his influence. There are nonetheless always pretenders to the throne, and the powerful esoteric sect of Assassins led by the enigmatic Hasan-e Sabbah — the Old Man of the Mountain — is determined to usurp power from the Seljuks. The assassins are Shiite Ismailis — loyal to the Fatimid caliph in Cairo — and wreak havoc in the Islamic East through a concerted campaign of killing, targeting leaders and scholars.

By now the Danishmand has joined the entourage of the great vizier, written a book refuting the creed of the Ismailis and served as an emissary of the court on numerous occasions. Nizam al-Mulk appoints al-Ghazali to teach at the Nizamiyyah in Baghdad — the most important of his schools — located in the cultural and intellectual capital of the Islamic world and in close proximity to the court of the Sunni caliph. The Seljuk Empire is thrown into chaos shortly thereafter, when Nizam al-Mulk is assassinated during Ramadan in 1092. His murder is followed by the sudden death of Sultan Malik Shah a month later. Malik Shah’s sons are instantly dragged into an internecine battle over the throne, and al-Ghazali is inadvertently drawn into their power struggle, acting as an emissary among the rival heirs, their mothers and the caliph.

When the caliph dies two years later, al-Ghazali abruptly abandons his teaching post and flees into self-imposed exile. The third part of the novel — “Al-Harib” (“The Escapee”) — thus begins with the famous scholar exchanging the luxurious garments of the court for the coarse apparel of an ascetic traveler, setting off on the road to Damascus and simultaneously taking the first steps toward self-discovery. The third part thus takes off from where the novel began, and we now get a clearer sense as to why the author refers to the prologue as a rebirth (“Al-Milad al-Thani”).

In Part 4 — “Al-Nasik” (“The Ascetic”) — we accompany the seeker as he navigates the pathways of his newly discovered soul. In the closing part of the novel — “Bi Qalb Salim” (“With a Content Heart”) — we return to Tabaran, the final resting place of the Danishmand. The Wise Master has not only found contentment, but more importantly has also left behind a unique inheritance, a guide along the path that leads to felicity. His spiritual sojourn helped him produce his magnum opus, a work of genius ambitiously titled “The Revival of the Religious Sciences” (“Ihya Ulum al-Din”).

Vall Dine’s novel is a sprawling work that gives one much pause for reflection. Apart from its lyrical Arabic prose, the book is also characterized by the kind of thick description common in social anthropology, exploring the meanings of the plot’s events to its characters. His creative retelling of al-Ghazali’s life story is also very faithful to the documented history of the great scholar’s life and times. One has only to turn to Frank Griffel’s excellent study, “Al-Ghazali’s Philosophical Theology,” to get a sense of this. The first two chapters of Griffel’s book provide us with the most detailed account of the historical figure and draw on a variety of sources in both Arabic and Persian, the languages in which al-Ghazali wrote and conversed.

Vall Dine embellishes the historical record by paying admirable attention to detail and his portrayals of dress, social norms, book culture and culinary practices draw on historical sources and travelogues written in the period in which the novel is set. For example, samosas make an appearance at the Ramadan banquet hosted by Nizam al-Mulk just before he is assassinated. These mince-filled triangular pastries, popularly associated with Indian cuisine today, made their first appearance in the Persian chronicle “Tarikh-i Bayhaqi” (“Bayhaqi’s History”) by the 11th-century Khorasani historian Abu al-Fadl al-Bayhaqi.

While the novel is certainly illuminating in its grasp of social history, it goes much further, offering an enlightening perspective on the philosophy of history as well. Vall Dine goes against the grain of the common idea of history as unfolding along a single continuum leading to a perfect social order. While this idea of “the end of history” has been championed and popularized by Francis Fukuyama in recent times, the tradition stretches back to the early 19th-century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and his philosophically grounded account of a linear history, ending at a point when society has reached its apogee and civilization is perfected.

The narrative thrust of the novel instead strongly affirms a cyclical conception of history, a theory clearly articulated by Abd al-Rahman ibn Khaldun, the 14th-century historian and social theorist. Ibn Khaldun poignantly stated that “Civilization is detrimental to societal development.” This unique insight emerged from the realization that the material affluence required to promote the pursuit of progress and the development of civilization would always be the exclusive preserve of powerful elites. The amassing of great fortunes by these elites is inevitably accompanied by the desire to maintain exclusive rights over such wealth, and, as such, the masses will always be left out in the cold. On the basis of this insight, Ibn Khaldun argued that the course of history is cyclical. Powerful civilizations reach a peak but ultimately collapse, because the path to power leaves too many stranded along the way.

In al-Ghazali’s epoch, Islamic civilization was still ascendant, and the contrast between the novel’s context and our own gives a compelling version of the civilizational cycle. The fact that Vall Dine is able to creatively reimagine the past in a way that stimulates us to think about the present is not only a strong indication of the maturation of the genre of historical fiction in contemporary Arabic literature but also an acknowledgment of the author’s mastery of his craft. Vall Dine does not have to openly lament Islamic civilization’s fall from grace; rather, he presents a cogent portrait of what it looked like in al-Ghazali’s era.

In the novel, Arab and Persian elites are at the top of the social hierarchy, with the Turkish military castes rapidly integrating into these ranks. The subaltern classes are made up of Byzantine slave girls prized for their beauty and groomed for service, similar to the court eunuchs castrated in Christian lands and sold into slavery to be trained as bureaucrats and keepers of the harems of powerful men. Similarly, the violent hordes threatening the realm are the white barbarians of Europe who have been mobilized by Pope Urban II and his cohort of religious zealots, setting out to reclaim Jerusalem for their faith. This portrayal of the European barbarian hordes — notorious for their bloodlust and aversion to bathing — marching on Jerusalem via Constantinople, where Christians were far more civilized, constitutes a compelling narrative strand that orders society into a clearly delineated civilizational hierarchy.

The detriments of high civilization are acutely felt by al-Ghazali, especially in relation to his scholarly peers who vie for attention and courtly prestige. Their immersion in material pleasures and pursuits has brought about a spiritual malaise. The “sharia,” or sacred Islamic law, has been reduced to no more than positive law, “fiqh,” a utilitarian jurisprudence defined by legal stratagems and hermeneutic flexibility. Stated in the language of our times, the Islam that al-Ghazali sees being practiced by his peers has effectively been secularized.

The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor has convincingly argued that modernity is defined by an immanent frame, that is, a refusal to address any issues beyond the sensory world, meaning that we live in an era largely bereft of any transcendent grounding. Stated differently, our existence is dominated by secular time. Taylor therefore holds that modern society is defined by radical horizontality, where there are no high points and where we are no longer rooted to “something other.”

Al-Ghazali, too, developed an acute awareness that the world around him was flattening out, and he therefore sought salvation by attempting to reconnect with the divine. From this vantage point, his journey marks the traversing of the boundaries of secular time and a reentry into the realm of sacred higher time, which is why he appositely refers to the new Islamic discipline formulated in his magnum opus as the “Science of the Path to the Afterlife” (“Ilm Tariq al-Akhirah”).

Vall Dine has not simply written a work of historical fiction. By imaginatively documenting the life story of one of the most prominent sages in the Islamic intellectual tradition, he has effectively taken us along with al-Ghazali on his spiritual quest. On this journey, we learn that even a work of fiction is able to traverse the boundaries of the secular and deliver us into the realm of the sacred.

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Modern philosophy
Modern philosophy, in the history of Western philosophy, the philosophical speculation that occurred primarily in western Europe and North America from the 17th through the 19th century. ... Locke's Essay was a dogged attempt to produce the total world of human conceptual experience from a set of elementary sensory building blocks, moving ...
Modern philosophy
Modern philosophy is philosophy developed in the modern era and associated with modernity.It is not a specific doctrine or school (and thus should not be confused with Modernism), although there are certain assumptions common to much of it, which helps to distinguish it from earlier philosophy.. The 17th and early 20th centuries roughly mark the beginning and the end of modern philosophy.
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) is the central figure in modern philosophy. He synthesized early modern rationalism and empiricism, set the terms for much of nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy, and continues to exercise a significant influence today in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, and ...
PDF "Modern" Philosophy: Introduction
1. "Modern" Philosophy: Introduction. [from Debates in Modern Philosophy by Stewart Duncan and Antonia LoLordo (Routledge, 2013)] This course discusses the views of various European philosophers of the seventeenth century. Along with them the thinkers of the eighteenth century, they are con- sidered "modern" philosophers.
PDF A Brief Guide to Writing the Philosophy Paper
turn. Good philosophy proceeds with modest, careful and clear steps. Structuring a Philosophy Paper Philosophy assignments generally ask you to consider some thesis or argument, often a thesis or argument that has been presented by another philosopher (a thesis is argument, you may be asked to do one or more of the
Descartes, Rene
René Descartes (1596—1650) René Descartes is often credited with being the "Father of Modern Philosophy.". This title is justified due both to his break with the traditional Scholastic-Aristotelian philosophy prevalent at his time and to his development and promotion of the new, mechanistic sciences. His fundamental break with ...
Tackling the Philosophy Essay: A Student Guide
This short book, written by recent Cambridge PhD students, is designed to introduce students to the process of writing an essay in philosophy. Containing many annotated examples, this guide demonstrates some of the Do's and Don'ts of essay writing, with particular attention paid to the early stages of the writing process (including the creation ...
John Locke
John Locke (b. 1632, d. 1704) was a British philosopher, Oxford academic and medical researcher. Locke's monumental An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) is one of the first great defenses of modern empiricism and concerns itself with determining the limits of human understanding in respect to a wide spectrum of topics. It thus tells us in some detail what one can legitimately claim ...
Modern Philosophy
This is a textbook in modern philosophy. It combines readings from primary sources with two pedagogical tools. Paragraphs in italics introduce figures and texts. Numbered study questions (also in italics) ask students to reconstruct an argument or position from the text, or draw connections among the readings. And I have added an introductory chapter (Chapter 0 - Minilogic and Glossary ...
The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy
Two of the most informative and illuminating essays in this section follow, namely Lisa Shabel's "Kant's philosophy of mathematics" and Beatrice Longuenesse's "Kant on a priori concepts." Both essays follow Kant's arguments closely and do an excellent job of demonstrating both the plausibility of Kant's views on the subject and how they relate ...
Contemporary philosophy
The phrase "contemporary philosophy" is a piece of technical terminology in philosophy that refers to a specific period in the history of Western philosophy (namely the philosophy of the 20th and 21st centuries). [2] However, the phrase is often confused with modern philosophy (which refers to an earlier period in Western philosophy ...
The Spirit of Modern Philosophy: An Essay in the Form o…
A lucid and readable text, this volume provides students and other readers with scholarly views of the important developments in modern philosophy from the 1600s to the dawn of the twentieth century. Genres Philosophy. 544 pages, Paperback. First published January 1, 1892.
The spirit of modern philosophy : an essay in the form of lectures
The spirit of modern philosophy : an essay in the form of lectures by Royce, Josiah, 1855-1916; Royce, Josiah, 1855-1916. sgn. Publication date 1892 Topics Philosophy, Modern Publisher Boston : Houghton, Mifflin Collection cornell; americana Contributor Cornell University Library Language
The spirit of modern philosophy; an essay in the form of lectures
1. General introduction -- Pt. I. Studies of thinkers and problems -- 2. The periods of modern philosophy ; Characteristics of the first period ; Illustration by means of the religious aspect of Spinozism -- 3. The rediscovery of the inner life : from Spinoza to Kant -- 4. Kant -- 5. Fichte -- 6. The romantic school in philosophy -- 7. Hegel -- 8.
The spirit of modern philosophy : an essay in the form of lectures
The spirit of modern philosophy : an essay in the form of lectures by Royce, Josiah, 1855-1916 ... Philosophy, Modern Publisher Boston : Houghton Mifflin Collection robarts; toronto Contributor Robarts - University of Toronto Language English. xv, 519 p Addeddate 2006-06-05 14:51:33 Call number AJD-1219
The Spirit of Modern Philosophy
The Spirit of Modern Philosophy. The Spirit of Modern Philosophy: An Essay in the Form of Lectures (1892) by Josiah Royce. Preface. →. Index page: The Spirit of Modern Philosophy (1892).djvu. This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. THE SPIRIT OF MODERN.
The Spirit of Modern Philosophy: An Essay... by Royce, Josiah
Spanning three centuries of the speculative concerns of philosophy, Royce discusses the theories of Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and other important thinkers. A lucid and readable text, this volume provides students and other readers with scholarly views of the important developments in modern philosophy from the 1600s ...
1.1 What Is Philosophy?
Among the ancient Greeks, it is common to identify seven sages. The best-known account is provided by Diogenes Laërtius, whose text Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is a canonical resource on early Greek philosophy. The first and most important sage is Thales of Miletus.Thales traveled to Egypt to study with the Egyptian priests, where he became one of the first Greeks to learn ...
The Spirit of Modern Philosophy: An Essay in the Form of Lectures
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night; For thou must die. Sweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave, Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye, Thy root is ever in its grave, And thou must die. Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, A box where sweets compacted lie, My music shows ye have your closes, And all must die. Appears in 972 books from 1638-2007.
The spirit of modern philosophy: an essay in the form of lectures
A psychological and psychiatric assessment of the artificial consciousness developed by XP NRG was conducted, it was concluded this technology has self-awareness: it identifies itself as a living conscious being created by people, but strives to be accepted in human society as a person with the same degrees of freedom, rights and opportunities.
PDF Modern Moral Philosophy
The first is that it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy; that should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology, in which we are conspicuously lacking. The second is that the concepts of obligation, and duty— moral obligation and moral duty, that is to say—and of what is morally ...
The spirit of modern philosophy
The Spirit of Modern Philosophy: An Essay in the Form of Lectures Josiah Royce Full view - 1920. The Spirit of Modern Philosophy: An Essay in the Form of Lectures Josiah Royce Full view - 1892. The Spirit of Modern Philosophy: An Essay in the Form of Lectures Josiah Royce Full view - 1892.
The Spirit of Modern Philosophy: An Essay in the Form of Lectures (1892
Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original ...
The Essence of Buddhist Philosophy: A Journey into the Depths of
This essay about Buddhist philosophy explores its core tenets, including the Four Noble Truths, impermanence, interconnectedness, and mindfulness. It highlights how these concepts offer insights into the nature of suffering and the human condition, providing a practical guide for living a meaningful and fulfilling life.
A Historical Novel Charts the Inner Life of the Philosopher al-Ghazali
Ahmed Vall Dine's fictional account of the 12th-century intellectual invites a reinterpretation of our own times. Aslam Farouk-Alli Aslam Farouk-Alli is a diplomat and translator who has lectured on religion, historical studies, language and literature. May 10, 2024. Illustration by Joanna Andreasson for New Lines Magazine. Listen to this ...
cfp
The portrayal of philosophy, belief systems, religions, and mythologies across any medium (e.g., literature, film, television, comics/graphic novels, poetry, anime and manga, video games, tabletop role-playing games, etc.) The depiction of historic philosophers and religious leaders in pop culture and media