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Fools and Knaves: Reflections on Locke's Theory of Philosophical Discourse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Michael P. Zuckert
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Extract

Ever since Leo Strauss and C. B. Macpherson, at almost the same moment, challenged the received view of Locke with their novel interpretations of his political philosophy, the question of how Locke wrote, and therefore of how he is to be read, has been prominent in most discussions of Locke. Strauss brought the issue to the fore by arguing the thesis that Locke engaged in “esoteric writing,” that is, that he intentionally said things he did not believe and sometimes withheld things he did, for the purpose of securing both his own safety and the greater likelihood of success of his philosophic project. Needless to say for so bold a claim, the Strauss thesis has not gone unopposed. Sharp issue has been taken both with the claim about Locke's esotericism and more substantively with the philosophic position Strauss attributes to Locke. It is clear that the two issues are intimately connected: the kind of “Locke” one finds depends to a very great extent on the kind of hermeneutical principles one adopts in approaching his work.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , October 1974 , pp. 544 - 564
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1974

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References

1 Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago, 1954), pp. 202–51Google Scholar;Macpherson, C. B., The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford, 1954); pp. 194–262Google Scholar. For the received opinion, see for example, Sabine, George, A History of Political Theory (New York, 1959), pp. 523–40Google Scholar.

2 See the critique of the Strauss thesis and the alternate interpretive principles put forward and their relation to the substantive understanding of Locke's treatises in Seliger, M., The Liberal Politics of John Locke (New York, 1968)Google Scholar and Dunn, John, The Political Thought of John Locke (Cambridge, 1968)Google Scholar. A recent treatment inspired by this thought is Kendall's, Willmoore “John Locke Revisited,” Intercollegiate Review, II, no. 4 (01–02, 1966), 217–34Google Scholar.

3 Givner, David A., “Scientific Preconceptions in Locke's Philosophy of Language,” Journal of the History of Ideas, XXIII (1962), 340CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Locke, John, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Yolton, John (New York: Everyman's Library, 1965)Google Scholar, Bk. III, chap. X, sec. 5—hereafter cited as III ECHU x 5, for example.

5 III ECHU x 34.

6 III ECHU xi 1, 5. Emphasis supplied. A good beginning discussion of the relation between language and society in Locke is Colie, Rosalie, “The Social Language of John Locke: A Study in the History of Ideas,” Journal of British Studies, VI, no. 2 (05, 1965), 29–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 III ECHU ix 8.

8 III ECHU x 6.

9 Ryle, Gilbert, “John Locke on the Human Understanding,” in Locke and Berkeley, A Collection of Critical Essays, eds. Martin, C. B. and Armstrong, D. M. (New York, 1968), pp. 14–39, esp. pp. 16–25Google Scholar. One might compare also II ECHU xii 4 where Locke speaks of the “novelty” of his use of the term “mode,” something of a violation of his rules. Also, Leibnitz, G. W., New Essays on the Human Understanding, III iii15Google Scholar, on Locke on “nominal essence.” Also, O'Connor, D. J., John Locke (New York, 1967), p. 183Google Scholar, on the novelty and inconsistency of Locke on “knowledge.”

10 Colie, , “Social Language,” 30–31Google Scholar.

11 Ashcraft, Richard, “Locke's State of Nature: Historical Fact or Moral Fiction,” American Political Science RevieW, LXII, no. 3 (09, 1968), 898–915CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Aarsleff, Hans, “The State of Nature and the Nature of Man,” in John Locke: Problems and Perspectives, ed. Yolton, John (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 99–101Google Scholar.

13 Seliger, , Politics, pp. 82–83Google Scholar; also, Dunn, Political Thought, ch. 9.

14 III ECHU ix 2, 3.

15 III ECHU ix 5.

16 III ECHU ix 6, 7.

17 III ECHU ix 5. The “standard” to which Locke refers is, of course, a “real existence” outside the mind, “in nature.”

18 III ECHU ix 13.

19 III ECHU ix 8, 17.

20 III ECHU ix 9.

21 III ECHU ix 17; also, III ECHU ix 24. See Quine, W. V. O., Word and Object (Cambridge, 1960), pp. 29Google Scholar and passim.

22 III ECHU x 4.

23 III ECHU xi 9.

24 Cf. esp. II ECHU xx, xxi.

25 III ECHU x 4, 34.

26 III ECHU x 18, 20.

27 III ECHU xi 10. Cf. ix 8, 14, 15, 16, 20; x 10, 22, 28; xi 3, 24.

28 III ECHU ix 3. Cf. x 16; xi 3, 24.

29 III ECHU x 5.

30 III ECHU x 8, 9.

31 The parody of the opening of Aristotle's Metaphysics in the first section of the Essay shows as well as anything Locke's stance toward theoria.

Aristotle: “All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things.” Metaphysics 980 at 20–27.

I ECHU: “The understanding, like the eye, whilst it makes us see and perceive all things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires arts and pains to set it at a distance and make it its object.”

32 III ECHU x 9, 13. Locke's suggestion as to the character of the by interests is certainly ungracious and reflects perhaps worse on him than on those of whom he speaks. This suggestion is not, I believe, Locke's last word on the subject of the by-interest of the philosophers, however. A better sense of Locke's deeper thought on the by-interest would come from comparing III ECHU x 20 and the discussion at note 37 below.

33 In the context of the claim that all public discourse is more or less civil, one ought to compare Strauss's correct observation in Natural Right and History (p. 220) that Locke identifies the Two Treatises of Government as civil discourse. Peter Laslett's objection to Strauss's point (in his introduction to his edition of the Two Treatises, p. 85 n.) rests on a clear misreading of the relevant Lockean texts and perhaps as well of Strauss's point. For the pertinent Lockean texts, see Two Treatises of Government, Bk. II, sec. 52., and the passages cited above at note 27, and those surrounding them in the Essay.

34 III ECHU ix 9; x 29.

35 III ECHU x 16. Cf. ix 18: “Which must needs produce mistakes and disputes, when they are made use of in discourses, wherein men have to do with universal propositions, and would settle in their minds universal truths, and consider the consequences that follow from them” with ix 3 where Locke defines the task of philosophic communication. He seems to suggest that the problem ultimately lies in the definition of the philosophic task itself.

36 III ECHU xi 26. Cf. also the reference in xi 27 to a “designed fallacy.”

37 III ECHU x 10.

38 II ECHU xxviii 10 (Fraser, ed., 1st ed).

39 III ECHU xi 26. Just how much of Locke's thought on discourse the rules and the discussion surrounding them abstract from can be seen in capsule form by comparing the following censorious passage regarding men's use of mixed-mode words with his earlier extenuating remarks, at note 20 above:

[Mixed modes] being combinations of several ideas that the mind of man has arbitrarily put together, without reference to any archetypes, men may, if they please exactly know the ideas that go into each composition, and so both use these words in a certain and undoubted signification, and perfectly declare, when there is occasion, what they stand for. This, if well considered, would lay great blame on those who make not their discourses about moral things very clear and distinct. For since the precise signification of the names of mixed modes, or, which is all one, the real essence of each species is to be known, they being not of nature's but man's making, it is a great negligence and perverseness to discourse of moral things with uncertainty and obscurity (III ECHU xi 15).