Abstract
From the fourteenth century onwards, the question of Cicero’s philosophical commitments—was he a Stoic or an academic sceptic?—was considered to carry very real implications for a just understanding of religion, morality, justice and human nature. One reason why the correct interpretation of Cicero’s philosophy was accorded such importance by Christian apologists was because, living shortly before Christ’s coming and summarising the insights gleaned by the heathen (Greek and Roman) philosophical schools, Cicero might show how far reason could ‘get’ in the absence of revelation. For John Locke, as for Erasmus, Cicero’s unique insight was that human reason could not establish man’s true end and purpose—in classical philosophical parlance, the summum bonum—with dogmatic certainty: this showed where Christ’s revelation had enlarged exponentially upon human knowledge. The importance place of Cicero in Locke’s thinking alerts us to his preoccupation with the vexed relationship between reason and revelation as the two sources of our knowledge. Locke, as this chapter indicates, turned to the heathen world in order to evaluate the nature and significance of the Christian revelation for mankind’s grasp of moral truths.
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Notes
- 1.
Locke to (Isaiah Ward?), Aug. 1659; and to (Samuel Tilly?), Sept. 1659, in Correspondence of Locke, i, pp. 28–29; 98–99.
- 2.
The National Archives, Shaftesbury Papers, 30/24/47/33 (c. 1661–2). The entry is in Latin; the translation is Goldie’s (Locke: Political Essays, p. 209).
- 3.
Cited in the editor’s foreword to An Essay concerning Human Understanding, p. xix; and see, too, Locke’s comments regarding ‘The History of this Essay’ in EHU, ‘Epistle to the Reader’, p. 7. All citations from the Essay will be provided in parentheses in the text, in the following format: (Bk. Ch. Para.).
- 4.
A question which continued to preoccupy theologians and philosophers throughout the seventeenth century, as the example of Leibniz indicates: Marenbon, Pagans and Philosophers.
- 5.
For Erasmus’s particular veneration for Cicero’s moral philosophy, see Rabil, ‘Cicero and Erasmus’. Erasmus is the subject of Chap. 2 in this volume, by Brian Cummings.
- 6.
Locke to Thomas Herbert, earl of Pembroke, 28 Nov. 1684, in Correspondence of Locke, ii, pp. 661–66 (italics added).
- 7.
Locke, Reasonableness of Christianity [1695], in Nuovo (ed.), Writings on Religion, p. 200.
- 8.
TNA 30/24/47/2, f. 49v (‘De Arte Medica’). An accurate transcription can be found in Walmsley, ‘Locke’s Natural Philosophy’, pp. 232–39.
- 9.
For discussion, see Levitin, Ancient Wisdom.
- 10.
Essays on the Law of Nature [1663–1664], [lect.] V: p. 173; cf. III: p. 151. Locke’s lectures were delivered in his capacity as Censor of Moral Philosophy at Christ Church, Oxford.
- 11.
On the divisions in the Christian natural law tradition between these two explanations of the origins of law, see Bouwsma, ‘Two faces’; Kraye, ‘Moral philosophy’; and Oakley, Natural Law.
- 12.
Tuck, ‘“Modern” tradition’; and idem, Natural Rights Theories.
- 13.
Grotius , Rights of War and Peace [1625], i, ‘Preliminary Discourse’, §XI, p. 89.
- 14.
Pufendorf, On the Duty of Man and Citizen [1673], p. 8 (italics added); cf. De Jure Naturae [1672], p. 224.
- 15.
Reasonableness of Christianity, pp. 195–96; 203–4; 196.
- 16.
For the ancient origins of this philosophical doctrine, see Obbink, ‘“What all men believe”’.
- 17.
For Grotius’s debt to Quintilian’s rhetorical method in De Inventione, see Straumann, Roman Law, Ch. 3.
- 18.
Locke , ELN, V: p. 175. The reference to Varro is drawn from Augustine’s discussion in City of God, 19.1, pp. 909–14. (Augustine actually specified that Varro had identified 288 different theories regarding the supreme good.)
- 19.
Ibid.
- 20.
For the full complexity and ambition of Cudworth’s undertaking, see Levitin, Ancient Wisdom, pp. 86–90, 171–80, 355–68, 418–27, 509–13.
- 21.
The motto of the Royal Society was, after all, nullius in verba.
- 22.
Locke , ELN, VI: p. 177; II: pp. 123, 127, 129 (italics added).
- 23.
For the productive intellectual consequences of earlier readings of Cicero as an academic sceptic, see Schmidt, Cicero Scepticus. For the development of academic scepticism in the Hellenistic world, see Long, Hellenistic Philosophy, pp. 88–106, 229–31.
- 24.
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 1.4.11–13. Locke later transcribed this passage into his journal: Bodleian Library, MS Locke Film 77, p. 93 (1698).
- 25.
Cicero, De Republica, 3.22 (italics added). Von Leyden notes Locke’s debt to De Republica in ELN, p. 127 n. 4. Rivers observes how commonly this passage was drawn upon in early modern theological and moral discussion: Reason, Grace and Sentiment, i, pp. 60–61.
- 26.
As noted by Colman, ‘Locke’s empiricist theory’, p. 119.
- 27.
Locke , ELN, II: pp. 133–35; cf. IV: pp. 155–57.
- 28.
Cicero, De Legibus, 1.9.26.
- 29.
Academica, 2.3.7–8. From the mid-seventeenth century an interest in probable reasoning occupies an increasingly central place across a range of disciplinary discourses: see Batsaki, Mukherji and Schramm (eds.), Fictions of Knowledge; Daston, Classical Probability; Hacking, Emergence; Shapiro, Probability and Certainty; and Tuck, Natural Rights Theories, pp. 101–18.
- 30.
Academica, 2.3.7–8.
- 31.
De Officiis, 1.4.13.
- 32.
Academica, 2.3.8. For a similar statement of probability as sufficient to guide ‘the wise man’ in all his actions, see De Natura Deorum, 1.5.12.
- 33.
Locke , ELN, III: p. 142.
- 34.
For Locke’s reverence for this work, see Marshall, Religion and Responsibility, pp. 157–204, 292–326; and Mitsis, ‘Locke’s offices’.
- 35.
De Officiis, 1.4.12–13; 1.35.126–28; 1.40.143; 2.6.19–31; 2.8.30; 3.28.101.
- 36.
Augustine , City of God, 5.14, p. 213.
- 37.
Locke , Some Thoughts, §185, p. 239.
- 38.
The inverted commas indicate an acceptance of Richard Serjeantson’s insight that ‘epistemology’ is an anachronistic category, and that Locke’s Essay most clearly sits within the field of semiotics: ‘Genre of Locke’s Essay’.
- 39.
For a very similar statement, see MS Locke c.28, f. 113r (1693).
- 40.
For this exchange, see Stewart, ‘Stillingfleet’.
- 41.
Locke , ELN, I: pp. 111–12; cf. II: p. 123.
- 42.
See, for example, Locke to Molyneux, 20 September 1692, in Correspondence of Locke, iv, pp. 522–25 (italics added): ‘Though by the view I had of moral ideas, whilst I was considering that subject, I thought I saw morality might be demonstratively made out, yet whether I am able so to make it out is another question. Every one could not have demonstrated what Mr. Newton’s book hath shewn to be demonstrable […]’. This is, of course, a tacit admission by Locke that he had failed to do so in the Essay, published three years previously. Newton himself later accused Locke of a dangerous ethical relativism on account of precisely this failure: Newton to Locke , 16 September 1693, in Correspondence of Locke, iv, pp. 727–28.
- 43.
This point is well treated by Dawson, Locke and Language.
- 44.
Tusculan Disputations, 1.32.78.
- 45.
Here Locke is paraphrasing Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 1.9.17: ‘further than likelihood as I see it I cannot get […]. Certainty will be for those who say such things can be known and who claim wisdom for themselves’.
- 46.
Locke , Second Reply (1697), in Works of Locke, iii, pp. 488–89.
- 47.
Ibid., p. 489 (Locke cites 2 Tim. 1:10).
- 48.
Locke , Reasonableness, p. 200.
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Stuart-Buttle, T. (2018). Locke’s Cicero: Between Moral Knowledge and Faith. In: Mukherji, S., Stuart-Buttle, T. (eds) Literature, Belief and Knowledge in Early Modern England. Crossroads of Knowledge in Early Modern Literature, vol 1. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71359-5_12
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