Abstract
The expression ‘Locke’s religious thinking’ can be taken in two ways, one religious and the other not or not-necessarily so: it may signify either Locke’s religious thoughts or his thoughts about religion. There is no doubt that Locke thought a lot about religion. The question is whether any of these thoughts were religiously meant or motivated. Something like the same distinction can be made concerning Locke’s politics, about which he also thought a lot, and so we may enquire whether any of his thoughts about politics, as well as his political actions and associations, were politically motivated? I count as religiously motivated thoughts ones that are guided by a serious consideration of God, our duty to him, and our future state (these are the main ingredients of Locke’s idea of religion). Such thoughts are often accompanied by expressions of piety. Politically motivated thoughts are, on the other hand, guided by secular interests, some of them partisan or selfish, others not; for example, establishing peace, protecting property, securing offices for oneself or one’s friends, promoting policies, or aiding commerce, and in general thoughts impelled by a desire for the public welfare, institutional integrity, wealth, power, or glory.
This chapter derives from a paper read at a conference held at the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University in April 2005, on the theme ‘Reason, Faith, Politics: John Locke Reexamined’. The lecture has been largely rewritten. When it was nearly complete, I recalled, what I should have had in mind at the outset, that the path I had been following had already been cleared by John Dunn.
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- 1.
Essay, Epistle to the Reader (6): ‘This, Reader, is the Entertainment of those, who let loose their own Thoughts, and follow them in writing’.
- 2.
Essay II. xxvii, 17, 26 (341, 346f); Essay IV. xvi, on the degrees of assent, shows a similar development, there Locke begins with a straightforward account of probable truth which, at the end, he accommodates to account for belief in miracles; more about this will follow, but see also above, the penultimate section of Chap. 2.
- 3.
See my ‘A list of theological places in An Essay concerning Human Understanding’, WR, 244–56.
- 4.
Essay II. xxi; the changes through successive editions of this chapter are transcribed in an apparatus of the critical text (see List of Abbreviations). Some of them are substantial. Yet it is noteworthy, that although he may have revised his idea of free agency, Locke was reluctant to discard any of his text, preferring to relocate it and adding new in its place.
- 5.
Essay II. xxi. 70 (281). The idea of a ‘rational Creature’ in pursuit of happiness complements the idea of a forensic self, one capable of following a rule, in this instance a rule and the ‘bare possibility’ of what obedience to it will secure against the attraction of an immediate concrete object of desire.
- 6.
Essay II. xxi. 56 (270).
- 7.
For Locke’s earliest surviving writings on this subject, see John Locke, Two Tracts of Government, ed. Philip Abrams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967).
- 8.
A critical edition of the 1667 Essay together with drafts and additions appears in Toleration, 269–315; I have benefited from the editors’ historical introduction to the text, 11–52.
- 9.
Toleration, 270.
- 10.
Tolerantia, 58–59.
- 11.
Tolerantia, 53.
- 12.
Tolerence, 269–71.
- 13.
As J. R. and Philip Milton have observed, the aim of Locke’s policy of toleration is to secure freedom of religion for individuals and not liberty of conscience; see Toleration, 37.
- 14.
Hobbes, Leviathan, I. xiv.4. I owe this insight to Tim Stanton. On Locke’s opposition to moral autonomy, see J. R. and Philip Milton’s comments, Toleration, 45.
- 15.
Toleration, 288, also 279, 287.
- 16.
Toleration, 272–73.
- 17.
Toleration, 273.
- 18.
Toleration, 289.
- 19.
Toleration, 290: ‘As to promoteing the welfare of the Kingdome which consists in riches & power, to this most immediately conduces the number & industry of your subjects.’ On the significance of the use of the second person here, see Ibid. 49.
- 20.
Toleration, 297–98.
- 21.
(659).
- 22.
See ‘Law’, MS Locke c. 28, fo.141: ‘The original and foundation of all law is dependency. A dependent intelligent being is under the power and direction and dominion of him on whom he depends and must be for the ends appointed him by that superior being. If man were independent he could have no law but his own will, no end but himself. He would be a god to himself, and the satisfaction of his own will the sole measure and end of all his actions.’ Cited by John Dunn in Western Political Theory in the Face of the Future (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 41–42. From this, Dunn suggests, with tongue in cheek, that Locke without his religious convictions, his other beliefs remaining the same, would more likely have ended up ‘a morally anarchic exponent of individual self-creation, a somewhat doleful Nietzschean’. But this is to concede what Dunn does only for the sake of argument, that Locke was an egoist and individualist, which he was not.
- 23.
Toleration, 308. See also Tolerantia, 134–35; here another argument is added which in the 1667 Essay was used against Roman Catholics: ‘… a man who by his atheism undermines and destroys all religion cannot in the name of religion claim the privilege of toleration for himself’.
- 24.
In The Reasonableness of Christianity, Locke provides a theological argument that complements this prudential policy of toleration. Here he establishes the great proposition that all that is required for solidarity among Christians is that they accept Christ as their King and sincerely endeavour to obey him, while it is the duty of every Christian privately to progress towards a consummate faith.
- 25.
This account of Locke’s liberalism is in accord with John Dunn’s; see Dunn, Western Political Theory, ch. 2, esp. 40–42. For a discussion of institutional character of the Enlightenment in England, see J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999–2008) i. 7 and passim.
- 26.
Sir Robert Filmer, Patriarcha, first published London, 1680; modern edition, Filmer: Patriarcha and Other Writings, ed. Johann P. Somerville (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
- 27.
Two Treatises, I. ii. 7 (145) I. iii. 2 (152), I. iv. 29, 30 (161f), I. v. 44, 48 (171f., 174) I. vi. 60–64 (183–87) and passim.
- 28.
Two Treatises, II. 82 (339).
- 29.
Two Treatises, II. ii. 4–8 (269–72).
- 30.
Reasonableness, 5; WR, 91.
- 31.
Essay II. ii. 12 (274f); Reasonableness, 13; WR, 96.
- 32.
Two Treatises II. ii. 11 (292).
- 33.
Essay IV. xiv. 2 (652).
- 34.
The Book of English Collects, ed. John Wallace Suter (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1940), 285, 481.
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Nuovo, V. (2011). Locke’s Religious Thinking and His Politics. In: Christianity, Antiquity, and Enlightenment. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 203. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0274-5_10
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