Locke on the guise of the good

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the first edition of the Essay, Locke argued that we pursue whatever course of action we judge to be the best option available to us at the time. In other words, we always act under the guise of the good. Faced with empirical counter-examples, in the second edition he renounced this view in favor of a complex psychology involving desire and suspension. That we may not be motivated by the apparent good is a way in which we diverge from ideal rationality. But although determination by the good becomes aspirational in the second edition and later, Locke has not abandoned the guise of the good altogether. We may not always pursue what we see as good after mature deliberation, but we do always pursue what we see as good at the moment of action, under the influences of habit, emotion, and perspectival distortion.