Qualities, Powers, and Bare Powers in Locke

Abstract

Lisa Downing focuses on the important issue of the metaphysics of Locke’s primary–secondary qualities distinction. In recent years this has returned as a topic of scholarly contention. Downing is concerned by the anti-realist trends in recent work on the metaphysics of Locke primary–secondary qualities distinction, and she is keen to defend the claims that Locke was ‘putting forward a kind of realism about secondary qualities’ and that his realism does not readily appear to be a reductive form of realism. Downing begins with the traditional claim that Locke’s distinction was driven by his understanding of matter theory within the new science, like many others in the seventeenth century. From this perspective, she criticizes recent work on the nature and priority of primary qualities, which fail to root the primary in a metaphysical base or connect them to the metaphysical base in the wrong way. Next, she turns toward explaining her own understanding of the subordinate status of the secondary qualities, which brings Downing to Locke’s claim that secondary qualities are ‘mere powers’ and what this meant metaphysically to him.