Recent Studies in Locke

Abstract

LocKE'S writings have lately received some extensive coverage at the hands of Cambridge University Press and Allen and Unwinl-extensive rather than comprehensive if only because his epistemological theory is largely, though certainly not entirely, ignored. The emphasis lies rather upon his educational, economic, and political contributions. When one considers the enormous amount of extant literature concerned exclusively with the Essay, such emphasis seems not untimely. One of the more original contributions to the general corpus is contained in the collection of essays edited by John Yolton. In this paper,2 Hans Aarsleff devotes some careful attention to the problem of how knowledge of natural law is achieved-a problem to some extent highlighted in recent years by the publication of the hitherto unknown Essays on the Law of Nature. In the fourth of these essays, Locke had maintained that the law of nature could be perceived by means of the light of nature which, in turn, amounted to the combined functioning of reason and the senses. But this turned out to be far more complex than the terminology suggested: our senses provide us with knowledge of the world, sufficient in itself to warrant the inference to a designer, which is God; and our knowledge of the content of natural law is parasitic upon prior knowledge of God's intentions. This was both a cumbersome and an intellectualist account, and for that reason obviously not capable of explaining how 'most men' (and all men in principle) come by their knowledge of natural law. Aarsleff argues that the ultimate answer to this epistemological difficulty is to be found, in its most complete form, in the second edition of the Essay, and more particularly in Locke's hedonism. The truth of the matter is, if Aarsleff is correct, that our experience of, and reflection upon, pleasure and pain (forms of punishment and reward) provide us more directly with the requisite knowledge; for pleasure and pain have the effect of inducing and inhibiting certain forms of action respectively. This view also requires the religious hypothesis, since only in a Godordered world can one take pleasure and pain to be the infallible guides they are claimed to be; but this interpretation of Locke does have the merit of rendering natural law more readily and universally accessible. There is in fact a reference to this function of pleasure and pain in the fourth of the Essays on the Law of Nature, but it appears to be an isolated occurrence and suggests that at this stage Locke had not fully developed this line of thought. It remains remarkable, certainly, that the whole matter receives no explicit mention in the Second Treatise (where one would perhaps most expect to see the argument deployed), but here one can only suppose that he has taken it for granted. At any rate, Aarsleff's carefully documented analysis is persuasive, and leaves little room for doubt as to what Locke's intentions were. It is noticeable that there is no acknowledgement of the connection between Locke's hedonism and the knowability of natural law in Professor Seliger's equally scholarly work; and, perhaps as a result, Seliger spends much time defending the claim that for Locke natural law was at least partially knowable by all men. The defence is primarily directed against Richard R. Cox and Leo Strauss both of whom suggest that Locke is not convinced of the knowability of natural law. 3 There is no doubt that