The Politics of John Locke’s Ethics of Belief

Abstract

An “ethics of belief” encompasses the norms that govern the formation, maintenance, and relinquishment of beliefs, and also the nature and the ground of those norms. According to John Locke’s ethics of belief, one is morally obligated to form one’s beliefs only on the evidence and to hold one’s beliefs with a tenacity that is directly proportional to the strength of the evidence, “evidence” here being the objective probability that one’s beliefs are true. This study is an investigation into the enabling grounds of Locke’s ethics of belief: What philosophical reasons enabled Locke to propose such practices of belief formation as morally obligatory? What conception of the human condition enabled Locke to propose such practices as practicable in the ethical order?The scholarship treating Locke’s ethics of belief has confined itself entirely to Locke’s An Essay concerning Human Understanding, where Locke articulates his ethics of belief. The scholarship is in agreement: An Essay provides no philosophical justification, and it was proposed as a palliative to the religious crises of the seventeenth century. Against this trend, the author argues that the philosophical justification is to be found in the natural law theory of Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, and that it was proposed as fully consistent with the human condition, Locke’s conception of which is expressed piecemeal throughout An Essay and the Two Treatises of Government. In the first chapter, the author examines An Essay. He argues that the philosophical justification should belong to the “demonstrative morality” that Locke in An Essay claimed was possible. In the second, he sets Locke’s ethics of belief in the context of those of Hugo Grotius, René Descartes, and Blaise Pascal. Using these thinkers as points of contrast, the author argues that Locke’s ethics of belief was deemed practicable, because the moral law was held to be clear or readily accessible to the unaided human intellect. In the third chapter, the author argues that An Essay’s demonstrative morality is the natural law of the Second Treatise, and that the supposed clarity of the moral law corresponds to descriptions of conditions of epistemic clarity in the Two Treatises. In the fourth chapter, the author extracts from the natural law theory of the Second Treatise the philosophical justification of Locke’s ethics of belief. The natural law of the Second Treatise grants individuals executive power, but it grants executive power with certain “terms of use.” These terms of use require practices of belief formation that mirrors the ethics of belief that Locke articulates in An Essay. The author therefore concludes that the Second Treatise’s natural law theory mandates An Essay’s ethics of belief.

Philosophy

Epistemology

Political science

Ethics of Belief, Evidentialism, John Locke, Natural Law

Philosophy

Degree Awarded: Ph.D. Philosophy. The Catholic University of America