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Toleration and the Skeptical Inquirer in Locke1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Sam Black
Sam Black*
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, CanadaVSA 156
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Extract

It is a noteworthy achievement of Western liberal democracies that they have largely relinquished the use of force against citizens whose lifestyles offend their members’ sensibilities, or alternatively which violate their members’ sense of truth. Toleration has become a central virtue in our public institutions. Powerful majorities are given over to restraint. They do not, by and large, expect the state to crush eccentrics, nonconformists, and other uncongenial minorities in their midst. What precipitated this remarkable evolution in our political culture?

The road to toleration originates in the debates provoked by religious dissent in the early modem period. This road was paved in part by a grudging appreciation of the necessity for pragmaticaccommodation. The wars of religion that had devastated the Continent educated the political classes about the costs of persecution. A policy of state-imposed religious intolerance was widely understood to be imprudent.

In the early modem period there occurs, however, a shift in the arguments adduced in support of the duty of toleration.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , December 1998 , pp. 473 - 504
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1998

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References

2 But see footnote #36 for discussion of some commentators who reject the connection between liberalism and skepticism in Locke.

3 The impact of metaphysical naturalism on ethics is what Putnam, Hilary mistakenly refers to as the classical or traditional source of moral skepticism. See his Realism With A Human Face (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1990) chap. 9Google Scholar; and The Many Faces of Realism (La Salle, IL: Open Court 1987) chap. 1. Compare McDowell, John ‘Virtue and Reason,’ The Monist 62, 3 (1979) 331–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar (346 for the impact of ‘Philistine’ science on ethics); and Taylor, Charles Philosophical Arguments (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1995), 38Google Scholar; see also his The Sources of the Self (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press 1989), 56-8. For more on Taylor, and his critics see my review of Philosophical Arguments and my Philosophy in the Age of Pluralism, The Philosophical Review 106, 3 (1997) 455–61Google Scholar.

4 There are some antecedents for understanding Locke as being influenced by classical skepticism. Woolhouse, Roger maintains that there are important links between the Pyrrhonian skeptical tradition and Locke's philosophy as a whole, while placing Locke in the tradition of constructive skepticism. See his Locke (Brighton: Harvester Press 1983), 11–14Google Scholar. For a discussion of Locke's ethics as an attempt to combat Pyrrhonian skepticism see Schneewind, J.B. ‘Locke's Moral Philosophy,’ in Chappell, V. ed., The Cambridge Companion to Locke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1994) 199–225CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I believe that Pyrrhonism exerted greater influence over Hobbes than Locke for reasons recounted in section III. For more on Hobbes, see my ‘Science and Skepticism in Hobbes,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 27 (1997) 173–207Google Scholar. M. Jamie Ferreira argues (correctly) that Locke represents a departure from the tradition of constructive skepticism, but proceeds to discount the crucial role which episternic skepticism does continue to play in Locke's philosophy, and his ethical theory in particular. See his Scepticism and Reasonable Doubt (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1986) chap. 1.

5 An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Nidditch, P.H. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1975)Google Scholar, IV.2.14, 537f. All subsequent references to the Essay are to this edition. Locke also makes finer discriminations between three different grades of certainty. The most certain propositions are those in which two representations can be directly compared for their agreement. An example is the belief that black is not white. Locke calls this intuitive knowledge. Next comes the certainty which attaches to propositions that are inferred through valid rules. Locke terms this demonstrative knowledge. The least certain form of knowledge is what he calls sensible knowledge. This is the knowledge that the objects which cause our ideas or perception actually exist in the world. According to Locke, we know that these objects exist over time when we perceive them in a continuous and unbroken manner. We cannot, however, know anything about their natures. Propositions which do not fall into these classes are only known to a probability. They comprise what Locke calls faith or opinion. The contrast gets qualified later when Locke suggests that certain matters of faith are beyond both certainty and probability. See Essay, N.17.23, 687.

6 See his Locke, 88-90; 125; 129. See, further, Essay, ID.6.6-26, 442-53.

7 Essay, N.2.2, 532

8 Essay, IV.3.23-5, 554-6; IV.12.9-10, 644-5. For more discussion see Ayers, Michael Locke: Epistemology and Ontology (London and New York: Routledge 1991) Vol. II, 58fGoogle Scholar.

9 For examples of Locke's departures from the common-sense view of knowledge, see Essay, IV.ll.9, 635; IV.15.5-6, 656-7; IV.16.6-8, 661-2. For instances of empirical knowledge, see IV.3.21, 553 and IV.11.9, 635.

10 Essay, IV.10.1-19, 619-30

11 On (ii) God's attributes, Essay, IV.10.4, 620 and IV.10.12, 625. On (iii) the duty of worship, ‘Every one that hath a true Idea of God and Worship, will assent to this Proposition, That GOD is to be worshiped…. And every rational Man, that hath not thought on it to day, may be ready to assent to this Proposition tomorrow’ (1.4.19, 96). On (iv) obedience to God, ‘having the Idea of GOD and myself, of Fear and Obedience, I cannot but be sure that GOD is to be feared and obeyed by me: And this Proposition will be certain concerning Man in general’ (IV.11.13, 638; see also IV.13.3, 651. So (ii) and (iii) follow from (i) the idea of God, provided that the following premises are added: that (a) people have the requisite concepts of ‘Fear,’ ‘Man,’ ‘Obedience,’ etc., and (b) make logical inferences from their beliefs. On (v) God having given us a law of nature, ‘That God has given a Rule whereby Men should govern themselves, I think there is no body so brutish to deny’ (11.28.8, 352). On the knowable character of that law by natural reason, ‘I think they equally forsake the Truth, who running into the contrary extreams, either affirm an innate Law, or deny that there is a Law, knowable by the light of Nature; i.e. without the help of positive Revelation’ (1.3.13, 75). The fact that people affirm the law of nature is consequently more than a contingent feature of human psychology, or the product of mere habit and tradition. No one is so brutish to deny that there is a law of nature because that proposition is true and demonstrable. It is ‘knowable’ by all agents who make logical inferences from propositions that are self-evidently true. On the dependence of the moral law and the knowledge of God more generally, see IV.10.7, 622. William Spellman describes the ‘minimal creed’ that was affirmed by many broad churchmen with whom Locke was close. According to Spellman, this canon was set out by Lord Herbert of Cherbury, in his De Veritatae (1627). Locke's views differ slightly, however, from Herbert's in their content. It should also be noted that Locke explicitly rejects Herbert's argument for the innate character of religious knowledge (13.15-27, 77f.). See Spellman, W.M. John Locke and the Problem of Depravity (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1988), 82, 129Google Scholar. On the minimalist aspect of Locke's creed compare Ayers, Michael Locke: Epistemology and Ontology (London and New York: Routledge 1991) Vol. I, 120–1Google Scholar.

12 ‘Through the works of nature, in every part of them, sufficiently evidence a Deity; yet the world made so little use of their reason, that they saw him not, where, even by impression of himself, he was easy to be found …. In this state of darkness and ignorance of the true God, vice and superstition held the world. Nor could any help be had or hoped for from reason; which could not be heard, and was judged to have nothing to do in the case; the priests, every where, to secure their empire, having excluded reason from having any thing to do in religion. And in the crowd of wrong notions, and invented rites, the world had almost lost the sight of the only true God. The rational and thinking part of mankind, it is true, when they sought after him, they found the one supreme, invisible God; but if they acknowledged and worshipped him, it was only in their own minds …. Hence we see, that reason, speaking ever so clearly to the wise and virtuous, had never authority enough to prevail on the multitude…’ (The Reasonableness of Christianity, in Collected Works (Aaken: Scientia Verlag 1963) Vol. VII, 135. All subsequent references to the Collected Works and The Reasonableness of Christianity refer to this edition.

13 ‘But natural religion, in its full extent, was nowhere, that I know, taken care of, by the force of natural reason. It should seem, by the little that has hitherto been done in it, that it is too hard a task for unassisted reason to establish morality in all its parts, upon its true foundation, with a clear and convincing light. And it is at least a surer and shorter way, to the apprehension of the vulgar, and mass of mankind, that one manifestly sent from God … should … tell them their duties, and require their obedience, than to leave it to the long and sometimes intricate deductions of reason, to be made out to them’ (The Reasonableness of Christianity, 139).

14 On these Heathens, Locke writes that: ‘The same spark of the divine nature and knowledge in man, which making him a man, shewed him the law he was under as a man; shewed him also the way of atoning the merciful, kind, compassionate Author and Father of him and his being, when he had transgressed that law’ (The Reasonableness of Christianity, 133). As Woolhouse notes, the Cambridge Platonists, including Whlchcote, More, and Cudworth, also did not believe that revelation was essential for salvation. See his Locke, 144.

15 Essay, IV.3.18, 549-50. For more on essences in ethics and mathematics, IV.4.7-9, 565-7.

16 Second Treatise of Government, in Two Treatises of Government, Laslett, P. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1990), chap. 2, #6, 271Google Scholar. Subsequent references to this work are to this edition. Compare Essay, IV.3.18, 549.

17 These duties include (i) respecting rights of property such that theft and murder are always proscribed, as is cheating a man out of his property; (ii) holding certain sentiments, including reverence and fear of the Deity, tender affection for parents, love of one's neighbor, etc.; (iii) imperfect duties including the showing of outward worship for the deity, the feeding of the hungry, relief of persons in distress; (iv) abstaining from saying things that will harm another's reputation (Essays On the Laws of Nature, Leyden, W. von ed. [Oxford: Clarendon Press 1954], 195)Google Scholar.

18 ‘Indeed, they [mankind] all agreed in the duties of natural religion, and we find them by common consent owning that piety and virtue, clean hands, and a pure heart, not polluted with the breaches of the law of nature, was the best worship of the gods. Reason discovered to them that a good life was the most acceptable thing to the Deity; this the common light of nature put past doubt’ (Third Letter On Toleration, in Collected Works, Vol. 6, 156-7).

19 A First Letter Concerning Toleration, Works, Vol. VI, 10 & 42-4

20 See generally, The Second Treatise of Government, chaps. 5-7.

21 The Second Treatise of Government, chap. 9, #123-7, 350-2

22 The Law of War and Peace, Kelsey, F.W. trans. (London: Hyperion 1993), 1.1.12, 42Google Scholar

23 Compare the aforementioned passages from The Essay, IV.11.13, 638 and IV.13.3, 651, where Locke refers to the generic attitude of ‘Fear’ in his derivation of the ultra-minimal creed. I thank Colin Macleod for pressing me on this point.

24 For references to property rights in The Letter, see note# 19.

25 Letter, on conviction, 11, 29-39, 40; on Princely fallibility, 12, 25.

26 Proast's objections are rehearsed at considerable length by Locke in the Second and Third Letters oil Tolcration in his Collected Works, Vol. VI. On the Augustinian tradition from which Proast draws in advocating religious intolerance see Goldie, Mark ‘The Theory of Religious Intolerance in Restoration England,’ in Grell, O.P. et al., eds., From Persecution to Toleration (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1991) 331–68, esp. 362CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Second Letter, Works, Vol. VI, 70, 74-7

28 Second Letter, 102-11

29 Third Letter, Works, Vol. VI, 144-5 (my emphasis). Locke rearticulates this skepticism later in the Third Letter: ‘For what greater advantage can be given them [the skeptics], than to teach, that one may know the true religion? thereby putting into their hands a right to demand it to be demonstrated to them, that the Christian religion is true, and bringing on the professors of its a necessity of doing it’ (415). Note Locke's care to make explicit that the Christian religion, and not the ultra-minimal creed, is undemonstrable.

30 Letter, 11, 23

31 Letter, 47

32 Locke, John A Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity, Works, Vol. VII, 161Google Scholar. Compare: ‘And for the toleration of corrupt manners, and the debaucheries of life, neither our author [Proast] nor I do plead for it; but say it is properly the magistrate's business by punishments to restrain and suppress them. I do not therefore blame your zeal against atheism and Epicurism…’ (Third Letter, Works, Vol. VI, 416). Locke plainly believes that atheism involves some sort of objective failing that far exceeds the failings of other sectarians.

33 Letter, 52

34 I am grateful to an anonymous referee from this journal for bringing the following three potential misunderstandings to my attention.

35 Thus, in the case where the Prince neglects rights of property Locke is prepared to advocate active resistance (Second Treatise of Government, chap. 18, #202, 400-1).

36 In rejecting the importance of skepticism for Locke's views on toleration, Jeremy Waldron writes: ‘nor was it [the argument for toleration) based on any suspicion, however slight, that at the last trump the sects that he proposed to tolerate might turn out to have been right all along.’ This betrays a general misunderstanding. Over many questions of doctrine, Locke believed that neither the sects nor anyone else would ultimately prove to be ‘right,’ since these disputes lie beyond the scope of knowledge. (Waldron indicates, however, that he is familiar with the skeptical passage cited from the Third Letter.) See Waldron's, ‘Locke: Toleration and the Rationality of Persecution,’ reprinted in Horton, J. and Mendus, S. eds., John Locke: A Letter Concerning Toleration in Focus (London and New York: Routledge 1991) 98–124, at 106Google Scholar. In his wonderfully comprehensive account of Locke's theology and theory of politics, John Marshal signals that he endorses Waldron's anti-skeptical reading of Locke on toleration (at 360, n. 44). Yet Marshal simultaneously writes that: ‘when Locke wrote the Epistola he was separately and contemporaneously committed to the necessary fallibility of almost all men in many religious issues’ (364). So for Marshal, Locke is a qualified skeptic regarding religious matters. It is, therefore, unclear why Marshal subscribes to Waldron's view. The mere fact that Locke does not appeal directly to this skepticism in the Epistola scarcely settles the issue. Why Locke would remain ‘separately and contemporaneously committed’ to a religious fallibilism while not allowing this skepticism to influence his arguments for religious toleration is something of a mystery. See Marshal, John John Locke: Resistance, Religion, and Responsibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Historians sometimes refer to this anti-Calvinist, humanist movement under the generic rubric of Socinianism. But the term Socinianism can be misleading in this context. Not all important Protestant anti-Calvinists were affiliated with Laelius Socinus (1525-1562. (Socinus was a former Sienese living in Switzerland. Socinus's followers eventually migrated to Poland, following Socinus's nephew Faustus, before making their way to the Netherlands in the 1660s.) What unites these anti-Calvinists is not an endorsement of the Socinian creed, but a skepticism over claims to religious infallibility. On the ‘broad Socinian’ tradition, see the masterful discussion by Trevor-Roper, Hugh in his Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans (Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1988) chaps. 2, 4Google Scholar. For the development of Socinianism during the early modem period, see Fix, Andrew C. Prophecy and Reason (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1991)Google Scholar; and Wilbur, Earl W. A History of Unitarianism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1946)Google Scholar. On the Dutch Armenians, see Tyacke, Nicholas Anti-Calvinists (Oxford: Clarendon 1987), 82, 245Google Scholar.

38 See the classic study by Jordan, W.K. The Development of Religious Toleration in England, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1932, 306Google Scholar. Jordan reports that many of the works of the Italian skeptics in Acontius's circle are now lost or in private hands (n. on 309). Calvin's remark is reported by Jordan, 306.

39 Acontius, Jacopo Satanae Stratagememata, translated as Satan's Stratagems by O'Malley, D. (San Francisco: California State Library 1940), 19–20. Compare 88Google Scholar.

40 Ibid., 61-9

41 Ibid., 64-9

42 Chillingworth, William The Religion of the Protestants: A Safe Way of Salvation (London: The Religious Tract Society 1839) Book IV, 87Google Scholar

43 On Chillingworth's fallibilism, Book I, 3, 36, 122-4, 385-6, 390

44 Ibid., Book IV, 34, 59

45 As related by Clarendon, along with a description of Chillingworth's, extreme skepticism on matters of Christian faith. See The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon Written By Himself (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1828), Vol. I, 62–5Google Scholar.

46 For Taylor's fallibilism and its connection to his arguments for religious toleration within the bounds of civil order, see Taylor, Jeremy The Whole Works (London: 1859) Vol. V, 516–31Google Scholar, on maintaining civil peace, 590. For Hammond, see his Of the Reasonableness of Christianity, in The Works of Dr Hammond (London: 1684)Google Scholar on fallibilism, 138, on submission to the state and the good of peace, 144. For Grotius, On the Truth of Christianity, Madan, S. trans. (London: 1814; 1639) on his fallibilism regarding religion, 79–80Google Scholar; on the acceptance of religious diversity, 60, 69.

47 Spellman, William The Latitudinarians and the Church in England 1660-1700 (Athens: The University of Georgia Press 1993), 150–2Google Scholar draws attention to Locke's familiarity with Chillingworth and this skeptical tradition.

48 See Montuori, Mario On Toleration and The Unity of God (Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben Publishers 1983), 125–6Google Scholar.

49 Grotius was a fallibalist about all religious knowledge, but claimed that natural law and natural right were nonetheless demonstrable a priori. As he famously remarked, even persons who denied the existence of God would be led to convergence in ethics provided they are rational. See The Law of War and Peace Prologemena, #11, 13. See further my ‘Science and Skepticism in Hobbes.’

50 Hobbes, Thomas Leviathan, Tuck, R. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1991), chaps. 11–12 (74, 77)Google Scholar.

51 Essay, IV .16.4, 659-60

52 On the Conduct of the Understanding, Works, Vol. VIII, 213

53 ‘For ‘tis rational to conclude, that our proper Imployment lies in those Enquiries, and in that sort of Knowledge, which is most suited to our natural Capacities, and carries in it our greatest interest, i.e. the Condition of our eternal Estate. Hence, I think I may conclude that Morality is the proper Science, and Business of Mankind in general; (who are both concerned, and fitted to search out their Summum Bonum)’ (Essay, Book IV.12.11, 646).

54 Essay, 11.21.55, 269-70. I disagree with Wolterstorff's, Nicholas assertion that Locke is ‘better thought of as standing in the long classical tradition of eudaimonism.’ See his John Locke and the Ethics of Belief (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996), 135CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 For contemporary examples of ordinary or non-deontological subjectivism about nonmoral value, see Brandt, R.B. A Theory of the Good and the Right (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1979), chaps. 6–7Google Scholar; and Railton, Peter ‘Facts and Values,’ Philosophical Topics 14, 2 (1986) 5–31Google Scholar.

56 Here I take issue with Richard Tuck. Tuck claims that Locke's views on toleration can be ascribed to exclusively pragmatic concerns: chiefly, the maintenance of public order. Tuck argues that this pragmatic emphasis is itself a response to skepticism. This is at most half of the story where Locke is concerned. It contains two important omissions. First, while Locke does believe that the maintenance of public order is important, he traces its value to the law of nature, and the protection of property. The law of nature is a known moral truth rather than the outcome of pragmatic accommodation. Second, Locke's emphasis on the moral value of the freedom of the understanding cannot be accounted for in terms of the pragmatic goal of maintaining political stability. See Tuck, Richard ‘Scepticism and Toleration in the Seventeenth Century,’ in Mendus, S. ed., Justifying Toleration (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1988) 21–35 (esp. 35)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Tuck's account of the Lockean argument makes it resemble what Bernard Williams calls the argument for toleration from a ‘Hobbesian equilibrium.’ See his ‘Toleration: An Impossible Virtue,’ in Heyd, D. ed., Toleration (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1996)Google Scholar.