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Liberal Impediments to Liberal Education: The Assent to Locke

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Joseph Carrig
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Extract

Some Thoughts Concerning Education, Locke's treatise on education, has yet to be fully integrated with his more familiar political and philosophical works. On the surface, there seems to be some tension between Locke's advice on how best to educate the young, and his prescriptions for political legitimacy. The emphasis on consent in the Second Treatise of Government seems to require a parallel emphasis on freedom of thought, but it is the possibility of precisely this sort of freedom that Locke calls into question with a theory of education grounded in the external inculcation of mental habits that control behavior throughout life. This surface tension, however, is dispelled by Locke's theory of knowledge, as it is expressed in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The Essay's skepticism with regard to an objective and public knowledge makes clear, first, that education is reducible to indoctrination, and second, that liberty therefore requires the rejection or fundamental reconstitution of what has been learned.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 63 , Issue 1 , Winter 2001 , pp. 41 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2001

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References

1. Locke, , Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963Google Scholar).

2. This is Nathan Tarcov's nice distinction between paternal and political power (Tarcov, Nathan, Locke's Education for Liberty [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984], p. 72Google Scholar). Elsewhere he says, “If government should not try to form character…then that function must be fulfilled privately, by agencies that do not have the ultimate destructive power of government” (ibid., p. 209). There is no osuggestion in Locke, however, that paternal power should be removed from its natural fount, or from society.

3. References to Some Thoughts Concerning Education will be to the Axtell edition, entitled The Educational Writings of John Locke, ed. Axtell, James L. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968Google Scholar), by section and page. Unless otherwise noted, all citations include the emphasis and punctuation of the authors.

4. In general, references to the Essay Concerning Human Understanding will be to the Nidditch edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975Google Scholar). The passage quoted here is found in Fraser's edition of the Essay (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1959), p. 352Google Scholar. There he indicates that it was introduced in Coste's French version (see note 3).

5. Tarcov suggests that Locke must show “how parental authority can elicit a filial obedience that is justified by the child's lack of reason, even though reason is needed for recognizing obligations” (Locke's Education, p. 78). The more significant point, however, should be, not that reason is a prerequisite to the recognition of obligation, but rather that the child's inability to reason could never justify any obligation to his parents. For, even if it is admitted that irrationality entails some kind of natural subordination, it does not entail a subordination to anyone in particular.

6. Compare this to what he says in the Second Treatise where he argues that there is yet “another Power ordinarily in the Father, whereby he has a tie on the Obedience of his Children. … And this is the Power Men generally have to bestow their Estates on those, who please them best” (Second Treatise, sec. 72.314–15)Google Scholar. Tarcov argues that the tie of inheritance “does not detract from natural freedom or even belong peculiarly to the family” (Locke's Education, p. 75)Google Scholar. This may be true, but it only reveals how much greater a tie on the child's obedience is the habitual reverence for the paternal power.

7. Indeed, as Pangle notes, “there is simply no historical or empirical evidence of any reliable, let alone universal, check on the way humans treat one another—even on the way fathers treat their own children” (Pangle, Thomas L., The Spirit of Modern Republicanism [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988]. p. 175Google Scholar, author's emphasis). Of course, as Tarcov rightly points out, “Locke emphatically denies that parents gain the power of life and death…over their children from begetting them. But he often concedes that they have some power by that title” (Locke's Education, p. 66Google Scholar). This is an enormous understatement. Paternal power makes the political power of life and death superfluous. Tarcov acknowledges that education exercises more influence over the conduct of men than do civil laws (ibid., p. 72). See also Neill, Alex, “Locke on Habituation, Autonomy, and Education,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 27 (1989): 226CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. Tarcov maintains that “paternal power is limited by its justification, that children are not born capable of taking care of themselves; that is, it does not continue when the child becomes capable” (Locke's Education, p. 71Google Scholar). He points out that Locke “must show how [paternal] authority, once established, can be employed so as to come to an end” (ibid., p. 78). But this is precisely the problem. Such authority is meant by Locke to be, in principle, perpetual. It is Locke's very point that it should be made as lasting as possible, although in practice it may not be perfectly so. Even in the Second Treatise, it is strongly indicated that the child's obligation to his parents is intended to endure at least until the parents' death (see especially Second Treatise, sees. 66, 72–73, 74–76Google Scholar).

9. Locke's Essay clearly implies that there is no such thing as “human nature,” only individual humans. Habit is not a second nature because “nature” is nothing more than a paternal construct. The implications of this for a theory of education are enormous. See Neill, , “Locke on Habituation, Autonomy, and Education,” p. 230Google Scholar; Mehta, Uday Singh, The Anxiety of Freedom (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 132Google Scholar; and Tarcov, , Locke's Education, pp. 104–05,107Google Scholar. Mehta argues that education “denatures” man (Mehta, , Anxiety of Freedom, pp. 161, 163, 166Google Scholar). This cannot be true if, as he himself contends, human nature is a construct.

10. References to Locke, John, Conduct of the Understanding, ed. Fowler, Thomas, 2nd ed. (New York: Lenox Hill/Burt Franklin, 1971Google Scholar). Peter A. Schouls makes the startling assertion that “both the Education and the Conduct insist on the necessity of autonomy, to be achieved through the rejection of prejudice and breaking of habit” (Schouls, , Reasoned Freedom: John Locke and Enlightenment [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992], p. 185Google Scholar). The Education is solely about the formation of habit, not to mention the inculcation of Lockean “prejudice.” There is no suggestion that habits will, or should, be broken at any point.

11. Tarcov cannot be correct that “for Locke the habit of submission prepares for autonomous rational self control or an approximation of it” (Locke's Education, p. 93Google Scholar). The truth of this statement hinges on the meaning of “approximation”; for action, unreflected upon, is surely not the same thing as “autonomous rational self-control.” It is also not clear why Mehta argues that Locke “denies the realm of inferiority [and] the realm of the unconscious” (Mehta, , Anxiety of Freedom, p. 33Google Scholar). Locke's primary purpose is to establish behavior in the child's unconscious mind. See also Yolton, John W., John Locke and Education (New York: Random House, Inc., 1971), pp. 32 and 75Google Scholar, though he makes little of the danger to liberty of unreflected action.

12. Yolton insists that the child is obedient not to the will of the parent but to his reason (Locke and Education, p. 34Google Scholar). However, since Locke does not distinguish between rational parents and irrational parents, there is no basis for this position. It is the habit of obedience, as such, that is being inculcated.

13. Yolton is mistaken to say that Locke's attitude towards desire “is almost wholly negative” (ibid., p. 34). Not only does Locke claim that all human action requires desire, but desire is also the most basic tool with which the behavior of the child is shaped.

14. Yolton argues that the tabula rasa is an “unfortunate image” (ibid., p. 53); and Neill suggests that Locke presents this notion “as a liability, for with it comes the possibility of indoctrination” (Neill, , “Locke on Habituation, Autonomy, and Education,” p. 230Google Scholar). These comments miss the point. The implication of “liability” is not clear from the text Neill cites, and the very fact that Locke chose the image of the tabula rasa suggests that he was quite aware of the possibilities of indoctrination.

15. In Of the Conduct of the Understanding, Locke appears to reject this artificial association of ideas, as well as the establishment of “the empire of habit” (see especially Conduct, p. 218Google Scholar; see also Essay, II. xxxiii. 6–18, III. x. 2–4Google Scholar). Be this as it may (and it can be argued that no incompatibility exists), it seems clear that the Education is founding the “empire of habit” through the establishment of ideas that will appear as natural and innate in the minds of those destined to be its subjects.

16. Yolton argues that Locke does not reject effort, only constraint (Locke and Education, p. 84Google Scholar). To be more precise, however, Locke does not even reject constraint; his suggestion is, rather, that constraint must not be felt as constraint. This is the implication behind Pangle's statement that “the word ‘duty’ in its strict sense is rarely to be heard in a reasonable Lockean household” (Modern Republicanism, p. 222Google Scholar; see also p. 217).

17. Tarcov calls this the “paradox of liberty” (Locke's Education, p. 115Google Scholar). However, liberty is not so much a paradox as it is a myth. Tarcov concedes as much in other passages. See ibid., pp. 114,126.

18. This may be what Tarcov means when he says, “Locke has presented the secret of education as parents′ and tutors′ making the child ′believe, he goes like a Man of himself, by his own Conduct, and for his own Pleasure, when, in truth, he is wholly as a Child led by them′ into those virtues that best serve their purposes as well as the child's own” (ibid., p. 126, quoting Locke). See also ibid., pp. 114,136, 139,176. And see Mehta's comment that “the freedom of the will must be curbed without being openly dominated” (Mehta, , Anxiety of Freedom, p. 158Google Scholar). On the other hand, Mehta sees no contradiction in saying “the specific experience of submission to authority” is the condition of freedom (ibid., p. 138); and Pangle remarks that “radical dependence on the opinion of others liberates, rather than enslaves, the child” (Pangle, , Modern Republicanism, p. 218Google Scholar). See also Tarcov, , Locke's Education, p. 93Google Scholar. Locke's definition of liberty in the Essay, however, and his denigration of assent based upon the testimony of others, makes such submission antithetical to freedom.

19. See Jeffreys, M. V. C., John Locke: Prophet of Common Sense (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1967), pp. 78,80Google Scholar; Gay, Peter, John Locke on Education (New York: Teachers College Press, 1964), pp. 6,15Google Scholar.

20. Of course, he goes on to say that “this is enough to begin with” and that “it would be better if Men generally rested in such an Idea of God, without being too Curious in their Notions about a Being, which all must acknowledge incomprehensible; whereby many, who have not strength and clearness of Thought, to distinguish between what they can and what they cannot know, run themselves into Superstition or Atheism” (Education, sec. 136. 242Google Scholar).

21. The theme of the useful runs throughout the Education. The content of Lockean education is reduced to the “useful” subjects. Consider his “popular” definition of wisdom as “a Man's managing his Business ablely, and with foresight in this World” (Education, sec. 140.244Google Scholar). See also Tarcov, , Locke's Education, pp. 97,104,124,199Google Scholar.

22. Pangle says, “men are to be bred to feel anxiety, never exhilaration, whenever they depart from the deepest community standards” (Pangle, , Modern Republicanism, p. 228Google Scholar). See also Mehta, , Anxiety of Freedom, p. 153Google Scholar.

23. Schouls comments that, “Human beings can acquire the habit to suspend desires and reflect” (Reasoned Freedom, p. 180Google Scholar). This conflates two wholly different ideas: the habit involved with suspending desire is not the same thing as reflection. Neill makes the point that a “bad education” involves “the failure of the development of reason”; people educated poorly“ were never habituated to reason or ‘accustomed to reflect’” (Neill, , “Locke on Habituation, Autonomy, and Education,201D; p. 232Google Scholar). He points to Locke's remarks that the child's mind should be exercised “in observing the connexion of ideas and following them in train,” thus habituating him to reason (ibid., p. 233, quoting Locke). Locke's remarks are extremely ambiguous, however. It is never made clear just how the child's mind is exercised in this way. More importantly, the “real” “connexion of ideas” is itself quite problematic, as Locke suggests in the Essay. Although Locke uses the language of reflection in the Education, there is little indication of what it would mean to learn to reflect.

24. Yolton includes logic and rhetoric in the list of subjects that the child should be taught (Locke and Education, pp. 76,78Google Scholar), but this contradicts what Locke explicitly says in the Education. “Gentlemen” should be able “to express themselves well either in Writing or Speaking,” but Locke's object appears to be fitting them “for Business or Conversation,” primarily in the form of writing letters.

25. It might be fruitful to compare Locke's description of the well-bred individual to Hobbes's description of one who endeavors peace. The latter's notion of endeavor seems to be closely related to Locke's portrayal of one who is predisposed to avoid confrontation with others. Tarcov remarks that “Locke's gentleman appears to be one of the people whom he characterizes in Two Treatises as being ‘more disposed to suffer, than right themselves by Resistance’” (Tarcov, , Locke's Education, p. 141Google Scholar, quoting Locke). See also Pangle's discussion of civility as the “new moral virtue” (Pangle, , Modern Republicanism, p. 221Google Scholar).

26. Tarcov says, “It is not clear, once the appetites are under control, whether reason is thereby in control or whether it needs further guidance to attain virtue” (Locke's Education, p. 87Google Scholar). This is just the point. If reason needs some other training than the habituation that is described, then one would expect it to appear somewhere in the Education. It does not. “Locke obscures the difference between the condition of submission and that of individual autonomy and rationality” (ibid., p. 91; see also pp. 88–89).

27. Even in the Second Treatise, reaching the age of reason is left as an unexamined assumption. The law determines, to some extent arbitrarily, “that there is a time when Men are to begin to act like Free Men” (Second Treatise, sec. 62. 309Google Scholar). Whether they are in fact rational is in practice irrelevant.

28. Pangle points out “how far Locke goes in blurring the distinction between rationality and the appearance of rationality” (Pangle, , Modern Republicanism, pp. 264–65Google Scholar).

29. Schouls suggests as much when he says that children, upon reaching the age of reason, “can erase whatever experience initially wrote on the tabula rasa” (Reasoned Freedom, p. 192Google Scholar). He argues that the process of becoming autonomous is “the process of cleaning the slate from all that experience has inscribed on it” (ibid., p. 225). Schouls may not intend this to refer to the liberating repudiation of one's education; however, “erasing what is written on the tabula rasa” perfectly characterizes what Locke suggests is necessary in order to contest the empire of habit.

30. See also Fraser's, edition, pp. 352–53Google Scholar. Locke subsequently reformulates this definition, saying that liberty is the power to suspend desire (see Essay, II. xxi. 47,52–53,56,71Google Scholar). This reformulation is the definition of virtue given in the Education. Thus, there is an implied connection between liberty and virtue. Whatever the connection, it goes beyond the mere habitual suspension of desire, and is thus something more than the virtue of the Education.

31. The “reasonable,” then, cannot be free because, in their case, “other People's Reason” determines the will. In this regard, rationality and “reasonableness” must be seen as fundamentally distinct, as distinct as freedom is from the feeling of freedom.

32. Axtell's comment that Locke “had a sceptical disregard for system and deductive rationalism” (Educational Writings, p. 49Google Scholar) does not do justice to Locke's emphasis in the Essay on the central place of demonstration in acquiring knowledge. Demonstration, for Locke, is not merely inductive or empirical, as his insistence on the demonstrability of morality makes clear.

33. Axtell says that “obviously Locke's knowledge of the understanding is a universal knowledge: it applies to all men in all places. And to that extent so the theory of education implicit within his philosophy is universal in application” (Educational Writings, pp. 51, 52, 54Google Scholar; see also Schouls, , Reasoned Freedom, p. 184Google Scholar). This assumption is not obvious. For Locke, even demonstration yields certainty to the self alone. This is precisely the difficul ty. The Essay argues that we cannot know anything about “all men and all places”; such knowledge is derived from definitions of general terms the meaning of which is determined by tacit agreement.

34. Axtell remarks that “in seventeenth-century England, as today, education was the whole process by which a culture transmits itself across the generations…. The most important agency in this transfer was not formal institutions of instruction or public instruments of communication, but the patriarchal family. Its primary function was the socialization of the child” (Educational Writings, p. 19Google Scholar).

35. This tacit consent to a particular linguistic usage is what, ultimately, constitutes the social contract.

36. Neill argues that “if I accepted on authority, on the testimony of another, a principle that was in fact true, and if I acted on that principle, I would still not be acting rationally; the point being that I would not be acting according to the dictates of my own reason, but according to those of another” (“Locke on Habituation, Autonomy, and Education,” p. 238)Google Scholar. It is also important to realize that to say something is “in fact true” is itself extremely problematic; truth is a function only of my own act of knowing. See also Tarcov, , Locke's Education, p. 93,117,118Google Scholar.

37. This is the import of Locke's remarks concerning the consent to the kingship of the father that he describes in his “history” of government (see Second Treatise, sees. 74–76,105–12Google Scholar).

38. Pangle says, “The experience of freedom which Locke celebrates as the privilege of finite intellects remains an experience of power” (Modern Republicanism, p. 269Google Scholar). The point is that it is precisely the experience that reason is “one's own” that gives the experience of power. It is a mistake to think, as Schouls does, that those who try to inculcate beliefs to secure their own power have refused reason (Reasoned Freedom, p.173Google Scholar). On the contrary, those who choose to refuse the given “reason” are the truly rational. Locke's Second Treatise attempts just such an inculcation of belief. Thus, it should not be surprising that he says, in the Essay, that “the proper signification and use of Terms is best to be learned from those, who in their Writings and Discourses, appear to have had the clearest Notions, and apply'd to them their Terms with the exactest choice and fitness” (Essay, III. xi.llGoogle Scholar). This is a not-so-veiled reference to himself.

39. Schouls suggests that, for Locke, all are equally free. He argues that Locke implicitly assumes an “original freedom,” a freedom the educator must leave inviolate (Reasoned Freedom, p. 206)Google Scholar. Schouls's point seems to be that teachers need to maintain a stance of neutrality in educating children, which would leave all some degree of freedom. This may be true, but Schouls's description obscures the fact that, in Lockean terms, the liberty most have is of a different order than that of the truly free individual, and that “true freedom” is somehow fundamentally at odds with being “taught.” The notion of an “original freedom” left inviolate by the process of education indicates this fundamental tension. It is true that, as Schouls says, “education can never completely determine human action” (ibid.). However, this is not the important point. Education is the attempt to determine human action. See also Mehta, , Anxiety of Freedom, p. 6Google Scholar.

40. Schouls implies that all are capable of self-mastery (see Reasoned Freedom, pp. 185ff, esp. 192Google Scholar). Neill also concludes that Locke is teaching “epistemic autonomy” to all (“Locke on Habituation, Autonomy, and Education,” p. 244)Google Scholar. Locke's point seems to be precisely the opposite. Only a very few are capable of self-mastery (or epistemic autonomy); the vast majority are not. Those who are not, are educated. However, they are not educated to have self-mastery; this, from Locke's point of view, would be a contradiction in terms. The educated gentlemen of Locke's Education have only the appearance of autonomy. See also Tarcov, , Locke's Education, p. 69Google Scholar; Pangle, , Modern Republicanism, p. 179Google Scholar; Mehta, , Anxiety of Freedom, pp. 121,122,124Google Scholar.

41. Many argue that Locke does not regard education as a means of acquiring beliefs or “values” (see Axtell, , Educational Writings, pp. 58, 81Google Scholar; Neill, , “Locke on Habituation, Autonomy, and Education,” p. 240Google Scholar; Schouls, , Reasoned Freedom, pp. 186,188,189,192Google Scholar; Yolton, , Locke and Education, p. 86Google Scholar). This may be true, but only up to a point. Habits carry with them beliefs: for example, liberal habits regularly include toleration, open-mindedness, distrust of authority, in short, all the tenets of “Lockean liberalism.” This is a fundamental (and inevitable) aspect of any education, including Lockean “liberal education.” Pangle goes so far as to say that “the imagination and the passions must then be brought into a created order—must be checked, harnessed, and structured—by conventional habits, laws, institutions, and beliefs which embody and enforce specific rational rules” (Pangle, , Modern Republicanism, p. 189Google Scholar), and that “Christianity [is] the perfect vehicle for mass moral indoctrination in a popularized version of the rational truth” (ibid., pp. 196, 203). Mehta makes the very strong claim that “parents should literally inform [the child's mind] with public standards” (Anxiety of Freedom, p. 143Google Scholar).

42. Pangle says, “The virtue that education instills and true virtue are two different things: education at best brings about the preconditions for the attainment of true virtue” (Pangle, , Modern Republicanism, p. 265Google Scholar). He asks, “May not the adequate taming and shaping of [the heroic nonconformist] require a wholly different sort of education?” (ibid., p. 227); and he says that there may be a “profound break—perhaps even a shattering liberation—that separates the philosopher, morally as well as intellectually, from all the nonphilosophers” (ibid., p. 66). The latter statement is more in keeping with Locke's position. To say that the virtue that education instills is a “precondition” is quite misleading. The “shattering liberation” describes the essential, diametrical opposition between the two kinds of virtue. The central point is that the philosopher is separated not only morally and intellectually. He is free in a fundamentally different way.

43. See also Axtell who says that “with Locke the emphasis of education ceased to be placed on brain-stuffing and was firmly transferred to the process for the formation of character, of habits…. We must prepare him to meet the whole range of experiences, physical and intellectual, he may possibly face in later life” (Educational Writings, p. 58Google Scholar); “the important thing was the open door, the opportunity to search into new fields” (ibid., p. 81). Schouls argues that “the right kind of education holds the promise that they can attain the most advantageous position from which to make the choice for truth and virtue, mastery and happiness” (Reasoned Freedom, pp. 188, 186, 189, 192Google Scholar). These remarks contain an element of truth. However, it should be remembered that those who are “liberally educated” meet this “whole range of experiences” with certain “liberal” habits of mind; and, as a consequence of these habits, they choose “liberal” truth and “liberal” virtue.

44. Neill considers this kind of education benign (“Locke on Habituation, Autonomy, and Education,” p. 244)Google Scholar. However, he never makes clear why the inculcation of unreflective habits does not make meaningless the notion of individual autonomy.

45. Neill raises this as a problem but then dismisses it, saying that Locke does not really force us into this position (“Locke on Habituation, Autonomy, and Education,” p. 239)Google Scholar. Again, however, it is not clear why he makes this argument. He seems to be satisfied with the doubtful distinction between the teaching of how to think and the teaching of what to think.

46. Tarcov argues that “on the basis of [man's] natural freedom Locke builds a liberal politics that restricts civil society to the preservation of the life, liberty, and property of the individuals who freely consent to it” (Locke's Education, p. 76, 71Google Scholar), and he says that “if government by consent is to be meaningful, the formation of that consent or dissent must be entrusted to agencies other than government” (ibid., p. 209). See also Pangle, 254. Nothing justifies the assumption that consent is made more meaningful by placing its formation in the hands of parents, whose position of power is purely the result of accident.

47. Ultimately, this is the intent of Locke's theory of education. The problem is not so much that Locke was an authoritarian, a secret Hobbesian; though this may be true (see, for example, Strauss, Leo, “Locke's Doctrine of Natural Law,” American Political Science Review 52 (1958): 490–501CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Cox, Richard H., Locke on War and Peace [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960]Google Scholar). The implication to be drawn from Locke's Education is, rather, that liberalism is no less authoritarian than any other system.

48. Pangle argues that “in Locke's scheme, there is no basis for supposing that human nature requires or inclines toward a government that defines for its subjects their happiness, virtue, or salvation (Modern Republicanism, p. 253Google Scholar). Whether human nature requires it or not, Locke indicates that parents should, and do, define their children's happiness, virtue, and salvation in just this way. Society, and government, reap the benefit.

49. Note Locke's remarks in the First Treatise that the greatest political danger is the rulers′ traditional belief in their “Divine unalterable Right of Sovereignty” coupled with an “Absolute, Arbitrary, Unlimited, and Unlimitable Power.” To have such a belief is to “tempt them to do what is neither for their own, nor the good of those under their Care, whereby great Mischiefs cannot but follow” (First Treatise, sec. 10.148Google Scholar).