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Improbable Liberalisms: “Servil Copulation” and Domestic Liberty in Locke and Milton

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Amy R. McCready
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Extract

This essay examines the liberal distinction between public and private spheres by analyzing civil and conjugal society in the work of John Locke and John Milton. Although the two authors explain the institution of civil government similarly, suggesting similar conceptions of liberal life, my explication of their views on marriage shows that they conceive of public and private quite differently. Marriage for Locke is a contract, the primary term of which is procreative sex. Because contracts are enforced by civil authorities, the apparently private conjugal society is subject to civil rule. In contrast, the purpose of marriage for Milton is comfort and companionship, which can only be known by those directly involved, which means that civil government cannot interfere. In marriage, one retains a natural domestic liberty and remains judge in one's own case. Exposing these variants of the publicprivate division, the article explains the differences in Locke's and Milton's liberalisms and suggests that neither acceptably encompasses intimate relationships.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 63 , Issue 1 , Winter 2001 , pp. 77 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2001

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References

I thank Ann Davies, Jay Goodale, Roger Gould, Patricia Misciagno, Jacqueline Pfeffer, and Julia Rudolph, as well as the Editor of The Review and its anonymous reviewers, for their helpful suggestions and advice.

1. For critical surveys, seeBoling, Patricia, Privacy and the Politics of Intimate Life (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996)Google Scholar; and Weintraub, Jeff, “The Theory and Politics of the Public/Private Distinction,” in Public and Private in Thought and Practice, ed. Weintraub, Jeff and Kumar, Krishan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), pp.1–42.Google Scholar

2. For an analysis of gender and sex in a wide range of early modern writers, see Sommerville, Margaret R., Sex and Subjection (New York: Arnold, 1995).Google Scholar

3. See, for one, Okin, Susan Moller, “Gender, the Public and the Private,” in Political Theory Today, ed. Held, David (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), pp. 67–90.Google Scholar

4. Second Treatise of Government, ed. Macpherson, C.B. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980), secs. 77–86 (hereafter cited in text by section number).Google Scholar

5. For the former view, see Butler, Melissa, “Early Liberal Roots of Feminism: John Locke and the Attack on Patriarchy,” American Political Science Review 72 (1978):135–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Walsh, Mary B., “Locke and Feminism on Private and Public Realms of Activities,” The Review of Politics 57 (1995): 251–77;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and for the latter, Pateman, Carole, The Sexual Contract (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988);Google Scholar and Coole, Diana, “Women, Gender and Contract: Feminist Interpretations,” in The Social Contract from Hobbes to Rawls, ed. Boucher, David and Kelly, Paul (New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 191–210.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a point in between—one that recognizes that Locke's ideas ultimately contributed to women's citizenship even though he did not intend that result—see Schochet, Gordon, “The Significant Sounds of Silence: The Absence of Women from the Political Thought of Sir Robert Filmer and John Locke (or, “Why can't a woman be more like a man?”)” in Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition, ed. Smith, Hilda L. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 220–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. Paradise Lost, ed. Hughes, Merritt Y. (New York: Macmillan, 1962), IV: 299.Google Scholar Milton's views on women and women's views of Milton are subjects that continue to be interpreted and subjects beyond the scope of this essay. For a sampling of the former, see Walker, Julia M., ed., Milton and the Idea of Woman (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988)Google Scholar, and of the latter, Wittreich, Joseph, Feminist Milton (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

7. The Reason of Church Government Urg'd against Prelaty in Complete Prose orks of John Milton, ed. Wolfe, Don M. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), I: 808.Google Scholar While generations of Miltonists accepted Milton's assessment of his prose, recent scholarship has challenged if not overturned his judgment. For collections on this subject, see Lieb, Michael and Shawcross, John T., eds., Achievements of the Left Hand (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1974)Google Scholar; and Loewenstein, David and Turner, James Grantham, eds., Politics, Poetics, and Hermeneutics in Milton's Prose (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

8. For a discussion of his hermeneutics, see McCready, Amy R., “Milton's Casuistry: The Case of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 22 (1992):393–428.Google Scholar

9. The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates in Complete Prose Works of Milton, John, 111:190 (hereafter cited as Tenure of Kings).Google Scholar

10. A Letter Concerning Toleration in Political Writings of John Locke, ed. Wootton, David (New York: Penguin, 1993), p. 396 (hereafter cited as Toleration).Google Scholar

11. A Treatise of Civil Power in Ecclesiastical Causes in Complete Prose Works of John Milton, VII: 255 (hereafter cited as Civil Power).Google Scholar

12. Locke might extend this to any point of knowledge: “The floating of other men's opinions in our brains, makes us not one jot the more knowing, though they happen to be true” (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Woolhouse, Roger [New York: Penguin, 1997] 1.4.23, hereafter cited as Essay).Google Scholar

13. See also Toleration, pp. 400, 417Google Scholar; Civil Power, pp. 243–44.Google Scholar Milton recognizes that the line between public and private is tenuous in practice: although one's liberty of conscience should not affect others, it may. Any difficulties in drawing the line, however, are due to those who question religious liberty, not those who exercise it: “if any man be offended at the conscientious liberty of another, it is a taken scandal not a given” (Civil Power, p. 267).Google Scholar

14. First Treatise of Government, sec. 88, in Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1963) (hereafter cited in text by sec. number).Google Scholar

15. Shanley, Mary Lyndon, “Marriage Contract and Social Contract in Seventeenth Century English Political Thought,” Western Political Quarterly 32 (1979): 90CrossRefGoogle Scholar, argues that Locke “carried the notion of the contractual nature of marriage very close to its logical conclusions,” but she does not question whether the necessary end of the contract—the part not subject to negotiation—threatens the idea that the contract is the result of free choice.

16. Brennan, Teresa and Pateman, Carole, “'Mere Auxiliaries to the Commonwealth': Women and the Origins of Liberalism,” Political Studies 27 (1979):183–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ask why a free woman would ever agree to such an arrangement. In their analysis, Locke's assumption that she would reflects not just his refusal to relinquish patriarchy but also emerging capitalism, which changed women from economic producers to dependents. Amussen, Susan Dwyer, An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England, (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988)Google Scholar, examines the use of the analogy between family and state and links its decline to the same social developments.

17. As Ingrid Makus argues in Women, Politics, and Reproduction: The Liberal Legacy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996)Google Scholar, reproductive sex may need to be mandated because children are, for Locke, the unintentional result of sexual appetites, not the result of natural desire or choice. In her analysis of Locke, the desire for sex is God's intervention; the duty to care for children, the result of reason not instinct; and the inference, that people might choose to avoid procreation if they could. On this point, see First Treatise, sec. 54; Essay, 2. 21. 34.

18. The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce in Complete Prose Works of John Milton, 11:235 (hereafter cited as Divorce).Google Scholar The idea of marriage as a cure for spiritual loneliness or lapses precedes Milton. Radical Protestants discussed it at length, often proposing more egalitarian conceptions than he did. See Johnson, James T., “The Covenant Idea and the Puritan View of Marriage,” Journal of the History of Ideas 32 (1971):107–118CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Leites, Edmund, The Puritan Conscience and Modern Sexuality (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986).Google Scholar

19. For a thorough account of Milton's multiple and at times conflicting purposes and ideas regarding sex and marriage, see Turner, James Grantham, One Flesh: Paradisal Marriage and Sexual Relations in the Age of Milton (New York: Clarendon Press, 1987).Google Scholar

20. On this point, conjugal society mirrors civil for Milton: “He who marries, intends as little to conspire his own ruine, as he that swears Allegiance” (Divorce, p. 229).Google Scholar

21. In Some Thoughts Concerning Education, ed. W., John And Yolton, Jean S. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989)Google Scholar, Locke speaks of natural tendencies as the basis for education. Identifying a child's inclinations toward certain “vices” or “genius” (sec. 66), a parent or teacher can tailor the process of conforming the child's mind to reason. While dispositions are thus heeded, they are heeded in order that they can be developed if good or eliminated if bad (sees. 66,74,100–102,108,139). Locke also uses “disposition” to refer to habits that have become part of one's character, often through deliberate training (sees. 66,74; also Essay, 2.22.10), but he does not think that natural dispositions should be accepted as legitimate as Milton does in the case of marriage.

22. His concern, however, was raised when his wife left him shortly after they married.

23. In this respect, it is like the right of reparation according to Locke. Unlike the right of punishing, which “is in every body,” and which derives from the right of “preservingall mankind,” that of “taking reparation …belongs only to the injured party.” He “who suffered the damage has a right to demand in his own name … has this power of appropriating to himself the goods or service of the offender, by right of self-preservation” (Second Treatise, sec. 11). Any may judge the offender, for all know the law of nature, but only the victim has experienced the offense.

24. Because Locke's and Milton's explanations of the original human state look forward to the transformation to civil society—freedom is a useful basis for the idea that government must derive from consent—the similarity of their accounts of the natural order and the transition to a constructed one is not odd. The two pursue this end, however, in somewhat different contexts. In his treatises on government, Locke distinguishes political from paternal power to refute the patriarchalists' claim that political power is an extension of paternal. Milton's brief version of the social compact and selection of deputies, on the other hand, is intended to justify the trial and execution of Charles I, in particular to those who supported it but then began “to swerve, and almost shiver at the Majesty and grandeur of som noble deed, as if they were newly enter 'd into a great sin” (Tenure of Kings, p. 194).Google Scholar In contrast to Locke's discussion of marriage, which is integral to his argument against patriarchy in civil society, Milton's pamphlets on marriage are not directly tied to those on the commonwealth. This difference in context contributes to their differences with regard to marriage, but it cannot, in my view, fully account for their opposing conceptions.

25. Correspondingly, a marital union could be comparable to a church for Milton but not for Locke. Both think that churches are private voluntary associations seeking a good that requires an inner belief. As such, churches can set their own membership rules and can excommunicate people as long as no civil harm is done (Toleration, pp. 397–401Google Scholar; Civil Power, p. 245).Google Scholar

26. See Essays on the Law of Nature, ed. Leyden, W. Von (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), I–IVGoogle Scholar (hereafter cited as Late of Nature); Essay, 1.3.13; and Second Treatise, sec. 6. For an analysis of the development of Locke's account of the law of nature through these texts, see Colman, John, John Locke's Moral Philosophy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1983).Google Scholar

27. In the course of justifying religious liberty, Locke includes “conservation of bodily health” and “management of estates” among “private domestic affairs” (Toleration, p. 404)Google Scholar in which the state cannot legitimately intervene. Although this could seem to counter my argument, it is important to examine Locke's rationale. If there is disagreement about how to achieve the good in question (salvation, health, wealth), the state cannot compel people to act in a particular way (Toleration, pp. 406–407).Google ScholarIf one has a disease for which there is “one only remedy, but that unknown” (Toleration, p. 407)Google Scholar, the magistrate should not prescribe a remedy. If, conversely, there is one known way to the good in question, then the magistrate can compel. The state cannot order baptism, but “if the magistrate understand such washing to be profitable to the curing or preventing of any disease that children are subject unto, and esteem the matter weighty enough to be taken care of by a law, in that case he may order it to be done” (Toleration, p. 412).Google Scholar Sexual intercourse was the only way of producing people, yet a state could entice immigrants as a means of procuring new citizens. However, the matter could be weighty enough and a portion of homegrown citizens deemed sufficiently profitable that magistrates could take care of the issue of reproduction through law. Although it may be startling to think of Locke the champion of liberty and private property supporting the idea that we belong to the state (ultimately belonging to God who gave us the law of nature which we transform into civil law), it is important to note that liberty for Locke is acting in accordance with reason. (See Grant, Ruth W., John Locke's Liberalism [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987]).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Liberty is not licence. If one does not use reason well to make sound judgments, he or she is not free and may be justly punished (Essay, 2.21.50–56, 67Google Scholar; Second Treatise, sees. 6–11)Google Scholar.

28. Explaining how civil society depends upon the family in Locke's Education for Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984)Google Scholar, Nathan Tarcov argues that Locke sharply separated public and private spheres because he distinguished parental power from civil power and because he thought a divide between family and civil government necessary for protecting liberty. Although parental power over children may not be subject to civil control, the state's power over potential parents seems to be a separate issue.

29. Gobetti, Daniela, Private and Public: Individuals, Households and Body Politic in Locke and Hutcheson (New York: Routledge, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, explains how Locke merges descriptive and normative accounts of the law of nature with respect to marriage and family to conclude that there will be no conflict in the household, and hence no reason for the government to intervene.

30. One case in which one could legitimately abstain is when one's own preservation would be threatened by procreating: every one is bound to preserve humanity “when his own preservation comes not in competition” (Second Treatise, sec. 6).

31. For an opposing view, see Walsh, “Locke and Feminism.” While her interpretation of the public and private in Locke as multiple interacting spheres rather than exclusive domains seems sound, her view that women retain control of their bodies (which is intelligible given Locke's claim that one has property in one's person) cannot prevail against the longstanding doctrine, which Locke reasserts, that the primary marital right is to the spouse's body for procreative sex. In addition, it is not clear that one can infer from the idea that civil government is separate from parents' authority over children that civil government cannot control the relationship between husband and wife, two adults who consented to a contract, the main term of which was bodily union, now enforceable by the state.

32. Marriage Promoted In A Discourse Of Its Ancient And Modern Practice, (London, 1690; facsimile Reprint, New York: Garland, 1984), Pp. 55–56.Google Scholar Along this line, it is conceivable that marital contracts could be broken during the couple's child-bearing years if they paid the state for their dereliction of duty. While Locke suggests twentyone as the age for a man to marry, he allows that it “would be no prejudice to his Strength, his Parts, or his Issue, if it were respited for some time” (Some Thoughts Concerning Education, sec. 216).

33. Marriage Promoted in a Discourse of its Ancient and Modern Practice, p. 22.Google Scholar Yet, Locke did not marry, and in his early essays, he explains that a father's duty to his child is universal but that “no one is compelled to be a father” (Law of Nature, p. 197).Google Scholar The latter point is raised, however, in a discussion of the obligations of king and subject. It is plausible that once Locke rejects patriarchal hierarchies, distributes the power of judgment among all in the state of nature, and explains the social contract, the responsibility for procreation is similarly distributed and then transferred to the state. Furthermore, The First Treatise tellingly explains how one fulfills the debt owed to his parents for his nourishment and education: it “is paid by taking care, and providing for his own Children” (sec. 90). One is, it seems, obliged to bear children to repay the debt of having been born and raised. If a son dies without issue, his debt to his parents is paid with his property, underscoring Locke's conception of persons as, fundamentally, things. Honoring his parents while he was alive is not enough—there must be a repayment in temporal goods.

34. Milton was not against sex, only sex without love. The clearest evidence for his positive view of sex may be his depiction of love-making in Eden. Far from being identified with the fall, sex is portrayed as part of the first couple's happiness (Paradise Lost, IV: 708–775).Google Scholar In the divorce tracts, Milton does not aim to denounce sex, but to argue that the “solace and satisfaction of the minde” should be “provided for before the sensitive pleasing of the body” (Divorce, p. 246).Google Scholar

35. See also Tetrachordon in Complete Prose Works of John Milton, II:637.Google Scholar

36. Areopagitica in Complete Prose Works of John Milton, II.531 (hereafter cited as Areopagitica).Google Scholar

37. For discussions of the ways in which Locke constructs the soul or mind for civil purposes, see Davies, Ann, “Re-Shaping the Psychic Landscape: Locke's Theory of Toleration” (Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association in Chicago, IL, 1998);Google ScholarMehta, Uday Singh, The Anxiety of Freedom: Imagination and Individuality in Locke's Political Thought (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Tully, James, “Governing Conduct,” in Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe, ed. Leites, Edmund (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).Google Scholar The emphasis on self-mastery is also evident in his work on education.

38. For a discussion of the subject in our context, see Regan, Milton C. Jr., Alone Together: Law and the Meanings of Marriage (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).Google Scholar

39. Because the wife's role as bearer of legitimate heirs elevated her above servants, by proposing that sex is inessential to marriage and conceiving of the wife as helpmeet instead, Milton could in effect be demoting her. On the other hand, because religious liberty for women was increasingly accepted—a woman could separate from an “ungodly” husband on the authority of her conscience—and because Milton's domestic liberty rested on a similar ground, women could theoretically be freed from the dictates of others in both church and home. While curtailing one accepted equality—right to the other's body for sex—Milton may begin to establish another based on the soul and mind.