It is the doctrine of toleration
rather than the scientific epistemology of An
Essay on Human Understanding (1693) that is Locke’s signal contribution to
modern philosophy. Ill-informed and culpable voices in intellectual history have erroneously
placed the Essay at the center of
Locke’s thought. Locke—as well as the
actual measurable influence of his ideas on the way we live in the modern
world—does not place this importance on the
Essay, and from the time of Bishop Berkeley to the present day the Essay has been falsely elevated within
Locke’s oeuvre so as to deflect
attention from Locke’s central contributions. Beginning with Bishop Berkeley,
this practice has in some instances been the opening move in clearing the way
philosophically for constructing various illiberal and repressive political
systems that are supposedly based on more accurate “scientific” foundations
than Locke’s skeptical epistemology. Locke has thus been identified as part of
a larger Enlightenment straw man that is the target of those seeking to advance
the authoritarian agenda of Continental philosophy, which as a program, in
anthropological terms, seems to be the logical systemic outcome of an
increasingly corporate, nihilistic and authoritarian Academy. To put the story
straight, An Essay on Human Understanding
is Locke’s commonplace book, a record of tentative speculations. It is not his
philosophy but rather an exercise in the method
of his philosophy, and in this method conviviality, measured skepticism and unhurried
consensus are as important as the progression of his epistemological propositions.
The Essay serves Locke’s higher
project to bring people together. Locke’s thinking on the subjects of religious
toleration and social and political diversification represent the actual center
of his philosophy. This philosophy was published in his Letter on Toleration (1689) and Two
Treatises of Government (1690). The doctrines of tolerance and the
diversification of powers that are elaborated in these documents are clearly
based upon the same fundamentals of religious toleration and republican democracy
negotiated among the Independents and the sectaries during the English Civil
War. John Locke’s father, it should be remembered, was an officer under
Cromwell. As well, the patronage of the Earl of Shaftesbury is additionally
illustrative of the connection between the Good Old Cause and Locke’s theology
and politics.
Sunday, May 13, 2012
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