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English Philosophy in the Age of Locke Edited by M. A. STEWART OXPORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 0x2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford NewYork Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotä Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Paris Säo Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw with associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., NewYork © the several contributors 2000 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2000 All rights reserved. N0 part ofthis publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data English philosophy in the age ofLocke/edited by M. A. Stewart, p. cm.—(Oxford studies in the history of philosophy; v. 3) Includes bibliographical references and index, ι. Philosophy,English—17thcentury. I. Stewart,M.A.(MichaelAlexander),1937- II. Series. B1131.E54 2000 192—dc21 00-060689 ISBN 0-19-825096-7 ι 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Typeset in Plantin by Cambrian Typesetters, Frimley, Surrey Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd, Guildford & King's Lynn OXFORD STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY EDITOR M. A. Stewart Harris Manchester College, Oxford ADVISORY BOARD David Berman, Trinity College, Dublin John Dunn, King's College, Cambridge Daniel Garber, University of Chicago David Fate Norton, McGill University Michael J. Petry, Erasmus University, Rotterdam PREFACE This collection completes the project announced in the previous volume in the series, of bringing to publication papers submitted over a period of some years relating to the history of philosophy in the seventeenth century. The intention was to have a volume of similar size follow hard on the heels of Studies in seventeenth-century European philosophy in 1997. The papers originally contracted for that had proved too multifarious to constitute a single volume, and it was agreed in consultation with the Press to give them greater thematic as well as geographical coherence by bringing them out as two collections, the second concentrating on English debate in the middle and later part of the century. At this point, one contribution was withdrawn for substantial recasting and expansion to the point where it became virtu ally a new essay, several new submissions became available which needed time for revision, and the editor's work was interrupted by illness. Some of the contributions have already attracted anticipatory discussion elsewhere in the secondary literature. I am grateful to all the contributors for their forbearance and cooperation as we have edged our way to completion. Once again we offer a distinctive blend of historical and analytical commentary, based upon an intensive study of primary sources and the context and circumstances of their composition. Paul Dumouchel, Knud Haakonssen, and Ian Harris explore the rela tion between politics and religion in Hobbes, Cumberland, and Locke. All three thinkers had their characteristic and distinctive views of God's rela tion to a rational law which they contributed to the analysis and resolution of central political and ecclesiastical problems of their time. Dumouchel argues that Hobbes's historical reading of the Bible is essential to the project of Leviathan because it legitimizes the rational separation of politics from the religion that initially seemed to threaten civil authority. Hobbes's perspective on human nature was anathema to Cumberland, who, on Haakonssen's account, found the basis for natural law in an intuitionism that unites the divine and human wills. Harris traces Locke's theory of justice through the concept of rights to a view of moral purpose in God's design which is central to the theory of a civil government. J. R. Milton moves on to different ground in his exploration of a signif icant gap between the common claims made for Gassendi's influence on Locke and the hard evidence, particularly the manuscript evidence. He does not pretend that the issues are all cut and dried, but he opens up an important general debate on how we should identify and measure one thinker's impact on, or response to, another. The contributions ofJohn Marshall andVictor Nuovo are complementary Preface VU1 studies in Locke's theology. Marshall looks particularly closely and comprehensively at the evidence for the Socinian or unitarian sympathies that have often been attributed to Locke, while acknowledging that his interests and sympathies cannot be defined solely in terms of the minutiae of that debate. Nuovo argues, on the other hand, that the whole issue was a good deal less central to Locke's agenda than it was to the agenda of his critics and commentators. Locke's primary concern was with the study of sacred history, which provides the framework for a biblically-centred analy sis of the nature of justifying faith. Both authors make extensive use of Locke's manuscripts as well as his published works. Our last three contributors, Udo Thiel, M. A. Stewart, and Beverley Southgate, look at groups of seventeenth-century contemporaries such as John Turner, William Sherlock, and Robert South; Stephen Nye and Edward Stillingfleet; and Thomas White and John Sergeant. The engage ment of the members of these groups with each other and with some of the same philosophical issues that engaged Locke—the nature of personhood, the foundations of knowledge, and the nature and grounds of certainty— provides the context in which Locke himself was working which can make a difference to how Locke himself is read. Not surprisingly, all were wrestling in some way with the impact of recent ideas. It was a context in which the theological ramifications of a view were never far below the surface and were known to be never far below, and in which theological concerns were often the source of the philosophical problem. It is thus fruitful to see some of the same players identified in both the theological and the philosophical papers in the collection; but Southgate's reassess ment ofWhite and Sergeant is a salutary reminder that, despite their criti cal stance, Catholic thinkers were closer to the main tradition of English thought in the seventeenth century than their partisan adversaries have left us to think. I should like to thank the following scholars for assistance in assessing potential contributions to this volume and for their advice at different stages in its planning and preparation: Peter Alexander, John Dunn, M. Jamie Ferreira, Daniel Garber, J. R. Milton, David Norton, Victor Nuovo, G. A. J. Rogers, and John Yolton. Ruth Evelyn Savage, who was editorial assistant for both this and the previous volume, checked and corrected references and quotations and assisted with the initial keyboarding and final indexing. Much of my own work for the volume was completed during tenure of a fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh. CONTENTS References and abbreviations ι. The political problem of religion: Hobbes's reading of the Bible PAUL DUMOUCHEL z. The character and obligation of natural law according to Richard Cumberland KNUD HAAKONSSEN 3. Locke on justice IAN HARRIS 4. Locke and Gassendi: A reappraisal J. R. MILTON 5. Locke, Socinianism, "Socinianism", and Unitarianism JOHN MARSHALL 6. Locke's theology, 1694-1704 VICTOR NUOVO 7. The Trinity and human personal identity UDO THIEL 8. Stillingfleet and the way of ideas M. A. STEWART 9. "Beating down scepticism": The solid philosophy of John Sergeant, 1623-1707 BEVERLEY C. SOUTHGATE Index '** REFERENCES AND ABBREVIATIONS Correspondence The correspondence ofJohn Locke, edited by E. S. de Beer, in progress (Oxford 1976-). References are given by volume and letter number. Essay John Locke, An essay concerning human understanding, edited by R H. Nidditch (Oxford 1975, corr. 1979). LL J. Harrison and R Laslett, The library ofJohn Locke, 2nd edn (Oxford 1971). Shelfmarks ofLocke's copies in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, are cited as 'Locke' and press/volume number, e.g. 7.10. MS Locke Manuscripts of John Locke in the Bodleian Library. See R Long, A summary catalogue of the Lovelace collection of the papers ofJohn Locke in the Bodleian Library (Oxford 1959). Two treatises John Locke, Two treatises ofgovernment, edited by Peter Laslett: the text of the second edition (Cambridge 1967), as revised for republication in the series Cambridge texts in the history ofpolitical thought (Cambridge 1988). Education John Locke, Some thoughts concerning education, ed. J. W. andJ. S.Yolton (Oxford 1989). I THE POLITICAL PROBLEM OF RELIGION: HOBBES'S READING OF THE BIBLE PAUL DUMOUCHEL In this essay, I argue that Hobbes's reading of the Bible, contained in the second half of Leviathan, is a fundamental part of his philosophy. The goal ofParts πι and iv is not merely, as has sometimes been suggested, to sustain with the prestige of religion the political legitimation of the sovereign expounded in Part ii; nor is it, as has also been claimed, to discredit reli gion while seeming to recognize its authority.1 To the contrary, the second half of Leviathan seeks to liberate the sovereign's authority from the neces sity of religious legitimation, which is perceived by Hobbes as a danger to the stability of the commonwealth.The way in which religion threatens civil authority is described in Part i and may be called the political problem of religion. Part II, like most modern political philosophy, simply assumes that the problem does not exist, and maintains that the power of the sovereign rests solely on the consent ofthe subjects.Yet given Hobbes's goal ofbasing his normative theory of politics on a descriptive theory of men as they are, rather than as they should be, it is clear that, from his own point of view, purely rational politics cannot exist as long as men believe that God gives us the first laws of the commonwealth. The aim of Parts ш and iv is to solve this difficulty, by showing that Christianity provides historical and theological justification for the separation of the two realms of religion and politics. © Paul Dumouchel zooo 1 In a recent book, Hobbes and Christianity. Reassessing the Bible in Leviathan (Lanham, Md. 1996), Paul D. Cooke has tried to defend both these theses simultaneously. Not unlike many of Hobbes's contemporary critics, Cooke claims that while Hobbes on the one hand tries to sustain the purely secular power of the sovereign with the prestige of religion, at the same time his aim, on the other hand, is to discredit Christianity, to destroy it while pretending to bow to its authority. Contrary to the claims of this "conspiracy theory", as Cooke himself calls it (P· 37)> I shall maintain that Hobbes is trying to free political power from the need of religious legitimation, and that he seeks a religious justification for the separation of the domains of reli gion and politics. 2 Paul Dumouchel The first two sections of this essay present the political problem of reli gion. Section three gives a quick overview of Hobbes's argument in Parts in and rv of Leviathan, in relation to the first half of the work. The next four sections present Hobbes's solution to the political problem of religion. In the concluding section I argue that Hobbes was doomed to encounter this problem and that he offers what is probably its only possible solution; and I suggest that it is a problem that goes beyond a mere question of Hobbesian exegesis, and that it exists today as the historical problem of the origin of modern forms of political organization. I. THE POLITICAL PROBLEM OF RELIGION Hobbes's political philosophy is a science ofcommonwealths as they should be, on the basis of men as they are. In Leviathan he proposes a normative theory of politics supported by a descriptive theory of mankind. The divi sion of its first half into two Parts reflects this. Part i studies men as they constitute the matter of the commonwealth. Consequently, in i. xiii, Hobbes illustrates his conception of the state ofnature with examples taken from the actual behaviour ofindividuals in society (pp. 186-7).2 Part 11 enquires into the rights and authority of the sovereign. In 11. xx, he accord ingly rejects all objections against the absolute power of the sovereign which are based on the practice of mankind. "For though in all places of the world, men should lay the foundation of their houses on the sand, it could not thence be inferred, that so it ought to be" (261). Similarly, 11. xxix, which discusses the causes of the dissolution of commonwealths, asserts that these do not lie in men inasmuch as they are the matter of commonwealths, but as they are the makers and orderers of them (363). The sovereign and the political philosopher take men as they come: violent, egoistic, greedy, and religious. On this factual basis they build perfect commonwealths, which are destined to live as long as mankind. The sover eign should not try to change his subjects, nor the political philosopher wish them different from what they are. From I. xii we learn that religion is natural in man, and its first seeds ineradicable. This in itself does not constitute a problem. None the less it indicates that the philosopher must take into account the religious dimen sion of human existence, at least in so far as it is relevant to his study of poli tics. The relation between the two domains is revealed through the fact that in the commonwealths of the Gentiles the laws always received a religious 2 Quotations from Hobbes's Leviathan are from the edition by C. B. Macpherson (Harmondsworth 1968), to which the page references also relate. Macpherson reproduces the text of the original 1651 English edition.