Abstract
Anyone who has read John Locke’s account of personal identity will remember that he equated it with consciousness of self over time whereby an individual owns its actions and passions past and present. He labels individuals who do this ‘persons’. ‘Where-ever a Man finds, what he calls himself, there I think another may say is the same Person.’ In addition he observes that ‘person’ is a forensic term, because individuals own not only their bare actions, but the merit or demerit of them also. This applies only to ‘intelligent Agents capable of Law’, that is, capable of following a rule. They personify the rule of law. On this account, a certain rule or measure of thought and action becomes an integral a part of one’s own self (which develops over time), to be sure a normative part. Its presence is detected in the feelings of satisfaction and shame that attach themselves to memories of things past, and to the aspirations of hope and the fear of condemnation that arise when we reflect upon them. Being true to one’s own self, forensically considered, involves the practice of honest self-examination according to an internal standard. Truthfulness in all other respects is akin to it, for this forensic practice is a kind of discerning; a person is truthful who takes care that what it says conforms to what it knows to be true. Care is another intrinsic aspect of personality, for persons endeavor to conform their actions to law out of a concern for their happiness. It is supposed that one’s happiness depends upon it also, for honesty in all one’s judgments about one self is a condition of divine favor, without which happiness is impossible. Locke believed that this law is not a natural endowment, engraved on the mind, ready to be read when needed. Rather it is something to be sought after in honest pursuits of truth. Rightly understood, it is an eternal rule of right, rooted in divine goodness, but like all else that we come to know or believe, natural or revealed, our acceptance is the result of experience and judgment, whereupon it is stored in the memory, revived in the mind and applied to our actions in reflective or deliberative moments that span our waking life. Over time, these practices cast the self into a particular shape and character. Hence, it would not be impertinent to inquire about the rule-governed character that Locke applied to his own self. What kind of person did John Locke take himself to be? I answer, a Christian Virtuoso.
This chapter is a revised and enlarged version of a keynote address delivered at the Tercentenary Conference on John Locke held in Brisbane, Australia in June 2004.
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Notes
- 1.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet, I. 3. 79–82. For a plausible interpretation of these lines that fits the theme of this paper, see Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 3. Trilling characterizes the age in which Locke lived as an age of sincerity, which he defines as an endeavour to achieve congruence between one’s public avowals with one’s internal beliefs. Like all moral norms, it was often touted rather than obeyed, and its avowals were therefore frequently suspect. An age of sincerity is also likely be an age of suspicion. The two go together, and their conjunction is not a reason to discount the seriousness of its practitioners, of which the Christian virtuoso is a type, to achieve it.
- 2.
Essay, II. xxvii. 26 (346).
- 3.
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Epistle to the Reader (6) ‘This, Reader, is the Entertainment of those, who let loose their own Thoughts, and follow them in writing’. The subsequent clause may be appealed to as justification for this approach. I have elaborated on this process in my ‘Locke’s Hermeneutics of Existence and his Representation of Christianity’ forthcoming in Luisa Simonutti, ed. Conscience and Scripture. Locke and Biblical Hermeneutics (Dordrecht: Springer, in preparation).
- 4.
See my ‘Locke’s Hermeneutics’.
- 5.
Robert Boyle, The Christian Virtuoso. The First Part (1691), Boyle, Works, xi, 283.
- 6.
‘Boyle. Observations on his treatise 81’, MS. Locke c. 27, fols. 67–68.
- 7.
Robert Boyle, Some Considerations Concerning the Usefulness of Natural Philosophy. The First Part (1663), Boyle, Works, iii, 213; see also The Excellency of Theology, Boyle, Works, viii, published in 1674 but written a decade or more before; also Some Considerations About the Reconcileableness of Reason and Religion, Boyle, Works, viii, published 1675 but also written at least a decade earlier.
- 8.
Composing works and laying them by for later examination by associates and eventual publication was Boyle’s common practice. See, e.g., Edward B. Davis, ‘ “Parcere Nominibus”, Boyle, Hooke and the rhetorical interpretation of Descartes’, in Robert Boyle Reconsidered, ed. Michael Hunter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 157f.
- 9.
Locke expressed such an opinion of Boyle in his ‘Advertisement’ to Boyle’s General History of the Air, Boyle, Works, xii, 5. See also Sir Peter Pett ‘notes on Boyle’ in Robert Boyle, by Himself and His Friends ed. Michael Hunter (London: Pickering and Chatto, 1994), 54–83, and Gilbert Burnet’s funeral sermon printed in the same volume.
- 10.
According to the corpuscular hypothesis, gross material bodies are made up of indiscernibly small corpuscles (tiny bodies) that vary in size, shape and bulk and whose divinely appointed ways of cohesion and motion determine the properties and operations of their perceptible grosser counterparts. For a survey of corpuscularism during the 17 C, see Daniel Garber, et al., ‘New Doctrines of Body and its Powers, Place and Space’, The Cambridge History of Seventeenth Century Philosophy, ed. Michael Ayers and Daniel Garber, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1998), i, 552–623. On corpuscularism in Boyle, see Peter Anstey, The Philosophy of Robert Boyle (London: Routledge, 2000), 2f. and passim.
- 11.
The Christian Virtuoso, Boyle, Works, xi, 291.
- 12.
The cognitive stance of the Virtuoso, which I emphasize here, also has a rhetorical aspect to it. This should not be surprising, for the virtuoso who publishes his opinions ‘to the world’ can hardly avoid a rhetorical strategy, especially if he has classical learning and, hence, a ready skill to do so. Steven Shapin explores this rhetorical and self-promotional aspect of the Christian Virtuoso in A Social History of Truth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). Shapin’s method has its limitations. He equates the role of the Christian Virtuoso and his discourse with a public posture and a convenient rhetorical device intended to gain public credibility. Although he acknowledges Boyle’s sincerity, he gives it little weight. Michael Hunter’s ‘The Conscience of Robert Boyle’ (in his Robert Boyle, 1627–1691: Scrupulosity and Science, Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2000, 58–71) is an important corrective. However, Hunter views Boyles fits of conscience, his scrupulosity, as dysfunctional, and makes Boyle into an obsessive-compulsive, perhaps overlooking that these characteristics are aspects of his virtuosity.
- 13.
Boyle, Works, xi, 297, 298.
- 14.
Essay, IV. xix. 4 (698); see also Locke, Education, 244f.
- 15.
Christian Virtuoso, xi, 306.
- 16.
Ibid., iii, 301. Free thinkers such as Charles Blount (1654–93) and John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647–80), known to Boyle, may have suggested these characters to him.
- 17.
Usefulness, Boyle, Works, iii, 278.
- 18.
On the other hand, Boyle recognized that some free thinkers objected to Christianity because it fell short of pagan nobility. A short work appended to the first published edition of The Christian Virtuoso offers a refutation of the claim of a libertine, an advocate of atheism and materialism, that the virtue of magnanimity, that is nobility of greatness of mind, was more likely to be cultivated by a libertine than by a Christian. In response, Boyle contends that Christianity promotes all of the pagan virtues: among them courage, liberality, patience, a contempt for all that is base, as well as a readiness to forgive, impartiality with respect to persons and indifference to worldly goods, and humility. Greatness of Mind Promoted by Christianity, Boyle, Works, xi, 347, 365 and passim.
- 19.
For an account of Boyle’s celibate disposition, see Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth, 164f. See also Michael Hunter, Scrupulosity and Science, 17f.
- 20.
Robert Boyle, The Excellency of Theology, Boyle, Works, viii, 8.
- 21.
Iain Pears’ historical novel, An Instance of the Fingerpost (London: Penguin, 1997), offers a faithful picture of Oxford and the activities of Boyle’s circle.
- 22.
M.A. Stewart, ‘Locke’s Professional Contacts with Robert Boyle’, The Locke Newsletter, 12, 1981, 20f. See also Correspondence, i, nos. 97, 101.
- 23.
Locke to John Locke, sen., c. 9 January 1660, Correspondence, i, 136, ‘Armes is the last and worst of refuges’.
- 24.
This is De Beer’s plausible conjecture, Correspondence, i, 136n. and nos. 91, 97.
- 25.
E.g., John Locke, Two Tracts on Government, ed. Philip Abrams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), ‘Infallibility’, WR, 69–72.
- 26.
Correspondence, i, 305.
- 27.
See De Beer’s headnote to no. 163, Correspondence, i, 214; also John Strachey to Locke, 18 November 1663: Strachey advised against accepting an ecclesiastical living, arguing that Locke’s intellect is too versatile to be confined to the cares of the clerical office and that he would soon grow impatient with it, Correspondence, i, 215.
- 28.
John Milton, ‘The Unscholastic Statesman: Locke and the Earl of Shaftesbury’, paper read at the John Locke Tercentenary Conference, St Anne’s College, Oxford, 3 April 2004.
- 29.
Locke to John Strachey, 28 February 1666, Correspondence, i, 263. See also Maurice Cranston, John Locke, A Biography (London: Macmillan, 1957), 81–87.
- 30.
MS Locke, f. 14 passim.
- 31.
The text is divided into two parts, the first with theological books, the second with books in the liberal arts. These are titled ‘Analecta Sacra’ and ‘Bibliotheca’ MS Locke e. 17, pp. 23–42; 44–71; with the exception of p. 23, the first page, the manuscript is in the an unidentified hand. Barlows’s bibliographies were published posthumously in his The Genuine Remains of that learned prelate, Dr. Thomas Barlow (London: John Dunton, 1693) and subsequently in Thomas Barlow, Αυτοσχεdiασματα, De Studio Theologiae, ed. William Offley (London: Leon. Lichfield, 1699). A manuscript version very nearly the same as the one in Locke’s notebook is in the library of St John’s College, Cambridge, MS K. 38. This has been transcribed and published as ‘A Library for Younger Schollers’, ed. Alma De Jordy and Harris Francis Fletcher, Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, vol. 48 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961). It is probable that Locke’s copy of this manuscript derives from a copy originally in Boyle’s library in Oxford, to which Locke had access; see Locke to J. O., early August 1660?, Correspondence, i, 151.
- 32.
Correspondence, iii, 354; iv, 320–22.
- 33.
In Boyle, Works, xii, and xi–xxiv passim.
- 34.
See Chap. 10.
- 35.
Locke to a lady, Correspondence, i, 65; see also Locke’s correspondence with Anne Evelegh (Correspondence, i, no. 63 et seq., Elinor Parry, Correspondence, i, no. 48, et seq., and with Damaris Cudworth).
- 36.
Correspondence, i, 301.
- 37.
‘I find my self more and more indebted to your kindnesse, which could make you for my sake consent that I should take a calling which you your self are not very fond of and in resolutions against which you have been this 7 years confirmeing me, and which before 7 years more be over you will fine twas neither want of reason or affection made me refuse.’ Correspondence, i, 305.
- 38.
On the love affair between Locke and Damaris Cudworth, no one has written with more learning and sensitivity than Mark Goldie in John Locke and the Mashams at Oates (Essex: Parish of High Laver, 2004).
- 39.
Cudworth named his daughter well: Damaris is one of two person’s named among St Paul’s converts following his sermon on the Areopagus of Athens; the other was Dionysius the Areopagite. On Damaris Cudworth as philosopher see the important studies by Sarah Hutton, who offers a careful account based on all available sources in ‘Damaris Cudworth, Lady Masham, Between Platonism and Enlightenment’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, i/1 (February, 1993), 30–54; and Luisa Simonutti, ‘Dalla Poesia Metafisica alla filosofia Lociana. Damaris Cudworth, Lady Masham’ Donne Filosofiae e Cultura nel Seicento, ed. Pina Totaro (Rome, 1999), 183–209.
- 40.
The locus classicus for Damon is Virgil Eclogue, viii. Philoclea is a main character of Sidney’s Arcadia.
- 41.
Correspondence, ii, 575.
- 42.
For a description of Damaris as an intellectual companion and alter ego, see Locke’s open letter to Samuel Bold, in the preface to A Second Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity (London: A. and J. Churchill, 1697), A1v.
- 43.
Cranston, op. cit., 480; for a less dignified account of Locke’s last moment, see Roger Woolhouse, John Locke, a Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 469.
- 44.
In his commentary on 1 Cor. 7: 25, 37, Locke correctly interprets St Paul’s use of the term παρθένος to signify virginity as a state of life suitable for men as well as women; see Paraphrase and Notes, i, 202–4.
- 45.
In Education, 258. Locke advocates rigorous diversions: ‘Nor let it be thought that I mistake when I call these or the like Exercises of Manual Arts [viz. gardening, husbandry, carpentry] Diversions or Recreations: For Recreation is not being Idle (as every one may observe) but easing the wearied part by change of Business: And he that thinks Diversion may not lie in hard and painful Labour, forgets the early rising, hard riding, heat, cold and hunger of Huntsmen, which is yet known to be the constant Recreation of Men of the greatest Condition.’
- 46.
Essay, I. i. 6 (46).
- 47.
Essay, I. i. 7 (47).
- 48.
London, 1665. I have not searched Locke’s manuscripts for a reference to it. He possessed a copy of the first edition of it; LL 1488.
- 49.
Locke to Van Limborch, 3 December 1689, Correspondence, 735. The translation is mine. According to Suetonius, de Vita Caesarum, Jul. 32, when his decision was made to cross the Rubicon, he said ‘jacta esto alea’ (let the die be cast!). My source is Lewis & Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879).
- 50.
Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, ed. Graham Rees and Maria Wakely (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), 170–71.
- 51.
Essay, IV. iii. 25, 26; also III. vi. 9.
- 52.
Essay, III. vi. 3, 11, 12; IV. iii. 6, 17, 23.
- 53.
Essay, IV. xxi. 2.
- 54.
Education, 245.
- 55.
On the science of morality: see Essay, III. xi. 16; IV. iii. 18; also IV. xii. 8, where Locke refers to the proposition that morality is capable of demonstration as a ‘Conjecture’.
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Nuovo, V. (2011). A Portrait of John Locke as a Christian Virtuoso. In: Christianity, Antiquity, and Enlightenment. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 203. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0274-5_1
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