Abstract
One of the primary philosophical labours that Locke took upon himself was the refutation of materialism and the establishment in its place of a divine physics, so I shall argue. I shall also argue that this task was fundamental to his entire philosophical programme, and that he was guided in this endeavour not only by mere natural reason but by reason enlarged by revelation, in particular, by thoughts concerning the work of Christ and the resurrection of the dead.
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Notes
- 1.
See Essay IV. xix. 4; also below, p. 230.
- 2.
It could be said about Gassendi and Spinoza, among others. On the ubiquity of Epicurean philosophy in Seventeenth Century Europe, see Catherine Wilson, Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2008).
- 3.
LL 969, 970, 1823, 1824, 1825.
- 4.
Robert Boyle, Some Considerations concerning the Usefulness of Natural Philosophy, The Works of Robert Boyle iii. 250–61; cited by Locke at about the time of the book’s publication (1663) in MS Locke f. 14, p. 31; John Smith, A Short Discourse of Atheism, Select Discourses (London: W. Morden, 1660), cited by Locke, c1665, MS Locke f. 14, p. 184.
- 5.
MS Locke f. 6; transcribed, An Early Draft of Locke’s Essay, R.I. Aaron and Jocelyn Gibb, eds (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936), 118.
- 6.
For more on the perennial philosophical conflict between gods and giants, the gigantomachia, see below, p. 227, and fn. 60.
- 7.
Epicurus, Letter to Herodotus, 38–39, The Hellenistic Philosophers, ed. A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), i. 25.
- 8.
Lucretius, De rerum natura [hereafter cited as DRN], eng. tr. W. H. D. Rouse, revised by Martin Ferguson Smith (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), i. 146–59.
- 9.
Furley, Cosmic Problems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) 166f; also The Hellenistic Philosophers, 26; D.P. Fowler, Lucretius on Atomic Motion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 409.
- 10.
DRN i. 225–37; 5. 91–109
- 11.
DRN i. 215–64; see also Epicurus to Herodotus, §§38, 73–74.
- 12.
DRN i. 445–63.
- 13.
naturae species ratioque, ‘the aspect of nature and her laws’. According to David Sedley, this Latin expression is Lucretius’ rendering of φυσιολογία, ‘with natura and ratio picking up ϕύσις and λόγος respectively’, Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) 37; see also, Don Fowler, Lucretius on Atomic Motion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 141.
- 14.
DRN i. 328.
- 15.
DRN 1. 329–45.
- 16.
DRN ii. 116–24.
- 17.
DRN i. 540.
- 18.
DRN i. 584–98.
- 19.
DRN i. 951–83; 1021–51; ii. 333–568.
- 20.
DRN ii. 216–24 The doctrine of the swerve of atoms is not only an important postulate of Epicurean physics, but of its theory of free agency also. In this connection it will be discussed below.
- 21.
DRN v. 187–94.
- 22.
DRN ii. 1090–92.
- 23.
The remainder of this chapter, §§13–17, 18–19 contains two supplementary arguments that will be considered below.
- 24.
See Elizabeth Asmis, ‘Rhetoric and Reason in Lucretius’, The American Journal of Philology, 104 (1983) 50 and passim. On Locke’s familiarity with Cicero’s writings, see the previous chapter.
- 25.
Essay IV. ii. 2–8.
- 26.
See Essay, Epistle to the Reader, 6f, ‘This, Reader, is the Entertainment of those, who let loose their own Thoughts, and follow them in writing; which thou oughtest not to envy them, since they afford thee an Opportunity of the like Diversion, if thou wilt make use of thy own Thoughts in reading. ’Tis to them, if they are thy own, that I referr myself’.
- 27.
Locke’s notion of a rational proof is a sequence of ideas so arranged that they form a chain of propositions that are intuitively certain and that carry the mind from the initial thought to a conclusion: in this instance, from the thought that something exists to the thought that there exists an eternal being that is all powerful and all knowing; see Essay IV. xvii. 4; p. 670–78.
- 28.
Locke does not make clear whether he intends both active and passive powers; I assume he was speaking generally and so meant both sorts. For further discussion, see below, Sect. 2.
- 29.
That is, thinking or unthinking, OED.
- 30.
Locke’s theistic proof has not fared well in modern scholarly opinion. J.J. MacIntosh, considers it ‘startlingly weak’ (‘Locke and Boyle on Miracles and God’s Existence’, Robert Boyle Reconsidered, 194); Nicholas Wolterstorff counts it ‘among the weakest’ versions of the cosmological argument and so dismisses it as unworthy of detailed analysis and appraisal (‘Locke’s philosophy of religion’, The Cambridge Companion to Locke, ed. Vere Chappell Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 189). One expositor correctly identifies it as a species of cosmological argument, but mistakes the species and much of the context (Nicholas Jolley, Locke, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 95f). In contrast to these, Michael Ayers’ exposition of Locke’s proof in ‘Mechanism, Superaddition, and the Proof of God’s Existence in Locke’s Essay’ (The Philosophical Review, 90/2 [April 1981] 210-51) is careful and insightful; it also provides a useful comparison with Cudworth’s anti-materialist arguments. See also Ayers, Locke, 2 vols (London: Routledge, 1991), ii. 168–83.
- 31.
Note that Locke rightly does not use the familiar terms ‘omnipotent’ or ‘omniscient’.
- 32.
Cicero, De Legibus II.vii. 16. Cicero’s reproof seems directed against Lucretius’s judgment that intelligence is very rare in the universe; that minds must at the very least be embodied, and most likely in bodies with ‘sinews and blood’, like our own (DRN v. 126–45).
- 33.
G. W. Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding, tr. Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) 436. It should be noted that with respect to the remainder of the chapter (IV. x. 7–19), Leibniz judges Locke’s arguments to be sound and his insights profound.
- 34.
Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 3 vols, ed. John Cottingham et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) ii. 46–47.
- 35.
Baruch Spinoza, Ethics, Part I, Appendix.
- 36.
‘Deus’, MS Locke c.28, fols 119–29. The manuscript is dated 1696. It is written in the hand of Timothy Kiplin, who entered Locke’s service in November 1696. There are corrections in Locke’s hand and his customary signature JL. There is one correction evidently made by Kiplin, which suggests that he was copying from another manuscript and not taking dictation. There is no trace of an earlier version among Locke’s manuscripts that might tell us when Locke first wrote it, however, the content leaves little doubt that Locke was addressing Edward Stillingfleet’s criticism of his proof in chap. 10 of A Discourse in Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity (London, 1697) 246–52. Although the year of publication for Stillingfleet’s Discourse is given as 1697, it came out during the previous year. It is listed in The Term Catalogue for Michaelmas term 1696. Locke’s first Letter to Stillingfleet, written in response to it, was published in March, 1697, and there is good evidence that he had finished drafting it before the previous year’s end, for more about this, see the General Introduction to my John Locke, Vindications of the Reasonableness of Christianity (forthcoming, 2011).
- 37.
The Principles of Philosophy, Part One, section 14 (The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, i. 197). It is likely that Locke did not have this place in mind, rather that he picked up on Stillingfleet’s appeal to the concept. Ibid., 248. The occasion of the manuscript, then, seems to be Stillingfleet’s criticism of his theistic proof, and then revisited. The manuscript may been written as a revised version of Essay IV. x. 7, and then abandoned. It seems clear, in any case, that Locke revisited his proof and confirmed his own anti-materialist intentions.
- 38.
In general, Stillingfleet found fault with Locke’s proof because it was not founded upon clear and distinct ideas, but on a vague intuition of self-existence. He also chided Locke for unfairly blaming Descartes for the arrogance of some of his followers; op. cit., 246–47, 252.
- 39.
MS Locke c. 28, fos 119r, 119v.
- 40.
Ibid., fo. 120v.
- 41.
There are actually two arguments here: (1) Something exists from eternity, for if this were not so, then there would have been a time when there was nothing, which is absurd. (2) Something exists from eternity, for if this were not so, then what now exists would be the product of pure nothing, which is absurd.
- 42.
Compare with DRN ii. 886–90 ‘… what is that which strikes on your very mind … forbidding you to believe that the sensible is born from the insensible? Surely that stones and sticks and earth though mingled together and earth though mingled together yet cannot produce the vital sense’. Lucretius point is that sentient thinking beings are of a different sort from sticks and stones, and from pebbles or nail clippings; they are complex organic bodies ‘with flesh, sinews, veins’, and material souls and minds. There is agreement thus far between Lucretius and Locke, even as far that finite thinking beings may be material organized mortal bodies.
- 43.
Locke’s claim that matter is inherently inert, that motion must be superadded to it is reminiscent of his reflection concerning thinking matter. Unlike bulk, shape, texture and location, motion and thought must be superadded.
See also Essay II. xxi. 4; perhaps deliberately, in this connection, Locke fails to mention free falling bodies; but see II. xxi. 9, 27.
- 44.
Essay IV. x. 10, p. 623, line 32—624, line 7, alludes to the Epicurean theory that mind and ideas are composed of the finest of elements; as though the refining of matter affects a ‘spiritualizing’ of it; yet, Locke insists, ‘They knock, impel, and resist one another, just as the greater do, and that is all they can do’; see DRN iii. 241–57.
- 45.
Lucretius agrees that sensation and thinking are not properties of material atoms, but of organic bodies. DRN ii. 865 Lucretius uses a similar argument to prove the emergence of mind; if atoms had the power of thinking, then every atom would be a thinking being, whereas we see that intelligence is a power of a certain kind of complex organized body.
- 46.
See Asmis, op. cit., 52.
- 47.
As is appropriate, Locke names no names. Hobbes comes immediately to mind, and Stoic theology. But it becomes clear that Locke’s purpose is not to refute some particular theory, but to ridicule the very idea.
- 48.
Here Nidditch cites Lucretius, DRN i. 150, which is quoted above, 209.
- 49.
In the account of this last alternative, I have relied on Ayers, op. cit. 1981.
- 50.
This qualification is added at the end of Locke’s discourse (IV. x. 17 [628]), and lends support to the present interpretation, that Locke is considering a material thinking body in Epicurean and not Stoic terms.
- 51.
On the doctrine of the ‘swerve’, see DRN ii. 16–93; Lucretius relies on this doctrine to explain free agency (ii. 251–83). It is quite clear from these lines and elsewhere in his discussion of mind (animus) as self-governing, that he believed that animals have a power, an emergent power, which is not directly caused by the random swerve of atoms but made possible by it. For contemporary discussion, see David Furley, Aristotle and Epicurus on Voluntary Action, Two Studies in the Greek Atomists (Princeton: Princeton University Press) 169–83 and passim; Hellenistic Philosophers i. 110–12; D.P. Fowler, op. cit., 219–63.
- 52.
See DRN ii. 263–71, 284–93; iii. 95, 143–44.
- 53.
Essay IV. x. 17 (627).
- 54.
The point of view represented here is similar to one presented by Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, Observations on Experimental Philosophy (1666), ed. Eileen O’Neill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) 23–42. There is no evidence that Locke read this book. However, the materialist positions represented in the two supplementary arguments have affinities with views promoted by the Newcastle circle, with which Margaret Cavendish and Hobbes were associated.
- 55.
Essay IV. x. 18–19, with the exception of an important insertion, this was written before II. xxvii., which first appeared in the second edition of the Essay (1694).
- 56.
I follow John Yolton here, who observes that Locke doesn’t seem to have attributed to spirit, an immaterial substance, any other properties than ‘bare being’, whereas he regularly attributes to matter the properties of solidity and extension; see Yolton, Thinking Matter (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983) 20. Yolton’s observation derives from Locke’s remark in his second Reply to Stillingfleet (Mr Locke’s reply to the Lord Bishop of Worcester’s Answer to his Second Letter, London, A. and J. Churchill, and E. Castle, 1699) 402. However, in the Essay, Locke attributes to common opinion a fuller notion of spirit: ‘a Substance, wherein Thinking, Knowing, Doubting, and a power of Moving, etc. subsist’ and concludes that we have as clear an idea of the substance of spirit as we do of body (Essay II. xxiii. 5 [297]).
- 57.
The idea that higher spirits might be disposed to doubt that they were created is reminiscent of Paradise Lost v. 859, where Satan denies having any memory of his own creation: ‘We know no time when we were not as now’. The idea of created spirits having no awareness of a beginning of existence is reminiscent of the Kabbalah; see above Chap. 6.
- 58.
The argument against inconceivability is double-edged. Locke regularly employs it to support divine creative power; yet as in the case of his defence of secondary qualities as effects of material bodies that possess only the attributes of solidity, shape, size and mobility (Essay II. viii. 13) and, in his argument against Stillingfleet, to defend the possibility that material organized bodies may think and possess other powers, he is defending material powers.
- 59.
IV. xxi. 2 (720).
- 60.
Plato, Sophist 246a-c; also Symposium 190b; an account of the mythical Gigantomachia is provided by Apollodorus, The Library, I.vi.103; see also Hesiod, Theogony, 820-68. Thomas Lennon has used the theme well to characterize the vicissitudes of European philosophy during the seventeenth century in his eponymous book, The Battle of the Gods and the Giants (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). Lennon includes Locke among the giants. While I have benefited greatly from reading his book and agree with much of it, I differ with his interpretation of Locke’s materialist affinities.
- 61.
Sophist 246a, translation by H.N. Fowler modified (Plato, Sophist, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1921).
- 62.
DRN iv. 136–42; v. 110–25; see Monica Gale, Myth and Poetry in Lucretius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 43–45 and passim.
- 63.
Essay IV. iii. 6 (540, 542).
- 64.
Second Reply to Stillingfleet, 397–98; see also below fn. 67.
- 65.
The Aristotelian notion of ἐντελέχια, i.e., actualization, perfection, most likely belongs to the ancestry of Locke’s thinking here; see Aristotle, Metaphysics 1009a36, 1015a19; De Anima, 412b5, the definition of soul as the first entelechy of the body.
- 66.
MS Locke c. 43, p. 32; WR, 29. The strikethroughs are Locke’s deletions in the manuscript. My additions are in brackets.
- 67.
It might have occurred to Locke, given his acquaintance with Hellenistic philosophical schools, that the Stoics had no trouble conceiving of material bodies that think in a way that was more accommodating to his purposes; but he preferred St Paul, who he believed wrote with divine authority. It is noteworthy that St Paul’s account in 1 Cor. 15 of different levels of body has key affinities with Stoic theory and most likely, directly or indirectly, derives from it. See A. A. Long, ‘Soul and Body in Stoicism’, Stoic Studies, 224–49. I am grateful to Christopher Star for calling this to my attention.
- 68.
Compare DRN i. 926–50; iv. 1–25; iii. 1–30; iv. 364–65: in the last, Lucretius, in apparent self-mockery, describes how our shadows move in the sunlight following in our own footsteps, imitating our every move.
- 69.
I offer this as a gloss on Locke’s admonition that readers must rely on their own thoughts (Essay, Epistle to the Reader [7]); these thoughts are not just any thoughts that a reader might care to use in interpreting what an author has written, but suitable thoughts for use in a particular enquiry. They are thoughts that arise in the mind when it attends carefully to the object of enquiry and ignores what some tradition and authority would have one think.
- 70.
However, at Essay II. i. 24 (118), Locke writes in a more expansive if not triumphal Lucretian mood. After observing that all our knowledge originates with ideas of sensation and reflection, he remarks: ‘All those sublime Thoughts, which towre above the Clouds, and reach as high as Heaven it self, take their Rise and Footing here: In all that great Extent wherein the mind wanders, in those remote Speculations, it may seem to be elevated with, it stirs not one jot beyond those Ideas, which Sense or Reflection, have offered for its Contemplation.’
- 71.
Reasonableness, 5–12; WR, 91–95.
- 72.
Two Treatises, 289.
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Nuovo, V. (2011). Locke Against the Epicureans. 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_9
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