## 1. Introduction


### 1.1 The puzzle of Locke's moral philosophy



There are two main stumbling blocks to the study of Locke's moral
philosophy. The first regards the singular lack of attention the
subject receives in Locke's most important and influential published
works; not only did Locke never publish a work devoted to moral
philosophy, but he dedicates little space to its discussion in the
works he did publish. The traditional moral concept of natural law
arises in Locke's *Two Treatises of Government* (1690) serving
as a major plank in his argument regarding the basis for civil law and
the protection of individual liberty, but he does not go into any
detail regarding how we come to know natural law nor how we might be
obligated, or even motivated, to obey it. In his *Essay Concerning
Human Understanding* (first edition 1690; fourth edition 1700,
hereafter referred to as the *Essay*) Locke spends little time
discussing morality, and what he does provide in the way of a moral
epistemology seems underdeveloped, offering, at best, the suggestion
of what a moral system might look like rather than a fully-realized
positive moral position. This brings us to the second major stumbling
block: What Locke does provide us by way of moral theory in these
works is diffuse, with the air of being what J.B. Schneewind has
characterized as "brief, scattered and sometimes puzzling"
(Schneewind 1994, 200). This is not to suggest that Locke says nothing
specific or concrete about morality. Locke makes references,
throughout his works, to morality and moral obligation. However, two
quite distinct positions on morality seem to emerge from Locke's works
and it is this dichotomous aspect of Locke's view that has generated
the greatest degree of controversy. The first is a *natural
law* position, which Locke refers to in the *Essay*, but
which finds its clearest articulation in an early work from the 1660s,
entitled *Essays on the Law of Nature*. In this work, we find
Locke espousing a fairly traditional rationalistic natural law
position, which consists broadly in the following three propositions:
first, that moral rules are founded on divine, universal and absolute
laws; second, that these divine moral laws are discernible by human
reason; and third, that by dint of their divine authorship these rules
are obligatory and rationally discernible as such. On the other hand,
Locke also espouses a hedonistic moral theory, in evidence in his
early work, but developed most fully in the *Essay*. This
latter view holds that all goods and evils reduce to specific kinds of
pleasures and pains. The emphasis here is on sanctions, and how
rewards and punishments serve to provide morality with its normative
force. Both elements find their way into Locke's published works, and,
as a result, Locke seems to be holding what seem to be incommensurable
views. The trick for Locke scholars has been to figure out how, or
even if, they can be made to cohere. The question is not easily
settled by looking to Locke's unpublished works, either, since Locke
also seems to hold a natural law view at some times and a hedonistic
view at others.



One might conclude, with J.B. Schneewind, among others, that Locke's
attempts at constructing a morality were unsuccessful. Schneewind does
not mince words when he writes the following: "Locke's failures
are sometimes as significant as his successes. His views on morality
are a case in point" (Schneewind 1994, 199). Schneewind argues
that the two strands of Locke's moral theory are irreconcilable, and
that this is a fact Locke must have realized. This view is indeed an
apt representation of the frustration many readers have felt with
Locke's moral theory. Locke's eighteenth-century apologist, Catharine
Trotter Cockburn thought Locke provided a promising, but incomplete,
starting point for a positive moral system, imploring, in her work
"A Defense of Mr. Locke's *Essay of Human
Understanding*,"



> 
> I wish, Sir, you may only find it enough worth your notice, to incite
> you to show the world, how far it falls short of doing justice to your
> principles; which you may do without interrupting the great business
> of your life, by a work, that will be an universal benefit, and which
> you have given the world some right to exact of you. Who is there so
> capable of pursuing to a *demonstration* those reflections on
> the grounds of *morality*, which you have already made?
> (Cockburn 1702, 36)
> 



Locke's friend William Molyneux similarly implored Locke to make good
on the promise found in the *Essay*. In a letter written to
Locke on September 16th, 1693, Molyneux presses Locke to
work on a moral treatise once he has finished editing the second
edition of his *Essay*, writing as follows:



> 
> I am very sensible how closely you are engaged, till you have
> discharged this Work off your Hands; and therefore will not venture,
> till it be over, to press you again to what you have promis'd in the
> Business of Man's Life, *Morality*. (Locke 1742, 53)
> 



Several months later, in December of the same year, Molyneux concludes
a letter by asking Locke about what other projects he currently has on
the go "amongst which, I hope you will not forget your
*Thoughts on Morality*" (Locke 1742, 54).



Locke never did produce such a work, and we might well wonder if he
himself ever considered the project a "failure". There is
no doubt that morality was of central importance to Locke, a fact we
can discern from the *Essay* itself; there are two important
features of the *Essay* that serve to enlighten us regarding
the significance of this work in the development of Locke's moral
views. First of all, morality seems to have inspired Locke to write
the *Essay* in the first place. In recounting his original
inclination to embark on the project, he recalls a discussion with
"five or six friends", at which they discoursed "on
a Subject very remote from this" (Locke 1700, 7). According to
Locke, the discussion eventually hit a standstill, at which point it
was agreed that in order to settle the issue at hand it would first be
necessary to, as Locke puts it, "examine our own Abilities, and
see, what Objects our Understandings were, or were not fitted to deal
with" (Locke 1700, 7). This was, he explains, his first entrance
into the problems that inspired the *Essay* itself. But, what
is most interesting for our purposes is just what the remote subject
was that first got Locke and his friends thinking about fundamental
questions of epistemology. James Tyrell, one of those who attended
that evening, is a source of enlightenment on this matter--he
later recalled that the discussion concerned morality and revealed
religion. But, Locke himself refers to the subjects they discussed
that fateful evening as 'very remote' from the matters of
the *Essay*. That may well be, but it is also true that Locke,
in the *Essay*, identifies morality as a central feature of
human intellectual and practical life, which brings us to the second
important fact about Locke's view of morality. Locke writes, in the
*Essay*, that "Morality is the proper Science, and
Business of Mankind in general" (*Essay*, 4.12.11; these
number are, book, chapter and section, respectively, from Locke's
*Essay*). For a book aiming to set out the limits and extent of
human knowledge, this comes as no small claim. We must, Locke writes,
"know our own *Strength"* (*Essay*, 1.1.6)
and turn our attention to those areas in which we can have certainty,
i.e., "those [things] which concern our Conduct"
(*Essay*, 1.1.6). The amount of attention given to the question
of morality itself would seem to belie its primacy for Locke. The
*Essay* is certainly not intended as a work of moral
philosophy; it is a work of epistemology, laying the foundations for
knowledge. However, a very big part of the programme involves
identifying what true knowledge is and what it is we as humans can
have knowledge about, and morality is accorded a distinctive and
fairly exclusive status in Locke's epistemology as one of "the
Sciences capable of Demonstration" (*Essay*, 4.3.18). The
only other area of inquiry accorded this status is mathematics;
clearly, for Locke, morality represents a unique and defining aspect
of what it means to be human. We have to conclude, then, that the
*Essay* is strongly motivated by an interest in establishing
the groundwork for moral reasoning. However, while morality clearly
has a position of the highest regard in his epistemological system,
his promise of a demonstrable moral science is never realized here, or
in later works.



It seems we can safely say that the subject of morality was a weighty
one for Locke. However, just what Locke takes morality to involve is
substantially more complicated an issue. There are two broad lines of
interpretation of Locke's moral views, which I will briefly outline
here.


### 1.2 Critical interpretations of Locke's moral philosophy



The first interpretation of Locke's moral theory is what we might call
an incompatibility thesis: Locke scholars Laslett, Aaron, von Leyden,
among others, hold that Locke's natural law theory is nothing more
than a relic from Locke's early years, when he wrote the *Essays on
the Law of Nature*, and represents a rogue element in the mature
empiricist framework of the *Essay*. For these commentators,
the two elements found in the *Essay* seem not only
incommensurable, but the hedonism seems the obvious and
straightforward fit with Locke's generally empiricist epistemology.
The general view is that Locke's rationalism seems, for all intents
and purposes, to have no significant role to play, either in the
acquisition of moral knowledge or in the recognition of the obligatory
force of moral rules. These fundamental aspects of morality seem to be
taken care of by Locke's hedonism. Worse than this, however, is that
the two views rely on radically different epistemological principles.
The conclusion tends to be that Locke is holding on to moral
rationalism in the face of serious incoherence. The incompatibility
thesis is supported by the fact that Locke seems to emphasize the role
of pleasure and pain in moral decision-making, however it has
difficulty making sense of the presence of Locke's moral rationalism
in the *Essay* and other of Locke's later works (not to mention
the exalted role he gives to rationally-deduced moral law). Added to
this, even in Locke's early work, he seems to hold both positions
simultaneously. Aaron and von Leyden both throw up their hands.
According to von Leyden, in the introduction to his 1954 edition of
Locke's *Essays on the Law of Nature*,



> 
> the development of [Locke's] hedonism and certain other views held by
> him in later years made it indeed difficult for him to adhere
> whole-heartedly to his doctrine of natural law. (Locke 1954, 14)
> 



In a similar vein, Aaron writes:



> 
> Two theories compete with each other in [Locke's] mind. Both are
> retained; yet their retention means that a consistent moral theory
> becomes difficult to find. (Aaron 1971, 257)
> 



Yet, it is curious that Locke neither claimed to find these strands
incompatible, nor ever abandoned his rationalistic natural law view.
It seems unlikely that this view would be nothing more than a
confusing hangover from earlier days. Taking seriously Locke's
commitment to both is therefore a much more charitable approach, and
one that takes seriously Locke's clear commitment to the benefits of
rationally-apprehending our moral duties. An approach along these
lines is one we might call a compatibility approach to the question of
Locke's moral commitments. John Colman and Stephen Darwall are two
Locke scholars who have argued that Locke's view is neither plagued
with tensions nor incoherent. Their common view is that the two
elements of Locke's theory are doing different work. Locke's hedonism,
on this compatibility account, is intended as a theory of moral
motivation, and serves to fill a motivational gap between knowing
moral law and having reasons to obey moral law. Locke introduces
hedonism in order to account for the practical force of the
obligations arising from natural law. As Darwall writes,



> 
> what makes God's commands morally obligatory [i.e., God's authority]
> appears...to have nothing intrinsically to do with what makes
> them rationally compelling. (Darwall 1995, 37).
> 



Thus, on this account, reason deduces natural law, but it is
hedonistic considerations alone that offer agents the motivating
reasons to act in accordance with its dictates.



This interpretation convincingly makes room for both elements in
Locke's view. A central feature of this interpretation is its
attention to the legalistic aspect of Locke's natural law theory. For
Locke, the very notion of law presupposes an authority structure as
the basis for its institution and its enforcement. The law carries
obligatory weight by virtue of its reflecting the will of a rightful
superior. That it also carries the threat of sanctions lends
motivational force to the law.



A slight modification of the compatibility account, however, better
captures the motivational aspect of Locke's rationalistic account:
Locke does, at times suggest that rational agents are not only
obligated, but motivated, by sheer recognition of the divine authority
of moral law. It is helpful to think of morality as carrying both
intrinsic and extrinsic obligatory force for Locke. On the one hand
moral rules obligate by dint of their divine righteousness, and on the
other hand by the threat of rewards and punishments. The suggestion
that morality has an intrinsic motivational force appears in the
*Essays on the Law of Nature* and is retained by Locke in some
of his final published works. It is, however, a feature of his view
that gets somewhat underappreciated in the secondary literature, and
for understandable reasons--Locke tends to emphasize hedonistic
motivations. Why this is will be discussed in
 section 4.
 At this point, however, it suffices to say that Locke's theory does
not have the motivational gap that the compatibility thesis
suggests--hedonism serves as a 'back-up' motivational
tool in the absence of the right degree of rational intuition of one's
moral duty.


## 2. Locke's natural law theory: the basis of moral obligation



In order to get a complete understanding of Locke's moral theory, it
is useful to begin with a look at Locke's natural law view,
articulated most fully in his *Essays on the Law of Nature*
(written as series of lectures he delivered as Censor of Moral
Philosophy at Christ Church, Oxford). Two predominant features of
Locke's natural law theory are already well-developed in this work:
the rationalism and the legalism. According to Locke, reason is the
primary avenue by which humans come to understand moral rules, and it
is via reason we can draw two distinct but related conclusions
regarding the grounds for our moral obligations: we can appreciate the
divine, and thereby righteous, nature of morality *and* we can
perceive that morality is the expression of a law-making
authority.


### 2.1 Morality as Natural Law



In the *Essays on the Law of Nature*, Locke writes that
"all the requisites of a law are found in natural law"
(Locke 1663-4, 82). But, what, for Locke, is required for
something to be a law? Locke takes stock of what constitutes law in
order to establish the legalistic framework for morality: First, law
must be founded on the will of a superior. Second, it must perform the
function of establishing rules of behavior. Third, it must be binding
on humans, since there is a duty of compliance owed to the superior
authority that institutes the laws (Locke 1663-4, 83). Natural
law is rightly called *law* because it satisfies these
conditions. For Locke, the concept of morality is best understood by
reference to a law-like authority structure, for without this, he
argues, moral rules would be indistinguishable from social
conventions. In one his later essays, "Of Ethic in
General", Locke writes



> 
> [w]ithout showing a law that commands or forbids [people], moral
> goodness will be but an empty sound, and those actions which the
> schools here call virtues or vices may by the same authority be called
> by contrary names in another country; and if there be nothing more
> than their decisions and determinations in the case, they will be
> still nevertheless indifferent as to any man's practice, which will by
> such kind of determinations be under no obligation to observe them.
> (Locke 1687-88, 302)
> 



For Locke, then, moral law is, by definition, an obligatory set of
rules, *because* it reflects the will of a superior
authority.



Moral rules are obligatory because of the authority structure out of
which they arise. But, this is not the only story Locke has to tell
regarding the nature of our obligation to divine moral dictates. The
set of moral rules that reason deduces are taken by Locke to be
reflective of human nature. The rules that govern human conduct are
specifically tailored to human nature, and our duty to God involves
realizing our natures to the fullest degree. There is a noticeable
degree of teleology in Locke's theory, which is worth pausing to
consider in its content and its implications.


### 2.2 Morality and Teleology



In the *Essays on the Law of Nature*, Locke draws a connection
between the natural law governing human action and the laws of nature
that govern all other things in the natural world; just as all natural
things seem nomologically determined, so human beings are likewise
law-governed. Humans are not determined to the same degree as other
physical and biological entities, but we are beholden to God to ensure
that our lives follow a certain path. Natural law is, Locke writes, a
"plan, rule, or ... pattern" of life (Locke
1663-64, 81). Locke's early view has a teleological strain
typical of the Aquinian (and thus Aristotelian) tradition. In fact,
Locke does not shy away from this teleological angle, acknowledging
this inheritance when he writes of Aristotle's that he



> 
> rightly concludes that the proper function of man is acting in
> conformity with reason, so much so that man must of necessity perform
> what reason prescribes. (Locke 1663-64, 83)
> 



Locke considers moral duty to be tailored to human nature, a set of
laws specific to humanity and governing our actions according to God's
will. These laws are not only discoverable by reason, but in order to
fulfill our function, humans are required to make use of reason to
this very end. This view resurfaces in the *Essay*, where Locke
writes the following:



> 
> it will become us, as rational Creatures, to imploy those Faculties we
> have about what they are most adapted to, and follow the direction of
> Nature, where it seems to point us out the way. (*Essay*,
> 4.12.11)
> 



The way it points us, he goes on to explain, is in the direction of
our "greatest interests, i.e., the Condition of our eternal
Estate" (*Essay*, 4.12.11). The greater effort we each
make in refining our rational faculty, the more clearly each of us
will discern the proper path to eternal salvation.



This teleological element may seem somewhat out of step with Locke's
unqualified empiricist rejection of teleological metaphysics in the
*Essay*. However, it is important to bear in mind that the
teleological aspects of Locke's moral theory do seem to be serving a
very specific purpose. Locke seems to be aiming to establish a
natural-theological basis for natural law. Why would this be so
crucial for Locke?



Locke is grounding human conduct within a general framework of laws
originating in God's divine command. This is not just a
nomologically-ordered universe, but one, as we have seen, that
reflects the interests of "a powerful and wise
creator...who has made and built this whole universe and us
mortals" (Locke 1663-64, 103). Humans are obligated to obey
God's laws since God is a superior to whom we owe "both our
being and our work" (Locke 1663-64, 105). As such, we are
obligated to show obedience to the "limits he prescribes"
(Locke 1663-64, 105). The laws governing our nature are
discovered by reason and their content is specifically suited to human
nature. Thus, for Locke morality is clearly and necessarily
anthropocentric, understood by reference to human nature. But moral
rules are, above all, an expression of God's will. It is this latter
aspect of morality that binds us to abide by the dictates of morality.
Moral obligation is a matter, for Locke, of obedience to the rightful
authority of God.


### 2.3 Morality as a deductive science



There are two baseline assumptions of Locke's moral thinking: morality
is universal and it is something that can be understood clearly and
unequivocally by human reason--when Locke imagines us
rationally-discovering natural law, he envisions us applying a
rigorous set of logical principles to a set of clear and well-defined
ideas about human nature, God, and society. But, how exactly is this
done?



For one thing, this process looks a great deal like mathematical
reasoning. For Locke, moral rules are founded on a fundamental set of
principles, much like mathematical axioms. The fundamental principles
can be deduced rationally, and it is from these that we can further
derive all of our moral duties. Morality is, therefore, demonstrable,
a term indicating mathematical-style proofs wherein conclusions are
derived from axiomatic foundations. The moral status of any action is
then determined by comparing our behaviour against these demonstrated
rules. But, we might ask, what *kinds* of ideas are moral
ideas, and what sort of rationalist could Locke possibly be? Locke is
a well-known empiricist; for Locke, the mind is a blank slate, the
content of which is supplied exclusively from sensory or reflective
experience. Locke famously espouses this empiricist view in the
*Essay*, but holds it quite clearly also in the *Essays on
the Law of Nature*. In fact, however, Locke's moral
rationalism takes this empiricist theory of ideas as its starting
point. Moral ideas, for Locke, are fundamentally experiential in
origin. They are not directly so, of course, since we do not perceive
something like justice or honesty directly. Moral ideas are
experiential, in the special Lockean sense that they are complex
ideas--products of the mind's ability to form complex
constructions from its simple directly-experiential contents. For
Locke, the interplay of reason and sensation works as follows:



> 
> reason is ... taken to mean the discursive faculty of the mind,
> which advances from things known to things unknown and argues from one
> thing to another in a definite and fixed order of propositions...
> The foundations, however, on which rests the whole of that knowledge
> which reason builds ... are the objects of sense-experience; for
> the senses primarily supply the entire as well as the chief
> subject-matter of discourse and introduce it into the deep recesses of
> the mind. (Locke 1663-64, 101)
> 



From perceptual simple ideas, we can generate complex moral
propositions. This seems like a tall order, and Locke offers very
little, in any of his works, by way of actually putting this moral
reasoning process to work. However, that is not to say that Locke is
silent in this regard. There are places in his writings where Locke
takes us through some moral demonstrations.



In the *Essays on the Law of Nature*, for example, Locke claims
that, based on sensory experience, we can assert the extra-mental
existence of perceptible objects and all their perceptible qualities.
All such qualities can be explained by reference to matter in motion.
What is also clear to the senses, Locke argues, is that this world of
moving objects exhibits a nomological regularity, or as Locke puts it,
a "wonderful art and regularity" (Locke 1663-64,
103). Such regularity and beauty leads the contemplative mind to
consider how such a world could have come about. Such contemplation
would lead any rational being to the conclusion that the world cannot
be the result of chance, and must therefore be the product of a
creative will. Note that Locke is here trying to demonstrate for us
just how sensation and reason work together. The mind moves from ideas
of sensation to what Locke considers logical conclusions regarding the
creative force behind the world we experience. But, our understanding
of natural law is not founded solely in sensory experience. Through
reflection, which is an introspective kind of perceptual experience
for Locke, humans can gain ideas of our own nature and faculties that
serve to complete our understanding both of God and of God's creative
will. This reasoning goes as follows--the creative being, which
sensation indicates must exist, cannot be *less* perfect than
human will, nor can it *be* human, because our ideas of
reflection tell us that humans are not, and cannot be, self-causing.
Reason must conclude, then, that the world is created by a divine
will--a superior power, which can bring us into existence,
maintain us, or take us away, give us great joy or render us in great
pain. Locke concludes as follows:



> 
> with sense-perception showing the way, reason can lead us to knowledge
> of a lawmaker or of some superior power to which we are necessarily
> subject. (Locke 1663-4, 104)
> 



From this deduction regarding divine purpose and authority, humans can
conclude that they are obligated to render "praise, honour, and
glory" to God. Beyond this, the rational agent can deduce,
through reflection upon her own constitution and faculties, that her
natural impulses to protect and preserve her life, and to enter into
society with others are faculties with which she has been uniquely
equipped by God and by which she is considered specifically human.
These must constitute the basis of the principles and duties governing
her conduct--her "function appears to be that which nature
has prepared ... [her] to perform" (Locke 1663-64,
105). Thus, by a series of steps from perception to reasoning about
that perceptual experience, we are, Locke concludes, able to define
our moral duties and regulate our conduct accordingly.



In the *Essay*, Locke develops this idea of the rational
deduction of natural law somewhat further, setting it in the context
of a more mature and coherent theory of ideas than we find in the
*Essays on the Law of Nature*. In the *Essay*, moral
ideas assume a particular significance owing to their place in Locke's
general taxonomy of ideas. For Locke, all the basic contents of the
mind are simple ideas. These are formed by the mind into what Locke
terms complex ideas, which are combinations of simple ideas made in
the pattern of our perceptions of things in the extra mental world, or
according to a pattern created by reason alone. Moral ideas fall into
the second category of complex idea, falling under the technical
heading *complex ideas of modes*. Modes are a specific kind of
complex ideas, created by the mind from simple ideas of sensation or
reflection, but referring to no extra-mental reality. They are not
intended as natural kinds, but are products of the mind alone,
referring to purely conceptual archetypes. They are best understood in
contradistinction to ideas of substances, which are created by the
mind but aim to mirror the real essences of extra-mental
things--for example, the idea *cat* is intended to capture
a kind of thing in the world that has a specific set of perceivable
characteristics. Ideas of substances fail in mirroring reality,
however, as they can never be complete representations of the world
outside the mind. Modal ideas, on the other hand, are a special kind
of idea for Locke, and actually hold out the promise for real
knowledge. Modal ideas are ideas by which we fully grasp the real
essence of things, because the mind, in some sense, is the originator
of them (I will return to this in the next paragraph). The idea of a
triangle is a modal idea, made by reason and knowable in its essence
with complete accuracy. The idea of a triangle is a product of the
mind, and does not refer to anything outside the mind--i.e., any
external archetype. The kinds of ideas that fall into this category
are the idea of God, mathematical concepts, and, most importantly for
our present purposes, moral concepts. Locke writes, 



> 
> I am bold to think, that *Morality is capable of
> Demonstration*, as well as Mathematicks: since the precise real
> Essence of the things moral Words stand for, may be perfectly known;
> and so the Congruity, or Incongruity of the Things themselves, be
> certainly discovered, in which consists perfect knowledge.
> (*Essay*, 3.11.16)
> 



Moral rules, for Locke, are knowable with the same degree of certainty
as "any Demonstration in Euclid" (*Essay*,
4.3.18).



This might seem to be a tall order when considering the controversy
generated by beliefs about moral rules, yet Locke clearly believes
that moral rules can, with the right mental effort, yield indisputable
universal laws. Locke offers an example of how this might work, by
analyzing the moral proposition *Where there is no property, there
is no injustice*. In order to see the demonstrable certainty of
this claim, we have to examine the composite ideas and how those agree
or disagree with one another. The idea of property, first of all, is a
right to something. The idea of injustice, considered next, is a
violation of that right. Given these definitions, which Locke thinks
are arrived at by careful attention to definition, it is a rational
deduction that injustice cannot exist if there is no property to be
violated. Injustice and property must, by definition agree. This is a
clearly demonstrable rule, according to Locke, deduced from clear and
adequately conceived ideas. The only other example Locke offers is the
proposition *No Government allows absolute Liberty*.
Government, according to Locke, is the establishment of society upon
certain laws, requiring conformity. Absolute liberty is allowing
anyone to do as they please. These are modal ideas, according to
Locke, and thus known with complete adequacy. As such, it is possible
for the rational individual to see clearly that the ideas of absolute
liberty and government cannot agree. Of course, most people will argue
that these rational deductions rely upon definitions that are
debatable. This would not seem to be helped by the fact that, for
Locke, modal ideas, like all complex ideas, are put together by the
mind; while complex ideas of substance are constructed on the pattern
of perceivable objects, modal ideas are, Locke explains, "put
together at the pleasure of our Thoughts, without any real pattern
they were taken from" (*Essay*, 4.4.12). This might seem
to pose a problem for Locke's moral theory, according to which moral
laws are just as necessary as mathematical principles. However, Locke
is not worried about any relativistic implications. For Locke, any
disagreement about definitions of concepts like property, justice or
murder, result from insufficient reasoning about the simple ideas that
comprise our moral ideas, as well as bias, prejudice and other
irrational influences. For Locke, it is precisely because these ideas
refer to nothing outside the mind that they can be
universally-conceived and adequately understood. Just as the notion of
triangularity is known perfectly because it does not depend upon the
existence of triangles outside the mind, so justice is understood
perfectly because it is not using some extramental archetype as its
inspiration. He writes,



> 
> the Truth and Certainty of *moral* Discourses abstracts from
> the Lives of Men, and the Existence of those Vertues in the World
> whereof they treat. (*Essay*, 4.4.8)
> 



Mathematical concepts are impervious to bias, prejudice or
otherwise-idiosyncratic definitions and their relative properties are
clear to anyone who understands them perfectly. While many would
contend that moral ideas are simply too controversial to fit a
proto-mathematical picture, Locke would respond that they seem
controversial only because many of us have not taken the time to
consider moral ideas in an objective and analytical light. If we were
to do so, he argues, we could come to know moral rules with
certainty.



Locke, in fact, adds something of a meta-moral dimension to this
epistemological point by suggesting that as rational beings it is our
"proper Imployment" to contemplate morality. In Book IV of
the *Essay*, where Locke concludes that morality is, like
mathematics, a human science (and, properly-speaking, knowledge),
Locke draws a teleological lesson--since we are clearly fitted
with the capacity for discerning our moral duty, then that is what we
ought to do: "I think I may conclude, that *Morality* is
*the proper Science and Business of Mankind in general*."
(*Essay*, 4.12.11) Humans must, he argues, employ reason in the
pursuit of that which "they are most adapted to, and follow the
direction of Nature, where it seems to point us out the way"
(*Essay*, 4.12.11). The fact that many people do not or cannot
devote contemplative hours to their moral duties is something Locke
will consider in his account of moral motivation, however, the key
point here is that humans have a teleological makeup that allows for
rational certainty with regard to divine moral law.



Is having this degree of knowledge enough to motivate humans to act
accordingly--that is, does the sheer recognition of one's duty
have any sway in one's practical deliberations?


## 3. Moral motivation 1: reward and punishment



Locke's hedonism has a dual function in Locke's moral theory. It
accounts both for how we acquire the ideas of moral good and evil that
lie at the root of moral law *and* for the motivation to comply
with moral rules. A prominent feature of Locke's moral legalism is his
view that a law needs to carry the threat of sanctions for it to have
normative force. Locke holds this view on the basis of his hedonistic
theory of human motivation.


### 3.1 Locke's general theory of motivation



Locke develops his hedonistic account most extensively in the
*Essay*. According to this account, pleasure and pain are the
primary motivating factors for all human action and human thought.
Feelings of pleasure and pain accompany all our ideas, for Locke,
prompting us to act in response to our perceptual experiences, and to
move, in thought, from one idea to another. If we had no accompanying
feeling of delight or pain in the face of certain stimuli we would be
unmoved to create music, eat when hungry, or even shift our attention
from one idea to any other--the perception of rain would raise in
us no different response than a sunny day, the idea of one's children
would inspire no related thoughts of home or family, nor any
discernibly different response from the idea of children one does not
know. Locke writes,



> 
> we should have no reason to preferr [sic] one Thought or Action, to
> another; Negligence, to Attention; or Motion, to Rest. And so we
> should neither stir our Bodies, nor employ our Minds; but let our
> thoughts (if I may so call it) run a drift, without any direction or
> design; and suffer the *Ideas* of our Minds, like unregarded
> shadows to make their appearances there, as it happen'd, without
> attending to them. (*Essay*, 2.7.3)
> 



Pleasure and pain are the engines that make decisions, thoughts, and
actions happen. This is not merely coincidence, or chance, for Locke,
but yet another example of God's divine design. God has attached
feelings of pleasure and pain to our ideas, so the natural faculties
with which humans are endowed "might not remain wholly idle, and
unemploy'd by us" (*Essay*, 2.7.3).


### 3.2 Locke's theory of *moral* motivation



Pleasure and pain form the basis of Locke's general theory of
motivation, but they are also the bedrock upon which our moral ideas,
and the motivation to moral goodness arise. *Good* and
*evil* reduce, for Locke, to "nothing but Pleasure or
Pain, or that which occasions or procures Pleasure and Pain to
us" (*Essay*, 2.28.5). A flower is good, because its
beauty raises feelings of affection or pleasure in us. Illness, on the
other hand, is an evil since it raises feelings of aversion in those
who have experienced illness in any of its many forms. A *good*
is whatever produces pleasure in us, or diminishes evil, and an
*evil* is whatever produces pain or diminishes pleasure. In
this way, for Locke, the ideas of good and evil arise from natural
emotive responses to our various ideas. Now, these are not moral goods
and evils, but for Locke moral ideas are founded in the general ideas
we have of natural pleasures and pains. Locke designates no special
faculty by which we acquire the basic moral concepts of good and evil,
since these are merely a modification of our ideas of natural good and
evil; moral good and evil gain their special significance from
considering ideas of pleasure and pain in specific contexts.



Our ideas of *moral* good and evil do not, therefore, differ
qualitatively from *natural* good or evil. If this is the case,
however, one might ask what makes smelling a rose different from
helping those in need. For Locke, the answer lies in the different
context for pleasures and pains that distinguishes the moral from the
natural. While a natural good involves the physical pleasure that
arises from the scent of a rose, *moral* good is a pleasure
arising from one's conformity to moral dictates, and *moral*
evil is pain arising from the failure to conform. The pleasure and
pain are not qualitatively distinct, in these cases, but they take on
a special significance as a result of the considerations that bring
them about. Locke explains this in the *Essay*, making sure to
emphasize the purely contextual distinction between moral and natural
feelings:



> 
> *Morally Good and Evil* then, is only the Conformity or
> Disagreement of our voluntary Actions to some Law, whereby Good and
> Evil is drawn on us, from the Will and Power of the Law-maker; which
> Good and Evil, Pleasure or Pain, attending our observance or breach of
> the law, by the Decree of the Law-maker, is that we call
> *Reward* or *Punishment*. (*Essay*, 2.28.5)
> 



Reward and punishment are a distinct species of pleasure and pain,
specifying the outcomes attending the decrees of a rightful
legislator. In this way, Locke's is a straightforwardly legalistic
account of the concepts of moral good and evil. The practical force of
moral laws arises when we compare our actions against these laws,
determine the degree to which they do or do not conform to the law and
consider the pleasure of pain we will privately experience. In fact,
for Locke, the very idea that one being has rightful legislative power
over another is predicated on the degree to which the former being can
effectively impose sanctions on the latter:



> 
> It would be in vain for one intelligent Being, to set a Rule to the
> Actions of another, if he had not in his Power, to reward the
> compliance with, and punish deviation from his Rule, by some Good and
> Evil, that is not the natural product and consequence of the action
> itself. (*Essay*, 2.28.6)
> 



God, according to Locke, is just such a rightful superior with the



> 
> Goodness and Wisdom to direct our Actions to that which is best: and
> he has the Power to enforce it by Rewards and Punishments, of infinite
> weight and duration, in another Life. (*Essay*, 2.28.8)
> 



Locke is clearly committed to the idea that hedonistically-construed
outcomes are a necessary condition of any system of law and of
legislative authority itself. In this regard, Locke's views are
consistent throughout his corpus. It is worth noting that Locke holds
the same view in the early work, the *Essays on the Law of
Nature*, as he does in the more mature works quoted above. In the
*Essays on the Law of Nature*, *Essay* *V*, Locke
asserts that both God and the soul's immortality "must
necessarily be presupposed if natural law is to exist" (Locke
1663-64, 113). The inclusion of the immortality of the soul
would seem to suggest the centrality of rewards and punishments in the
afterlife. Locke continues by asserting that "law is to no
purpose without punishment" (Locke 1663-64, 113). For
Locke, then, an agent may well know the moral law, and that they are
obligated to a superior authority, but the obligatory
force--i.e., what gives the agent a reason for acting--is
the structure of rewards and punishments built into the system.



The question that has plagued Locke scholarship has been how, if at
all, the hedonistic elements of Locke's moral philosophy can be
reconciled with his rationalistic account, which suggests that reason
can discern morality's inherent righteousness and motivate
accordingly. Some scholars have concluded that Locke effectively
abandons the rationalism of his earlier writings by the time he is
writing the *Essay*, and that any such elements found therein
are mere holdovers of an earlier position. Von Leyden expresses this
view when he writes,



> 
> the development of [Locke's] hedonism and certain other views held by
> him in later years make it indeed difficult for him to adhere
> whole-heartedly to his doctrine of natural law. (von Leyden, 1954, 14)
> 



But does it? What I earlier called the compatibilist thesis is held
most prominently by scholars John Colman and Stephen Darwall,
according to whom Locke's hedonism does not supplant the rationalist
account of natural law and moral obligation, but is, rather, intended
to account for the motivational force of moral law. In this way, the
two views work together for a complete moral picture. Darwall
identifies the distinction between rationally-derived versus
legalistically-construed moral obligation when he writes



> 
> what makes God's commands morally obligatory [i.e., God's authority]
> appears...to have nothing intrinsically to do with what makes
> them rationally compelling. (Darwall 1995, 37)
> 



Colman makes a similar point:



> 
> Right is the central concept in Locke's natural law doctrine, but the
> law could have no purchase on human conduct unless doing that which is
> right were in some way productive of good. 'Good' is the
> central concept in his moral psychology. (Colman 1983, 49)
> 



Both Darwall and Colman understand Locke as equating moral good and
evil with rewards and punishments, such that good and evil are the
operative notions that turn moral rules into moral imperatives for
rational agents. Agents do not have reasons for acting until they are
aware of the rewards and punishments that accompany natural law. On
this interpretation, rational insight regarding the righteousness of
morality cannot, on its own, motivate humans to act.



Divine sanctions are a constant feature of Locke's moral philosophy,
as we've seen, and the compatibilist interpretation goes much further
than the incompatibilist interpretation in capturing the nuances in
Locke's moral philosophy. However, there are passages in Locke's work
that suggest that moral rules carry an obligatory force that can
motivate rational agents irrespective of rewards and punishments. When
this further aspect of Locke's view is taken into account, we can see
that, for Locke, rewards and punishments do not exhaust our reasons
for obeying divine moral rules.


## 4. Moral motivation 2: the righteousness of morality



In the *Essays on the Law of Nature*, Locke argues that there
are two different kinds of obedience to the law of a superior
authority, and that these are founded upon two distinct kinds of
obligation. The example is as follows:



> 
> Anyone would easily ... perceive that there was one ground of his
> obedience when as a captive he was constrained to the service of a
> pirate, and that there was another ground when as a subject he was
> giving obedience to a ruler; he would judge in one way about
> disregarding allegiance to a king, in another about wittingly
> transgressing the orders of a pirate or robber. (Locke 1663-64,
> 118)
> 



At this point, Locke might be understood to be distinguishing laws
backed by a rightful authority and laws that are not, in which the
point is simply that there is no obligation to the pirate, since his
are not strictly laws at all on Locke's definition of the term.
However, Locke continues this passage as follows:



> 
> in the latter case [subject to a pirate or robber], with the approval
> of conscience, he rightly had regard only for his well-being, but in
> the former [subject to a king], though conscience condemned him, he
> would violate the right of another. (Locke 1663-64, 118)
> 



Locke identifies two distinct grounds of obedience. Recognizing that
one's obligation to the king arises from his rightful authority
provides a grounds for obedience that is absent in the case of obeying
the pirate. My reasons for obeying the pirate are hedonistic, but my
reasons for obeying the king involve my recognition of his rightful
authority. Further on in the same *Essay*, Locke explains
that



> 
> We should not obey a king just out of fear, because, being more
> powerful he can constrain (this in fact would be to establish firmly
> the authority of tyrants, robbers, and pirates), but for conscience'
> sake, because a king has command over us by right; that is to say,
> because the law of nature decrees that princes and a lawmaker, or a
> superior by whatever name you call him, should be obeyed. (Locke
> 1663-64, 120)
> 



Thus, sanctions are not the sole motivating factor for Locke. The
contrast Locke draws here is an important but commonly
underappreciated one; that is, acting for "conscience'
sake" *versus* acting 'out of fear' as two
quite distinct grounds for obedience.



The question that remains is how Locke's notion of acting 'for
conscience' sake' can be made sense of within the context of
Locke's general hedonistic account of motivation. It might sound as
though we are working with the kind of purely rational motivating
factor that Locke's hedonistic theory clearly rejects; for Locke
*all* human action is motivated by considerations of pleasure
and pain.



Recall that for Locke rewards and punishments are specific pleasures
and pains. Acting for conscience' sake will necessarily involve
considerations of pleasure and pain, but of a kind quite distinct from
sanctions. For Locke, there is a kind of pleasure that attends
fulfilling one's moral duty that is quite distinct from considerations
of reward and punishment. In an essay, written in 1692, entitled
*Ethica A* (the first of two essays, the other entitled
*Ethica B*), Locke appeals to a kind of pleasure that attends
the fulfilment of one's moral duty:



> 
> Whoever spared a meal to save the life of a starving man, much more a
> friend...but had more and much more lasting pleasure in it than
> he that eat it. The other's pleasure died as he eat and ended with his
> meal. But to him that gave it him 'tis a feast as often as he
> reflects on it'. (Locke 1692, 319)
> 



The pleasure here is of a special kind. It is not the same as the
pleasure we get from satisfying our hunger, nor is it the pleasure
that comes with pleasing an authority or earning a reward. In fact,
Locke explicitly distinguishes it from the pleasure expected in the
afterlife. Fulfilling one's duty, for Locke, carries its own kind of
pleasurable motive--it makes us happy. As Locke writes, further
on in *Ethica A*, "Happiness...is annexed to our
loving others and to doing our duty, to acts of love and
charity" (Locke 1692, 319). Acting according to moral duty,
then, is motivated by feelings of pleasure that attend such acts.



Why, then, does Locke so frequently emphasize the legalistic angle of
morality, which depends so heavily on the motivational force of reward
and punishment? In Locke's view, many people fail to acknowledge, or
be motivated by, the pleasure inherent to the fulfilment of one's
moral duty, and for these people (which, it turns out, is most of us),
God has provided extra incentive--the rewards and punishments God
attaches to our actions are a matter of God's jurisdiction, quite
apart from the pleasures of acting dutifully, and in accordance with
righteous moral dictates. As Locke explains, God



> 
> brings in a necessity of another life...and so enforces morality
> the stronger, laying a necessity on God's justice by his rewards and
> punishments, to make the good the gainers, the wicked losers. (Locke
> 1692, 319)
> 



Sanctions, therefore, serve to enforce morality 'the
stronger' but are quite clearly secondary to the intrinsic
pleasures motivating dutiful action. So, conscience does not motivate
in and of itself, nor does the rational apprehension of one's moral
duty, but Locke identifies a species of pleasure distinct from divine
sanctions that makes his notion of acting for conscience' sake
perfectly consistent with his hedonism: to act for conscience'
sake is to be motivated by, and take pleasure in, acting in accordance
with one's moral duty.


### 4.1 Locke's ethics of belief



Locke's emphasis can be explained by turning our attention to a view
of human nature that lies at the root of Locke's account. Locke tends
to be fairly pessimistic about the degree to which most humans
appreciate the inherent righteousness of morality. In fact, Locke
maintains a fairly low opinion of the willingness of most people to
actually take the time to appreciate the righteousness natural law.
If, he writes,



> 
> we will not in Civility allow too much Sincerity to the Professions of
> most *Men*, but think their Actions to be Interpreters of their
> Thoughts, we shall find, that they have *no* such internal
> Veneration for these Rules, nor so *full a Perswasion of their
> Certainty* and obligation. (*Essay*, 1.3.7)
> 



Humans are flawed in two respects, according to Locke: we can fail to
acknowledge our obligations to natural law, and we can fail to comply
even when these obligations are acknowledged.



Locke's views regarding reason and intellectual duty can be
characterized as an ethics of belief, according to which our rational
abilities place a responsibility on each of us to examine the beliefs
we hold, and to be accountable for those things to which we assent.
This is particularly the case with respect to moral rules, themselves,
which are the ultimate guidelines for a good human life. As Locke sees
it, our capacities as rational agents are insufficiently realized in
many, if not most, cases. While the law of nature is knowable by
reason for Locke, it is not innately known--Locke does not mean
to suggest, as many theologians of his day believed, that it
"lies open in our hearts" (Locke 1663-64, 89). This
would, he grants, be:



> 
> an easy and very convenient way of knowing, and the human race would
> be very well off if men were so fully informed and so endowed by
> nature that from birth they were in no doubt as to what is fitting and
> what is less so. (Locke 1663-64, 90)
> 



For Locke, however, this is just not the case. It is clear, to him,
that most people do not understand their moral duty in any deep or
robust way. To really know one's moral duty is to be a moral agent,
for Locke--moral knowledge is something gained, by the
individual, through rational discovery. Moral truths are attainable
with the proper use of reason:



> 
> there is some sort of truth to the knowledge of which man can attain
> by himself and without help of another, if he makes proper use of the
> faculties he is endowed with by nature. (Locke 1693-94, 89)
> 



For Locke, knowledge, properly-speaking, requires that the individual
herself perceives the truth or falsity of any claim to which she
grants or withholds assent. An individual agent must perform the
intellectual analysis and demonstration herself in order to truly know
her moral duty. As it turns out, however, the greatest number of
people (particularly in Locke's day), are, he acknowledges



> 
> given up to Labour, and enslaved to the Necessity of their mean
> Condition; whose lives are worn out, only in the Provisions of Living.
> (*Essay*, 4.20.2)
> 



For these people, the opportunity for gaining a clear perception of
their moral duty is very narrow. Worse than this, there are people who
have the means and the leisure, but "satisfy themselves with a
lazy ignorance" (*Essay*, 4.20.6). These latter, Locke
asserts, have a "low Opinion of their Souls"
(*Essay*, 4.20.6). But, in neither case are people entirely off
the hook, according to Locke, who argues that no matter how busy one
is, there should always be time for thinking about our souls and
matters of religion. If one fails to do this, then one is relying for
one's salvation and self-realization upon the mere current of opinion
or the untrustworthy word of others. Locke asks if this can
provide



> 
> sufficient Evidence and Security to every Man, to venture his greatest
> Concernments on; nay, his everlasting Happiness, or Misery.
> (*Essay*, 4.20.3)
> 



The failure to do so is a kind of moral failing for Locke, one that
gains its normative force from the teleogical imperative attending our
rational natures:



> 
> God has furnished Men with Faculties sufficient to direct them in the
> Way they should take, if they will but seriously employ them that Way,
> when their ordinary Vocations allow them the Leisure. (*Essay*,
> 4.20.3)
> 



Again, Locke is not suggesting that we do this from considerations of
rewards and punishments, but because it is the fulfillment of our
divinely-created natures. Despite failures to comply, the normative
force of morality is undeniable, for Locke, on these teleogical
grounds. Though Locke seems to believe that our failings with regards
to moral knowledge result from a failure to engage our minds in the
right direction, he does however acknowledge that the discovery of
moral truths is difficult and laborious. And this is where sanctions
come into play.


### 4.2 The special role of sanctions



Sanctions are not necessary to natural law if we consider it strictly
as a system of divine rules. However, sanctions *are* necessary
when morality functions as *law*. Sanctions are mechanisms for
enforcement, where inherent motivating factors are either absent or
underappreciated. Consider, as an example, the moral duty to care for
one's children. For most people, this carries inherent obligatory
force arising from its being obviously good and necessary. Where a
person fails to appreciate the inherent force of this duty, however,
laws exist that require parents to provide the means of life and
education for their children, and such laws stipulate compliance under
threat of sanctions. To call the first instance a law seems
unnecessary, but we can clearly see how the concept of a rule of law
distinguishes the latter case. Sanctions provide motives when
individuals fail to act on the responsibilities reason should on its
own reveal and thereby compel. In the *Essays on the Law of
Nature*, Locke writes,



> 
> Those who refuse to be led by reason and to own that in the matter of
> morals and right conduct they are subject to a superior authority may
> recognise that they are constrained by force and punishment to be
> submissive to that authority and feel the strength of him whose will
> they refuse to follow. (Locke 1663-64, 117)
> 



Sanctions thus ensure that people who 'refuse to be led'
by reason abide by the dictates of natural law; in this way, sanctions
ensure that divine moral rules function as a system of law.



When Locke speaks of moral law, he frequently alludes to sanctions.
Morality *can* motivate without sanctions, but it cannot ensure
general compliance in the way that a system of law can. God's
imposition of sanctions is thus strictly instrumental. They are not
intrinsic to a system of morality, but they are necessary when the
obligatory force of moral rules is not adequately understood. The
special role of sanctions as a means of shoring up moral compliance is
articulated by Locke in several of his writings. In the 1680 essay
*Of God's Justice*, he writes



> 
> though justice be also a perfection which we must necessarily ascribe
> to the supreme being, yet we cannot suppose the exercise of it should
> extend further than his goodness has need of it for the preservation
> of his creatures in the order and beauty of the state that he has
> placed each of them in. (Locke 1680, 278)
> 



God metes out justice in the form of sanctions as a means of ensuring
social order and peace; sanctions ensure social good:



> 
> [God's] justice is nothing but a branch of his goodness, which is fain
> by severity to restrain the irregular and destructive parts from doing
> harm; for to imagine God under a necessity of punishing for any other
> reason but this, is to make his justice a great imperfection. (Locke
> 1680, 278)
> 



In one of his more mature works, *The Reasonableness of
Christianity*, Locke makes the point several times, that moral
law, with its attendant rewards and punishments, was articulated as a
means of ensuring obedience. Humans appreciate the intrinsic
righteousness of virtuous acts, which are generally granted the
highest degree of approbation. However, virtuous behaviour is assured
only when it is in an agent's interests to comply. It is clear to
reason that we ought to act virtuously, but it is easy enough for many
of us to eschew virtuous actions when they either present hardships or
sacrifice of any kind or when they will not clearly benefit our own
interests:



> 
> The generality could not refuse [virtue] their esteem and
> commendation; but still turned their backs on her, and forsook her, as
> a match not for their turn. That she is the perfection and excellency
> of our nature; that she is herself a reward, and will recommend our
> names to future ages, is not all that can now be said of her. (Locke
> 1736, 247)
> 



In order to remedy this problem, Locke explains, God attached clear
and explicit sanctions (made plain through revelation) to ensure that
the virtuous course of action will always be the more attractive
option:



> 
> [Virtue] has another relish and efficacy to persuade men, that if they
> live well here, they shall be happy hereafter. Open their eyes upon
> the endless, unspeakable joys of another life, and their hearts will
> find something solid and powerful to move them. The view of heaven and
> hell will cast a slight upon the short pleasures and pains of this
> present state, and give attractions and encouragements to virtue which
> reason and interest, and the care of ourselves, cannot but allow and
> prefer. Upon this foundation, and upon this only, morality stands
> firm, and may defy all competition. This makes it more than a name; a
> substantial good, worth all our aims and endeavours; and thus the
> gospel of Jesus Christ has delivered it to us. (Locke 1736, 247)
>