Among the most influential writings in the history of Western political thought, John Locke'sTwo Treatises of GovernmentandA Letter Concerning Tolerationremain vital to political debates today, more ...than three centuries after they were written. The complete texts appear in this volume, accompanied by interpretive essays by three prominent Locke scholars.Ian Shapiro's introduction places Locke's political writings in historical and biographical context. John Dunn explores both the intellectual context in which Locke wrote theTwo Treatises of GovernmentandA Letter Concerning Tolerationand the major interpretive controversies surrounding their meaning. Ruth Grant offers a comprehensive discussion of Locke's views on women and the family, and Shapiro contributes an essay on the democratic elements of Locke's political theory. Taken together, the texts and essays in this volume offer invaluable insights into the history of ideas and the enduring influence of Locke's political thought.
In Natural Rights and the New Republicanism, Michael Zuckert proposes a new view of the political philosophy that lay behind the founding of the United States. In a book that will interest political ...scientists, historians, and philosophers, Zuckert looks at the Whig or opposition tradition as it developed in England. He argues that there were, in fact, three opposition traditions: Protestant, Grotian, and Lockean. Before the English Civil War the opposition was inspired by the effort to find the "one true Protestant politics--an effort that was seen to be a failure by the end of the Interregnum period. The Restoration saw the emergence of the Whigs, who sought a way to ground politics free from the sectarian theological-scriptural conflicts of the previous period.
InAuthority Figures, Torrey Shanks uncovers the essential but largely unappreciated place of rhetoric in John Locke's political and philosophical thought. Locke's well-known hostility to rhetoric has ...obscured an important debt to figural and inventive language. Here, Shanks traces the close ties between rhetoric and experience as they form the basis for a theory and practice of judgment at the center of Locke's work. Rhetoric and experience come together, for Locke, to reorient readers' relation to the past in order to open up alternative political futures. Recognizing this debt sets the stage for a new understanding of theTwo Treatises of Government, in which the material and creative force of language is necessary for political critique.
Authority Figuresdraws together political theory and philosophy, the history of science and of rhetoric, and philosophy of language and literary theory to offer an interpretation of Locke's political thought that shows the ongoing importance of rhetoric for new modes of critique in the seventeenth century. Locke's thought offers up insights for rethinking the relationship of rhetoric and experience to political critique, as well as the intersections of language and materialism.
The aim of this book is twofold: to explain the reconciliation of religion and politics in the work of John Locke, and to explore the relevance of that reconciliation for politics in our own time. ...Confronted with deep social divisions over ultimate beliefs, Locke sought to unite society in a single liberal community. Reason could identify divine moral laws that would be acceptable to members of all cultural groups, thereby justifying the authority of government. Greg Forster demonstrates that Locke's theory is liberal and rational but also moral and religious, providing an alternative to the two extremes of religious fanaticism and moral relativism. This account of Locke's thought will appeal to specialists and advanced students across philosophy, political science and religious studies.
Locke on personal identity Strawson, Galen; Strawson, Galen
2011., 20140721, 2014, 2011-09-19, 2014-07-21
eBook
John Locke's theory of personal identity underlies all modern discussion of the nature of persons and selves--yet it is widely thought to be wrong. In his new book, Galen Strawson argues that in fact ...it is Locke's critics who are wrong, and that the famous objections to his theory are invalid. Indeed, far from refuting Locke, they illustrate his fundamental point.
Liberating judgment Casson, Douglas John
2011., 20110103, 2011, 2011-01-03, 20110101
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Examining the social and political upheavals that characterized the collapse of public judgment in early modern Europe,Liberating Judgmentoffers a unique account of the achievement of liberal ...democracy and self-government. The book argues that the work of John Locke instills a civic judgment that avoids the excesses of corrosive skepticism and dogmatic fanaticism, which lead to either political acquiescence or irresolvable conflict. Locke changes the way political power is assessed by replacing deteriorating vocabularies of legitimacy with a new language of justification informed by a conception of probability. For Locke, the coherence and viability of liberal self-government rests not on unassailable principles or institutions, but on the capacity of citizens to embrace probable judgment.
The book explores the breakdown of the medieval understanding of knowledge and opinion, and considers how Montaigne's skepticism and Descartes' rationalism--interconnected responses to the crisis--involved a pragmatic submission to absolute rule. Locke endorses this response early on, but moves away from it when he encounters a notion of reasonableness based on probable judgment. In his mature writings, Locke instructs his readers to govern their faculties and intellectual yearnings in accordance with this new standard as well as a vocabulary of justification that might cultivate a self-government of free and equal individuals. The success of Locke's arguments depends upon citizens' willingness to take up the labor of judgment in situations where absolute certainty cannot be achieved.
This book examines John Locke's claims about the nature and workings of language. Walter Ott proposes an interpretation of Locke's thesis in which words signify ideas in the mind of the speaker, and ...argues that rather than employing such notions as sense or reference, Locke relies on an ancient tradition that understands signification as reliable indication. He then uses this interpretation to explain crucial areas of Locke's metaphysics and epistemology, including essence, abstraction, knowledge and mental representation. His discussion challenges many of the orthodox readings of Locke, and will be of interest to historians of philosophy and philosophers of language alike.
This book studies Locke's views on the content and method of natural philosophy. Focusing on his Essay concerning Human Understanding, but also drawing extensively from Locke's other writings and ...manuscript remains, it argues that Locke was an advocate of the Experimental Philosophy: the new approach to natural philosophy championed by Robert Boyle and the early Royal Society. On the question of method, this study demonstrates how Locke's pessimism about the prospects for a demonstrative science of nature led him, in the Essay, to promote Francis Bacon's method of natural history, and to downplay the value of hypotheses and analogical reasoning in science. Yet, it is argued, Locke never abandoned the ideal of a demonstrative natural philosophy, for he believed that, if we could discover the primary qualities of the tiny corpuscles that constitute material bodies, we could then establish a kind of corpuscular metric that would allow us a genuine science of nature. It was only after the publication of the Essay, however, that Locke came to realize that Newton's Principia provided a different model for the role of demonstrative reasoning in science, a model based on principles established by observation. This led Locke to make significant revisions to his views in the 1690s. On the content of Locke's natural philosophy, this book argues that, even though Locke adhered to the Experimental Philosophy he, was not averse to speculation about the corpuscular nature of matter. It takes us into new terrain and new interpretations of Locke's thought through an exploration of his mercurialist transmutational chymistry, his theory of generation by seminal principles, and his conventionalism about species.
This book discusses Locke’s theory of property from both a critical and an interpretative standpoint. The author first develops a comprehensive interpretation of Locke’s argument for the legitimacy ...of private property, and then examines the extent to which the argument is really serviceable in defense of that institution. He contends that a purified version of Locke’s argument--one that adheres consistently to the logic of Locke’s text while excluding considerations extraneous to his logic--actually does establish the legitimacy of a form of private property. This version, which is both defensible in contemporary, secular terms and is, essentially, egalitarian, should provoke a reassessment of the nature of Locke’s relevance to contemporary discussions of distributive justice.
