The
main lines of Locke’s natural law theory are as follows: there is a
moral law that is ( discoverable by the combined work of reason and
sense experience, and binding on human beings in virtue of being
decreed by God. Locke thinks that all human beings are naturally
oriented to the pursuit of happiness. This is because we are
motivated to pursue things if they promise pleasure and to avoid
things if they promise pain. It has seemed to many commentators that
these two discussions of moral principles are in tension with each
other. On the view described in Law, Locke
straightforwardly appeals to reason and our ability to understand the
nature of God’s attributes to ground our obligation to follow the
law of nature. In other words, what is lawful ought to be followed
because God wills it and what is unlawful ought to be rejected
because it is not willed by God. Because we can straightforwardly see
that God is the law-giver and that we are by nature subordinate to
Him, we ought to follow the law. By contrast, in the discussion of
happiness and pleasure in the Essay, Locke explains that
good and evil reduce to what is pleasurable and what is painful.
While he does also indicate that the special categories of good and
evil—moral good and moral evil—are no more than the conformity or
disagreement between our actions and a law, he immediately adds that
such conformity or disagreement is followed by rewards or punishments
that flow from the lawmaker’s will. From this discussion, then, it
is difficult to see whether Locke holds that it is the reward and
punishment that binds human beings to act in accordance with the law,
or if it is the fact that the law is willed by God.
One
way to approach this problem is to suggest that Locke changed his
mind. Because of the thirty-year gap between Law and
the Essay,
we might be tempted to think that the more rationalist picture, where
the law and its authority are based on reason, was the young Locke’s
view when he wrote Law.
This view, the story would go, was replaced by Locke’s more
considered and mature view, hedonism. But this approach must be
resisted because both theories are present in early and late works.
The role of pleasure and pain with respect to morality is present not
only in the Essay,
but is invoked in Law (passage
quoted at the end of §2c), and many other various minor essays
written in the years between Law and Essay (for
example, ‘Morality’ (c.1677–78) in Political
Essays,
267–69). Likewise, the role of the authority of God's will is
retained after Law,
again evident in various minor essays (for example, ‘Virtue B’
(1681) in Political
Essays,
287-88), Government II.6),
Locke’s correspondence (for example, to James Tyrrell, 4 August
1690, Correspondence,
Vol.4, letter n.1309) and even in the Essay itself
(II.xxviii.8). An answer to how we might reconcile these two
positions is suggested when we consider the texts where appeals to
both theories are found side-by-side in certain passages.
In
his essay Of Ethick in General (c. 1686–88) Locke
affirms the hedonist view that happiness and misery consist only in
pleasure and pain, and that we all naturally seek happiness. But in
the very next paragraph, he states that there is an important
difference between moral and natural good and evil—the pleasure and
pain that are consequences of virtuous and vicious behavior are
grounded in the divine will. Locke notes that drinking to excess
leads to pain in the form of headache or nausea. This is an example
of a natural evil. By contrast, transgressing a law would not have
any painful consequences if the law were not decreed by a superior
lawmaker. He adds that it is impossible to motivate the actions of
rational agents without the promise of pain or pleasure (Of Ethick
in General, §8). From these considerations, Locke suggests
that the proper foundation of morality, a foundation that will entail
an obligation to moral principles, needs two things. First, we need
the proof of a law, which presupposes the existence of a lawmaker who
is superior to those to whom the law is decreed. The lawmaker has the
right to ordain the law and the power to reward and punish. Second,
it must be shown that the content of the law is discoverable to
humankind (Of Ethick in General, §12). In this text it
seems that Locke suggests that both the force and authority of the
divine decree and the promise of reward and punishment are necessary
for the proper foundation of an obligating moral law.
A
similar line of argument is found in the Essay. There,
Locke asserts that in order to judge moral success or failure, we
need a rule by which to measure and judge action. Further, each rule
of this sort has an “enforcement of Good and Evil.” This is
because, according to Locke, “where-ever we suppose a Law, suppose
also some Reward or Punishment annexed to that Law” (Essay,
II.xxviii.6). Locke states that some promise of pleasure or pain is
necessary in order to determine the will to pursue or avoid certain
actions. Indeed, he puts the point even more strongly, saying that it
would be in vain for the intelligent being who
decrees the rule of law to so decree without entailing reward or
punishment for the obedient or the unfaithful (see also Government,
II.7). It seems, then, that reason discovers the fact that a divine
law exists and that it derives from the divine will and, as such, is
binding. We might think, as Stephen Darwall suggests in The
British Moralists and the Internal Ought, that if reason is that
which discovers our obligation to the law, the role
for reward and punishment is to motivate our
obedience to the law. While this succeeds in making room for both the
rationalist and hedonist strains in Locke’s view, some other texts
seem to indicate that by reason alone we ought to be motivated to
follow moral laws.
One
striking instance of this kind of suggestion is found in the third
book of the Essay where Locke boldly states that
“Morality is capable of Demonstration” in the same way as
mathematics (Essay, III.xi.16). He explains that once we
understand the existence and nature of God as a supreme being who is
infinite in power, goodness, and wisdom and on whom we depend, and
our own nature “as understanding, rational Beings,” we should be
able to see that these two things together provide the foundation of
both our duty and the appropriate rules of action. On Locke’s view,
with focused attention the measures of right and wrong will become as
clear to us as the propositions of mathematics (Essay,
IV.iii.18). He gives two examples of such certain moral principles to
make the point: (1) “Where there is no Property, there is
no Injustice” and (2) “No Government allows absolute Liberty.” He
explains that property implies a right to something and injustice is
the violation of a right to something. So, if we clearly see the
intensional definition of each term, we see that is necessarily
true. Similarly, government indicates the establishment of a society
based on certain rules, and absolute liberty is the freedom from any
and all rules. Again, if we understand the definitions of the two
terms in the proposition, it becomes obvious that is necessarily
true. And, Locke states, following this logic, 1 and 2 are as certain
as the proposition that “a Triangle has three Angles equal to two
right ones” (Essay, IV.iii.18). If moral principles have the
same status as mathematical principles, it is difficult to see why we
would need further inducement to use these principles to guide our
behavior. While there is no clear answer to this question, Locke does
provide a way to understand the role of reward and punishment in our
obligation to moral principles despite the fact that it seems that
they ought to obligate by reason alone.
Early
in the Essay, over the course of giving arguments against
the existence of innate ideas, Locke addresses the possibility of
innate moral principles. He begins by saying that for any proposed
moral rule human beings can, with good reason, demand justification.
This precludes the possibility of innate moral principles because, if
they were innate, they would be self-evident and thus would not be
candidates for justification. Next, Locke notes that despite the fact
that there are no innate moral principles, there are certain
principles that are undeniable, for example, that “men should keep
their Compacts.” However, when asked why people
follow this rule, different answers are given. A “Hobbist” will
say that it is because the public requires it, and the “Leviathan”
will punish those who disobey the law. A “Heathen” philosopher
will say that it is because following such a law is a virtue, which
is the highest perfection for human beings. But a Christian
philosopher, the category to which Locke belongs, will say that it is
because “God, who has the Power of eternal Life and Death, requires
it of us” (Essay, I.iii.5). Locke builds on this statement
in the following section when he notes that while the existence of
God and the truth of our obedience to Him is made manifest by the
light of reason, it is possible that there are people who accept the
truth of moral principles, and follow them, without knowing or
accepting the “true ground of Morality; which can only be the Will
and Law of God” (Essay, I.iii.6). Here Locke is suggesting
that we can accept a true moral law as binding and follow it as such,
but for the wrong reasons. This means that while the
Hobbist, the Heathen, and the Christian might all take the same law
of keeping one’s compacts to be obligating, only the Christian does
it for the right reason—that God’s will requires our obedience to
that law. Indeed, Locke states that if we receive truths by
revelation they too must be subject to reason, for to follow truths
based on revelation alone is insufficient (see Essay,
IV.xviii).
Now,
to determine the role of pain and pleasure in this story, we turn to
Locke’s discussion of the role of pain and pleasure in general. He
says that God has joined pains and pleasures to our interaction with
many things in our environment in order to alert us to things that
are harmful or helpful to the preservation of our bodies (Essay,
II.vii.4). But, beyond this, Locke notes that there is another reason
that God has joined pleasure and pain to almost all our thoughts and
sensations: so that we experience imperfections and dissatisfactions.
He states that the kinds of pleasures that we experience in
connection to finite things are ephemeral and not representative of
complete happiness. This dissatisfaction coupled with the natural
drive to obtain happiness opens the possibility of our being led to
seek our pleasure in God, where we anticipate a more stable and,
perhaps, permanent happiness. Appreciating this reason why pleasure
and pain are annexed to most of our ideas will, according to Locke,
lead the way to the ultimate aim of the enquiry in human
understanding—the knowledge and veneration of God (Essay,
II.vii.5–6). So, Locke seems to be suggesting here that pain and
pleasure prompt us to find out about God, in whom complete and
eternal happiness is possible. This search, in turn, leads us to
knowledge of God, which will include the knowledge that He ought to
be obeyed in virtue of His decrees alone. Pleasure and pain, reward
and punishment, on this interpretation, are the means by which we are
led to know God’s nature, which, once known, motivates obedience to
His laws. This mechanism supports Locke’s claim that real happiness
is to be found in the perfection of our intellectual nature—in
embarking on the search for knowledge of God, we embark on the
intellectual journey that will lead to the kind of knowledge that
brings permanent pleasure. This at least suggests that the knowledge
of God has the happy double-effect of leading to both more stable
happiness and the understanding that God is to be obeyed in virtue of
His divine will alone.
But
given that all human beings experience pain and pleasure, Locke needs
to explain how it is that certain people are virtuous, having
followed the experience of dissatisfaction to arrive at the knowledge
of God, and other people are vicious, who seek pleasure and avoid
pain for no reason other than their own hedonic sensations.
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