Abstracts
Abstract
This paper argues that what interests Locke most is not whether we are free to suspend desire but the nature of the liberty that suspension grants us, and that Lockean liberty is essentially about deliberation that takes place in what has nowadays come to be called the space of reasons. This allows me to offer a novel and balanced account that carefully designates both causal and rational elements of Locke’s theory of moral agency: after having reached a judgment concerning the best course of action, we are to take measures, if need be, so that this cognitive achievement raises the corresponding conative element, namely an uneasiness that determines our will. Locke’s ambitious theory aims to incorporate two strong philosophical intuitions widely held incompatible: that our will is free and that impulses affect our choices. The present interpretation thus throws new light on the development of Western moral thought.
Keywords:
- freedom,
- deliberation,
- motivation,
- moral agency,
- desire,
- uneasiness,
- judgment
Download the article in PDF to read it.
Download
Appendices
Bibliography
- Allison, Henry E. Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
- Bramhall, John. A Defence of True Liberty. In Hobbes and Bramhall on Liberty and Necessity, edited by Vere Chappell, 43–68. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
- Celano, Anthony. “Medieval Theories of Practical Reason.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edited by Edward N. Zalta. Stanford University, 1997–. Article published October 8, 1999; substantive revision November 21, 2022. Accessed August 27, 2024. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/practical-reason-med/.
- Chappell, Vere. “Locke on the Freedom of the Will.” In Locke’s Philosophy: Content and Context, edited by G. A. J. Rogers, 101–21. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
- Chappell, Vere. “Power in Locke’s Essay.” In The Cambridge Companion to Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, edited by Lex Newman, 130–56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
- Descartes, René. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes I–II. Translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
- Garrett, Don. “Liberty and Suspension in Locke’s Theory of the Will.” In A Companion to Locke, edited by Matthew Stuart, 260–78. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2016.
- Harris, James A. Of Liberty and Necessity: The Free Will Debate in Eighteenth-Century British Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
- Jolley, Nicholas. Locke: His Philosophical Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
- Kambouchner, Denis. “Locke and Descartes on Free Will: The Limits of an Antinomy.” In Locke and Cartesian Philosophy, edited by Philippe Hamou and Martine Pécharman, 144–57. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
- Leisinger, Matthew A. “Liberty and Suspension in Locke’s Essay.” Locke Studies 21 (2021): 26–55.
- Locke, John. An Essay concerning Human Understanding. Edited by Peter H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.
- LoLordo, Antonia. Locke’s Moral Man. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
- Lowe, E. J. “Locke: Compatibilist Event-Causalist or Libertarian Substance-Causalist?” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68, no. 3 (2004): 688–701.
- Lowe, E. J. Locke. London: Routledge, 2005.
- Magri, Tito. “Locke, Suspension of Desire, and the Remote Good.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 8, no. 1 (2000): 55–70.
- Rickless, Samuel C. “Locke on Active Power, Freedom, and Moral Agency.” Locke Studies 13 (2013): 31–51.
- Schneewind, J. B. “Locke’s Moral Philosophy.” In The Cambridge Companion to Locke, edited by Vere Chappell, 199–225. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
- Schouls, Peter A. Reasoned Freedom: John Locke and Enlightenment. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992.
- Sellars, Wilfrid. “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind.” In The Foundations of Science and the Concepts of Psychology and Psychoanalysis, edited by Herbert Feigl and Michael Scriven, 253–329. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1956.
- Stuart, Matthew. Locke’s Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
- Walsh, Julie. “Locke and the Power to Suspend Desire.” Locke Studies 14 (2013): 121–57.
- Weinberg, Shelley. Consciousness in Locke. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
- Westberg, Daniel. Right Practical Reason: Aristotle, Action, and Prudence in Aquinas. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.
- Yaffe, Gideon. Liberty Worth the Name: Locke on Free Agency. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.