The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Review: Curtis - An Outline of Lockers Ethical Philosophy

by Walter Francis Willcox

An Outline of Locke’s Ethical Philosophy. Inaugural Dissertation presented to the University of Leipzig for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Mattoon Munroe Curtis, M.A. Leipzig, Gustav Fock, 1890. — pp. viii, 145.

In a note to his "Geschichte der Ethik in der neueren Philosophie" Professor Jodl remarks, "I am not acquainted with any monograph upon the ethics of Locke." The present dissertation thus fills a niche hitherto unoccupied in the history of English ethics. The author begins with an historical sketch in which he points out that the "sensualism, materialism, and absolutism" of Hobbes "formed the point of departure of modern ethical speculation" (p. 8), and dwells interestingly on a neglected contemporary of Hobbes and forerunner of Cumberland, Nathaniel Culverwel.

After this introduction Professor Curtis comes to Locke and finds his position determined in great measure by reference to his great predecessor. "It remained for Locke to review the entire philosophy of Hobbes and assail it in each of its ethico-political strongholds. . . . They represent two distinct and opposing lines of thought not only in politics, but in morality and religion" (p. 18). "On the main lines Locke opposes Hobbes throughout, while agreements in particulars are the agreements of both with others who went before" (p. 22). This interpretation differs widely from those of Professor Jodl, "Locke agrees with Hobbes in his fundamental idea" (Grundanschaung) (G.d. Ethik, I, p. 146), and Professor Wundt, "Locke follows Hobbes in his fundamental ideas in that he opposes intellectualism" (Ethik, p. 275) as well as of Professor Paulsen, whose opinion the author cites and attempts to refute. Locke like Kant seems to have given rise to two lines of successors, each claiming to be the legitimate heirs of his intellectual estate. The line through Hume and Voltaire to the French Encyclopædists naturally finds in him a link binding them back to Hobbes; while the line through the Scottish school as naturally finds in him a bitter opponent of materialism and its founder in England. Numerous passages may be cited in support of either position. It is to the latter class that Professor Curtis belongs. In agreement with this tendency he supplements the two generally recognized sources of ideas, sensation and reflection, by a third, the intellect, and argues ably in support of this interpretation of the "Essay." The most definite quotation by which he seeks to uphold it is found in Locke's First Letter to Stillingfleet, "General ideas (e.g. of substance) come not into the mind by sensation or reflection, but are the creatures or inventions of the understanding, as I think I have shown" (p. 35). It might have been better, had the author put over against the foregoing some one or more of the seemingly contradictory passages in the second book, e.g. "The understanding seems to me not to have the least glimmering of any ideas which it doth not receive from one of these two," i.e. sensation and reflection (Essay on Hum. Und. II, i, 5), and either attempted to reconcile them, or admitted that the contradiction was irreconcilable. We may admit the position taken by President Porter in a passage quoted (p. 37), "In the latter part of the Essay ... without asserting in form any new source of ideas, and without in the least abandoning his previous teachings ... he does in fact take the same ground with Reid and the Scottish school," but this does not justify the construction of Locke's ethical system without a careful balancing of conflicting passages. The author may have done so in his own study, but we should be glad to know more fully than he has enabled us to do his reasons for accepting one set and passing somewhat lightly over what makes against his interpretation. In no part of his monograph does he admit the existence of fundamental difficulties or contradictions in Locke's thought. Yet the conviction with which one leaves this interesting study may well be that such difficulties exist, and that no harmonious system of ethics can be constructed from his writings without doing violence to some parts of them. Is it not a possible and even a probable position that Locke embodied and expressed, perhaps unconsciously and at different periods of his twenty-five years of writing on these subjects, the opposing views which gradually came to more precise expression and a clearer consciousness in his successors? This possibility the author does not examine or suggest. On the whole, however, the thesis is an interesting and suggestive attempt to interpret in a systematic way all of Locke's writings on ethics including the "Treatises on Government" and the "Reasonableness of Christianity."

W. F. Willcox.