Slavery and Absolutism in Locke

The following Note responds to a recent article by Johan Olsthoorn and Laurens van Apeldoorn on slavery and political absolutism in Locke’s Two Treatises of Government. The Note engages with Olsthoorn and Apeldoorn’s important article but queries its principal contentions.

Corrigendum and Errata to Samuel C. Rickless's "Locke on the Probability of the Mind's Immateriality," Locke Studies 20 (2020): 1-28, https://doi.org/10.5206/ls.2020.10677

This article contains corrections to Rickless’s article “Locke on the Probability of the Mind’s Immateriality” published in Locke Studies 20 (2020). The original article may be found at the article’ homepage. Rickless provides a corrigendum to his interpretation of Nicholas Jolley’s Locke’s Touchy Subjects. The editor notes three errata, which have been corrected in the original article.

Addendum to "Recent Publications," Locke Studies 20 (2020)

This is an addendum to the 2020 bibliographic article "Recent Publications," Locke Studies 20 (2020): 1-16. It contains 14 items of interest to Lockeans published in Japanese between 2018-2020 and not yet included in the John Locke Bibliography.

Recent Publications

A list 173 works related to Locke, published during late 2019 and 2020.

Front Matter

A summary note from the Editor-in-Chief regarding developments at the journal Locke Studies and the contents of volume 20 (2020). The note also looks ahead to changes for the journal coming in 2021.

A Defense of Locke’s Moral Epistemology

In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke provides an empirical account of all of our ideas, including our moral ideas. However, Locke’s account of moral epistemology is difficult to understand leading to mistaken objections to his moral epistemological theory. In this paper, I offer what I believe to be the correct account of Locke’s moral epistemology. This account of his moral epistemology resolves the objections that morality is not demonstrable, that Locke’s account fails to demonstrate the normativity of statements, and that Locke has not provided us with the means to determine the correctness of the moral rules.

Query concerning Locke's Method of Reproduction for BL Add MS 5415 G.4 "Map of Charlestown"

This is a query regarding BL Add MS 5415 G.4 “Map of Charlestown,” which is a chart of the Cape Fear River and coastline around 1662 that Locke replicated sometime around 1671.

Christian Antiquity and the Anglican Reception of John Locke’s Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St Paul, 1707–1730

The study of John Locke’s theological thought has yet to be combined with emerging historical research, pioneered by Jean-Louis Quantin, into the apologetic uses of Christian antiquity in the Restoration Church of England. This article will address this historiographical lacuna by making two related arguments. First, I will contend that Locke’s Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St. Paul (1705–1707) marked a definitive shift in his critique of the appeal to Christian antiquity. Prior to 1700, Locke had largely contested these references to the precedent of the early Christian Church by making a narrowly philosophical case against arguments from authority in general. However, the controversial reception of Locke’s theological writings in the 1690s, compelled him to develop historical and methodological arguments in the Paraphrase against the witness of Christian antiquity. Secondly, I will argue that Locke’s repudiation of the witness of Christian antiquity was the primary motivation for the diverse responses to the Paraphrase by early eighteenth-century Anglican writers, such as Robert Jenkin, Daniel Whitby, William Whiston, Winch Holdsworth and Catharine Cockburn.

Locke on the Probability of the Mind's Immateriality

For many years, there has been a vibrant debate about whether Locke is friendly or hostile to the proposition that the mind is a material thing. On the one hand, there are passages in which Locke tells us that it is probable that the mind is immaterial. On the other hand, there are passages in which Locke expressly allows for the possibility that matter, suitably arranged, could be given the power to think. It is no surprise, then, that some scholars assume that Locke is a dualist, while other scholars think that Locke is a materialist. Yet others think that Locke studiously tries to remain completely agnostic about the nature of mind. Taking the relevant primary sources and secondary literature into account, I argue that Locke takes it to be more probable than not that the mind is immaterial.

Secondary Qualities as Dispositions

In this paper I will defend the view that, according to Locke, secondary qualities are dispositions to produce sensations in us. Although this view is widely attributed to Locke, this interpretation needs defending for two reasons. First, commentators often assume that secondary qualities are dispositional properties because Locke calls them “powers” to produce sensations. However, primary qualities are also powers, so the powers locution is insufficient grounds for justifying the dispositionalist interpretation. Second, if secondary qualities are dispositional properties, then objects would retain secondary qualities while not being observed, but Locke says that colors “vanish” in the dark. Some commentators use this as evidence that Locke rejects the dispositionalist view of secondary qualities, and even those that are sympathetic to the traditional interpretation find these comments to be problematic. By contrast, I argue that even in these supposedly damning passages Locke shows an unwavering commitment to the view that the powers to produce sensations in us, i.e., the secondary qualities, remain in objects even when they are not being perceived. Thus, the arguments against the traditional interpretation are unpersuasive, and we should conclude that Locke does indeed hold that secondary qualities are dispositions to cause sensations in us.