But what of Locke’s rationalistic natural law theory? How can this be made to cohere with Locke’s legalistic account of natural law. While the latter suggests that morality amounts to obedience to the sanction-based laws of a superior, as we have seen, the former suggests that morality, rationally discovered, reveals our inher- ent obligation to divine law. If we consider what Locke has to say in the earlier Essays on the Law of Nature, natural law is far from arbitrary. Locke believed that natural law was reflective of human nature in the sense that the laws intended to govern us are laws specifically tailored to the disposition and temperament of human beings. He claims, for instance, that “we can infer the principle and a definite rule of our duty from man’s own constitution and the faculties with which he is equipped.”7 In other words, by examining
our natures, we can reason to the laws that most naturally ought to govern us. As we have also seen, there is evidence for this in the Essay. Here, Locke explains that our moral rules are founded in the ideas of God as a supreme being and ourselves “as understand- ing, rational Beings, being such as are clear in us” (4.3.18). It is the knowledge that these are God’s laws, determined by God according to the specific characteristics of human nature, that lends the oblig- atory weight, if not motivational force, to natural law. The specific content of natural law is based on the facts of human nature, and our duty to obey natural law lies in the authority of God’s will, since it is God who originally articulated the laws suitable to crea- tures like us. Locke repeatedly speaks of the fittingness of morality
LOCKE’S THEORY OF MORALITY
to our rational natures, as a science discoverable by reason. God fit us with rational abilities to discern our duty, and we can perceive our obligation to obey these laws on more than strictly hedonistic grounds. The fittingness and righteousness of moral law is some- thing, it would seem, quite apart from the legalistic features of nat- ural law involved in its proper enforcement. In fact, for Locke, our obligation to divine law is as clear to reason as a mathematical truth. The rational person will be as certain that “the inferior, finite and dependent is under an obligation to obey the supreme and infinite as he is certain to find that three, four, and seven are less than fif- teen if he chooses to compute those numbers” (4.13.3). This does not involve a perception of sanctions but a consideration of our nature and that of God, and the obligations that attend the relationship between such beings. While he may require a present uneasiness to motivate him to act, the rational agent’s perception of the inherent righteousness of moral law requires no such inducement.
One way of reconciling these two strains of Locke’s thought is to see Locke’s rationalism and his hedonism as speaking to separate aspects of morality. Locke’s rationalism concerns the discovery of moral rules, and their origin in divine will. As suggested above, there seems to be a recognition of our obligations to these laws that is not strictly hedonistic. Though Locke thinks many people are incapable of recognizing the inherent righteousness of morality, this is because they have “no such internal Veneration for these Rules, nor so full a Perswasion of their Certainty and Obligation” (1.3.7). But our lack of veneration for moral rules does not affect the fact of their inherent moral authority as rules for virtuous living. We can, in principle, discern their inherent authority if we are sufficiently insightful as to their content and source; further, we can perceive the rationality of these laws as guides to action. As Locke writes in the Essays on the Law of Nature, “it is reasonable that we should do what shall please him who is omniscient and most wise.”8
Locke’s hedonism concerns morality as a system of law. Insofar as natural law is intended as a kind of social control, its obligatory force arises from the authority of a superior and the sanctions the laws carry. Hedonistic considerations, then, motivate moral action insofar as morality is a system of law. However, the origin of moral- ity in human and divine nature does speak to something more than a strictly legalistic view of morality. It was important for Locke that the laws we are being motivated to obey are, themselves, righteous
laws that are set down by a benevolent superior in accord with our rational natures. If these laws were the products of an evil dicta- tor, Locke would have nothing to say about their inherent oblig- atoriness, nor of our internal veneration for them. Locke scholar J.B. Schneewind has characterized Locke’s natural law as the arbi- trary dictates of God: “The possession of unlimited power merely enables God to be at best a benevolent despot, at worst a tyrant.”9
But this seems to ignore the fact that, for Locke, the sanctions- based obedience to these laws is only one part of the story about morality that we are given in Locke’s writings. In regards to moral law as the expression of God’s righteousness and our duty to God on those grounds, sanctions have no intrinsic part to play. Reason, it would seem, dictates that we should follow these laws. But the question remains whether these laws can possibly have any intrinsic motivational force. It might be possible to see how Locke thinks the rational perception of her moral duties can motivate a person’s will if we return to Locke’s account of suspension. The rational per- son will, ideally, be able to perceive that obedience to divine law is in her present interest, insofar as it is an expression of her nature. In this way, she can raise in herself an uneasiness for the satisfac- tion of acting in a way most fitted to her own nature and that of God; as such, then, it can become a present good. Reading Locke in this way makes sense of Locke’s view that rational moral rules, clearly perceived as expressions of our nature and God’s righteous- ness, can guide human behavior: “it is appropriate for us as rational creatures to employ our faculties on what they are best adapted to, and follow the direction of nature where it seems to show us the way” (4.12.11).
CHAPTER SIX