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Douglas John Casson is assistant professor of political science at St. Olaf College.

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"This innovative treatment of Locke emphasizes the role of probable judgment in early modern political thought. Casson clearly demonstrates that Locke, like several of his contemporaries, was searching for a middle way between the skepticism and dogmatism that characterized so much of the early modern era, and that he was able to apply a probabilistic solution to the political sphere."--Barbara Shapiro, University of California, Berkeley

"Liberating Judgment is a welcome addition to the literature on Locke. More clearly and powerfully than any previous book, it traces the importance of the theme of probable judgment across several aspects of Locke's work, including his writings on medicine, epistemology, metaphysics, economics, and politics."--Alex Tuckness, Iowa State University

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"This innovative treatment of Locke emphasizes the role of probable judgment in early modern political thought. Casson clearly demonstrates that Locke, like several of his contemporaries, was searching for a middle way between the skepticism and dogmatism that characterized so much of the early modern era, and that he was able to apply a probabilistic solution to the political sphere."--Barbara Shapiro, University of California, Berkeley

"Liberating Judgment is a welcome addition to the literature on Locke. More clearly and powerfully than any previous book, it traces the importance of the theme of probable judgment across several aspects of Locke's work, including his writings on medicine, epistemology, metaphysics, economics, and politics."--Alex Tuckness, Iowa State University

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Liberating Judgment

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Acknowledgments......................................................................................ixIntroduction: The Great Recoinage....................................................................1I. Unsettling Judgment: knowledge, belief, and the crisis of authority...............................23Certain Knowledge and Probable Belief................................................................25Unsettling Knowledge.................................................................................34Unsettling Belief....................................................................................41II. Abandoning Judgment: Montaignian Skeptics and Cartesian Fanatics.................................53Montaigne and the Politics of Skepticism.............................................................54Descartes and the Rationalist Dream..................................................................63Young Locke as Skeptic and Absolutist................................................................75III. Reworking Reasonableness: The Authoritative Testimony of Nature.................................92The Transformation of a Skeptic......................................................................97Precursors to Lockean Reasonableness.................................................................103From Lecture Halls to Laboratories...................................................................114IV. Forming Judgment: The Transformation of Knowledge and Belief.....................................126Locke's Political Pedagogy...........................................................................129Fanatics and Philosophizers..........................................................................136Defining and Redefining Knowledge and Belief.........................................................143V. Liberating Judgment: Freedom, Happiness, and the Reasonable Self..................................159Unrestrained and Restrained Freedoms.................................................................160The Pursuit of True and Solid Happiness..............................................................168The Formation of the Reasonable Self.................................................................178VI. Enacting Judgment: Dismantling the Divine Certainty of Sir Robert Filmer.........................185Preaching Patriarcha from The Pulpit.................................................................188Probable Judgment and the Authority of Scripture.....................................................192The Slavishness of Systems...........................................................................205VII. Authorizing Judgment: Consensual Government and the Politics of Probability.....................219The State of Nature as a Realm of Virtue and Convenience.............................................223From Moral Clarity to Epistemological Confusion......................................................233Entrusting Judgment to a Shared Authority............................................................238Prerogative, Public Good, and the Judgment of the People.............................................244Conclusion: The Great Recoinage Revisited............................................................253References...........................................................................................263Index................................................................................................279

Chapter One

KNOWLEDGE, BELIEF, AND THE CRISIS OF AUTHORITY

John Locke and his contemporaries were very aware that they were living in an age of intellectual and moral crisis. "The rules that have served the learned world these two or three thousand years," Locke writes in the Conduct of the Understanding, "are not sufficient to guide the understanding" (CU 1). In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, traditional modes of ordering experience were breaking down throughout Europe. The interpretive frameworks that had once served to explain and justify theological systems, political arrangements, and ethical imperatives were appearing increasingly inadequate. In the wake of the reformation and subsequent struggles over religious, political, and moral authority, the available languages of justification ceased to constitute a unifying authority through which norms of law and justice could be articulated. appeals to traditional vocabularies could not be the basis for publicly reliable judgments. A once common mode of discourse had fractured into mutually exclusive interpretive camps all claiming authority. Those who continued to utilize earlier languages of justification appeared increasingly untrustworthy. Their arguments smacked of partisan interest, corrupt habit, or personal passion. This collapse led to intellectual stalemate, as rival factions hurled incompatible assertions at each other. Without a shared language that could sustain public deliberation, irreconcilable arguments often gave way to brute force.

This crisis and the responses that it brought about gave shape to Locke's modes of discourse and our own. If we are to understand Locke's concern with the language of justification and his attempt to provide a remedy, we must first grasp the interests and purposes that led him to write down his thoughts. We must place his project in a context of inherited vocabularies, persistent difficulties, and available solutions. From what traditions of discourse did Locke draw his vocabulary? to what difficulties or collection of difficulties was he responding? With what alternatives should his response be compared? answers to these questions will not only help us understand Locke as a historical figure. They will also help us evaluate how his proposal for a new language of justification might inform our own religious, political, and ethical modes of discourse.

Locke was clearly troubled by what he saw as the poor health of intellectual discourse, yet he was not the first to diagnose the intellectual maladies of his day. As early as the sixteenth century, observers such as Michel Montaigne and his admirer Pierre Charron had noted that the traditional epistemic categories could no longer sustain public deliberation. With heartfelt concern and scathing wit, they documented how debate between factions had slid from vigorous argument into shrill assertion. they unmasked the confidence of religious and political leaders as nothing more than dimwitted dogmatism and self-interested obstinacy. Montaigne and his followers artfully pointed out the absurdity of flamboyant claims to certainty in the midst of profound disagreement and bloodshed.

One response to the collapse of traditional modes of discourse was to conclude that rational argument had no place in the political sphere. Those who took this path turned the moribund languages of judgment in on themselves in order to point out the futility of public justification. If the categories and distinctions that had once been accepted as invulnerable could be shown to be suspect, then it would seem that any framework of interpretation would be vulnerable to similar attacks. For these keen observers of the shifting sands of history, the ancient teachings of skepticism gained a new plausibility. The criteria of truth, intelligibility, and rationality were themselves put into question. Any attempt at public justification could be faulted for either vicious circularity or infinite regress.

Yet not everyone responded to the epistemological crisis by turning to radical skepticism. Some, led by Descartes, moved in the opposite direction, setting out on an unprecedented search for unshakeable foundations. in the face of pervasive doubt and uncertainty, these revolutionary thinkers sought to construct a new and indestructible fortress of certainty. They believed that if rational judgment was to withstand the forceful attack of radical skepticism, it must be built on the firm and unquestionable foundation of apodictic science. In the absence of a stable and consistent language of justification, the revival of ancient skepticism seemed sufficiently threatening to these thinkers to warrant a rationalist response.

In the following chapters, we will see that Locke's thought is haunted by the specters of both radical skepticism and dogmatic rationalism. At times he seems to endorse one or the other as a suitable response to the collapse of traditional modes of justification. Yet ultimately his answer to the epistemological crisis is neither radically skeptical nor wholly rationalist. Following the lead of a host of practitioners of law, natural philosophy, and theology, he neither rejects the possibility of reasonable discourse nor insists that warranted judgments must somehow involve a god's-eye view of the moral universe. His proposal for a renewed language of judgment sits uneasily between these alternatives. The type of judgment that Locke advocates—the judgment that lies at the heart of the Lockean regime—involves the widespread acceptance of a renewal of probable reasoning. This new emphasis on probable judgment is meant to serve as a standard of public reasonableness. The widespread acceptance and habituation of this type of probability is a necessary prerequisite for accurately assessing the legitimate exercise of political power. this standard, we will discover, proves politically useful yet philosophically problematic. Before we can situate Locke's proposal, however, we must first understand how traditional discourse deteriorated in the late medieval world to such an extent that skepticism and rationalism were seen as plausible responses.

Certain Knowledge and Probable Belief

When individuals in the medieval and early modern periods discussed the truth of religious, political, and ethical claims, they employed a vocabulary dominated by the categories of knowledge and belief. A claim could either be known with certainty by demonstrative proof or believed for good reason according to authoritative sources and experience. Or it could fall short of both of these criteria. Although some claims, such as those concerning religious practices and beliefs, sat uncomfortably between these categories, the two distinct realms of inquiry provided a framework through which speakers could communicate levels of epistemological confidence and listeners could justify or criticize those claims. the realm of certain knowledge was known as scientia and involved logic and mathematics, whereas the realm of probable belief, or opinio, concerned dialectic and rhetoric. These cognitive categories served as a type of framework, a shared vocabulary, through which judgments could be made and assessed publicly. Yet this framework did not simply appear; it was not spontaneously invented. It emerged out of a long tradition of deliberation and practice concerning what constitutes rational justification.

One of the most enduring images in this tradition comes from Plato's account of the process of enlightenment. In the sixth and seventh books of the Republic, Plato describes the stages of human cognition in various ways as an ascent from darkness into light. As we approach what is fully real, we move out of ignorance, through the murky shadows of belief (doxa) and toward the clarity of knowledge (episteme). These accounts seem to teach that genuine philosophical fulfillment cannot to be found in the contingent and uncertain realm of belief; it is only achievable through the contemplation of knowledge, which is necessary, eternal, and immutable. As we strive toward episteme, we liberate ourselves from the triviality and illusion of doxa.

of course Plato recognized that most of our interactions with others, that is, most of our social and political interactions, take place in the realm of appearance or belief. Most of the claims we make before a court of law or in deliberation with fellow citizens are more or less probable rather than certain, eternal, and necessary. Plato and his contemporaries used the term pithanon to describe statements or opinions that are not demonstrable but nonetheless plausible or persuasive. In the Laws, Plato has clinias speak of what is "plausibly true" or "easy to credit" (Laws 782d, 839d). Similarly he uses the word eikos (literally "like") to denote that which is likely (Crito 45d; the term is often used in this way in Republic as well). Although Plato recognizes the usefulness of referring to plausible or probable belief, he is careful to distinguish between those who are content with deliberating about opinion and those who seek certain knowledge. Only the pursuit of knowledge is philosophy; deliberation about the plausibility of opinions remains in the lesser realm of rhetoric. Thus he can denounce rhetoricians such as Gorgias and Tisias for claiming that "likelihoods (eikota) are more to be esteemed than truths" and for making "small things seem great, and great things small by the power of their words" (Phaedrus 267a; see also Gorgias 464b–465d). Plato insists that those seek truth must transcend the illusory character of opinion and free themselves from its deception.

To a great extent medievals shared this Platonic ideal. They believed that the goal of human understanding was the contemplation of the eternal and necessary, and for them that meant the contemplation of god. Yet they also recognized that doxa plays a crucial role in the way human beings rationally evaluate the world around them. They believed that their limitations as imperfect creatures forced them to make daily decisions about the world based on opinion and belief. So they sought both certain knowledge of the divine as well as probable opinion concerning the contingent world around them. As with many aspects of medieval thought, this twofold view of human understanding had first been carefully delineated by Aristotle and then reiterated by Roman, Islamic, and Christian readers. Although medieval and early-modern thinking was by no means monolithic, it tended to follow the basic categories laid out in Aristotle's Organon.

It was Thomas Aquinas, however, who set out to clarify and disseminate a common vocabulary of justification for the medieval world. He embraced the categories of certain knowledge and probable opinion as a way of organizing contested claims. In his commentary on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, Aquinas explains that both knowledge and belief, what he calls scientia and opinio, are integral to human thought. Rational justification can generally be divided into these two categories, each one involving its own particular objects and methods of inquiry.

Here Aquinas follows Aristotle's categorical distinction between demonstrative arguments and dialectical ones. For Aristotle, a demonstrative argument is one in which necessary truths follow from necessarily true premises, as in geometry. A dialectical argument, on the other hand, is one in which probable conclusions are reached from generally accepted opinions (endoxa), that is, opinions that are "agreed to by all or most of the wise" (Topics 100a30–b25). Aristotle likens dialectical argument to rhetoric in that they both trade in propositions of "good repute" that are not demonstrable (Rhetoric 1354a). For Aristotle, endoxa are ultimately grounded in experience or empeiria, which is why he can also sometimes refer to them as phainomena, or "things which appear to be the case" (Topics 104a12). In contrast to Plato, Aristotle placed special emphasis on the importance of dialectical and rhetorical argument and the probable assurance that it provides. Although he viewed certain knowledge as the ideal, demonstrative proof was not easy to come by in everyday affairs. For Aristotle dialectical and rhetorical arguments were central to political, legal, and moral deliberation since such deliberation involves human actions, actions that are by their very nature contingent and subject to debate. He offered elaborate procedures for scrutinizing and evaluating commonly held opinions in his Rhetoric and Topics, texts that were seminal to the medieval and early-modern study of rhetoric. For Aristotle the realms of certain knowledge and probable belief are both important categories of cognitive evaluation.

Cicero transported this Greek distinction into the roman world. although he dabbled in the philosophical quest for certain truths, he championed the art of rhetoric as the public discipline needed to address the contingent sphere of law and to sustain republican self-government. Cicero employed the Latin terms probabile (credible) or veri simile (like truth) for the Greek pithanon, emphasizing that probable opinion or belief is the most appropriate standard for matters of rhetoric, politics, and law. the rhetorician Quintilian further codified the division between certain knowledge and probable belief, adding gradations of probable opinion. this distinction was also embraced by Islamic and Jewish commentators. the great Muslim polymath al-Farabi in the ninth century, and later Ibn Sina (known in the West as Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (averroës), emphasized the role of logic in establishing demonstrable truths and of rhetoric or dialectic in establishing probabilities. A Jewish contemporary of Ibn Rushd and fellow inhabitant of Cordoba, Maimonides, also embraced these Aristotelian categories. A long line of Roman, Islamic, Jewish, and Christian commentators defended and refined Aristotle's schema, helping to establish a widely embraced distinction between philosophy/science and dialectic/rhetoric in the late medieval and renaissance world.

Working in this Aristotelian tradition, Aquinas uses the term scientia to refer to knowledge of truths that are universal, necessary, and certain. In order to be deemed scientia a proposition must be demonstrated as such by means of a syllogism that begins with first principles. Different scientific disciplines have separate and distinct first principles, so a demonstrative proof can only be carried out within the confines of that particular science. A geometric proposition can be included within scientia if it can be deduced from the first principles of geometry. Similarly, the articulation of causes (formal, final, efficient, and material) involves reasoning from particular first principles and thus falls within the sphere of scientia. at times, Aquinas argues that first principles of particular disciplines can be abstracted from concrete perceptions by the active intellect. At other times, he seems to imply that they are intuitive or innate.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Liberating Judgmentby Douglas John Casson Copyright © 2011 by Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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