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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...