Locke, Morality, and God

Are Locke’s views on God

and Morality valid?

Chris Cochran

Spring 2004

Modern Western Philosophy

Introduction

Are John Locke’s views on God and morality valid? This is a very interesting question, since Locke never wrote anything specific on this subject like a Treatise on Morality or a Treatise on God. I’m not saying that Locke was an atheist, he was far from it. I’m examining the possibility that Locke may have taken a more deistic view of God when he wrote about morality. I’m reading between the lines of his works and I’m looking for the reasons behind what he wrote and why he wrote them. In this paper I will examine and discuss his writings on innate morality, compare his work with that of Descartes, and discuss his views on demonstrative and mathematical knowledge, and finish up with a detailed look into his first letter he wrote on religious tolerance. He wrote a total of four letters on toleration, but I am only focusing on his first letter. I will try and show that Locke’s views on God and morality are indeed valid and necessary for his philosophy.

Let us begin by defining innate morality. Innate means: Possessed at birth; inborn; inherent; of or produced by the mind rather than learned through experience: i.e., an innate knowledge of right and wrong.[1] Morality is: The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct; a system of ideas of right and wrong conduct: religious morality; Christian morality; virtuous conduct; and a rule or lesson in moral conduct.[2] Locke takes these two terms and combines them to describe the innate morality in men.

Where does innate morality come from? According to the definition, we are born with it. So does this mean that God gave us an innate sense of morality? Or, are we just saying that God gave it to us because we don’t have any other way of explaining it? God has been the central focus for many philosophers’ views on morality and virtue. Whenever the question was posed as to where men get their sense of morality from, the standard answer is that it has always been from God. Locke takes a different point of view and goes one step further by trying to provide answers to the origin of man’s morality without saying it was caused or given to us by God. He doesn’t actually come out and write a “Treatise of Morality” saying this, but if you pay close enough attention to his others works, you can extrapolate the general idea that God is not the one who gave men their knowledge of morality.

Locke discusses his views of innate morality in chapter two of “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding,” Locke writes about innate morality and whether or not God gave men innate knowledge. He says that morality is not innate to man, with the exception of revelations from God, and that men only have morality because it is profitable to do so. What does this say about the involvement by God? If this is true, then God is not, and never was, directly involved with man’s morality except for rare instances of revelation. It appears that man made it up as he went along. Locke goes on to say that God does exist and several moral rules are received from God through revelations. Whether or not man knows it or admits to it as the true grounds of morality. “…knowledge then seems to me to be nothing but the perception of the connexion and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our Ideas. In this alone it consists.”[3] If you put some thought behind this passage, it is possible to conclude that this is a more deistic point of view given by Locke. Whereas one believes in God and his power to give men innate ideas, but God in fact does not get involve with the affairs of men. It acknowledges Gods existence but at the same time says that he takes a step back away from the affairs of men. This causes men to decide for themselves what is moral and virtuous and by which religion we should live by, if any at all.

Another problem that Locke has is with the Cartesian concept of the empirical method. This concept claims there are innate ideas which account for certain truths/knowledge that cannot be confirmed by experience. Locke gives us the example of numbers. He says that we can only know numbers as either odd or even. He doesn’t deny that we can know such truths. But at the same time, he argues that this knowledge is not gained innately, but rather through a demonstrative type of knowledge. We know it to be true, simply because we perceive it to be true.

“I imagine that all knowledge is founded on and ultimately derives its self from sense.”[4] Here, Locke makes a clear distinction between knowledge gained through experience and knowledge gained innately. To put this in perspective, Locke is saying that our morality is derived through our own senses and experience, not simply handed down to us by God. Again, you can clearly see his deistic view of God. Locke is a firm believer in tabula rasa, or blank slate, in which humans start out with a blank slate of knowledge and have to learn it as they go along in life. But yet, at the same time, he contradicts himself by arguing against the Cartesian concept of the empirical method which says knowledge is gained through our senses and experience.

During the 1660’s, Locke studied Descartes’ major works in great detail. Locke even goes so far as to mention Descartes in his writings. As I stated before, Locke is not an atheist. He believes in the existence of God. But he does have a problem with Descartes, when Descartes tries to prove the existence of God in his Meditations. After much study, Locke came to realize a couple problems with the Cartesian concept of the empirical method. He claimed that clear and distinct ideas were hard to imagine when it involved the infinite, or an infinite being such as God. “. . . it is not so easy to have a clear positive Idea of Infinite as anyone may imagine, & that we have reason to suspect those Ideas not to be clear & distinct which when we suppose to be positive we cannot explain nor reconcile to those other positive Ideas which are very clear in our understandings without a contradiction.”[5] How can we have a clear and distinct idea of God, when he is infinite? There is nothing tangible to look at or count or even perceive, for that matter. God is nothing more to us than an idea in our mind. So, how can we have a clear and distinct idea of God when we haven’t even proven the existence of God?

* * *

Locke uses demonstrative and mathematical knowledge to further show that knowledge is gained through experience and reason and not just given to us innately by God. He calls these types of knowledge real knowledge because humans have endeavored to discover them for them selves. Had humans not endeavored to gain real knowledge, what sense of morality would we have and what sort of society would we live in? Would there be peace or chaos? What would be considered right and what would be considered wrong? Would we all just act like children and idiots? Knowledge is the foundation of any morality and/or religion by which we live by. If real knowledge is not given to us by God, then we must learn it for ourselves.

Demonstrative knowledge is a chain of reasoning used to deduce an idea or realness, whether true or not, of an object or situation. This is brought about by a means or series of intermediate ideas. A great example of Demonstrative knowledge is: “If I know that A is greater than B and that B is greater than C, then I know demonstratively that A is greater than C.”[6] This knowledge was therefore proved to us through reasoning and experience. Another good example is by using fire and ice. The first time you see fire, you don’t know what it is. You have no prior knowledge of the flames and their heat. So you put your hand over the flame. What happens? You get burned. Do you think you would have gone through that pain and possible disfigurement if you had a priori knowledge of what fire can do? Of course not, that would be absurd. The same thing goes for ice. Granted, ice does not do the same damage to you as quickly as fire, but over a period of time, it can be just as painful and disfiguring as fire.

This leads us into Locke’s view on the reality of Mathematical knowledge. He believes that mathematical knowledge is not only certain, but real knowledge. One of the ways he tries to prove this is by using the truth and properties associated with a triangle, rectangle, and a circle. The properties of these three items only exist as ideas in our mind. However, it is possible that these items may not have ever existed mathematically, but we still associate everyday objects as taking on these forms that we have created. Where as, a triangle has three angles equal to two right ones, whether it really exists or not, will always have three angles equal to two right ones. We associate things that are similar to this shape as being a triangle. Again, this reinforces our ability to gain knowledge through experience and reason. The more humans know, the more they understand how things come into being and the more aware they are of the choices that need to be made with regards to being and coexisting with others. This leads us into further understanding of moral knowledge.

Mathematical knowledge is merely an idea that we have in our mind, and for Locke, this idea is real knowledge. “…and hence it follows that moral knowledge is as capable of real certainty as mathematics (Locke, Understanding).” A circle could never be a triangle, nor could a triangle ever be a circle, or any other shape except a triangle, lest we perceive something totally different in its place. But if we perceive something different in its place, then we no longer perceive the triangle or circle, thus negating its existence in the first place. You see, if we can’t perceive it in our mind, then it does not exist.

The existence of God is a central issue for many philosophers. Many philosophers spend a great deal of time trying to prove that God exists. They do this so they can base their philosophy on God and his moral values. If there were no God, then where would moral values come from? Up to this time, there have been no real atheist philosophers. Descartes would have been the closest thing to an atheist, but even he tried to prove the existence of God in his Meditations. Although, it seemed as though Descartes only tried to prove the existence of God, as an after thought so he could attain a stipend from the church to continue working on his philosophy and search for certain knowledge. Proving the existence of God was merely beneficial to Descartes lifestyle, not his beliefs or philosophy.

Locke talks about our knowledge of the existence of God in chapter X in his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke is not an atheist by any means, but he doesn’t go out of his way to try and prove the existence of God. Chapter X does deal with the existence of God, but it reads like Descartes had a major influence on his work. It almost seems like Locke did the same thing Descartes did. He just threw this in as a last minute attempt to appease the church and not bring their wrath upon him. This was the view that first got me interested into the inner workings and the reasons behind Locke’s philosophy. Upon further reading and reflection, it turns out that I made the wrong assumption about Locke. I will expand upon this further during at the conclusion of this paper. But it is easy to understand why I made this assumption. At first glance there are some works that still read like he has a deistic view of God.

Locke comes up with a theory that says existence is not a prerequisite for knowledge to be real and certain. All we need are our ideas to follow the archetypes of our knowledge for it to be real. Since existence is not a prerequisite for real knowledge, then there is no reason why he needs to prove the existence of God. Nor is it necessary for Locke to claim that morality comes from God as many other philosophers believe. When talking about God in a philosophical sense, things can get pretty tricky real fast.

How can we have ethics without God? If Locke is right, and men do not have innate morality, how can they have ethics? For what are ethics without God? Ethics would take on a whole new meaning. All throughout time, it has been the general consensus among philosophers that ethics have been derived from God. Where would we learn our ethical values and morals from, if we are not born with them? This is a pretty serious leap forward in the evolution of philosophy. Locke puts forward his idea that men are born with a tabula rasa, otherwise known as a blank slate. Ideas are put into the minds of men through sensations experiences. This is also an Empiricist view. It is through this view that morality must prevail. But, unfortunately it does not always happen that way.

* * *

Morality is performed by humans and humans have a tendency to do things based on benefit for themselves or their cause, such as religion. This led Locke to write A Letter Concerning Toleration in 1689. Actually he wrote four such letters, but I’m only going to examine and talk about his first letter on toleration because I feel it best deals with the issue of morality and how it applies to humans and to organizations that call themselves Christian churches.

I think this following quote sums up the reason behind why he wrote what he did, “…it is not the diversity of opinions (which cannot be avoided), but the refusal of toleration to those that are of different opinions (which might have been granted), that has produced all the bustles and wars that have been in the Christian world upon account of religion. The heads and leaders of the Church, moved by avarice and insatiable desire of dominion, making use of the immoderate ambition of magistrates and the credulous superstition of the giddy multitude, have incensed and animated them against those that dissent from themselves, by preaching unto them, contrary to the laws of the Gospel and to the precepts of charity, that schismatics and heretics are to be outed of their possessions and destroyed. And thus have they mixed together and confounded two things that are in themselves most different, the Church and the commonwealth.”[7]

Basically, Locke’s letter on toleration argues the point that religious persecution is not caused by differing concepts of the good. He calls it simple old fashioned evil. He claims that one group will seek power and wealth by using organized violence to rob and subjugate another group. The groups he is referring to are the many different, so-called, Christian churches in the world. Religion has subjugated people for a long time. They have done so in the name or morality and virtue. Either that or they claim that God has told them to convert people by any means necessary.

Locke is pointing out the outlandishness and foolishness of this hypocrisy. For, if these churches truly are Christian, they must tolerate the non-believers and atheists that coexist out in the world. For how can the church impose its will on people if they do not voluntarily allow this to happen? According to Locke, they can’t if they truly are Christian. But yet we see just this sort of thing happen all the time. Locke received a lot of criticism after writing A Letter Concerning Toleration. This criticism led Locke to write the follow up three letters to further explain and expound upon his position.

Conclusion

In this paper, I have tried to show some of the reasons behind why Locke’s view of God and morality are indeed valid. Locke makes some very interesting points and then backs them up with examples and pure reasoning. He makes the reader use their own knowledge and reasoning skills to determine for themselves the truth behind what he writes. He wants to instill the idea that it is better for people to gain knowledge for themselves, rather than having knowledge given to them without any effort on their part. Such, as would be the case for innate knowledge. Not to say that there is no innate knowledge at all. For Locke clearly believes that God does give us limited knowledge through revelation. It was this view of no innate knowledge that first gave me the idea Locke was an atheist, or at the very least, a deist.

The way Locke writes makes the reader feel as if God is not important to the human equation of morality. But that is not the case at all. As I began to further read and reflect on the inner workings and the reasons behind Locke’s philosophy. I came to the realization that I had made the wrong assumption about Locke. He is not an atheist or deist. He is a Christian. But it is easy to understand why I made this assumption. He emphasizes man’s knowledge more than he provides proof for God’s intervention into mans life.

Endnotes