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“Contesting the Empire of Habit”: Habituation and Liberty in Lockean Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2016

RITA KOGANZON
RITA KOGANZON*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
*
Rita Koganzon is Associate Director of the Program on Constitutionalism and Democracy and Lecturer in the Politics Department, University of Virginia (rita.koganzon@gmail.com), Gibson Hall, 1540 Jefferson Park Ave, Charlottesville, VA 22904.
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Abstract

Although John Locke's educational curriculum has traditionally been seen to aim at creating free citizens capable of independent thought, the centrality of habituation to his pedagogy has recently raised concerns that the Education is no more than “indoctrination” for compliant subjects. I argue here that by re-examining habituation in light of Locke's epistemology, we find that Locke's education does aim at freedom, but that this freedom requires a strong will and a cultivated skepticism. The habits which Locke asks parents to instill are aimed not at programming specific behavior and opinions, but rather at training children to “cross their desires” to strengthen their wills against the impositions of nature, custom, and fashion, which Locke argues pose an far more serious threat to independent thought than parental discipline. Locke's education aims to cultivate a skeptical mental disposition that permits individuals to resist these other sources of habit and to continually question and revise their own convictions.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 110 , Issue 3 , August 2016 , pp. 547 - 558
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2016 

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Footnotes

I'm grateful to Harvey Mansfield, Jennifer Page, Will Selinger, Richard Tuck, and Sebastian Waisman for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. I would also like to thank Ruth Grant and the other participants in the 2015 Duke Graduate Political Theory conference, as well as the reviewers at the American Political Science Review for their instructive objections and suggestions for improving this article.

References

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