Locke, no friend of innate principles, would normally be considered, a fortiori, no friend of Plato. But while there are undeniable and obvious differences between the two philosophers, this chapter is intended to bring out some remarkable affinities between them. To do this we shall be focusing on Locke's attack on moral innatism in the first book of the Essay concerning Human Understanding. After first sketching out the background to this attack, I wish to show that, as we might by now be expecting, when Locke comes to attack moral innatism, he selects something far more like the Stoic theory than the Platonic as his target. Admittedly, he does not simply do this because that was the theory that happened to be around at the time; he himself believes that if there were to be an innatist theory, that would be the most plausible; and he actually supplies arguments of his own to show this. But despite this limited concession to those who espoused the Stoic form of innateness, he then turns against it using arguments that sound strangely Platonic.

BACKGROUND TO ESSAY I iii

Locke starts his attack on innatism in the second chapter of book I and his overall strategy remains clear and systematic throughout: the second chapter deals with speculative maxims, the third with practical (i.e. moral) principles and the fourth with ideas such as those of God and substance. Another way of seeing the division of labour is that the second and third chapters deal with principles or propositions alleged to be innate, whereas the fourth concentrates mostly on ideas.