Article contents
Jeremy Waldron and the Religious Turn in Locke Scholarship
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Extract
The title, God, Locke, and Equality, as well as its controversial thesis about the necessity of a theological foundation for equality are designed to startle and provoke. Yet those who have kept up with Locke scholarship (not an easy job since there are 5–10 new books on Locke each year, and over 9000 articles have been published about his work) will recognize that in recent years, its topic, the relation of Locke's religious beliefs to his politics, has become an important theme in the interpretation of Locke's political philosophy. This article will attempt to place the book in the context of this literature and evaluate its contribution to the growing number of studies.
In the early years of what John Pocock once called “the Locke industry,” Locke's religious beliefs did not get much attention. The two most influential interpretations of his political thought portrayed him either as a crypto-Hobbesian hedonist, or an apologist for capitalist exploitation, ignoring or explaining away his commitment to Christianity. It is true that John Dunn in his book on Locke's political theory made much (perhaps too much) of Locke's Calvinist upbringing, only to dismiss his political thought as so dominated by a religious worldview that it is irrelevant today.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2005
References
1. Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1963)Google Scholar.
2. Macpherson, C. B., The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962)Google Scholar.
3. Dunn, John, The Political Thought of John Locke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4. Ashcraft, Richard, “Faith and Knowledge in Locke's Philosophy” in John Locke: Problems and Perspectives, ed. Yolton, John (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969)Google Scholar.
5. Macpherson, C. B., Possessive IndividualismGoogle Scholar; Lodge, George C., The New American Ideology (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1975)Google Scholar.
6. Murray, John Courtney, We Hold These Truths (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1960), pp. 202–203Google Scholar.
7. Taylor, Charles, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.
8. Bailyn, Bernard, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Wood, Gordon S., The Creation of the American Republic, 1776–1787 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1969)Google Scholar; Pocock, J. G. A., The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Creation of the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975)Google Scholar; Wills, Garry, Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1978)Google Scholar.
9. Glendon, Mary Ann, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse (New York: Free Press, 1991), p. 71Google Scholar.
10. Barzun, Jacques, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present (New York: HarperCollins, 2000), pp. 362–63Google Scholar.
11. Dunn, , Political Thought of John LockeGoogle Scholar.
12. Skinner, Quentin, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)Google Scholar.
13. Locke, John, Two Treatise of Government, ed. Laslett, Peter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963)Google Scholar.
14. Colman, John, John Locke's Moral Philosophy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1983)Google Scholar.
15. Locke, John, A Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St. Paul, ed. Wainwright, Arthur William (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987)Google Scholar.
16. Spellman, W. M., John Locke and the Problem of Depravity (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1988)Google Scholar.
17. Simmons, John, The Lockean Theory of Rights (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.
18. Marshall, John, John Locke: Resistance, Religion, and Responsibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
19. McClure, Kirstie, Judging Rights: Lockean Politics and the Limits of Consent (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996)Google Scholar.
20. Yolton, John, The Two Intellectual Worlds of John Locke: Man, Person, and Spirits in the “Essay” (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Unvirsity Press, 2004)Google Scholar.
21. Parker, Kim Ian, The Biblical Politics of Johm Locke (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.
22. Forster, Greg, John Locke's Politics of Moral Consensus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
23. Tully, James, A Discourse on Property: John Locke and His Adversaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also: Sreenivasan, Gopal, The Limits of Lockean Rights in Property (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Kramer, Matthew, John Locke and the Origins of Private Property (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Swanson, G., “The Medieval Foundations Of John Locke'S Political Thought,” History of Political Thought 28 (1997): 399–459Google Scholar.
24. Strauss, , Natural Right and History, pp. 203–204, 212Google Scholar.
25. Ibid., pp. 249–51.
26. Bluhm, William T., Wintfield, Neil, and Teger, Stuart T., “Locke's Idea of God: Rational Truth or Political Myth?” The Journal of Politics 41(1980): 415–16Google Scholar.
27. Horwitz, Robert H. et al. eds., Locke, John, Questions Concerning the Law of Nature (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.
28. Horwitz, Robert H., “John Locke, Questions Concerning the Law of Nature: A Commentary,” Interpetation 19 (1991): 274Google Scholar.
29. Pangle, Thomas, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 176, 145, 186Google Scholar.
30. Rahe, Paul, Republics Ancient and Modern (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), pp. 295, 311Google Scholar.
31. Rabieh, Michael, “The Reasonableness of Locke, or the Questionableness of Christianity.” The Journal of Politics 53 (1991): 933–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
32. Zuckert, Michael P., Natural Rights and the New Republicanism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Launching Liberalism: On Lockean Political Philosophy (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2002)Google Scholar.
33. Zuckert, , Natural Rights and the New Republicanism, p. 207Google Scholar.
34. Essay, 2.20.2 and 2.28.5.
35. E.g., Aarsleff, Hans, “The State Of Nature And The Nature Of Man In Locke” in John Locke: Problems and Perspectives, ed. Yolton, John (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1969)Google Scholar.
36. Myers, Peter C., Our Only Star and Compass (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Liottlefield, 1998)Google Scholar; Zinaich, Sam, “Lock's Moral Revolution: From Natural Law to Moral Relvativism,” Locke Newsletter 31 (2002): 79–114Google Scholar.
37. Essay, 3.9.16.
38. Essay, 4.10.12.
39. Waldron, , God, Locke, and Equality, pp. 104, 222Google Scholar.
40. Ibid., p, 225.
41. Ibid., pp. 104–105.
42. Ibid., p. 11.
43. Ibid., p. 13.
44. Ibid., p. 236.
45. Ibid., p. 82.
46. See Sigmund, Paul E., Nicholas of Cusa and Medieval Political Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), chap. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
47. Ibid., pp. 164–70.
48. Ibid., pp. 116–17.
- 14
- Cited by