City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 2-2015 Locke's "God" Problem: Predicating God and Liberty Amid the Secularizing Effect of "Uneasiness" Kathleen M. Ryan Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/616 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] i Locke’s “God” Problem: Predicating God and Liberty Amid the Secularizing Effect of “Uneasiness” by Kathleen M. Ryan A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Philosophy in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2015 ii © 2015 Kathleen M. Ryan All Rights Reserved iii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Philosophy in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Prof. David M. Rosenthal __________________ ________________________________________________ Date Chair of Examining Committee Prof. John Greenwood __________________ ________________________________________________ Date Executive Officer Supervisory Committee Prof. Bernard Baumrin Prof. Joseph Dauben Prof. Peter Phillips Simpson Prof. Catherine Wilson THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iv Abstract Locke’s “God” Problem: Predicating God and Liberty Amid the Secularizing Effect of “Uneasiness” by Kathleen M. Ryan Advisor: Professor Bernard Baumrin Notorious among philosophy texts, Locke’s Essay stands between the God-intoxicated 17th century and the science-intoxicated 18th century and has had a significant role in the transition of the one intoxication to the other. That the Essay itself underwent major revisions before it emerged in the posthumous form we’ve canonized for our enlightenment today obscures many of the issues Locke was contending with at the time to which he may not have found the kind of final answers we’ve come to attribute to him. This dissertation attempts to justify an examination of one particular chapter in the Essay -- the “Of Power” chapter of II.xxi -- in terms of its troubled creative history and with regard to some of the particular individuals who were most instrumental in its changes, with an eye to the possibility that what has been seen as Locke’s final and “fixed” account of human liberty may actually be a posthumously-executed editorial distortion of it. (1-3) v Acknowledgements I’d like to first of all thank my dissertation committee comprised of Prof. Joseph Dauben, Prof. David Rosenthal, Prof. Peter Simpson and Professor Catherine Wilson, all of whom offered me extremely thoughtful and probing questions prior to and during my defense. Notable too were the period classes I’d had earlier with Professors Dauben and Wilson which had initially prompted my thirst for understanding the issues girding Early Modern Philosophy and which broadened my field of vision as to what else might be going on when Locke was working out his theories. More insight into the metaphysical issues came in the EMP and Locke conferences I’d attended in 2012 and 2013 (sponsored by Kenneth Winkler and Jessica Gordon-Roth) during which I tried to informally rehearse some of the hypotheses I would later develop here. Special gratitude also goes to my friends Adriana Renero-Castillo, Ken Weissharr, Patricia Willard, and Joe and Linda Brindley for their everlasting patience in hearing out my philosophical arguments and for their encouraging calls to “hang in there” when I was most obviously flagging with anxieties. My biggest debt, however, is owed to my thesis advisor, Prof. Bernard [Stefan] Baumrin, whose infamous irascibility belies the extraordinary generosity with which he is imbued. Ever indulgent with his time and wisdom, he was the one who first introduced me to the history of ideas and the notion that scholarship could be built upon the supposition that odd paths may lead to new discoveries. It was Prof. Baumrin’s being particularly honed in to the religious and metaphysical debates swirling during Locke’s time that gave me a better sense of what the epistemic limits vi necessarily entailed, thus allowing me to find ways to develop my thesis and to clarify and firm up my initial rather flimsy premises. Though Prof. Baumrin likely will never quite “appreciate” Locke’s loquacious literary style in the way I did, I dearly thank Prof. Baumrin for trying his level best to curb my own penchant for verboseness as best he could. While I never was able to achieve the kind of elegant terseness Prof. Baumrin has able to master in his own work, may I only plead that this weakness of mine is probably the central reason for my feeling a special affinity for Locke. vii Table of Contents (parenthetical numerals following sections refer to Analytic TOC enumeration) Front Matter Title page i Copyright page ii Approval page iii Abstract (1-3) iv Acknowledgments v Table of Contents vii Quotes from Plato’s Parmenides & Aristotle’s De Anima 1 Chapter I 2 Preliminaries 2 A. My Argument (4-14) 2 B. Hypotheses explaining why previous Locke commentators failed to understand Locke’s “Of Power” chapter properly (15-19) 5 C. Special Note: Thesis limits (20-22) 7 Chapter II 9 Introduction: The “‘God’ Problem” (Molyneux quote; scrawl text) 9 A. Back story (23-28) 9 viii B. The Chapter’s Three Stages (29-31) 14 C. Three questions prompted by the sequence of revisions which seem in need of answering (32-34) 18 D. Initial answers to the first two questions (35-38) 19 E. Answer to Question #3 lies at the core of Locke’s error of logic, and is what needs to be disentangled (39-40) 21 Chapter III 22 The Case for Disentanglement: Three Competing Theses for the Resolution of Locke’s “‘God’ problem” 22 (1) The philosophical thesis (41) 22 (2) The circumstantial thesis (42-43) 22 (3) The prudential thesis (44-45) 22 B. Most important to keep in mind overall (46) 25 Chapter IV 26 The philosophical thesis 26 A. The Analogical Error (47-49) 26 B. Question[s] (50-51) 27 C. Moral philosophers debated (52-54) 29 D. Analogical Predication (55-60) 30 E. What counts for success in analogical predication (61-64) 34 ix F. Calling on Euthyphro (65-67) 36 a. Hobbes (68-70) 38 b. Cudworth (71-73) 42 G. Back to Locke (74-81) 45 H. The competing pressures driving Locke to formulate his account the way he did 52 Chapter V 54 The Baconist Component: How Locke’s Growing Baconianism Causes Shift of Argument for Second Edition of the Essay (82) 54 A. The Sergeant/Norris challenge (83-85) 56 B. The King challenge (86-89) 58 C. Consequence of King’s input (90-93) 69 Chapter VI 72 The Calvinist Component: How Locke’s Puritan Origins Kick In At the End and Preserve His Original Theological Determinism against the Anglican form of “Free Grace” prior to posthumous Fifth Edition of the Essay 72 A. The Limborch challenge (94-109) 72 x Chapter VII 95 The circumstantial thesis: Posthumous Confusion (110-116) 95 Chapter VIII 104 The Coste Component: Why I think the version of the liberty account of Locke’s that does get published posthumously in 1706 does not truly reflect Locke’s intentions but was instead rather selectively “massaged” by his French translator, Pierre Coste 104 A. Coste’s Problems with Locke (117-118) 104 B. The proffered timeline, and what remains puzzling (119-130) 107 D. Coste’s biography/relationship with Locke (131-134) 123 E. Shaftesbury’s Role (135-138) 126 Chapter IX 136 The prudential thesis: The “Uneasiness Encounters Self-Abasement and Topples It” Component (140-146) 136 Chapter X 143 Conclusion 143 A. How I got here (147-152) 143 B. The Collins Component (153-162) 150 C. What Locke could have done (163-164) 153 xi D. In sum (165-167) 157 Chapter XI 158 Ideas/Topics for Future Investigation 158 Endnotes 160 Appendix 214 Bibliography 270 xii Appendix list Appendix I: Analytic Table of Contents 214 Appendix II: Publication dates of various Essay editions 231 Appendix III: Coste obit of Locke 232 Appendix IV: Changes mentioned in various versions of Locke’s “Epistle to the Reader” (Essay) 240 Appendix V: LeClerc’s comment on Coste’s first French translation of the Essay 241 Appendix VI: The important Le Clerc text regarding the change to §71 based on Locke’s correspondence w/ Limborch 242 Appendix VII: Coste’s front matter to French translations of the Essay 250 Appendix VIII: Pertinent Molyneux/Locke correspondence list 257 Appendix IX: Pertinent Limbroch/Locke correspondence list 258 Appendix X: Charts comparing revisions between Essay editions 4 & 5, etc. 262 Appendix XI: Ngrams for English texts printed between 1600-1800 regarding “liberty of indifference,” the five “graces,” Pelagianism, and “Uneasiness” 268 1 Parmenides: Well, whatever else partakes of knowledge itself, wouldn’t you say that god more than anyone else has this most precise knowledge? Socrates: Necessarily. P: Tell me, will god, having knowledge itself, then be able to know things that belong to our world? S: Yes, why not? P: Because we have agreed, Socrates, that those forms do not have their power in relation to things in our world, and things in our world do not have theirs in relation to forms, but that things in each group have their power in relation to themselves. S: Yes, we did agree on that. P: Well then, if this most precise mastery and this most precise knowledge belong to the divine, the gods’ mastery could never master us, nor could their knowledge know us or anything that belongs to us.