Of the Conduct of the Understanding Copyright by Paul Schuurman 2000 Of the Conduct of the Understanding by John Locke 1 Edited with General Introduction, Historical and Philosophical Notes and Critical Apparatus by Paul Schuurman Doctoral dissertation, defended 10 April 2000 University of Keele, Department of Philosophy Supervisor: Prof. Dr. G. A. J. Rogers Examiners: Prof. G. A. J. Rogers, Prof. M. A. Stewart (University of Lancaster), and Dr. I. Harris (Oxford University) Ter nagedachtenis aan mijn moeder Voor mijn vader CONTENTS Acknowledgements....................... 9 Abstract............................ 11 Abbreviationsoftitlesanduseofcalendarsystems........... 13 GENERAL INTRODUCTION Context............................ 15 1.Locke’slateryears..................... 17 2.Errorsofthefirstandthesecondkind............. 22 3.Causesoferror...................... 28 4.Preventionandcureoferror................. 32 5.Twomethods....................... 37 6.Ananti-scholasticlogicofideas............... 47 7. Aristotelian textbook writers . ................ 52 8.Cartesianlogic...................... 61 9.ThestructureofCartesianlogic:ArnauldandMalebranche.... 69 10.ThestructureofLocke’slogic................ 78 11. The appreciation of the Essay and the Conduct as texts on logic . 85 12.Conclusion....................... 95 Text.............................. 97 1.Descriptionofthemanuscripts................ 98 2.TheConduct inLocke’scorrespondence............106 3. A short history of the Conduct, 1697-1706 ...........109 4. The relation between the Conduct and the Essay .........118 5.Choiceofcopy-text....................120 6.Theorderofthetext....................121 7.Editorialprinciples.....................123 Table 1: The relation between the paragraph numbers in the present edition and the source MSS, the Essay and O-1706 ........127 Table 2: Headwords/keywords of the Conduct in MS e.1 ........131 8 contents Table 3: The watermarks in MS Locke e.1 compared with similar watermarksinLocke’sdatedMSS................136 Illustrations..........................139 OF THE CONDUCT OF THE UNDERSTANDING Signsandabbreviations......................150 A(paragraphs1-97) .......................153 B(paragraphs98-99).......................245 Appendix...........................253 Collation of MS Locke e.1 with MS Locke c.28 ............257 BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Editions of the Conduct .....................259 2.Manuscripts.........................278 3.Primaryliterature.......................279 4.Secondaryliterature......................284 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The subject of this text-edition was suggested by my supervisor Prof.dr. JohnRogers, whose vast erudition, open mind and kind advice, oVered in numerous conversations and even more e- mailed replies, formed an invaluable source of help and inspiration. I am very much indebted to Prof.dr. M. A. Stewart for his thorough and comprehensive guidance in a whole range of editorial problems. Prof.dr.J. W. Yolton, Dr. I. Harris and Dr. J. R. Milton also made helpful suggestions. It was a pleasure to discuss work with Dr. Kiyoshi Shimokawa (Chubu University, Kasugai, Japan), who has recently finished a Japanese translation of the Conduct.Ienjoyed working at the Faculty of Philosophy of Utrecht University; Prof.dr.mag. K. Schuhmann, Dr. Ria van der Lecq and Dr. Piet Steenbakkers made useful remarks on the principles that underlie my edition, and Dr. Paul Mercken criticized the section on Aristotelian logic in the General Introduction with great acumen. Prof.dr. C. Dekker (University of Amsterdam) supported me in dealing with some puzzling palaeographical problems. My research was made possible by a substantial award from the British Academy. Generous grants from the Board of the Clarendon Edition of the Works of John Locke enabled me to consult Locke’s original manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. I thank Mrs. M. Clapinson, Keeper of the Western Manuscripts of the Bodleian Library, for her permission to transcribe the Conduct-part of MS Locke e.1 and to present the result here. This thesis could not have been produced without the kind eYciency of the staV of the Bodleian Library and of the Universiteitsbibliotheek Utrecht. Communication with members of the Philosophy Department of Keele University was mostly virtual, but was very pleasant whenever my visits to Keele allowed contacts to be real; I look back with particular fondness to the hospitality of Mrs. J. Rogers. I thank my friends Prof.dr. J. S. Folkers, Simona Brolsma and Marc Kooijmans for their careful reading and criticism of my work. I am especially grateful to Betty Stad, who again has lived up to her name of constant and loyal supporter of my various pursuits. Craig Walmsley and Sami-Juhani Savonius not only kept me alert by their own advances in Locke scholarship, which they used for many incisive remarks on the contents of my work, but also greatly assisted me in coping with the many intractabilities of the English language. My flatmates Ivo Geradts and Johannes Rustenburg, founding fathers of the Typographica Academica Traiectina, brought finesse to this thesis with their typographical professionalism and light to my meals with their willingness to play board games. Finally, my greatest debt is to my father and to my dear late mother, who I will vividly remember when I have forgotten all about Locke. Paul Schuurman Utrecht, January 2000 ABSTRACT The present thesis gives an edition of John Locke’s Of the Conduct of the Under- standing that is based, for the first time since 1706, on the original manuscripts, MS Locke e.1 and MS Locke c.28. The text has been provided with a text-critical apparatus and with historical and philosophical notes. The editor’s General Introduction is divided into two parts. The first part, ‘Context’, discusses Locke’s analysis of the nature of error, the causes of error and the prevention and cure of error in the Conduct. His enquiry is placed in the contextofhiswayofideasasgiveninhisEssay concerning Human Understanding. Locke’s two-stage way of ideas, his occupation with our mental faculties and with method form the interrelated main ingredients of his logic of ideas. There is a complicated relation of continuity and change between the content and the structure of this new logic on the one hand and the content and structure of works by both scholastic predecessors (Du Trieu, Smith, Sanderson) and representatives of the new philosophy (Descartes, Arnauld, Malebranche) on the other hand. Once this context is taken into account, the Conduct can be understood as a work that has a function within the structure of Locke’s informal logic of ideas that runs parallel to the function of the De sophisticis elenchis in the Aristotelian Organon. The second part of the General Introduction,‘Text’,gives a description of the relevant MSS, an overview of references to the Conduct in Locke’scorrespondence, ahistoryofthegenesisoftheConduct until its first publication in 1706 in the Posthumous Works, an analysis of the evidence provided by the MSS on how the Conduct grew out of the Essay, and a statement of the principles that underlie the present editon. ABBREVIATIONS OF TITLES AND USE OF CALENDAR SYSTEMS Editorial reference to passages in the Conduct is by the paragraph numbers as established in the present edition. Other works by Locke that are frequently cited, are abbreviated as follows: Corr. The Correspondence of John Locke, ed. E. S. de Beer. Ox- ford: Clarendon Press, 1976-.Cited by letter number, vol- ume and page number. Drafts, I John Locke, Drafts for the Essay concerning Human Un- derstanding, and Other Philosophical Writings. Vol. I: Drafts AandB, eds. Peter H. Nidditch and G. A. J. Rogers. Ox- ford: Clarendon Press, 1990. Education John Locke, Some Thoughts concerning Education,eds.John W. Yolton and Jean S. Yolton. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989. Essay John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding,ed. Peter H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. Cited by book, chapter, section and page number. O-1706 Posthumous Works of Mr. John Locke: viz. I. Of the Conduct of the Understanding. II. An Examination of P. Malebranche’s Opinion of Seeing all Things in God. III. A Discourse of Mir- acles. IV Part of a Fourth Letter for Toleration. V. Memoirs relating to the Life of Anthony first Earl of Shaftesbury. To which is added, VI. His New Method of a Common-Place- Book, written Originally in French, and now translated into English. London: A. and J. Churchill, 1706. W-1963 John Locke, The Works of John Locke. A New Edition, Cor- rected (10 vols.). Aalen: Scientia, 1963 (repr. of W-1823). For the abbreviations of all other (works comprising) editions of the Conduct see below, ‘Bibliography’, §1. Works by other authors are also given in abbreviated form; here are some of the most frequently cited abbreviations: 14 abbreviations of titles and use of calendar systems AT René Descartes, Œuvres de Descartes,eds.CharlesAdam and Paul Tannery (11 vols.).Paris:J.Vrin,1982-1991. Bacon, Works The Works of Francis Bacon, eds. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis and Douglas Denon Heath (6 vols.). Stuttgart: Frommann, 1963 (repr. of London: Longman, 1858-1861). CSM Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, translated by John Cottingham, Robert StoothoV, Dugald Murdoch and (Vol. III) Anthony Kenny (3 vols.). Cambridge: Cam- bridge University Press, 1984-1991. Harrison/Laslett John Harrison and Peter Laslett, The Library of John Locke. Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1965. King Peter, Lord King, The Life of John Locke,