Government remains limited in civil society because God gave man the ability, through work and reason, to subdue the earth and thereby improve his life by the use of pri­vate property.

Understanding Locke

John Locke is one of the few major philoso­phers who can be used to provide a theoret­ical and moral foundation for American and Western regimes organized around the concept of liberty. Yet, in recent years, re­visionist interpreters from literally every perspective have maintained either that Locke is confused and, therefore, not able to provide a foundation for any culture; or, that Locke actually was a relativistic hedon­ist. It will be argued here, however, that Locke is consistent and non-hedonistic, if one understands his epistemology.

Since Locke is so central for the legiti­macy of these regimes based upon liberty, it is not surprising to find neo-Marxists like C.B. Macpherson holding that Locke espoused a “possessive individualism,” which ulti­mately is destructive for these “capitalist” societies. But when Leo Strauss, who was dedicated to saving Western civilization from the fate of Rome, concluded that “Locke is a hedonist”—this is another matter entirely.

As different as Strauss and Macpherson are, they both interpreted Locke as an epistemological rationalist. There are prob­lems regarding whether they are describing the historical Locke or are trying to render his philosophy more coherent. But if the historical Locke was not a rationalist as Strauss and Macpherson understand the term, then it does not necessarily follow that he needs to be made more consistent, or that he was a hedonist.

Modern epistemology—at least until quite recently—has generally demanded that one choose the single rational, empiri­cal, or traditional method that underlies the thought of a philosopher and analyze his ideas on the basis of that method. Locke can correctly be identified as a rationalist. Yet, it is difficult to classify Locke as a pure ra­tionalist in view of the fact he is also re­garded as the founder of British empiricism. Moreover, he holds that there are “things above reason,” that these things above rea­son are a matter of faith and revelation, and that “an evident revelation ought to deter­mine our assent, even against probability.” One, thus, can find rationalistic, empirical and revelational aspects to Locke’s epistem­ology.

The revisionists, however, try to reduce Locke so that he may be dealt with, on their grounds, as a simple rationalist. Strauss, for example, starts with a distinction between rationalism and revelation but then says, since Locke held that belief in a life after death comes from revelation, this cannot be used to understand his rationalistic eth­ics. He then boldly excludes this aspect of Locke’s thought. With this element exclud­ed, he creates a Lockean “partial law of nature,” finds this construction and Locke’s revelation in conflict with each other, and is forced to the conclusion that Locke, as traditionally interpreted, is confused. But since he must be rational (how else could he be so widely respected?) there must be another, “hidden,” interpretation which is rational. The hidden interpretation which Strauss finds is that Locke did not take rev­elation seriously, that he really was a pure rationalist of hedonism and that he was hiding his true rational philosophy of hedo­nism so that it could he packaged more attractively to appeal to a religious society which held virtue rather than pleasure as its highest goal.

The entire argument, however, rests upon the assumption that some aspects of Locke’s belief can be excluded in the analy­sis of his philosophy. Another view of epistemology, though, views reason as a synthesis of methods. Although one should distinguish rationalistic, empirical and tra­ditional (i.e. common sense, instinct, faith and revelation) aspects, reason itself is conceived as a total means by which one can understand and evaluate truth. Locke himself distinguished between what can be called rationalism and the holistic conception of understanding which can be called reason.

If one wishes to understand the historical Locke, i.e. how Locke saw himself, Strauss’ analysis of Locke must be incomplete. As we have seen, Strauss made a rigid distinction between the rationalism and revelation aspects of Locke’s thought and excluded an important element of the latter from his analysis. Strauss even admits his view of Locke is partial; but he could do this since he was not a believer and could not take revelation seriously. Strauss also has been widely recognized for his antagonism to the empirical aspect of reason and has been accused of not making the critical distinction between empirical description and nor­mative prescription—especially in Locke’s Second Treatise. Since Strauss excludes the traditional and empirical aspects of Locke’s thought, this certainly must influ­ence his interpretation of it. But by viewing Locke’s epistemology as composed of three aspects—rationalist, empirical, and tradi­tional—in one whole where all aspects must be consistent, rather than as composed of simple rationalism alone, one can look at Locke’s ethics and politics as he did him­self. He did not believe that these kinds of knowledge were obtained solely from ra­tionalism but that one also knew and made judgments on the basis of empirical evidence, common sense and revelation.

Lockean Ethics

To Strauss, the essence of Locke’s ethics is that “life is the joyless quest for joy.” This ethics is even worse than classical hedonism, since it sought pleasure joyfully. Locke’s hedonism is more pessimistic since it tries to avoid a pain which really cannot be avoided, as life is not only without virtue but it is aimless, possessive, hopeless and miserable. As Willmoore Kendall has put it, the “chief point about Strauss’ Locke is that he is a revolutionary against both the biblical tradition and the great tradition in political philosophy.” But even if he were a revolutionary against the Torah tradition and Platonic philosophy, this does not neces­sarily make Locke a hedonist.

To understand Locke one must view him as a Christian influenced, but not exclusive­ly so, by the later pragmatic and naturalis­tic neo-scholastics like Richard Hooker, Hugo Grotius, and Samuel von Puffendorf.

The tradition which seems to have had the most outstanding effect upon Locke’s ethical philosophy was that which based morality upon ‘the law of na­ture.’ This tradition was very old and widespread. It sprang from the teachings of the Roman stoics, dominated the thought of the medieval scholastics and then found striking expression in several great moralists of the seventeenth cen­tury.

The closeness of this connection seems es­pecially well illustrated in Locke’s recently recovered early essays on natural law where he almost directly quotes Grotius and Hooker on the Divine origin of a natural law which can be known to man through the use of reason.

Yet, even though Locke’s ethics are based upon philosophy through the neo-scholas­tics, George Santayana also finds that, in his scien­tific studies of medicine, Locke found Pla­tonic and neo-scholastic rationalism mis­leading, and even narrowly dangerous to his patients’ health when applied to real world problems. Consequently, Locke al­ways had a high traditional and common­ sensical component to his philosophy which refined his rationalism, which very importantly (Santayana says, most importantly) included a sincere and confident Christian faith. Indeed, it appears that his major work on philosophy, his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, was written with the major purpose of providing “a sound foundation upon which morality and re­ligion could be based.”

Indeed, the evidence for Locke’s Chris­tianity seems overwhelming even in the face of Strauss’ seemingly powerful argument that he is simply hedonistic. In the first place, Locke himself says that “to give a man a full knowledge of true morality I shall send him to no other book but the New Testament.” How much clearer could one be? Likewise, he wrote that Jesus was Messiah and Savior, that this was the cen­ter of reasonable religion, and that men were expected to believe this if they were to be saved for the happiness of life after death in heaven. In this way, he spent many years of writing defending Chris­tianity against both intolerant sectarians and Deists in his Reasonableness of Chris­tianity and its later elaborations. And as a result of these efforts, some moderns even call him a “defender of the faith.” Furthermore, Locke was orthodox enough to write a discourse defending miracles and in his last years translated and extensively commented upon the Epistles of St. Paul. Moreover, in the latter he specifically noted that true liberty was not hedonistic but should he hound by the obligations of good­ will and love.

The strongest argument against a scholastic interpretation of Locke, perhaps, is that he was not an “orthodox Christian” and that he was strongly opposed by the orthodox clergy. But this does not mean that Locke was not a Christian but merely indicates that he was associated with the latitudinarian wing of the Anglican Church. In some narrow sense this wing might not he considered orthodox, but it certainly was comparatively conservative between the extremes of narrow sectarian­ism and liberal deism. Locke also did at­tack the concept of innate ideas as a proof of religion but he almost certainly did this to put religion in a firmer base rather than to attack religion.

The revisionist critique, though, seems to have been most convincing in finding so­ called contradictions, and in Locke’s cau­tion and secret writing. Yet, the exam­ples Strauss gives seem very weak and re­sult from the simplification of Locke’s epistemology noted above. For example, Strauss finds a contradiction when Locke says that conscience indicates there is a natural law but also says conscience cannot prove it. Yet all Locke means is that since all reason-based knowledge is probabilistic one never can be certain beyond a shadow of a doubt. Likewise, the belief that Locke used secret writing, was cautious, and feared to offend the Christian powers in England does not lead to the belief that he did not really believe in natural law and Christianity. Thus, his secret writing seems restricted to “love notes” in his amatory correspondence. The model of caution Strauss refers to in his citation for Locke is none other than Jesus! And there is a better argument to he made that Locke feared the long-term influence of the Deists more than he feared the waning influence of the orthodox wing of the Anglican Church.

In one sense, Strauss is correct in seeing that Locke did not have the same concep­tion of “natural law” as did the ancients. If the ancients are thought to have found truth from a single reality of nature, Locke did use two realms—an empirical nature of how man tended to act and a moral na­ture related to how God expected man to act. Indeed, it is from this distinction that the charge that Locke was hedonistic can be seen to have a basis in fact. For Locke did hold that as man actually acted he did so mainly from motivations of self-interest. Yet, this hedonistic aspect of Locke’s thought was recognized long before the re­visionists popularized it, although in the past it had always been balanced by the un­derstanding that he was also a pious and believing Christian.

As early as 1914, Karl Gotthard Lamprecht had noted Locke’s hedonism but balanced this with the belief that:

Locke’s hedonistic ideas cannot be said ever to have constituted an independent and self-sufficient ethical system…. Though he seems to have started by ac­cepting Hobbes’ general psychological background for ethics, he departed from Hobbes at many points. He was too much devoted to the interests of religion to admit much of the materialistic and worldly emphasis of Hobbes. He not only insisted on pleasure of the mind as well as of the body, as if the former had no physiological basis, but also upheld the rewards in heaven so completely out­ weighing all other pleasures as to be alone worth considering.

Consequently, Locke merely reempha­sized a “hedonism” which had always existed in Christian thought. Thus, in its earliest years the subject of Locke’s ex­tensive study, St. Paul, clearly had taught that one should obey the moral law not only for conscience sake but also for fear of God’s wrath. By introducing the idea of “Christian hedonism”—i.e. that present pains and pleasures should be measured against eternal punishment and rewards­ into his philosophy, Locke did break with classical philosophy and the testament of the Torah, as the revisionists have held; but it was a break implicit in the idea of a life after death. Locke’s radicalism, therefore, was not introduced by Locke but by Christianity.

Locke, like the classical philosophers, be­lieved that acting for the sake of virtue was the highest good. But like traditional Chris­tianity, John Locke also held that acting virtuously out of fear of future punishment from God was better than acting un-virtuously. To Locke, as with Christians generally, Christ was not important because he proclaimed virtue for the first time since Locke knew that virtue was proclaimed both through the Old Testament and by the classical philosophers. What Christ did was to separate Caesar from virtue and to weigh the calculus of free human decision more in the favor of virtue by making men take into account the rewards and punishments of heaven and hell in an afterlife.

To Locke, the resurrection of Jesus and this proof that there was a life after death

changed the nature of things in the world and gave the advantage to piety over all that could tempt it. The philoso­phers, indeed, showed the beauty of virtue; they set her off so as drew men’s eyes and approbation to her; but leaving her unendowed, very few were will­ing to espouse her. The generality could not refuse her their esteem; but still turned their backs on her, and forsook her…. But now there being put into scales on her side, ‘an exceeding and immortal weight of glory’: interest is come about to her and virtue is now visi­bly the most enriching purpose, and by much the best bargain.

Indeed, Locke held that the “mere proba­bility” of an afterlife should move reason­ able men to follow God’s law so that they could enjoy the “infinite eternal joys of heaven” rather than try “to satisfy the suc­cessive uneasiness of our desires pursuing trifles” on earth.

With Hans Aarnsleff, however, I must agree that “if this is called a utilitarian ethic based upon hedonism, the almost certain result will be needless confusion.” The most one could say was that Locke’s “par­tial law of nature” as abstracted by Strauss was hedonistic (and this may have been Strauss’ meaning); but when one consid­ers Locke as a whole the charge of hedon­ism is misleading. One might as easily call St. Paul or St. Thomas hedonistic. Indeed, Strauss considers St. Thomas’ scholasticism dualistic and, therefore, epis­temologically unsatisfactory. Yet the scholastic epistemology used by Locke which encompasses several harmonious as­pects is not inherently invalid and if it is to be challenged, it should be on its merits and not by mere assertion. As long as this is not done, it is reasonable to use the more complex epistemology outlined above; and using this it is possible to defend Locke’s ethics from the charge of hedonism.

Since Locke himself used this epistemology, it can minimally be held that he did not see his own philosophy as hedonistic. In his Essay on Human Understanding and his Second Treatise on Civil Government he surely saw himself mainly describing how men acted, not so much how they should act. In a letter to a friend he specifically stated that, “I did not design to treat of the grounds of true morality…it had been impertinent if I had so designed; my busi­ness was only to show whence men had moral ideas and what they were.” That is, these were empirical studies of how men actually acted and in the case of the Sec­ond Treatise how a government could best be devised to constructively utilize the hedonistic tendencies in mankind. In The Reasonableness of Christianity and in his essays on education, however, Locke does deal with how man should act and these are clearly Christian ethical prescriptions. True morality, to Locke, was not hedonistic selfishness; it was not even the Christian selfishness of acting well to save one’s soul; but true virtue only resulted from freely fol­lowing God’s law. But, since most men did not consistently keep their minds on God’s law, it was necessary to create a govern­ mental regime which recognized this fact of human nature while still allowing for the free pursuit of virtue.

Lockean Political Philosophy

Revisionist scholarship must hold that there is no virtue in Lockean civil society but only the brutish pursuit of self-inter­est.If the preceding understanding of Locke’s epistemology and ethics is correct, though, it is possible to understand his political philosophy in the Second Treatise as based upon natural law values. Locke’s political philosophy simply starts with his ethical view of man, morally equal because created by God, each having an obligation to choose the good. Each, accordingly, is created free but he is expected by God to use that freedom responsibly by following God’s law so that he will merit eternal re­ward.

This view of freedom makes only the in­dividual ultimately valuable as all human institutions were simply created by indi­viduals and, therefore, are inferior to them. Some social institutions—and especially the family—are created immediately because of a strong need to live in society. Yet, since they are formed with other free indi­viduals, in the forming of the institutions both parties accept further responsibilities. They are still fully free since individuals themselves choose institutions so that life may have order and a means to sustain it­self materially. As the institutions tend to solve these problems, moreover, they be­ come valued and individual freedom be­ comes freely more limited by the “commu­nion of interest” in these groups.

This society with full freedom to choose, though, is “very unsafe, very insecure” be­cause not all will accept their responsibili­ty; and this makes the individual very quickly “willing to quit this condition which, however free, is full of fears, and continual dangers.” As society, therefore, is potential because of the existence of choosing individuals, the state is latent in the existence of society as a means to con­trol the violence, force and fraud which take place with enough regularity in society to make it unsafe.

Paradoxically, then, Lockean society is immediately not free but only has what can be called liberty—which is not a situation where everyone is “to live as he pleases”; but is where there is only freedom to live within rules of behavior: first given by di­vine and natural law and which, when in­stituted in the state, have been devised with one’s own consent.

Lockean societies, however, do not follow a single form: the people are free to choose which governmental regime’s rules they will live under. But, to obtain agreement, Locke assumes (1) that these people must have “some acquaintance and friendship together and some trust in one another,” (2) that this trust will then allow them to come together and make a common agree­ment as to the type of regime all “think good,” and (3) that the type they think good must be defined by the value princi­ples they hold which specify the good.

The Lockean society which has a govern­ment, therefore, is not one which is value­ free or without virtue as held by the revi­sionists. Rather, Lockean society assumes values and is distinguished from others only in the locus of its values and virtue, which are placed in individuals within society as opposed to the state. This distinction be­tween society as the repository of virtue and the state as only a means to regulate coer­cion, indeed, is what defines Lockean soci­ety. Hence, in this type of regime, the gov­ernment is given the very limited, though important, function of only defining and regulating coercion. Otherwise, it is to allow virtue to develop spontaneously in society as the result of free decisions of individuals, since society is the higher repository of virtue, honor, esteem, reverence, etc. which are the ends of life.

Revisionist scholarship, however, main­tains that Locke’s Second Treatise on Civil Government does not contain the language of virtue—or that it “barely” does. Yet, the present perspective can explain both why there is little discussion of virtue and why it does appear where it does. To Locke, this treatise is on government and not on ethics or morality. He did write works on these latter subjects and these clearly dealt with values. But this one was primarily about a government which was conceived as different from society, where society was the repository of virtue and government merely the protector of society from coercion. Therefore, virtue would only be considered in the Second Treatise where society came into contact with government. As the revisionists have noted, this is a radical break with the Greek conception which viewed state and society as one and virtue, therefore, intimately related to gov­ernment. The essentially Christian idea of separating Caesar from society did not really enter political philosophy until the Middle Ages with St. Thomas and did not take its developed form until Locke and the American Federalist Papers.

Given this, the Second Treatise is comprehensible. After an introductory section which merely recounts the argument of the First Treatise, section 2 immediately says that this treatise will deal with political power and the very next phrase makes the major distinction between state and society—i.e.”that the power of a magistrate over a subject may be distinguished from that of a father over his children, a master over his servant, a husband over his wife, and a lord over his slave.” The difference be­tween these is that political power involves coercion and these other relations legitimately do not or, if so, it is of a very re­strictive character.

Before the establishment of government men are under the authority of God, “whose workmanship they are,” to follow the “great maxims of justice and charity.” Yet, because they have been given freedom “from any superior power on earth,” men do not necessarily follow this law—al­though God has given reason so that man is not without some guidance even when not following His law. Since the interpretation of reason is equally given to all, though, “the execution of the law of nature is…put into every man’s hands, whereby every one has a right to punish the transgressors of that law.”

Since all can use the political power of coercion in the state of nature, this state be­ comes unsafe. But in civil society govern­ment is only given the power to regulate this coercion through the construction of rules of law.

Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, com­mon to every one of that society and made by the legislative power erected in it. A liberty to follow my own will in all things where the rule prescribes not, not to be subject to the inconsistent, un­certain, unknown arbitrary will of another man, as freedom of nature is to be under no other restraint but the law of nature.

Government remains limited in civil society because God gave man the ability, through work and reason, to subdue the earth and thereby improve his life by the use of pri­vate property. Once given this right, man would not freely choose to enter society un­less his property were secure from expro­priation from government. He obtains this security by turning the power of decision over to a type of government to which all have consented. Once consented to, the ma­jority, in some sense, is given the right to act for all.

It may he objected that turning the right of decision over to the majority would not protect liberty or property. Yet, it is a mea­sure of the importance of values in the Lockean regime that it assumes that the majority will act virtuously. Locke does not emphasize structural restraints—though he does mention separation of powers as an assistance—but mainly relies upon the vir­tue of the people and the virtue of the lead­ers they consent to. The civil magistrate is not to enter into family relations nor to ex­propriate life, liberty, or property. But the only real protection of these basic rights is the “trust” that the authorities will not abuse them, or that if they do, the majori­ty will correct the abuses.

The argument that Locke was not inter­ested in obligation, seems no more valid than the one which says he was uninter­ested in virtue. But with his distinction be­tween state and society and his assumption that society would be good, a discussion of government need not deal with obligation to any great extent. Yet to argue against Robert Filmer’s position that the power of the monarch was equivalent and based upon the authority of the father over his chil­dren, it was necessary for the Second Treatise to consider the social institution of the family.

When Locke did talk at length about the societal institution of the family, he used all of the language of virtue which the revisionists wished he would use—although, even in Chapter VI (“Of Paternal Pow­er”), most of the sections deal with power. Yet in the middle section of this discussion he distinguished between power and obliga­tion and here he clearly holds that obliga­tion and virtue belong in society; and that—although the father has power also­—power is not the basis for reverence from his children but merely for their obedi­ence to him after maturity.

The reverence due to parents, however, is different from power. Even in maturity:

freedom exempts not a son from that honor which he ought, by the law of God and nature, to pay his parents, God having made the parents instruments in his great design of continuing the race of mankind and the occasions of life to their children. As he laid upon them an obligation to nourish, preserve, and bring up their offspring, so he has laid on the children a perpetual obligation of honoring their parents which, con­taining in it an inward esteem and rev­erence to be shown by all outward ex­pressions, ties up the child from any­ thing that may ever injure or affront, disturb, or endanger the happiness of the life of those from whom he received his, and engages him in all actions of de­fense, relief, assistance, and comfort of those by whose means he entered in­ to being and has been made capable of any enjoyments of life. From this obli­gation no state, no freedom, can absolve children.

A government of the Lockean type sim­ply is one which leaves the question of vir­tue to individuals in society. The state only exists to control the brutish tendencies where one attempts to coerce his neighbor. Government’s only morality is to conduct its own affairs morally and otherwise virtue rests in society. There it exists to control the state (normally through democratic means) and to regulate the non-coercive relations among men—at best for brother­hood or at least for enough respect to allow others to freely pursue self-interest as long as it does not involve coercion. As such, Lockean civil society allows virtue but it al­so allows society to sustain itself as long as men merely peacefully seek their own inter­ests and government only guarantees this peace.

The Lockean Harmony

When one looks at Locke from this perspec­tive, the problem of values in the Lockean regime begins to make sense. Those in the classical tradition view society and state as an undifferentiated whole and do not neces­sarily believe in an afterlife. With this view, justice must reside in the state and virtue must be worked out in politics. But in a Lockean society which sees society as sepa­rate from the state and which sees the former as the source of virtue and, in addi­tion believes in an afterlife which provides for real ultimate justice, politics is a very limited pursuit and has little to do with vir­tue. With this realization, the problems posed by the revisionists can be solved. Virtue is not treated extensively in the Second Treatise because this work deals with politics, not virtue.

The basic political assumption of Locke­ an theory is that virtue can exist spontane­ously among the people of society without government direction, as long as there is civil peace. What seems to the classical tradition to be a callous disregard of virtue by Locke is in actuality a radically differ­ent conception of it. Locke believed that society could be virtuous if it only allowed individuals to choose the good and, there­fore, it did not need the state to direct its virtue. A treatise of government, thus, did not have to deal very extensively with vir­tue since virtue was beyond the bounds of government itself and resided in the people. All that was necessary to achieve virtue was to make government responsible to the peo­ple, and they would see that society re­mained virtuous. The political question, therefore, was how to control and limit gov­ernment, so that it would only restrain private coercion, not how it was to achieve virtue directly.

Because virtue is seen as residing in so­ciety, individuals and the voluntary asso­ciations they form must be protected so that virtue is protected. In the Lockean para­digm, therefore, the problem of virtue and the problem of liberty are one and the same. Although it is expected that most peo­ple usually will pursue short-term goals, rather than the highest virtue, even this has beneficial results as the search for self-inter­est leads to increased wealth and satisfac­tion for all. But, most importantly, by al­lowing liberty the way is open for all to live virtuously and for some to pursue the high­est virtue. That is, in both these instances, the Lockean does not see individual liberty and virtue to be in fundamental conflict. Rather, liberty and virtue are perceived to be in harmony when coercion is controlled and the people are good enough to have “some trust in one another.”

It is not so much that those in the classi­cal tradition find Locke inconsistent as that they reject this harmony. To Strauss,

no alternative is more fundamental than this: human guidance or divine guidance. The first possibility is charac­teristic of philosophy or science in the original sense of the term, the second is presented in the Bible. The dilemma cannot be evaded by any harmonization or synthesis. For both philosophy and the Bible proclaim something as the one thing needful, as the only thing that ultimately counts, and the one thing needful proclaimed by the Bible is the opposite of that proclaimed by philoso­phy: a life of obedient love versus a life of free insight. In every attempt at har­monization, in every synthesis however impressive, one of the two opposed ele­ments is sacrificed…

Locke attempted a synthesis. To Strauss, Locke could not have been successful. When Locke found knowledge without con­clusive proof, this must show confusion (al­though Locke would call it probabilistic knowledge). To Strauss, this problem traced back to Locke’s epistemologically unc­ertain choice between revelation and ra­tionalism. It is an attempt by Locke to reconcile the irreconcilable. To Strauss, either philosophy or revelation must be “queen.” It is not primarily that Locke uses secret writing (neither Strauss nor Goldwin make specific charges here), nor that Locke is as cautious as Christ, nor that Locke feared the power of the religiously orthodox, which is critical. These are very subsidiary to the charge of epistemological fallacy.

There are, of course, other epistemologi­cal views of this matter. Rather than see the Torah and Greek philosophy in funda­mental conflict, they may be viewed as ulti­mately in harmony. St. Paul taught that Christ was that harmony (1 Cor. 1:20-24):

Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world, by wisdom, knew not God, it pleased God, by the foolishness of our preaching, to save them that believe. For both the Jews require signs, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumbling block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness: but unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power and wis­dom…

Until St. Thomas, this perceived har­mony was only implicit in Western philoso­phy. But St. Thomas attempted an explicit synthesis of Christianity and the Greek philosophers. As shown by John Courtney Murray,

scholasticism in the Thomist style did indeed authorize a mode of rational inquiry, philosophical or scientific, that was methodologically atheist. It did not start with God but only with experience. This inquiry, however…was not the only mode of inquiry; the kind of truth it sought was not the only kind of truth ; its techniques of certification were not the only ones available. Truth was a many sided edifice…. I should say rather that there was one universe of truth, within which different kinds of truth, and correspondingly different methodologies for their pursuit, existed in distinction and in unity. Moreover…there prevailed the robust belief that between the valid conclusions of ra­tional thought and the doctrines of faith no unresolved clash could or should oc­cur.

Strauss, of course, knew the Thomist synthesis. Yet, he rejected it as a “dual­ism.” Indeed, he rejected, in general, at­tempts to use different methodologies for what he viewed as undifferentiated reality. So, Strauss found the fact-value distinction epistemologically invalid. Likewise, he re­jected the modern philosophy-science and philosophy-political philosophy field dis­tinction and viewed political philosophy as the master epistemology. Finally, he re­jected the state-society distinction, so cen­tral to Western free societies as they have developed overtime.

To St. Paul and St. Thomas, it was neces­sary to separate Caesar from God and, then, the state from society, so that the Church and its members might be free. St. Paul even would have the Church arbitrate con­flicts rather than have them settled by the state courts (1 Cor. 6: 1-7). It is signifi­cant, so far as St. Thomas’ solution of free­dom is concerned, that in his great History of Political Philosophy Strauss himself writes the section following that on St. Thomas. In this, Strauss presents the doc­trine of Marsilius of Padua, that the Church should be subsidiary to the state. It is a measure of the importance given to this that Strauss wrote the section for only one other philosopher in this work—his greatest of political philosophers, Plato. In such a work Strauss must write on Plato but why also on Marsilius, unless he also is of central importance?

In separating state from society and in placing virtue mainly in society (which includes the Church), rather than in the state, Locke is merely elaborating upon St. Thomas and the predominant political philosophy of the West for many centuries. Likewise, in making a distinction between rationalism and revelation and holding these to be different but complementary methods towards the truth, Locke is follow­ing in the same tradition. Again, to Locke (as in Thomism generally) both virtue and freedom are needed. It is not a choice be­tween opposites but a harmony. This syn­thesis may be invalid, simply faulty, or even just unable to meet modern needs; but its failure—if it be such—is not a unique problem for Locke.

Republished with gracious permission from Modern Age (Volume 22, No. 3, 1978).

This essay was first published here in February 2017.

The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.

The featured image is John Locke’s Kit-cat portrait by Godfrey Kneller, National Portrait Gallery, London, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

All comments are moderated and must be civil, concise, and constructive to the conversation. Comments that are critical of an essay may be approved, but comments containing ad hominem criticism of the author will not be published. Also, comments containing web links or block quotations are unlikely to be approved. Keep in mind that essays represent the opinions of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Imaginative Conservative or its editor or publisher.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email