Preface to liberalism: Locke's first treatise and the bible

Review of Politics

Volumn 67, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 451-472

  Faulkner, Robert ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 34248036667     PISSN: 00346705     EISSN: 17486858     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0034670500034665     Document Type: Review

References (34)

1. Thomas Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 131-275
2. Michael Zuckert, Launching Liberalism, On Lockean Political Philosophy (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2002), pp. 129-68
3. Peter C. Myers, Our Only Star and Compass: Locke and the StrugglePolitical Rationality (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefleld, 1998), pp. 1-65
4. Nathan Tarcov, Locke's Education for Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 9-76
5. David Foster, "The Bible and Natural Freedom in John Locke's Political Thought," in Piety and Humanity, ed. D. Kries (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997)
6. D. Foster, "Taming the Father: John Locke's Critique of Patriarchal Fatherhood," Review of Politics 56, no.4 (1994)
7. and Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 202-251.
8. The quotation in the text is from Locke's A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. James H. Tully (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1986), 26.
9. Richard Rorty, "The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy," in Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 175-196
10. For three of the latest of Rawls' reformulations, and for his muffling of the religious challenge, see "Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical," "The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,"
11. and "Commonweal Interview with John Rawls," all in Rawls, Collected Papers, ed. Samuel Freeman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), pp. 388-414,573-615,616-27.
12. The problem is clarified and plumbed in J. Judd Owen, Religion and the Demise of Liberal Rationalism (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press (2001).
13. Ernest L. Fortin, Human Rights, Virtue, and the Common Good: Untimely Meditations on Religion and Politics (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1996), p. 55.
14. Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations in John Locke's Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); on the postmodern void and the superior depth of Locke, pp. 1-15.
15. For the passages quoted or referred to, see pp. 1-28, especially 13,18-19.
16. Consider Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), esp. p. 516
17. but see also 468-60, 470, 265-70, 70, 78, 259, 583, etc. John Dunn is a chief authority for the view that as to politics Locke's works are philosophically irrelevant; they are merely "historical," that is, confusedly Calvinist and wrapped within the "tradition and change" of his own time.
18. The Political Thought of John Locke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969).
19. For refutations see Nathan Tarcov, Locke's Education, pp. 90, 127,142-44
20. and Myers Political Rationality pp. 14-23, 32. n.66 107,135 n.52
21. All such references to the Treatises are to Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
22. See Zuckert, "An Introduction to Locke's First Treatise," in Launching Liberalism, p. 137, and in general the works cited before in footnote 2.
23. Letter, ed. Tully, pp. 38, 55; the ensuing quotations in the text are from pp. 23, 26, 32, 37, 42, 49, 51, 52.
24. As to Locke's acknowledgement of Filmer's foundation in divine providence, see Tarcov, Locke's Education, 13-21
25. and Zuckert, "An Introduction to Locke's First Treatise," in his Launching Liberalism, pp. 129-146
26. As to Locke's two quotations from the New Testament, other allusions, and the pattern of distortion, see George Alan Windstrup, "Politic Christianity: Locke's Theology of Liberalism" (Ph.D. Dissertation, Princeton University, 1977), p. 255. Windstrup's little known work is among the most tenacious and extensive inquiries into Locke's political theology.
27. Some Thoughts Concerning Education, ed. Ruth W. Grant and Nathan Tarcov (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1996), sections 4,5,7, 39, 41; cf. 34, 35, esp. 78.
28. Consider the examinations by Pangle, in Modern Republicanism, pp. 136- 149
29. and in Political Philosophy and the God of the Bible (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), pp. 10-11.
30. Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV. xi. 12 and also IV. iii. 27.
31. Laslett's index to both Treatises has no entries for prophets, prophecy, Messiah, Christ or Savior.
32. Leo Strauss, Philosophy and Law, tr. Fred Baumann (New York: The Jewish Publication Society, 1987), Introduction 10-14.
33. See also Matthew Davis, "Locke and the Problem of the Biblical God," chapter two of "Ancient and Modern Approaches to the Problem of Relativism: A Study of Husserl, Locke and Plato" (Ph. D. Dissertation, Boston College, 1995), pp. 25-85.
34. As to the definition of "essay" and the political significance of the essay form, see Robert Faulkner, "Francis Bacon' in Encyclopedia of the Essay, ed. Tracy Chevalier (London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997).