ccording to Kathryn Gleadle’s The Early Feminists. Radical Unitarians and the Emergence of the Women’s Rights Movement, 1831-51, as divided as Unitarians were about the precise denominational origin of their group, “they were unequivocal in claiming Locke as its founding philosopher” (10). The Unitarians subscribed especially to Locke’s epistemology and educational theory. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), Locke concerned himself with origin, certainty and circumference of human knowledge. Locke was an Empiricist, i.e. he held that all of human knowledge is gained by experience, and by experience alone. Humans have neither innate ideas (a claim made by his philosophical counterpart, René Descartes) nor congenital dispositions (good-bye to the idea of original sin). Rather, the human mind is a tabula rasa, a blank slate, which becomes inscribed with a person’s sensual experiences. These sensations (i.e. our perceptions of outward appearances) are being “processed” in the human mind – to use Locke’s terminology, we reflect on the sensations we’ve made. Only after our mind has been supplied with sensations does it become creative and engages in reflection to ponder the impressions it has received. According to Locke, knowledge stems only from two sources: External material things, which cause our sensations, and the inner workings of our mind, which are objects of our reflections.
Since there are no such things as innate ideas, man is essentially free and wholly mutable. This thought builds the foundation of Locke’s theory of education, which he developed in two major works. His Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693) explains how parents can best teach their children – in the broader sense of how to foster children’s reasoning capacity. Rather than making children learn things by heart or by making them obedient, Locke’s pedagogy aims at preparing them to make responsible and reasonable decisions and practice self-governance. However, since Locke’s Thoughts aims at the education of the sons and daughters of the English gentry, it has been deemed “limited in its time and place” (Uzgalis, “John Locke”).
Things are different when it comes to Locke’s second major work on education, the Conduct of the Understanding (1706, published posthumously). Locke intended to include this long essay in the fourth edition of his Essay, yet eventually it was neither added nor finished. In their introduction to Locke’s writings on education, Ruth W. Grant and Nathan Tarcov emphasize that the Thoughts and the Conduct “complement each other well: the Thoughts focuses on the education of children by their parents, whereas the Conduct addresses the self-education of adults” (Grant and Tarcov, vii). Specifically, Locke wants to remedy “that most men fall short of what they could achieve at their different levels, through neglect of their understandings” (Locke, Thoughts Concerning Education, 2). This implies the revolutionary idea that everyone is capable of improving his or her reasoning and that the differences in people’s “basic abilities” (Locke’s term) are not insurmountable. All it takes to amend people’s “faults in the use and improvement of this faculty of mind, which hinder them in their progress and keep them in ignorance and error all their lives” is proper guidance. Ignorance is no longer considered a matter of fate or a sure mark of “natural” inferiority but the result of a person’s surroundings, living conditions, and consequently habits, which are alterable.
For Locke, the development of one’s reason is decisive for individual freedom and morality. Only if mas has learned to reason well does he outgrow his moral failings of partiality and passion. The self-government he thereby obtains in turn qualifies him to participate in the government of his country. This is why Grant and Tarcov consider Locke’s educational theory an “education for liberty” (Grant and Tarcov, xii).
As liberating as Locke’s theory of knowledge was, it also raised a wholly new question: If man has no innate ideas on good and evil, how can he still be considered a moral being? Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713) argued that man has a “natural moral sense” (Characteristics, I, 262), a power of (moral) imagination that makes him aware of good and evil and enables him to decide on moral issues. This moral sense evokes emotions in the same way that, e.g., the sense of hearing “provides” sound. The feelings we have in a given situation tell us whether we should carry out an action or not.
Unfortunately, morality is no exact science, which makes moral questions difficult to settle. How do we account for moral differences? Thomas Burnet (1635-1715) would draw on Locke’s idea that the mind has an innate power to perceive differences in color and claimed that a similar innate power tells us about moral differences. He assumes a “natural conscience” in humans that effects our determination of the goodness or badness of an action (Grave, 11).
The ideas of Burnet and other contemporaries who engaged critically (albeit appreciatively) with Locke’s epistemology led to a new focus on the emotions in ethical speculation. This gave rise to a new current in philosophy: Moral sense theory. One of its most influential proponents, Adam Smith (1723-1790), argued that reason played no part in moral decisions. Rather than reason, man is motivated by “sympathy”. In 18th century philosophy, this term connotes a person’s “ability to identify with others and seek their approval” (quoted in Zagarri, 196). Yet unlike Burnet’s “natural conscience”, sympathy needs careful nurturing to develop. It is learnt first and foremost in the family. This had profound consequences on the understanding of the family, which was soon considered “the key transmitter of customs, habits, morals, and manners” (Zagarri, 195). Ultimately, thinkers like Smith, Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746), and David Hume (1711-1776) saw the family as an integral part of political culture because “the relationships and attitudes forged within the family directly shaped the public realm” (Zagarri, 197). In combination with Locke’s educational theory, this idea greatly influenced the Unitarian stance on the role of women.
Another person who dealt in-depth with Locke’s concept of sensation and reflection and the way these processes impact our personality was David Hartley (1705-1757), the founder of associative psychology. Hartley’s Observation on Man, his Frame, his Duty, and his Expectations (1749) is a unique work not as regards its topics per se, but their combination: It marries science with spirituality. Hartley makes a case for universal salvation by applying Newtonian science to human nature. Building on Newton’s laws of attraction and repulsion, Hartley develops a “theory of vibration” to explain how the particles that constitute the nerves and the brain interact with a Newtonian universe. Accordingly, the response of our nervous system to its physical environment produces ideas – all ideas, for that matter, given the vast possibilities for associative connections between the nerves and within the brain.
Hartley’s conception offers not only an early account of neuroscience, but also of moral psychology. As mentioned above, Hartley proceeds from the idea of universal salvation. He holds that all people are intrinsically motivated to become “partakers of the divine nature” (quoted in Allen). This is accounted for by their psychological dynamics. According to Hartley, there are six classes of emotional states, which form two groups: imagination, ambition, and self-interest on the one hand and sympathy, theopathy, and the moral sense on the other (theopathy seems to be coined by Hartley and defines a person’s relationship with what that person considers divine). The first two are basic orientations whereas the third ones function as a means of regulation. Hartley considers this psychological constitution to be highly changeable. He draws again on Newtonian science to account for this. The forces of attraction and repulsion Hartley discerned on a neuroscientific basis now become association and counter-association. The associations which generate ideas are checked by counter-associations, i.e. inner processes that interrupt and break the course of associations. This is essential for a sane mind, as when a painful or frustrating memory or association is being re-oriented to unburden a person’s memory. A person’s psychological set-up is mutable insofar as earlier orientations shape the orientations that follow them.
These counter-associations stem from the first group of emotional states: Imagination, ambition, and self-interest work to counterbalance negative experiences. Sometimes, these counter-associations have the effect of freeing us from pursuing wrong, i.e. painful aims and focus on higher goals. Hartley underlines: “We do, and must, upon our entrance into the world, begin with idolatry to external things, and, as we advance in it, proceed to the idolatry of ourselves” (quoted in Allen). Counter-associations are important stepping-stones in achieving such a state of “idolatry of ourselves”. They help us to develop a higher sense of sympathy, theopathy, and morality. Once this is accomplished, these higher modes change the lower ones of imagination and ambition as well in the sense that we appreciate, and strive for, different things – ideally things which no longer require the formation of counter-associations for they harbor no (or at least, comparatively little) risk of frustration.
Related Material
- Introduction
- Unitarianism’s social vision
- “Loose the female mind” – Unitarianism and feminism
- The Unitarian Radicals
- The Monthly Repository
- Unitarianism and Utilitarianism
- The Philosophic Radicals
Bibliography
Allen, Richard. “David Hartley,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Ed. Edward N. Zalta. Summer 2020 Edition. Web. August 16, 2020.
Gleadle, Kathryn. The Early Feminists. Radical Unitarians and the Emergence of the Women’s Rights Movement, 1831-51. London: MacMillan, 1998.
Grave, S.A. Locke and Burnet. Philosophy Society of W.A. and Department of Philosophy, University of Western Australia, 1981. Web. September 15, 2020.
Locke, John. “Some Thoughts Concerning Education” and “The Conduct of the Understanding”. Ed. Ruth W. Grant and Nathan Tarcov. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1996.
Locke, John. The Conduct of the Understanding. Ed. Jonathan Bennett, 2017. Web. September 15, 2020.
Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper. Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times. Gloucester: P. Smith, 1963
Uzgalis, William. “John Locke.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Ed. Edward N. Zalta. Spring 2020 Edition. Web. August 16, 2020.
Zagarri, Rosemarie. 1992. “Morals, Manners, and the Republican Mother,” American Quarterly 11:2 (1992): 192-215.
Last modified 23 September 2020