Switch to: References

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. John Locke’s “Unease”: The Theoretical Foundation of the Modern Separation of Church and State.Haig Patapan & Jeffrey Sikkenga - forthcoming - Political Theory.
    John Locke is acknowledged to be one of the theoretical founders of the separation of church and state, a distinguishing feature of modern liberal democracies. Though Locke’s arguments for the merits of such separation have been subject to extensive investigation, his argument for its feasibility has remained relatively unexamined. This article argues that Locke was confident that separation of church and state can successfully be implemented in all times and places because of his epistemological and psychological insights that human beings (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Liberty and Suspension in Locke's Essay.Matthew A. Leisinger - 2022 - Locke Studies 21:26–55.
    I argue for two controversial claims about Locke’s account of liberty in Essay 2.21. The first claim is that Locke does not identify liberty with freedom of action. Instead, Locke places further conditions on liberty beyond to the power to perform or forbear an action at will. The second (and closely related) claim is that Locke takes the power to suspend and examine desire to be necessary for liberty—in other words, that possession of the power to suspend and examine desire (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Locke on the Motivation to Suspend Desire.Matthew A. Leisinger - 2021 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 51 (1):48-61.
    This paper takes up two questions regarding Locke’s doctrine of suspension. First, what motivates suspension? Second, what are the conditions under which we are motivated to suspend? In response to the first question, I argue that suspension is motivated by the desire to avoid the possible future evils that might result from acting precipitately upon some desire without suspending. In response to the second question, I argue against the common assumption that the desire motivating suspension must be an agent’s most (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Locke’s Diagnosis of Akrasia.Matthew A. Leisinger - 2020 - Journal of Modern Philosophy 2 (1):6.
    I argue for a new interpretation of Locke’s account of akrasia. On this interpretation, akrasia occurs on Locke’s account because certain cognitive biases endemic to the human mind dispose us to privilege present over future happiness. As a result, we end up irrationally pursuing present pleasure and the removal of present pain even as we simultaneously judge that doing so runs contrary to our own greater good. In this sense, I argue that Locke seeks to diagnose akrasia by identifying its (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Does Locke Have an Akrasia Problem?Leonardo Moauro & Samuel C. Rickless - 2019 - Journal of Modern Philosophy 1 (1):9.
    Starting in the second edition of the Essay, Locke becomes interested in the phenomenon of akrasia, or weakness of will. As he conceives it, akrasia occurs when we will something contrary to what we acknowledge to be our greater good. This commitment represents an important shift from the first edition of the Essay, where Locke argues that the will is always determined by a judgement of our greater good. But traces of the first-edition view are present even in the second (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Making Sense of Locke’s Confession.Andrea Guardo - manuscript
    After having given in the "Essay" a definition of freedom which straightforwardly entails its compatibility with – among other things – God's foreknowledge, Locke surprisingly writes in a 1693 letter to Molyneux that he does not see how human liberty can coexist with divine prescience. I argue that the confession to Molyneux can be made consistent with the "Essay"'s definition by embracing the view that the problem Locke had in mind when he drafted it was not a problem concerning the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Locke's Last Word on Freedom: Correspondence with Limborch.Julie Walsh - 2018 - Res Philosophica 95 (4):637-661.
    JohnLocke’s 1700–1702 correspondencewith Dutch Arminian Philippus van Limborch has been taken by commentators as the motivation for modifications to the fifth edition of “Of Power,” the chapter in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding that treats freedom. In this paper, I offer the first systematic and chronological study of their correspondence. I argue that the heart of their disagreement is over how they define “freedom of indifference.” Once the importance of the disagreement over indifference is established, it is clear that when (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations