LOCKE AS THE FATHER OF EUROPEAN LIBERALISM

 

We have previously identified some of John Locke’s strengths and weaknesses, balancing them in a manner that would satisfy a critical historian, especially throwing some very substantial criticism at him at the end. But since when have we been motivated by giving pleasure to the critic? I am sure that having put so much objection to Locke’s ethical theory in the previous entry, we cannot be content to leave it at that. After all, Locke can be rightly seen as the father of European political liberalism, and this tremendous accomplishment of his ought to be written on his tomb, figuratively speaking, as his crowning achievement, and, in practical terms here, we are obliged to give him the last praise in the closing entry of his subsection.

A lot of philosophers before Locke can be justly described as liberal thinkers, and Machiavelli is certainly a most distinguished precursor of Locke as a political liberal. What is of critical importance here, though, has to be the fact that Locke’s intellectual influence on the British power elite was such that his liberalism took root in the British soil, and from there sprung and proliferated all across Europe. It is very commendable to be a liberal thinker, of course, but it is absolutely rare to be as fortunate as Locke was in finding political support for his liberal thinking.

In order to support my thesis with outside authority, I am taking recourse to Bertrand Russell again, but this time I shall be quoting from his less known opera. The opus in question is Russell’s 1940 article under the title Freedom and the Colleges. All quotations are taken from Section II of that article.

“The principle of liberal democracy, which inspired the founders of the American Constitution, was that the controversial questions should be decided by argument, rather than by force. Liberals have always held that opinions should be formed by untrammeled debate, not by allowing only one side to be heard. Tyrannical governments, both ancient and modern, have taken the opposite view…

The liberal outlook is the one which arose in England and Holland during the late seventeenth century, as a reaction against the wars of religion. These wars had raged for 130 years without producing the victory of either party. Each party felt an absolute certainty that it was in the right, and that its own victory was of the utmost importance to mankind. At the end, sensible men grew weary of the indecisive struggle and decided that both sides were mistaken in their dogmatic certainty. John Locke, who expressed the new point of view both in philosophy and in politics, wrote at the beginning of an era of growing toleration. He emphasized the fallibility of human judgments and ushered in an era of progress, which lasted until 1914. It is owing to the influence of Locke and his school that Catholics enjoy toleration in Protestant countries and Protestants in Catholic countries…

…All those [today] who oppose free discussion, and who seek to impose a censorship upon the opinions to which the young are to be exposed, are doing their share in increasing this bigotry and in plunging the world further into the abyss of strife and intolerance, from which Locke and his coadjutors gradually rescued it…”

…With this glowing tribute to John Locke as the father of European liberalism I find it most fitting to close the Locke subsection among my Magnificent Shadows. Here is undeniably Locke’s most significant legacy to our Western Civilization, and by this alone the extent of his positive value versus negative value ought to be judged and appreciated by posterity.