A Portrait of John Locke as a Christian Virtuoso

Abstract

Anyone who has read John Locke’s account of personal identity will remember that he equated it with consciousness of self over time whereby an individual owns its actions and passions past and present. He labels individuals who do this ‘persons’. ‘Where-ever a Man finds, what he calls himself, there I think another may say is the same Person.’ In addition he observes that ‘person’ is a forensic term, because individuals own not only their bare actions, but the merit or demerit of them also. This applies only to ‘intelligent Agents capable of Law’, that is, capable of following a rule. They personify the rule of law. On this account, a certain rule or measure of thought and action becomes an integral a part of one’s own self (which develops over time), to be sure a normative part. Its presence is detected in the feelings of satisfaction and shame that attach themselves to memories of things past, and to the aspirations of hope and the fear of condemnation that arise when we reflect upon them. Being true to one’s own self, forensically considered, involves the practice of honest self-examination according to an internal standard. Truthfulness in all other respects is akin to it, for this forensic practice is a kind of discerning; a person is truthful who takes care that what it says conforms to what it knows to be true. Care is another intrinsic aspect of personality, for persons endeavor to conform their actions to law out of a concern for their happiness. It is supposed that one’s happiness depends upon it also, for honesty in all one’s judgments about one self is a condition of divine favor, without which happiness is impossible. Locke believed that this law is not a natural endowment, engraved on the mind, ready to be read when needed. Rather it is something to be sought after in honest pursuits of truth. Rightly understood, it is an eternal rule of right, rooted in divine goodness, but like all else that we come to know or believe, natural or revealed, our acceptance is the result of experience and judgment, whereupon it is stored in the memory, revived in the mind and applied to our actions in reflective or deliberative moments that span our waking life. Over time, these practices cast the self into a particular shape and character. Hence, it would not be impertinent to inquire about the rule-governed character that Locke applied to his own self. What kind of person did John Locke take himself to be? I answer, a Christian Virtuoso.