Locke alludes to God at various points in the passage you've been assigned for Monday. How crucial is God to his argument?
Cite some text to support your claims.
Deadline: start of class Monday (10/19).
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George Stubbs, 1795
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2 comments:
It seems that God is a fairly crucial aspect to Locke's argument. God is kind of acting like an asterisk after Locke's theories. For example, when he is talking about the "State of Nature" he is saying that all men are in equality with reciprocal powers. After he gets through stating that no man should be subordinate to another man he says, "unless the Lord and Master of them all should, by any manifest destination of His will, set one above the other [...]" (396).
So it seems to me that Locke is saying that this God, this Master of all, has in His power, to change the natural ways of life and society.
As the reading continues, however, he often refers to Nature. I am unsure of how he is using Nature in this context. Is it something opposite from God? or could it be acting as a synonym? Or perhaps it is not one way or the other, but merely a middle ground?
I think Lauren's post is well said and I encountered some of the same questions. God seems to be credited for the big picture and the ways things are. On page 398, Locke says, "God gave the world to men in common; but since He gave it to them for their benefit, and the greatest conveniences of life they were capable to draw from it, it cannot be supposed He meant it should always remain common and uncultivated." It was God's intention that society should be a certain way which is what Locke uses to back up some of his claims.
Yet I agree with Lauren on the topic of Nature, especially at the conclusion of the text. On page 405: "The rules that they make for other men's actions must, as well as their own, and other men's actions be conformable to the law of nature, i.e., the will of God, of which this is a declaration..." There seems to be a link between the two that wasn't as obvious as before. Nature and God seemed to be rationales for different topics and now they are synonymous...or are they?
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