2 - Hume's attack: why implementing Locke's practice is not always doing one's best

Summary

As I proceeded down the path of trying to discern what Locke was getting at in his discussion concerning the governance of belief and to uncover his motives for trying to get at it, I have offered, at various points, what is perhaps more a “rational reconstruction” than an interpretation, strictly speaking. When doing so, I have often brought twentieth-century discussions of the same issues into the conversation. And every now and then I have stopped to ask whether some claim or assumption that Locke made was true, often bringing contemporary discussions into the conversation at those points as well. Often, indeed, it was contemporary discussions which suggested the question. I have considered, for example, whether we human beings do in fact possess the powers of immediate awareness and of will which Locke's proposed method, or practice, presupposes. My conclusion was that, on these matters, Locke's proposal holds up better than a typical, late-twentieth-century, philosopher would initially have supposed.

However, my central goal on this occasion is not so much to critique as to understand this central part of the culture of modernity. Thus I have said almost nothing, and will say nothing more, about Locke's overarching strategy of trying to cope with fractured tradition by escaping from all untested tradition and going to “the things themselves.” I believe that such escape is impossible.