AbstractsPhilosophy & Theology

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine John Locke's conception of freedom, as related to the self and to society. In Chapter I, freedom is defined as having both a personal and a social meaning and democracy is defined as representative government in which sovereignty resides in the people whose elected representatives express the people's wills in the laws of the land. Locke's life is reviewed, the procedure for gathering data and the structure of the dissertation are set forth, and the literature of the study is surveyed. In Chapter II, Locke's conception of the freedom of the self is examined. In a preliminary study of the problem of determinism (the theory that the total life of the self is explained by the principle of necessary causality) and freedomism (the general theory that the self is, in some manner and to an indefinite degree, independent of mechanistic causality, physical and mental, and free through a principle of its own nature) it is maintained that freedomism is the more adequate theory since (1) determinism lacks much that is required to demonstrate it as universally valid; (2) though relatively true, it depends on minds which transcend given atomic data to formulate a whole law; and (3) proof of it by a person, as proof of any claim, necessarily presupposes freedom as, otherwise, all conclusions would be merely effects of causes, neither true nor false; (4) freedomism is comprehensive in that, in addition, it is not only necessary to an adequate interpretation of morality, of human control of nature and society, of idealism and theistic religion, but admits and coherently includes the fact of determinism or, at least, of a high degree of uniformity and predictability in certain realms. As free spirit then, man is superior to nature, which may be necessitated; as spirit, he may freely surrender to reason or ignore it, do what he ought to do or what he desires to do, is morally responsible, is a person, not a process. On subsequent examination, Locke's conception of freedom as the power to perform what one wills is held to be only incidental to the real problem of the freedom of the self. His theory that desire or uneasiness, naturally given, naturally determines volition is criticized as (1) minimizing man's rational and spiritual nature; (2) excluding freedom of thought and choice; (3) mailing ought and should meaningless; (4) destroying moral responsibility and grounds for praise and blame; (5) making God responsible for all men's acts including their evil ones; (6) destroying the distinction between good and evil; and (7) failing to see that ideas frequently determine desires. His theory of deliberation, connected, as it is, with his hedonistic determinism, is first criticized as untenable because (1) if all volitions are necessitated, one cannot be free to think since thought requires volition and (2) because in failing unequivocally to affirm the self's nature as spirit, Locke excludes the only theory which provides an adequate basis for man's partial independence of necessity. But…