The Christian Finality of John Locke's Theory of Empiricism

Abstract

In this paper I will present the way in which John Locke connected the Hobbesian theory of the natural state to a vision that also takes into account Christian precepts. First of all, I will show that, for Hobbes, the story of mankind was in fact a history of submission to a terrestrial power, bearing the metaphorical name of Leviathan, a true political monster. Hobbes's conclusion was that God's intervention in history is reserved only to those actions that do not concern coercion and punishment, but only evangelization, in view of the Savior's second coming. Secondly, I will show that this sharp separation Hobbes makes between divine law, which only regards Salvation, and the natural one, which underlies the political relations between people, is a matter of which Locke, a spirit far more pious than the author of the Leviathan, cannot accept it. Locke actually looked for a way to conclude an agreement between Filmer's theory on royalty, which exaggerated the role of the divine law on politics, and the Hobbesian theory of the natural state, which is devoid of God's intervention. In conclusion, I consider that the result of Locke's philosophical compromise will be a new type of empiricism, which we can call Christian, different from that of his predecessors, Bacon and Hobbes, which had had more an epistemological character.

Metaphysical Foundations of the Idea of Tolerance in John Locke's Philosophy

“…Self-awareness is what underlies the concept of person. The self, which is based on self-consciousness, thus becomes the object of reward or punishment in the case of a judgment on the deeds made by the man who assumes it (Dumitrescu, 2020). Thus, we can establish three visions about identity that are outlined in Locke's thinking regarding the human being.…”

“…The sources of inspiration for Lockeʼs ideas of toleration can be found in Spinoza's Tractatus theologico-politicus, as well in his Ethics (Dumitrescu, 2018a;Dumitrescu, 2020).…”

“…In his Essay, Locke proved to be an anatomist and physician, who saw the human being under the spectrum of his external, physiological determinations, as a being who possesses a specific body. But when it comes to personal identity, there is a much more complicated issue than mere intelligence, namely self-awareness or self-consciousness, which is "essential to it," which causes the data of the problem to change radically (Dumitrescu, 2020).…”

“…In the end, Locke recalibrates both Plato's philosophy and Cartesianism because both offered, through the dualism they promoted, by emphasizing the ontological separation of soul and body, the possibility of an interpretation in the sense of Palingenesis, which was considered an illicit theory by the British philosopher (Dumitrescu, 2020).…”

The Synergistic-Generative Knowledge of God in the I-Thou Encounter

“…Thus, if in the natural, physical world, we generally speak of three levels of transdisciplinary reality, epistemological, logical and ontological, when we enter the semantic space of spirituality we speak of divine and human, i.e. of two levels of reality ontologically differentiated, but oikonomically related (Dumitrescu, 2020;LaCugna, 1991, p.1). In terms of the relationship between the two ontological levels of reality, theological epistemology can be seen as an attempt to know and explain how the two come into contact, interacting specifically.…”