A Defense of Locke’s Moral Epistemology

Authors

Jamie J. Hardy, Portland State UniversityFollow

Published In

Locke Studies

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-23-2021

Subjects

Moral Epistemology, Moral Demonstration, Morality, Locke’s Ethics

Abstract

In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke provides an empirical account of all of our ideas, including our moral ideas. However, Locke’s account of moral epistemology is difficult to understand leading to mistaken objections to his moral epistemological theory. In this paper, I offer what I believe to be the correct account of Locke’s moral epistemology. This account of his moral epistemology resolves the objections that morality is not demonstrable, that Locke’s account fails to demonstrate the normativity of statements, and that Locke has not provided us with the means to determine the correctness of the moral rules.

Rights

Copyright (c) 2021 Jamie Hardy

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Locate the Document

https://doi.org/10.5206/ls.2020.8249

DOI

10.5206/ls.2020.8249

Citation Details

Hardy, Jamie. 2021. “A Defense of Locke’s Moral Epistemology”. Locke Studies 20 (January):1-23. https://doi.org/10.5206/ls.2020.8249.