¹ Nussbaum, Martha, “Radical Evil in the Lockean State: The Neglect of the Political Emotions,” Journal of Moral Philosophy 3, no. 2 (2006): 162CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² MacPherson, Nozick, and Strauss contributed to this view, though in different ways. See Macpherson, C. B., The Political Theory of Possesive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Nozick, Robert, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974)Google Scholar; Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953)Google Scholar. As long ago as 1988, I wrote, “the opinion persists, despite general agreement among contemporary Locke scholars to the contrary, that Locke's individualism is ‘atomistic’ individualism” (Grant, Ruth, “Locke's Political Anthropology and Lockean Individualism,” Journal of Politics 50, no. 1 [1988]: 43CrossRefGoogle Scholar). Surprisingly, the same can be said today. The persistence of this view can be attributed in part to influential works, which are not studies of Locke per se, that associate Locke with liberal individualism, Enlightenment individualism, or modern individualism. For example, see MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), 33, 259–61Google Scholar; Taylor, Charles, Philosophical Papers, vol. 2, Philosophy and the Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 187–90, 291–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 159–76Google Scholar.

³ For Locke's engagement with an extensive travel literature see Batz, William G., “The Historical Anthropology of John Locke,” Journal of the History of Ideas 35, no. 4 (1974): 663–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harrison, John and Laslett, Peter, The Library of John Locke, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Laslett, Peter, introduction to Two Treatises of Government, 3rd ed., ed. Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Paxman, David B., Voyage into Language: Space and the Linguistic Encounter, 1500–1800 (Surrey: Ashgate, 2003)Google Scholar.

⁴ Exceptions include Smith, Jad, “Custom, Association, and the Mixed Mode: Locke's Early Theory of Cultural Reproduction,” English Literary History 73 (Winter 2006): 831–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Tully, James, “Governing Conduct: Locke on the Reform of Thought and Behavior,” in An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts, ed. Skinner, Quentin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Neill, Alex, “Locke on Habituation, Autonomy, and Education,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 27, no. 2 (1989): 225–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Schouls, Peter, Reasoned Freedom: John Locke and Enlightenment (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992)Google Scholar, on prejudice. One reason for the neglect among political scientists may be that most tend to read and teach the Second Treatise and the Letter concerning Toleration, some read the Essay concerning Human Understanding, and very few read the educational writings. The Conduct of the Understanding particularly is understudied, but see Ward, Lee, John Locke and Modern Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ Locke, John, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, ed. Nidditch, P. H. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), I.iii.25Google Scholar.

⁶ Locke, John, Essays on the Law of Nature, ed. von Leyden, W. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1954)Google Scholar.

⁷ Ibid., 135.

⁸ Locke, John, Of the Conduct of the Understanding, in Some Thoughts Concerning Education and Of the Conduct of the Understanding, ed. Grant, R. W. and Tarcov, N. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1996), par. 24; see also pars. 3, 33Google Scholar.

⁹ Locke, Essays on the Law of Nature, 135.

¹⁰ Locke, Essay, II.xxviii.12 (my emphasis). See also Some Thoughts Concerning Education, in Some Thoughts Concerning Education and Of the Conduct of the Understanding, par. 146.

¹¹ Locke, “Credit, Disgrace,” in Political Writings, ed. Wootton, D. (New York: Mentor, 1993), 237Google Scholar.

¹² Locke, First Treatise, §58, in Two Treatises of Government, ed. Laslett; Essay, I.iii.9–12; Essays on the Law of Nature, 167–77.

¹³ Alternatively, we might think of these as aspects of culture: tradition, custom properly speaking, what Locke calls “fashion,” and orthodoxy. By “orthodoxy,” I mean the unquestioning acceptance of established beliefs.

¹⁴ Locke, Conduct, par.12.

¹⁵ Locke, Essays on the Law of Nature, 142.

¹⁶ Locke, Essay, I.iii.22.

¹⁷ Ibid., I.iii.22–26; Essays on the Law of Nature, 141–43.

¹⁸ Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, par. 1.

¹⁹ Locke employs this idea in the context of a particular dispute over whether or not there are innate ideas imprinted on the mind from birth. It has been taken to mean that Locke is a thoroughgoing empiricist or a devotee of the “nurture” side of the nature/nurture debate. See Pinker, Steven, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (New York: Viking, 2002), 5–6Google Scholar; and see Vogt, Philip, “Seascape with Fog: Metaphor in Locke's Essay,” Journal of the History of Ideas 54, no. 1 (1993): 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for one challenge to this view. Vogt argues that Locke's use of the metaphor of a ship captures his ideas better than the blank slate metaphor and that Locke's epistemology contains both empiricist and rationalist elements. I tend to agree with his view.

²⁰ Locke, Conduct, par. 41.

²¹ Ibid., par. 4; see also Waldron, Jeremy, “The Democratic Intellect,” chap. 4 in God, Locke and Equality: Christian Foundations in Locke's Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 83–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²² Locke, Essay, II.ix.10.

²³ Locke, Conduct, par. 41.

²⁴ Locke, Essay, II.xxxiii.17–18; see also II.xxxiii.6–9; Smith, “Custom, Association, and the Mixed Mode,” 836.

²⁵ Locke, Thoughts, par. 110.

²⁶ Locke, Essay, II.xxi.69.

²⁷ Locke, “Credit, Disgrace,” 236.

²⁸ Locke, Thoughts, par. 56; see also pars. 48, 53, 57–63.

²⁹ Ibid., par. 216. How a child raised with great sensitivity to social approval becomes an adult capable of challenging prevailing views and practices is one of the puzzles of Locke's position taken up briefly later in this article.

³⁰ Locke, Essay, I.iii.25.

³¹ One of Locke's examples is “rotten borroughs.” See Locke, Second Treatise, §§157–58.

³² Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity as Delivered in the Scriptures, in Clarendon Edition of the Works of John Locke, ed. Higgins-Biddle, J. C. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), pars. 238, 241, 243Google Scholar; Second Treatise, §§92, 94 line 20; Essay, I.iv.24.

³³ Locke, Conduct, pars. 10, 12, 14, 34 (my emphasis).

³⁴ Ibid., pars. 10, 12, 14, 34.

³⁵ Ibid., par. 34.

³⁶ Locke, Essay, I.iii.25.

³⁷ Locke, First Treatise, §58.

³⁸ John Marshall argues that bold public expression of Locke's own religious views could have brought imprisonment even at the end of his life. See Marshall, John, John Locke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 454CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁹ Locke, Essays on the Law of Nature, 143; Conduct, par. 6; Essay, I.iii.25; IV.iii.20; Thoughts, par. 81; see text accompanying note 68.

⁴⁰ Burke, Edmund, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. Mahoney, Thomas H. D. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1955), 38, 99Google Scholar; see also Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1948), I-II, Q. 97, art. 3Google Scholar, where Thomas argues that custom sometimes embodies reason: “when a thing is done again and again, it seems to proceed from a deliberate judgment of reason.”

⁴¹ Locke, Essay, I.iii.25.

⁴² Ibid., IV.xx.17; IV.xv.6.

⁴³ Locke, First Treatise, §158.

⁴⁴ Locke, Reasonableness, pars. 1–9.

⁴⁵ Locke, Thoughts, par. 116. But the love of dominion in children is “the origin of most vicious habits that are ordinary and natural” (pars. 103–5).

⁴⁶ Locke, “Labour,” in Political Writings, 442.

⁴⁷ Locke, Conduct, par. 12.

⁴⁸ Locke, Essays Concerning the Law of Nature, 129.

⁴⁹ Locke, Conduct, par. 24.

⁵⁰ Ibid., par. 10.

⁵¹ Locke, Essay, II. 21. 48.

⁵² Locke, Second Treatise, §103; see First Treatise, §157.

⁵³ Locke, Conduct, par. 1.

⁵⁴ For the importance of a new conception of probability in seventeenth-century thought, see Shapiro, Barbara, Probability and Certainty in Seventeenth-Century England: A Study of the Relationships between Natural Science, Religion, History, Law and Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983)Google Scholar. For a discussion of how the new language of probability offered an alternative to both skepticism and rationalism and made it possible for Locke to forge a public reason in politics and religion, see Casson, Douglas, Liberating Judgment: Fanatics, Skeptics, and John Locke's Politics of Probability (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), esp. chap. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁵ Locke, Essay, IV.xvi.

⁵⁶ Joshua Mitchell argues for the importance of Christ's first coming, in Locke's account, for clarifying reason's authority. But Christ's first coming does not establish reason's authority. Men are always and everywhere subject to the Law of Reason as God's law, including before Christ and in places where Christ is not known. See Mitchell, Not By Reason Alone: Religion, History, and Identity in Early Modern Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ Locke, Conduct, pars. 11, 14.

⁵⁸ Locke, Essay, I.i.5, IV.xii.11; Conduct, 8.

⁵⁹ Locke, Essay, IV.xvii.24; see Conduct, par. 41.

⁶⁰ Locke, Reasonableness, par. 252. Edwards's attacks focused primarily on charges of Socinianism. Locke wrote both a first and a second Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity in response to Edwards's attacks. See Parker, Kim Ian, The Biblical Politics of John Locke (Waterloo, ON: Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion, 2004), 32–33Google Scholar. Despite this dispute, Edwards was indebted to Locke in some respects, quoting Locke's Essay in some of his writings.

⁶¹ To take another's interpretation as authoritative is to put that person in Christ's place. See Locke, A Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St. Paul (London: C. Baldwin, 1824), xiiGoogle Scholar.

⁶² In taking this position, Locke is entering a theological dispute that goes back at least as far as the famous exchange between Erasmus's On the Free Will: A Diatribe or Discussion and Luther's The Bondage of the Will. According to Luther, faith and grace, not doubt and reason, are the only ways that fallen man can have access to the word of God as revealed in scripture. As a result of the Fall, human beings are entirely unworthy. Our capacity for reason itself is corrupted, such that reason cannot give us access to knowledge of God's will, according to which we could guide our actions. See Gillespie, Michael, The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 151ff.Google Scholar, and Skinner, Quentin, The Foundation of Modern Political Thought, vol. 2, The Age of Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 3ffGoogle Scholar.

⁶³ Locke, Essay, II.xxiii.8; IV.xix.4; Reasonableness, pars. 241, 252; see also Forde, Steven, “What Does Locke Expect Us to Know?,” Review of Politics 68, no. 2 (2006): 242Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ His position in this follows Richard Hooker's closely. Hooker is cited in the Second Treatise very heavily.

⁶⁵ Locke, Essay, IV.xvii.24.

⁶⁶ There is a vast literature on the question whether Locke was sincere in his claims about God and the Law of Reason or the Law of Nature. The argument that he was not can be found in Strauss, Natural Right and History, 202–51, and What Is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies (Glencoe, IL: Free Press, 1959), chap. 7Google Scholar. For a recent alternative view that Locke's thought is grounded in religious ideas see Waldron, God, Locke and Equality. I do not need to engage this debate here. For my purposes, it is enough to show that Locke portrayed reason as the enemy, not of the Christian religion in particular or of religion in general, but only of sectarianism and bigotry, i.e., the effects of blindly following custom.

⁶⁷ Locke, Essay, IV.xx.18.

⁶⁸ Ibid., IV.iii.20 (last emphasis mine).

⁶⁹ Locke, Conduct, par. 34.

⁷⁰ Ibid., par. 28.

⁷¹ I am not alone in recognizing Locke's project of cultural reform. Casson (Liberating Judgment, 18–20) describes Locke's political project as a kind of pedagogical project, shaping the sorts of citizens who can sustain legitimate institutions and shaping a new conception of what constitutes reasonableness. Smith (“Custom, Association, and the Mixed Mode”) argues that Locke alters the concept of culture and “attempts to recuperate custom by identifying it as a possible site of social reform.” Ward takes in the entire scope of Locke's efforts to reform family, polity, church, and education around the idea that the autonomous individual is the only determinant of truth. He even argues that Locke anticipated public education. See Ward, John Locke and Modern Life, 832.

⁷² Locke, Essay, II.xxi.69.

⁷³ Locke, “Labour,” 440.

⁷⁴ Locke, Conduct, par. 3

⁷⁵ Locke, Second Treatise, §172; see also Laslett, introduction to Two Treatises, 96.

⁷⁶ Wolterstorff, Nicholas, John Locke and the Ethics of Belief (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 119CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁷ Locke, Conduct, par. 12.

⁷⁸ Locke, “Credit, Disgrace,” 237.

⁷⁹ Here I disagree with Ward (John Locke and Modern Life, 192) who sees the Conduct, in contrast to the Thoughts, as unconcerned with habit formation.

⁸⁰ To regulate assent according to the evidence is the core of reasonableness for Locke.

⁸¹ Locke, Conduct, par. 4 (my emphasis).

⁸² See text accompanying note 25 above.

⁸³ Locke, “A Letter Concerning Toleration,” in Political Writings, 404, 427.

⁸⁴ Locke, Thoughts, par. 200.

⁸⁵ Ibid., pars. 54, 189.

⁸⁶ Wolterstorff, John Locke and the Ethics of Belief, 119.

⁸⁷ See Mitchell, Not By Reason Alone, 86ff., for the theoretical importance of this transition for Locke's attack on patriarchal government.

⁸⁸ Tully, “Governing Conduct”; Mehta, Uday, The Anxiety of Freedom: Imagination and Individuality in Locke's Political Thought (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

⁸⁹ Neill, “Locke on Habituation, Autonomy, and Education.”

⁹⁰ See Thoughts, par. 200, quoted above.

⁹¹ Ibid., pars. 36, 61.

⁹² Some Thoughts Concerning Education was written as a series of letters to Locke's friend, Sir Edward Clarke, who presumably could be characterized as both reasonable and sensitive. As I already mentioned, the work is addressed to parents bold enough to challenge custom.

⁹³ Locke, Essay, II.xxi.48; Schouls, Reasoned Freedom, 173.

⁹⁴ Neill, “Locke on Habituation, Autonomy, and Education,” 244.

⁹⁵ Locke, Second Treatise, §§6, 22, 63.

⁹⁶ Locke, Conduct, par. 12.

⁹⁷ Much current psychological research is finding that people's moral decisions are powerfully affected by emotions or “gut” reactions as opposed to rational judgments. For a summary of recent findings see Lehrer, Jonah, How We Decide (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009), chap. 6Google Scholar. But to argue for the importance of rational moral judgment is not to deny that emotional “gut” reactions govern most people most of the time. The crucial thing is the possibility of resisting those initial impulses.

⁹⁸ Schouls, Reasoned Freedom, 94; Taylor, Sources of the Self, 171, 173ff.

⁹⁹ Smith, “Custom, Association, and the Mixed Mode,” 833.

¹⁰⁰ Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Truth and Method, 2nd ed. (New York: Continuum, 1989), 277Google Scholar. I am indebted to Matthew Cole for this reference. Cole writes: “while Locke acknowledges the intransigence of prejudice in human understanding, he vindicates the capacity and the right to challenge any specific prejudice, and denies that tradition or authority ought to enjoy any presumptive validity when confronted on evidentiary grounds. Locke stops short of a theory of epistemic autonomy, but he is an unambiguous champion of intellectual freedom” (Cole, “Was John Locke Prejudiced against Prejudice? Should He Have Been?” [unpublished manuscript, 2010]).

¹⁰¹ Locke, “Letter,” p. 431: “It is not the diversity of opinions (which cannot be avoided), but the refusal of toleration to those who are of different opinions (which might have been granted), that has produced all the bustles and wars that have been in the Christian world on account of religion.” Locke does not see a diversity of heterodox opinions as a problem in itself. See Mitchell, Not By Reason Alone, 78.

¹⁰² Forde, “What Does Locke Expect Us to Know?,” 233, 255–56.

¹⁰³ See McCann, Edwin, “John Locke” in A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Nadler, Steven (Malden: Blackwell, 2002), 373Google Scholar. McCann characterizes Locke's Two Treatises and the Essay this way: “both evince a decisive rejection of any claim to authority, whether epistemological, moral, political, or religious, licensed merely by tradition or by the social position of the claimant.”