Jeremy Waldron and the Religious Turn in Locke Scholarship

Abstract

The title,God, Locke, and Equality, as well as its controversial thesis about the necessity of a theological foundation for equality are designed to startle and provoke. Yet those who have kept up with Locke scholarship (not an easy job since there are 5–10 new books on Locke each year, and over 9000 articles have been published about his work) will recognize that in recent years, its topic, the relation of Locke's religious beliefs to his politics, has become an important theme in the interpretation of Locke's political philosophy. This article will attempt to place the book in the context of this literature and evaluate its contribution to the growing number of studies. In the early years of what John Pocock once called “the Locke industry,” Locke's religious beliefs did not get much attention. The two most influential interpretations of his political thought portrayed him either as a crypto-Hobbesian hedonist, or an apologist for capitalist exploitation, ignoring or explaining away his commitment to Christianity. It is true that John Dunn in his book on Locke's political theory made much (perhaps too much) of Locke's Calvinist upbringing, only to dismiss his political thought as so dominated by a religious worldview that it is irrelevant today.

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