Abstract

This chapter discusses the main features of John Locke's moral philosophy. Locke is a realist and a rationalist about moral rules. For Locke, even though a large part of the content of morality is determined by what God wills, it is not the fact of being willed by God that makes moral principles true: God's will fixes the content, but not the truth, of morality. In this sense, Locke does not accept a divine command theory of morals: he is an intellectualist, rather than a voluntarist, about morality. The chapter explains Locke's views about the ground of moral obligation. The objective moral rules that Locke thinks we can discover by the use of reason are, taken collectively, known as natural law. As Locke says, reparation and restraint are the purposes appropriately served by punishment. It is important that, for Locke, there is no such thing as fully exclusive property in possession.