Liberating Judgment

by Casson, Douglas John

• ISBN13: 9780691144740
• ISBN10: 0691144745
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-01-03
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

Examining the social and political upheavals that characterized the collapse of public judgment in early modern Europe,Liberating Judgmentoffers a unique account of the achievement of liberal democracy and self-government. The book argues that the work of John Locke instills a civic judgment that avoids the excesses of corrosive skepticism and dogmatic fanaticism, which lead to either political acquiescence or irresolvable conflict. Locke changes the way political power is assessed by replacing deteriorating vocabularies of legitimacy with a new language of justification informed by a conception of probability. For Locke, the coherence and viability of liberal self-government rests not on unassailable principles or institutions, but on the capacity of citizens to embrace probable judgment.The book explores the breakdown of the medieval understanding of knowledge and opinion, and considers how Montaigne's skepticism and Descartes' rationalism--interconnected responses to the crisis--involved a pragmatic submission to absolute rule. Locke endorses this response early on, but moves away from it when he encounters a notion of reasonableness based on probable judgment. In his mature writings, Locke instructs his readers to govern their faculties and intellectual yearnings in accordance with this new standard as well as a vocabulary of justification that might cultivate a self-government of free and equal individuals. The success of Locke's arguments depends upon citizens' willingness to take up the labor of judgment in situations where absolute certainty cannot be achieved.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction: The Great Recoinage	p. 1
Unsettling Judgment: Knowledge, Belief, and the Crisis of Authority	p. 23
Certain Knowledge and Probable Belief	p. 25
Unsettling Knowledge	p. 34
Unsettling Belief	p. 41
Abandoning Judgment: Montaignian Skeptics and Cartesian Fanatics	p. 53
Montaigne and the Politics of Skepticism	p. 54
Descartes and the Rationalist Dream	p. 63
Young Locke as Skeptic and Absolutist	p. 75
Reworking Reasonableness: The Authoritative Testimony of Nature	p. 92
The Transformation of a Skeptic	p. 97
Precursors to Lockean Reasonableness	p. 103
From Lecture Halls to Laboratories	p. 114
Forming Judgment: The Transformation of Knowledge and Belief	p. 126
Locke's Political Pedagogy	p. 129
Fanatics and Philosophizers	p. 136
Defining and Redefining Knowledge and Belief	p. 143
Liberating Judgment: Freedom, Happiness, and the Reasonable Self	p. 159
Unrestrained and Restrained Freedoms	p. 160
The Pursuit of True and Solid Happiness	p. 168
The Formation of the Reasonable Self	p. 178
Enacting Judgment: Dismantling the Divine Certainty of Sir Robert Filmer	p. 185
Preaching Patriarcha from the Pulpit	p. 188
Probable Judgment and the Authority of Scripture	p. 192
The Slavishness of Systems	p. 205
Authorizing Judgment: Consensual Government and the Politics of Probability	p. 219
The State of Nature as a Realm of Virtue and Convenience	p. 223
From Moral Clarity to Epistemological Confusion	p. 233
Entrusting Judgment to a Shared Authority	p. 238
Prerogative, Public Good, and the Judgment of the People	p. 244
Conclusion: The Great Recoinage Revisited	p. 253
References	p. 263
Index	p. 279
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