Table Of ContentTHE IMPOSITION
OF METHOD
A Study of Descartes
and Locke
BY
PETER A. SCHOULS
CLARENDON PRESS · OXFORD
1980
Oxford University Press. Walton Street> Oxford OX2 6DP
OXFORD LONDON GLASGOW
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DELHI BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI
NAIROBI DAR RS SALAAM CAPB TOWN
© Peter A. Schouls 1980
Published in the United States
by Oxford University Press
New York
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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British Library Cataloguing in Pubtication Data
Schouls, Peter A
The imposition of method.
1. Descartes, Reno-Knowledge, Theory of
2. Locke, John-Knowledge, Theory of
3. Knowledge, Theory of
I. Title
121*.092'2 B1878.K6 79^41041
To
Jeanette,
Tim, Lyrm, and Michelk
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Several parts of this study are based on work akeady in print.
Chapter II incorporates a good deal of 'Descartes and the Auto
nomy of Reason', pubUshed in xhcJoumal of the History of Philo
sophy, X (1972), 307-22. Sections 1 and 2 of the third chapter
incorporate parts of 'Reason, Method and Science in the
Philosophy of Descartes'; this article was pubUshed in the
AustralasianJournal ofPhilosophy, 50 (1972), 30-9. Some parts of
'The Extent of Doubt in Descartes' Meditations', from Volume
III (1973) of the CanadianJournal ofPhilosophy, pp. 51-8, have
found their way into the first two sections of Chapter IV. Chapter
VI presents an extensively rewritten version of 'The Cartesian
Method of Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding*;
its original appeared in Volume IV (1975) ofthe CanadianJournal
ofPhilosophy, pp. 579^>01. Some ofthe paragraphs of section 4,
Chapter III, are to appear in a Festschrift for T. A. Goudge,
edited by members of the Philosophy Department of the Univer
sity of Toronto and to be pubHshed by the University of Toronto
Press; they appear there in the essay 'Peirce and Descartes:
Doubt and the Logic of Discovery'. I wish to thank the editors
and publishers in question for their permission to makeuse of
these various items.
I am grateful to the University of Alberta for study leave granted
for the entire academic year of 1972-3, and again for the first
term of 1976-7. It was during these periods that this study was
conceived and much of it was written. Thanks are due ako to the
Canada Council for support through a Leave FeUowship during
the first of these periods. The second term of 1976-7 was spent
as a Visiting Professor at the Free University of Amsterdam. A
series oflectures to members ofthe staffand graduate students of
its Department of Philosophy have helped much to give my ideas
on Descartes's and Locke's methodology a coherent form. A
special boon was the presence at the Free University ofDr. E. D.
FackereU, Senior Lecturer in the Department of AppHed Mathe
matics at the University of Sydney, AustraHa; he generously gave
ofhis sabbatical time to help me with the third section of Chapter
III.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii
Many students and coUeagues have contributed to this study
through their encouragement and criticism. Persistent probing
from Richard I. Aaron (Aberystwyth) forced me to rewrite several
parts of Chapter VI. EquaUy persistent criticism from Hendrik
Hart (Institute of Christian Studies, Toronto) led me to become
clearer about both the nature of methodology and the status of
scientific knowledge in Descartes's work. John W. Yolton (who,
to the grief of Canadian philosophers, has left Toronto's York
University to return to Rutgers) has helped me clarify the argu
ment of especiaUy Chapter VII.
My debt to friends and coUeagues at the University of Alberta's
Department of Phüosophy is very great indeed. Patricia Brunei
provided exceUent manuscript typists through the services of
Shari Berge and Anne Nield. My coUeagues Richard Bosley and
John King-Farlow generously gave me of their time; I am especiaUy
grateful to them for their wiUingness to read the entire penuhimate
typescript. Their very many suggestions concerning both style
and content have made this a far better book than it wovdd have
been without their assistance.
I dedicate this book to my wife, and to our chUdren. They cheer-
fuUy made it possible for me to spend my days in the seclusion I
needed to be able to write.
Edmonton p. A. s.
December 1978
CONTENTS
I. The New Method and the Modern Mind
1. A rationale 1
2. The break with tradition 5
3. Resolution and composition 9
4. Rationalism and empiricism 21
5. Scope of this study 26
II. Descartes' Concept of Reason
1. 'Reason' and 'mind' 31
2. Intuition and deduction 32
3. The autonomy of reason 41
III. Reason and Descartes's Concept of Method
1. Reason as determining the nature of method 54
2. Method as determining the nature of science 58
3. 'Method' and 'Methods' 63
4. Method and doubt, imagination, sense 75
IV. Meditations I and II: the Trustworthiness of
Intuition and the Justification of Resolution
1. Reasons for doubt in the Meditations 89
2. The extent of doubt in the Meditations 92
3. Autonomous intuition and the efficacy ofresolution 104
V. Meditations II and III: the Vahdation of Deduc
tion and the Justification of Composition
1. Meditation II: rejection ofdependence upon
anything corporeal as a step to the intuitive
contemplation of the Cogito 117
2. Meditation III: rejection of trust in deduction leads
to intuitive contemplation of the Cogito 127
3. Cogito, 'God', the validation of deduction, and the
justification of composition 13 5
4. 'PrejtuIices' and the intuitive contemplation of the
Cogito 142
χ CONTENTS
VI. Method and 'general knowledge5 in Locke's Essay
Concerning Human Understanding
1. The development ofgeneral knowledge 149
2. Resolution of the complexity ofexperience 158
3. Various kinds of complexity 172
4. Knowledge of single simpk ideas 177
VII. Method and the Argument of Locke's Second Treatise
of Government
1. Relevance of the Essay'$ methodölogicalprinciples
for an interpretation of the Second Treatise 187
2. 'Invention9 of the concept of an individual 195
3. Experience of Opinions in Fashion' 199
4. Resolution of 'Opinions in Fashion' 203
VIII. Method in Locke's Theological Works
1. Theadequacyofreason 219
2. Characteristics of Scripture 229
3. Procedure for understanding Scripture 234
4. Methodology and the nature of Scripture 240
AppendixtoChapterVIII 244
EPILOGUE 252
BIBLIOGRAPHY 261
INDEX 267
I
THE NEW METHOD
AND THE MODERN MIND
ι
1. A rationale
There is no dearth of comprehensive studies on the philosophy
of Descartes, nor on that of Locke. In several scores of recently
pubHshed articles there is an even greater abundance of writing
on many details oftheir positions. I do not propose to set another
book alongside those deaiing quite generaUy and comprehensively
with either Descartes or Locke; neither do I intend to deal with
some more or less isolated details of their positions. I propose
rather to consider one pervasive aspect which, I hold, is in-
sufficiendy explored: that ofmethodology.
With respect to Descartes, scholars have devoted a great deal
of attention to his 'method'. There nevertheless remains much to
be said about the relationship between Cartesian method and
reason, about the nature of method itsetf, and about how Des
cartes's method is related, for example, to the argument of his
Meditations.1 With respect to Locke relatively Uttle has been said
about his views on method and their iUuminating relation to
1 Three books which appeared after this study was completed aptly illustrate
the point that more reflection on the nature and role of Descartes' method is in
order. Margaret Dauler Wilson's Descartes (London, 1978) pays a good deal of
attention to the notion of 'general doubt', but does not explore its methodological
nature. Considerations of methodology are, in fact, almost entirely absent from
this book. Since, by Descartes's own admission, the argument of the Medita
tions is structured by his method, Wilson's discussion of the Meditations apart
from methodological considerations often leads to misinterpretation. In his
Descartes against the Skeptics (Oxford, 1978) E. M. Curley misinterprets
Descartes's position when he argues that there are two distinct methods in
Descartes's work, one presented in the ReguIae and one in the Discourse. Only
the latter, according to Curley, includes the principle of doubt. Curley then
further misinterprets Descartes by limiting the method which functions in
most of Descartes's works to 'the method of doubt'. Bernard WiUiams, in
Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry 5*assocks, Sussex, 1978), presents a
good though limited account of Descartes's method. But also in his discussion
ofthe Meditations his arguments sometimes stop short of providing an adequate
exposition because of occasional insensitivity to the relevance of matters of a
methodological nature. (For a more detailed discussion of these three books,
see my review in Philosophical Books, Vol. 20, No. 2, May 1979.) ,
2 THE NEW METHOD AND THE MODERN MIND
Descartes's. Perhaps this is because it has often been assumed that
the most important issues of Lockean methodology are to be seen
as related to his *historical, plain method'; it is further assumed
that there is Utde to be said about that method. There are, however,
much more important methodological aspects of Locke's work.
Once these aspects, revealed in his Essay concerning Human
Understanding, are brought into focus, we shaU find a striking
similarity between Descartes's and Locke's methodology. In
contemporary scholarship this similarity has been inadequately
examined, with even those findings discussed by very few. More
over, if these methodological aspects are kept in mind when one
reads some of Locke's other writings, it becomes clear that they
are of considerable help in forming sound interpretations of these
works. For to a large extent they structure their arguments and
determine their concepts. As far as I know there has been no
important contemporary üterature on the relation between the
Essay's methodology and the argument of the Second Treatise of
Government, nor on that between his methodology in the Essay
and its appHcation in A Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of
St. Paul. This study therefore deals with some of these insuffi
ciently explored areas in the works of Descartes and Locke.
One part of my task is to bring into focus the relationship between
their positions, especiaUy in terms of methodological similarity.
In the course ofthis study there wiU be many points of contact
with related issues in contemporary scholarship. At times this
contact wiU consist in providing support for my argument by
indicating that others have reached conclusions simüar to mine
on certain points. At other times it wiU lead to the settUng of
problems left unresolved by others. And at times it wiU reveal
the inadequacy of attempts to deal with such problems, or of
existing statements about certain features ofDescartes's or Locke's
position. For reasons Uke these I take this study to be capable of
iUiuninating several basic issues for the student of Descartes and
Locke.
In the Ught ofcontemporary evaluations ofLocke it is somewhat
surprising that scholars have not paid greater attention to the
area ofmethodology in his writings. For it is not as ifthe import
ance of Locke with respect to methodology has remained unnoticed.
Let me mention just two instances. Maurice Cranston's concluding
sentence of John Locke, A Biography is 'Locke did not merely
