The Treatment of Personality by Locke, Berkeley and Hume

Consideration of fundamental ethical conceptions leads Professor Hudson to look upon them as essentially predicates of personality. Used abstractly such terms lose their significance. Witness the many arguments concerning freedom. The true question at issue, it should always be borne in mind, is that of the free person. This personal reference of ethical conceptions points to the view that the logically validating ground of all such terms is to be found in a finally self-sustaining...
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Consideration of fundamental ethical conceptions leads Professor Hudson to look upon them as essentially predicates of personality. Used abstractly such terms lose their significance. Witness the many arguments concerning freedom. The true question at issue, it should always be borne in mind, is that of the free person. This personal reference of ethical conceptions points to the view that the logically validating ground of all such terms is to be found in a finally self-sustaining doctrine of the person. That is to say, ethics presupposes the reality of the ethical person. The true question that the moralist must answer, stated in terms reminiscent of Kant, is, How is the ethical person possible? Owing to the interdependence of all ethical conceptions, Professor Hudson feels justified in looking at the subject from a restricted aspect. What is the nature of a free person? If we go no further than the domain of natural science, no such person can exist; science denies autonomy to persons. But Kant, so we are reminded with interesting conviction, has demonstrated that science itself presupposes the a priori knower. Whatever else may be said of an ethical person, he is essentially the a priori knower. The prime object of this study is to show that any attempt to establish any other theory of personality ends in self-refutation. The particular attempt considered is English empiricism. To let the author speak for himself:

"To summarize in one sentence, our threefold task is: to present the treatment of personality by Locke, Berkeley and Hume, especially with reference to the place of the a priori in that treatment, with the subsidiary aim of showing by a sort of illustrative dialectic, in each case and together, the necessity of the a priori for any personality such as they tried to guarantee, and such as is adequate for ethics. Thus our aim is plainly a restricted one. The working out of a total ethics or metaphysics is the least of the intention. The most that can be essayed is to indicate one logical condition which such a total view must observe-the logical condition of rational self-activity, in the sense of a priori cognition."

While Locke is interested primarily in the limitation of human knowledge, he has much to say in regard to personality. He is intuitively certain of his own existence, but this certainty is not for him what it was for Descartes, a logical first principle. Though the implication of his treatment may not always uphold it, the essay is pervaded with dualistic presuppositions from beginning to end; experience seems to uphold the existence of both mind and body. Thought, however, is not a substance; it "inheres" in spiritual substance. The real nature of the soul is not, for Locke, such an important consideration, which leads Professor Hudson to suspect that he did not truly understand the task that he had in hand. Thinking and willing are peculiar to the soul; existence, duration, and motion are shared with matter. Identity of the self is needful to guarantee accountability, but this is not necessarily identity of substance; it is rather a continued consciousness distinct from substance. This- has the advantage of taking accountability out of the uncertain field of metaphysics, and after all it is the conscious person that is accountable. Locke's treatment of freedom is viewed as quite inadequate, though there are now and then hints at a true view of the subject. The person is not autonomous, but the will is determined by "uneasiness."

- The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods [1912]