Sobre la ausencia de una noción de razón práctica propiamente tal en John Locke

Abstract

One feature of John Locke’s moral philosophy that interpreters have highlighted is the apparent disconnection, or even inconsistency, between his voluntaristic theory of moral law and his hedonistic theory of motivation. Locke claims that, whereas the basis of moral obligation is the divine command, man is motivated only by the prospect of pleasure and pain, so that, in order to explain the possible motivational character of the moral law, Locke says that we must suppose that God has annexed to the fulfillment of it rewards, and to its breach, punishments, to be received after death. We argue that this disconnection between the two aspects of his moral philosophy is due to the absence of a concept of practical reason properly speaking, such as is found, for example, in Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas or Immanuel Kant.