Reminder that [human] used this way is a secular humanist shibboleth or dog whistle. Or perhaps the reverse: secular humanism is a Lockean dog whistle. Check the dates if you want to know which.
Consider how stupid it is rhetorically. What, are you going to have this on your shelf next to cow understanding and lemur understanding? Shall I mention it is written in a language spoken by specifically tongues? The only possible purpose of specifying [human] is to obscure the topic at hand, paging Satan. This is indeed a work on some subset of understanding, but Locke went out of his way to avoid mentioning which one.
This was in a sense what Locke had hoped his writing would accomplish. He was not a dogmatist
Yes he was. Hypocrisy paying the virtue toll, I suppose.
Rather, his purpose was to stimulate others to think for themselves
Lol. Paging Life of Brian. "Yes! We think for ourselves!"
In fact, it was one of Locke's major ambitions in all of his writings to dispel the sources of intolerance
Ewwww. Woke Locke.
and encourage people to promote the cause of freedom in their thinking as well as in their actions.
Didn't work. I expect we'll find it was never intended to. At best, Locke hadn't the faintest clue what [freedom] is and could no more promote it than he could assemble a smartphone.
This is due in part to the fact that not all of them have interpreted what he had to say in the same way.
"Locke could not clearly communicate his ideas." ("That's why we like him.") Probably because he was a liar and if you communicate a lie clearly, it is clearly stupid and wrong.
Each critic has viewed the work from the perspective of his own experience and understanding.
Cope. "Oh actually it's impossible to communicate clearly." Even if he did fumble it, all you do is re-write the book on his behalf, play Plato to his Socrates. Keep trying until an attempt at clarity obviously succeeds.
That or [tolerance] means they can't discard idiots. If folk disagree on what the book means, all but one of them are wrong. Discard the wrong ones? Unless you can't because you're too weak?
Each one has come to it with his own presuppositions
Christianity. Romans 3. "Competence is impossible." A very nice cover story for liars...
For example, it has been fairly common among Locke's critics to call attention to the fact that incongruities can be found among the different sections of his work.
"I'm about to make excuses for the fact that it's really hard to make lies appear coherent."
If they were honest mistakes Lockeans would readily accept correction. "Oh yeah, that's wrong, I meant to / should have said this at that point." They, uh, don't.
It's only necessary to defend theocratic purity if you are a theocrat. Nobody's mad that astronomy and quantum chromodynamics aren't completely coherent. That is, the fact this issue comes up, the fact Lockeans care about it, is itself prima facie evidence that Lockeans are theocratic Satanists. That they're even defending it is evidence against the defence.
Besides, he made it abundantly clear throughout the Essay that he had no intention of speaking the last or final word on the subject.
Close-minded dogmatic claims he is not a close-minded dogmatic. Thief claims he didn't steal anything. "Cookies were already gone from jar when he got into the kitchen, child says, news at 11."
What Locke made abundantly clear is that he didn't know how epistemology works. He made it abundantly clear what he wanted you to think (exactly like a preacher). Reliable evidence is sparse or absent.
Many of the words that are used are ambiguous in their meaning, and the ways in which they are used are not always consistent with one another.
Incompetent, or liar?
The primary purpose that seems to have inspired all of Locke's major writings was his intense devotion to the cause of human liberty. He was unalterably opposed to tyranny
Politicians lie.
Given how Lockean philosophy (e.g. free speech) has been immediately turned to tyranny using hypocrisy, one must wonder if Locke didn't originally intend exactly that. Locke was not opposed to tyranny, he was merely opposed to someone else being the tyrant.
In the field of government, tyranny had been supported by the theory of the divine right of kings.
Locke: "The divine right of mob is much better."
Did Locke not read Plato? Perhaps he was an illiterate, and was unaware he was directly following the sequence laid out in book 8.
Perhaps I'm cruelly bullying a tiny intellectual infant.
The fact that the members of the group seldom reached any agreement among themselves and often failed to reach any definite conclusions at all caused him to wonder just what benefits, if any, these discussions might have.
Locke finds discussion is not persuasive. Consequently, everyone believes Locke's discussion was persuasive. (Set 4.) Idiots, or liars?
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