ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I consider the development of Locke’s moral epistemology throughout the course of his life, focusing principally on the Essays on the Law of Nature [1664] and An Essay Concerning Human Understanding [1690]. After providing a general account of Locke’s view on how we come to have moral knowledge, I examine one of the most formidable objections to Locke’s moral philosophy, which asserts that his epistemology rules out the possibility of there being moral knowledge that is both certain and instructive. The distinctive contribution of this chapter is to offer a defence against this criticism by examining Locke’s account of eternal truths in ethics and discussing the structural similarities that this account bears with Catharine Trotter Cockburn’s moral fitness theory.
