Journal of the History of Philosophy

I argue that God’s providential arrangement of pleasure and pain, according to Locke, gives us insight into the ends that God has set for us. And insight into these ends ultimately gives us insight into the content of the natural law. Others have convincingly argued that the moral theory of Locke the hedonist and Locke the natural lawyer represent a coherent whole. The distinctive contribution that I make in this paper is to describe the indicative role that pleasure and pain play in the promulgation of the duties of the natural law.