Enthusiasm is a supposed third ground of assent which sets up revelation while laying aside reason, but by doing so it effectively destroys both genuine reason and genuine revelation, substituting instead the ungrounded fancies of an individual’s own mind as the foundation of belief and conduct.
By John Locke, from An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Key Arguments
- Locke introduces 'a third ground of assent ... I mean enthusiasm: which, laying by reason, would set up revelation without it.'
- He argues that in effect this 'takes away both reason and revelation', because revelation itself, to be accepted, requires rational judgment of its divine origin.
- Enthusiasm 'substitutes in the room of them the ungrounded fancies of a man’s own brain, and assumes them for a foundation both of opinion and conduct,' thus replacing objective grounds with subjective fancy.
Source Quotes
Who does violence to his own faculties, tyrannizes over his own mind, and usurps the prerogative that belongs to truth alone, which is to command assent by only its own authority, I.e. by and in proportion to that evidence which it carries with it. 3. Force of enthusiasm, in which reason is taken away. Upon this occasion I shall take the liberty to consider a third ground of assent, which with some men has the same authority, and is as confidently relied on as either faith or reason; I mean enthusiasm: which, laying by reason, would set up revelation without it.
Force of enthusiasm, in which reason is taken away. Upon this occasion I shall take the liberty to consider a third ground of assent, which with some men has the same authority, and is as confidently relied on as either faith or reason; I mean enthusiasm: which, laying by reason, would set up revelation without it. Whereby in effect it takes away both reason and revelation, and substitutes in the room of them the ungrounded fancies of a man’s own brain, and assumes them for a foundation both of opinion and conduct.
Upon this occasion I shall take the liberty to consider a third ground of assent, which with some men has the same authority, and is as confidently relied on as either faith or reason; I mean enthusiasm: which, laying by reason, would set up revelation without it. Whereby in effect it takes away both reason and revelation, and substitutes in the room of them the ungrounded fancies of a man’s own brain, and assumes them for a foundation both of opinion and conduct. 4.
Key Concepts
- 3. Force of enthusiasm, in which reason is taken away.
- I mean enthusiasm: which, laying by reason, would set up revelation without it.
- Whereby in effect it takes away both reason and revelation, and substitutes in the room of them the ungrounded fancies of a man’s own brain, and assumes them for a foundation both of opinion and conduct.
Context
Book IV, Chapter XIX, §3, where Locke first defines 'enthusiasm' as a purported ground of assent and sketches its subversive effect on both reason and true revelation.