1. Background

We can begin with some background. Locke holds that “the Will” is “a Power to begin or forbear, continue or end several actions of our minds, and motions of our Bodies” (2.21.5). He goes on to ask what determines an agent to will the particular actions that they do and answers that “some (and for the most part the most pressing) uneasiness a Man is at present under […] is that which successively determines the Will, and sets us upon those Actions, we perform” (2.21.31). He then specifies that the particular kind of uneasiness that determines the will is “Desire,” which Locke takes to be “an uneasiness of the Mind for want of some absent good” (2.21.31; compare 2.20.6).

A complication arises when the desired absent good is relief from present pain:

If I feel some pain, Locke thinks that I am actually subject to two uneasinesses. Since Locke explains elsewhere that he uses the words “pain” and “uneasiness” synonymously (2.7.1–2), the first uneasiness is the pain itself. The second uneasiness (“scarce distinguishable” from the first) is the desire for the negative good of relief from that pain. In such cases, Locke is ambivalent about which uneasiness determines the will, writing that what determines the will is “some present uneasiness, which is, or at least is always accompanied with that of Desire” (2.21.71). In what follows, I will bracket this complication and assume that the will is determined exclusively by desire, an uneasiness of the mind directed towards some absent good (positive or negative).

Locke observes that we are constantly subject to all manner of uneasinesses, including “the uneasiness of Hunger, Thirst, Heat, Cold, Weariness with labour, and Sleepiness” as well as “the fantastical uneasiness, (as itch after Honour, Power, or Riches, etc.) which acquir’d habits by Fashion, Example, and Education have setled in us” (2.21.45). Since these uneasinesses either are or give rise to desires and desire determines the will, the result is that the will is often determined by desires for lesser short-term goods rather than greater long-term goods. Locke gives the example of a drunkard who returns to the tavern every evening even though he recognizes “that his Health decays, his Estate wastes; Discredit and Diseases, and the want of all things, even of his beloved Drink, attends him in the course he follows” (2.21.35). While the drunkard “sees [the greater good], and acknowledges it […] when the uneasiness to miss his accustomed delight returns, the greater acknowledged good loses its hold, and the present uneasiness determines the will to the accustomed action” (2.21.35).

The doctrine of suspension is Locke’s answer to this worry. While “it is natural […] that the greatest, and most pressing [desire or uneasiness] should determine the will,” Locke says that “the mind” possesses “a power to suspend the execution and satisfaction of any of its desires” and that, “during this suspension of any desire, before the will be determined to action, […] we have opportunity to examine, view, and judge, of the good or evil of what we are going to do” (2.21.47). This power to suspend and examine our desires is significant because, according to Locke, “due, and repeated Contemplation” of absent goods can bring those goods “nearer to our Mind,” give us “some relish” of them, and “[raise] in us some desire” for them (2.21.45). As a result, “by a due consideration and examining any good proposed, it is in our power, to raise our desires, in a due proportion to the value of that good, whereby in its turn, and place, it may come to work upon the will, and be pursued” (2.21.46). The drunkard, for example, might suspend his desire to return to the tavern and, through examination, gradually strengthen a competing desire for the greater goods of health and sobriety.Footnote ² If all goes well, this newly bolstered desire may then determine his will, motivating him to stay home and pursue the greater good.

Unfortunately, Locke never specifies what the act of suspension consists in. Significantly, however, he speaks not merely of suspending desire itself but also of suspending the “execution and satisfaction” or “prosecution” (2.21.47) of desire, which suggests that suspending some desire constitutively involves not acting on that desire. There are a few ways in which an agent might not act on some desire. First, an agent might not act on some desire by willing not to act on that desire, that is, by willing to forbear acting on that desire.Footnote ³ The trouble with this suggestion is that it fails to distinguish the act of suspending some desire from the decision not to act on that desire. A second and more promising way in which an agent might not act on some desire is not by willing to forbear acting on that desire but by forbearing to will to act on it.Footnote ⁴ The drunkard, for example, might suspend his desire to return to the tavern by forbearing to will to return to the tavern. A third way in which an agent might not act on some desire is by, as it were, simply putting a hold on that desire or blocking its motivational efficacy. On this interpretation, suspension would not involve an act of the will at all but would instead be something sui generis: to suspend some desire would be to prevent that desire from affecting the will in the first place.Footnote ⁵ I am not going to take a stand on which of these readings is the most plausible.Footnote ⁶ Instead, in what follows, I will talk about suspension generally without taking a stand on what exactly it consists in.

Despite this agnosticism, I will make one crucial and, admittedly, controversial assumption (more on the controversy in a moment): I will assume that suspension is voluntary, that is, that we will to suspend desire.Footnote ⁷ If suspension consists in forbearing to will to act on some desire, for example, then I am assuming that we will to forbear willing to act on that desire.Footnote ⁸ While I am not going to argue for this assumption in any detail, it does enjoy at least some textual support.Footnote ⁹ First, there is one passage in which Locke says (or at least implies) that suspension involves an act of will: “Nor let any one say, he cannot govern his Passions, nor hinder them from breaking out, and carrying him into action; for what he can do before a Prince, or a great Man, he can do alone, or in the presence of God, if he will” (2.21.53; my emphasis). Second, since Locke holds that we can be held responsible for suspension (e.g., 2.21.56), he is under some pressure to admit that suspension is within our voluntary control. This evidence is far from decisive, but it does make for a compelling prima facie case.

Once we grant that suspension is voluntary, an important consequence follows. Locke holds that whenever an agent wills some action, their will is determined by some desire. So, if we will to suspend desire, then it follows that the act of suspending desire is itself motived by some desire. Prima facie, this consequence might seem paradoxical. How could desire motivate the suspension of desire? There is no paradox, however. Locke speaks not of the global suspension of desire in general but of the local suspension of this or that desire.Footnote ¹⁰ If the drunkard wills to suspend his desire to return to the tavern, for example, then his volition to suspend this desire is motivated by some other desire. The latter desire motivates the drunkard to suspend the former. My goal is to understand this mechanism: what is the desire that motivates us to suspend desire, and what are the conditions under which this desire actually motivates us to suspend?

In assuming that suspension is voluntary and therefore motivated by desire, I am deliberately setting aside a large and somewhat heterogeneous family of interpretations on which suspension is not motivated by desire. Commentators who read Locke as a libertarian maintain that the doctrine of suspension introduces an indeterministic element into his account of liberty and therefore that suspension is not determined by anything, desire included.Footnote ¹¹ Similarly, while Walsh (Reference Walsh2014; Reference Walsh2018) opposes the libertarian reading, Walsh does so by arguing that suspension is not something that we do at all but rather “something that happens to us” (Reference Walsh2014, 150). Consequently, for Walsh, “Suspension is not itself something that is willed” (Reference Walsh2018, 658) and, therefore, is not motivated by desire.Footnote ¹² Intermediate between these two approaches, LoLordo (Reference LoLordo2012, 60–62) reads Locke as agnostic about the causes of suspension but argues that “it is difficult for him [Locke] to say that suspension is voluntary” (49).Footnote ¹³ Finally, Garrett (Reference Garrett and Stuart2015, 277) maintains that suspension is voluntary but suggests that Locke treats the doctrine of suspension as an exception to the claim that desire determines the will, citing passages in which Locke says that an agent’s most pressing desire determines the will only “ordinarily” or “for the most part.”Footnote ¹⁴

My goal is not to refute these interpretations. Instead, I wish to set them aside in order to examine Locke’s doctrine of suspension under the assumption that suspension is voluntary and therefore motivated by desire. I believe that many commentators will happily grant this assumption. Those who do not may read the paper as an elaborate conditional with this assumption in the antecedent. So, without further ado, I turn now to my two questions: granting that suspension is voluntary and determined by desire, what is the desire that motivates suspension and what are the conditions under which it does so?

2. What motivates suspension?

I begin with the first question: What motivates suspension? More specifically, what is the desire that motivates suspension? Locke comes closest to answering this question in the following passage:

Locke’s suggestion seems to be that “the inclination […] to happiness” motivates suspension. Earlier in the Essay, he explains that “Nature […] has put into Man a desire of Happiness, and an aversion to Misery,” which he describes as “innate practical Principles, which […] do continue constantly to operate and influence all our Actions, without ceasing” (1.3.3). Likewise, in his discussion of liberty, Locke speaks of the “general Desire of Happiness” and says that it “operates constantly and invariably” (2.21.71). Locke’s suggestion thus seems to be that it is the general desire for happiness that motivates suspension.

This account remains incomplete, however. Locke contrasts the “general Desire of Happiness” with “particular desire[s]” for apparent goods (2.21.71). Since the general desire for happiness “operates constantly and invariably” (2.21.71), Locke maintains that “happiness and that alone [moves desire]” (2.21.41) and that “we all aim at [happiness] in all our actions” (2.21.36). As a result, Locke holds both that we desire all those goods that we judge necessary for our happiness:

And moreover that we desire only those goods that we judge necessary for our happiness:

Accordingly, if an agent possesses a particular desire for some apparent good, Locke maintains that they desire this apparent good only because they desire happiness and judge that this apparent good is necessary for their happiness.Footnote ¹⁵ In this sense, the agent’s particular desire is generated or explained by the general desire for happiness.

If this much is correct, then it seems that the general desire for happiness, simply as such, cannot motivate suspension. Consider the drunkard, whose most pressing particular desire is the desire to return to the tavern. On Locke’s view, the drunkard desires to return to the tavern only because he desires happiness and judges that returning to the tavern is necessary for his happiness.Footnote ¹⁶ The general desire for happiness thus underlies and explains the drunkard’s desire to return to the tavern. Consequently, the general desire for happiness, simply as such, cannot also motivate the drunkard to suspend his desire to return to the tavern, since the general desire for happiness is what explains why the drunkard desires to return to the tavern in the first place.Footnote ¹⁷

Here is another way to make the same point. Why do we suspend some desires but not others? If the general desire for happiness motivates suspension, then it seems that the answer to this question must be that the general desire for happiness can be stronger or weaker relative to different particular desires, motivating us to suspend some but not others. But, since the general desire for happiness itself generates our particular desires, it is hard to make sense of such comparisons. After all, a stronger general desire for happiness would simply generate stronger particular desires. Moreover, Locke says that the general desire for happiness “operates constantly and invariably” (2.21.71), which seems to imply that the general desire for happiness cannot grow stronger or weaker relative to any particular desire.Footnote ¹⁸

Fortunately, there is another way to understand Locke’s suggestion that the general desire for happiness motivates suspension. While the general desire for happiness cannot motivate suspension by itself, the general desire for happiness might motivate suspension by generating another particular desire that motivates suspension. On this interpretation, cases of suspension involve three desires. The first is the general desire for happiness. The second and third are particular desires generated by the general desire for happiness: the desire to be suspended and the desire motivating suspension.

What is the particular desire motivating suspension? Here is my proposal. Locke introduces the doctrine of suspension by noting the “variety of mistakes, errors, and faults which we run into, in the conduct of our lives, and our endeavours after happiness,” explaining that the purpose of suspension is precisely “To prevent” such mistakes (2.21.47). To illustrate, suppose that I am choosing between A and B and desire A more than B. I realize, however, that B might (unbeknownst to me) be a greater good than A. Indeed, it might even turn out that A is not good but evil. I thus realize that if I act on my desire for A, there is a chance that I may end up either with a comparative evil (a lesser good) or even with an absolute evil. In other words, I realize that I might be making a kind of mistake if I were to act on my desire for A. This realization might plausibly give rise to a new particular desire, namely, the desire to avoid the possible evil that might result if I were to act on my desire for A. It is this desire, I propose, that motivates me to suspend the desire for A. More generally, if an agent suspends the particular desire for some apparent good X, the agent’s act of suspension is motivated by the further particular desire to avoid the (comparative or absolute) evil that might result if they were to act on the desire for X.

Locke sometimes expresses this aspect of his view by distinguishing “real” or “true” happiness from merely “imaginary” happiness. He says that “the highest perfection of intellectual nature, lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness,” that “the care of our selves, that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty,” and therefore that “we are by the necessity of prefering and pursuing true happiness as our greatest good, obliged to suspend the satisfaction of our desire in particular cases” (2.21.51). His point is that, while we possess a general desire for happiness and therefore “aim at [happiness] in all our actions” (2.21.36), we are often mistaken about what will make us really or truly happy—that is, about the greater good or, given Locke’s hedonism (2.21.41–42), about what will bring us the most pleasure in the long run. As a result, we often end up pursuing merely imaginary happiness, acting in pursuit of various apparent goods that we imagine will make us happy but that will actually bring us either less pleasure or more pain. The purpose of suspension is to prevent this kind of mistake by allowing us to examine “whether the satisfaction of [desire], does not interfere with our true happiness” (2.21.52):

Given this distinction, we can capture Locke’s view by saying that the desire that motivates suspension is the desire to avoid missing out on real or true happiness (the greater good) or to ensure that one is not pursuing merely imaginary happiness. As Locke says in the quotation from the beginning of this section, “the inclination […] to happiness is an obligation, and motive to them, to take care not to mistake, or miss it” (2.21.52). We are motivated to suspend by a desire not to “mistake” or “miss” happiness.

It is worth distinguishing this interpretation from some close competitors. Davidson (Reference Davidson2003, 225) proposes that we are motivated to suspend “If on reflection, we see that satisfying a first-order desire would not contribute to our real happiness, we form a second-order desire not to have the original desire motivate us.” This proposal strikes me as overly demanding. For Davidson, an agent can be motivated to suspend some desire only if they already recognize that satisfying that desire will not contribute to their real happiness. On my interpretation, by contrast, the act of suspending some desire is motivated by the desire to avoid the possible future evil that might (but might not) result from acting on that desire. In other words, on my interpretation, suspension arises from a kind of risk aversion in contexts of uncertainty. As a result, suspension does not require that an agent already believe that satisfying some desire will not contribute to their real happiness. Suspension only requires that the agent be sufficiently uncertain.

Rickless (Reference Rickless and Anstey2013b, 413) suggests another interpretation: “if a subject S wills to suspend willing, what determines her volition to suspend is a desire D1 to be rid of pain, presumably pain at the thought of what would likely happen if she did not suspend.” Recall that, for Locke, every present pain is accompanied by a desire for the negative good of relief from that pain (2.21.31). According to Rickless, the desire that motivates suspension is one such desire. Rickless suggests that when an agent considers the possible negative consequences of failing to suspend, this consideration gives rise to a kind of pain. On Rickless’s interpretation, it is the desire to be rid of this pain that motivates suspension. While I do not have a principled objection against this reading, it seems needlessly complicated. On my interpretation, an agent is motivated to suspend because they realize that the failure to suspend might lead to some future evil, which they desire to avoid. On Rickless’s interpretation, the agent has the same realization but is motivated to suspend not because they desire to avoid the possible future evil but because their realization generates a further pain which they desire to relieve. I do not see any reason for this complication.Footnote ¹⁹

Weinberg (Reference Weinberg2016, 183–205) suggests a third interpretation.Footnote ²⁰ Weinberg observes, as I did earlier, that something besides the general desire for happiness is required to motivate suspension (200–1). Accordingly, Weinberg proposes that what motivates suspension is “the concern for ourselves that we attain true happiness” (201) or the “desire for true happiness” (195). It is not entirely clear how Weinberg understands the relation between the general desire for happiness and the desire for true happiness. If the desire for true happiness is just a particular desire generated by the general desire for happiness, then I take it that Weinberg’s proposal is more or less the same as my own. There are a number of passages, however, in which Weinberg seems to suggest that the desire for happiness is not just another particular desire generated by the general desire for happiness. Weinberg explains that just as the general desire for happiness is “a natural drive toward our own physical self-preservation here and now” (184) or “a natural motivation pushing us in the direction of present preservation (happiness)” (195), so too the desire for true happiness is “a natural drive toward our long-term preservation, what Locke calls our ‘true’ or ‘real’ happiness” (184). Weinberg concludes:

Here, Weinberg seems to imply that the general desire for happiness and the desire for true happiness are two distinct and equally fundamental sources of motivation. On this reading of Weinberg’s interpretation, suspension is not in any sense motivated by the general desire for happiness either as such or via some particular desire derived from it. Instead, suspension is motivated by the desire for true happiness.Footnote ²¹

My central objection to Weinberg’s interpretation, understood in this way, is that there is no need to posit a desire for true happiness entirely distinct from the general desire for happiness. On my interpretation, Locke does indeed hold that suspension is motivated by “the desire for true happiness,” but I maintain that this desire is itself just another particular desire derived from the general desire for happiness. After all, if an agent desires happiness and realizes that acting on some desire might lead to future evils that undermine their happiness, then it is not hard to see how this realization might give rise to a further desire to avoid such future evils that would motivate the agent to suspend. So, while I agree with Weinberg that the general desire for happiness as such cannot motivate suspension, I reject the inference that Locke must posit a further principle of motivation distinct from the general desire for happiness.

Weinberg’s interpretation (or at least this reading of Weinberg’s interpretation) also faces a textual challenge. Locke says that we possess two “innate practical Principles”: “a desire of Happiness” and “an aversion to Misery” (1.3.3). As a result, when Locke asks “what ‘tis moves desire?” his answer is “happiness and that alone” (2.21.41). He gives no indication that there might be a further motivational principle distinct from the general desire for happiness. Weinberg points to passages from 2.21.51–52 in which Locke writes, for example, that “we are by the necessity of preferring and pursuing true happiness as our greatest good, obliged to suspend the satisfaction of our desire in particular cases” (2.21.51). Commenting on this passage, Weinberg says that “Locke seems to be distinguishing true happiness from happiness generally” and claims that “whatever drives us to true [happiness] as opposed to happiness generally is what also drives us to suspend desire” (202; emphasis in original). It is worth emphasizing, however, that Locke never opposes happiness to true happiness, nor does he oppose the desire for happiness to the desire for true happiness. Instead, as we have seen, Locke contrasts true happiness not with happiness simpliciter but with imaginary happiness. For Locke, happiness is true happiness; “false happiness” would not be happiness precisely because it is false. Likewise, to desire happiness is to desire true happiness, just as (at least in ordinary circumstances) to desire money is to desire true money (as opposed to Monopoly money) or to desire friends is to desire true friends (as opposed to sycophants). Locke’s view is not that we possess, above and beyond the general desire for happiness and the various particular desires that it generates, a further principle of motivation that motivates us to suspend those particular desires in order to pursue true happiness. Instead, on the interpretation that I am proposing, Locke holds that one and the same desire for happiness that gives rise to all our particular desires also gives rise to a further desire to avoid the possible evils that might result if we were to act precipitately upon some desire without suspending. It is this particular desire, I have argued, that motivates suspension.

3. What are the conditions of suspension?

I turn now to my second question. Suppose that an agent has two particular desires, the first a desire for some apparent good and the second a desire to avoid the possible evils that might result if they were to act on the first desire without suspending. The mere fact that the agent has the second desire need not guarantee that they will suspend the first. So, what are the conditions under which the second desire would actually motivate suspension?

While this question has received little scholarly attention, Matthew Stuart (Reference Stuart2013, 461–63) helpfully articulates and defends an answer that others often seem to take for granted.Footnote ²² Stuart imagines a case in which “an agent is deciding which of three acts to perform (A₁, A₂, or A₃) and […] has a corresponding desire (D₁, D₂, and D₃) to perform each of them” (462), of which D₁ is the most pressing. The agent also has a fourth desire (D₄), which is the desire that would motivate the agent to suspend D₁.Footnote ²³ Stuart then explains the conditions under which D₄ motivates suspension:

Stuart’s proposal is that D₄ motivates suspension only so long as it is the agent’s most pressing desire. As soon as some other desire becomes more pressing than D₄, D₄ no longer motivates suspension. For example, if examination augments the strength of D₂, then D₂ will motivate the agent to perform A₂ as soon as D₂ becomes the agent’s most pressing desire. So, D₄ motivates suspension just in case (and so long as) D₄ is the agent’s most pressing desire.

This interpretation faces what I take to be a decisive objection. When Locke introduces the doctrine of suspension, he says that while “it is natural […] that the greatest, and most pressing [desire or uneasiness] should determine the will,” “it does for the most part, but not always” because “the mind [has] in most cases […] a power to suspend the execution and satisfaction of any of its desires” (2.21.47). For Locke, therefore, an agent’s most pressing desire determines the will “for the most part, but not always” because, in cases of suspension, the agent’s most pressing desire is suspended and therefore does not determine the will.Footnote ²⁴ So, if some desire D is an agent’s most pressing desire, Locke claims that, at least in most cases, the agent is able to suspend D. It seems to me that Stuart has to deny this claim. According to Stuart, if the agent suspends D, this act of suspension must be motivated by another desire D*. And, in order for D* to motivate suspension, D* must be the agent’s most pressing desire. Therefore, since D* is the agent’s most pressing desire, it follows that D cannot be the agent’s most pressing desire after all. Stuart’s interpretation thus implies that an agent cannot suspend their most pressing desire. On Stuart’s interpretation, for an agent to suspend some desire is actually just for that desire to be outweighed by another, more pressing desire. Strictly speaking, therefore, it is not possible for an agent to suspend their most pressing desire.

In his defense, Stuart seeks to explain away Locke’s claim that an agent’s most pressing desire determines the will “for the most part, but not always.” Returning to Stuart’s example, in which an agent is choosing between three actions (A₁, A₂, and A₃) and has a desire to perform each (D₁, D₂, and D₃) as well as an additional desire (D₄) motivating suspension, Stuart (Reference Stuart2013, 463) reads Locke as claiming merely that the agent’s will “need not be determined by the most pressing of D₁, D₂, and D₃.” I think that this interpretation distorts Locke’s meaning. Locke’s claim is not merely that the will is not always determined by an agent’s most pressing desire to perform some particular action (A₁, A₂, or A₃). Instead, his claim is that the will is not always determined by an agent’s most pressing desire, full stop. Of course, if this were the only passage in which Locke appeared to claim that the will is not always determined by an agent’s most pressing desire, then Stuart might insist that Locke is simply being imprecise. In fact, however, Locke makes the same claim in a number of different passages. He writes that what determines the will is “some (and for the most part the most pressing) uneasiness a Man is at present under” (2.21.31; my underlining), that the desire that “has the precedency in determining the will to the next action” is “that ordinarily, which is the most pressing of those, that are judged capable of being then removed” (2.21.40; my underlining), and that “The greatest present uneasiness […] for the most part determines the will in its choice of the next action” (2.21.40; my underlining). Locke’s section headings bring out the same point: the heading of 2.21.40 states that “The most pressing uneasiness naturally ”—but not necessarily—“determines the will” (my underlining) and the heading of 2.21.47 proclaims that “The power to suspend the prosecution of any desire makes way for consideration” (my underlining). There is thus abundant evidence that, in Locke’s view, an agent’s most pressing desire does not always determine the will, which is why Locke claims in 2.21.47 that we are able to suspend even our most pressing desires.

The interpretation that I am proposing has significant implications for the doctrine of suspension. On my reading, Locke holds both that an agent is able to suspend their most pressing desire and that the act of suspension is motivated by some other desire. It follows that the desire that motivates suspension need not be the agent’s most pressing desire. If an agent suspends some desire D and D is the agent’s most pressing desire, then it turns out that the desire that motivates the agent to suspend D must be less pressing than D.

Prima facie, this interpretation may appear paradoxical. How could a less pressing desire motivate an agent to suspend their most pressing desire? Indeed, Stuart (Reference Stuart2013, 461) considers and quickly rejects this possibility, which is why he seeks to explain away Locke’s claim that an agent’s most pressing desire only determines their will “for the most part, but not always.” Stuart expresses the worry with characteristic acuity:

Applying the point to cases of suspension, Stuart’s worry is that, if some less pressing (“weaker”) desire were to motivate an agent to suspend their most pressing (“stronger”) desire, this fact alone would reveal that the desire motivating suspension was in fact more pressing than the desire suspended and thus that the desire suspended was not the agent’s most pressing desire after all. Stuart concludes that the desire motivating suspension must be the agent’s most pressing desire in order for it to be “strong” enough to “overpower” the agent’s other desires.

I think that this worry rests on a misinterpretation of what it is for a desire to be more or less pressing. Hume famously distinguishes a desire’s “violence” from its “strength”: whereas a more violent desire is one that is felt more intensely, a stronger desire is one that has greater influence upon the will (Treatise 2.1.1.3, 2.3.3.8–10, 2.3.4.1–2).Footnote ²⁵ For Hume, a violent but weak desire is a desire that is felt intensely but has little effect upon the will. By contrast, a calm but strong desire is a desire that is not felt intensely but has great effect upon the will. The point is that we often feel violent passions that we do not act upon (e.g., momentary feelings of rage) and often act upon desires that are not particularly passionate (e.g., “kindness to children” [Treatise 2.3.3.8]). Stuart’s objection assumes that when Locke speaks of a desire as being more or less “pressing,” he is talking about the desire’s strength—Stuart himself uses the words “weaker” and “stronger.” On this interpretation, it would follow trivially that an agent’s most pressing desire always determines the will because an agent’s most pressing desire would be defined as the desire with the greatest influence upon the will. We need not make this assumption, however. On the contrary, when Locke speaks of a desire as being more or less “pressing,” he might instead be talking about the desire’s violence. On this interpretation, it would not follow trivially that an agent’s most pressing desire always determines the will because, as Hume observes, an agent’s most violent desire need not be their strongest desire. An agent’s will might sometimes be determined by a less violent desire that, nonetheless, has greater influence upon the will.

I think that we ought to adopt the latter interpretation. Recall that Locke conceives of desire as a state of “uneasiness” (2.21.31) and that, in Locke’s vocabulary, “uneasiness” is roughly synonymous with “pain”: “By Pleasure and Pain, I would be understood to signifie, whatsoever delights or molests us […] whether we call it Satisfaction, Delight, Pleasure, Happiness, etc. on the one hand; or Uneasiness, Trouble, Pain, Torment, Anguish, Misery, etc. on the other” (2.7.2).Footnote ²⁶ Consequently, Locke holds that desires vary primarily with respect to how painful they are, writing that a desire is “greater or less, as that uneasiness is more or less vehement” (2.20.6). So, when Locke speaks of desires as being more or less “pressing,” he is likely referring to their relative degrees of painfulness: a more pressing desire is just a more painful desire. Locke’s pressingness is thus similar to Hume’s violence insofar as, in either case, we are concerned primarily with the felt intensity of a desire rather than with its influence upon the will.Footnote ²⁷ As a result, it is not surprising that, according to Locke, an agent’s most pressing desire determines the will “for the most part, but not always” (2.21.47). Locke is simply anticipating the Humean point that the violence or painfulness of a desire can come apart from its influence upon the will. For Locke, therefore, there are at least some cases in which the desire that determines an agent’s will is not their most pressing desire. The clearest such case, and the only one that Locke discusses explicitly, is the case of suspension in which some less pressing desire motivates an agent to suspend their most pressing desire.

I do not wish to overstate my claim. Since desire is a state of uneasiness or pain, all desires are painful to some degree. Moreover, since Locke specifies that it is the uneasiness of desire that determines the will, he seems to hold that part of the reason why desire determines the will is because it is painful. Accordingly, Locke almost certainly holds that more pressing—that is, more painful—desires do tend to have greater influence upon the will. It is presumably for this reason that, according to Locke, an agent’s most pressing desire usually determines the will, because more pressing desires tend to be stronger. For the same reason, Locke emphasizes that suspension allows us to “raise our desires” (2.21.46) for absent goods—that is, to render our desires for absent goods more pressing—so that they might be able to determine the will “according to [their] greatness, and pressure” (2.21.45). Locke thus holds that we often need to make our desires more pressing in order for them to acquire sufficient strength to determine the will. It does not follow from any of these claims, however, that an agent’s most pressing desire must always determine the will. On the contrary, I have argued that, in Locke’s view, there are at least some cases—namely, cases of suspension—in which the less pressing of two desires is nonetheless the stronger of those desires.

We might wonder, however, what could possibly make a less pressing desire stronger than a more pressing desire. Given that more pressing desires do tend to be stronger ceteris paribus, what additional source of strength might bolster a less pressing desire such as the desire that motivates suspension and allow it to overpower a more pressing desire? While Locke does not address this question explicitly, Hume is once again a helpful guide. Hume defends the distinction between calm yet strong desires and violent yet weak desires by pointing to the effects of custom: once a desire becomes deeply engrained through “repeated custom,” it may become a “settled principle of action” that has great influence upon the will even though “it commonly produces no longer any sensible agitation” (Treatise 2.3.4.1). Locke might make a similar appeal. On this proposal, the reason why a less pressing desire can sometimes motivate an agent to suspend their most pressing desire might be because the former desire, while less pressing, is nonetheless stronger as a result of habituation.

Locke himself gestures toward such a suggestion in Some Thoughts Concerning Education. Footnote ²⁸ Throughout that work, Locke emphasizes the cultivation of good habits. He writes, for example, that “the principle of all virtue and excellency lies in a power of denying ourselves the satisfaction of our own desires where reason does not authorize them” and explains that “This power is to be got and improved by custom, made easy and familiar by an early practice” (Some Thoughts, sec. 38; emphasis in original). Later, he explains that “he that knows not how to resist the importunity of present pleasure or pain for the sake of what reason tells him is fit to be done, wants the true principle of virtue and industry” and therefore recommends that “this habit, as the true foundation of future ability and happiness, is to be wrought into the mind as early as may be” (Some Thoughts, sec. 45; emphasis in original). Recast in the language of the Essay, Locke’s suggestion in such passages seems to be that we ought to cultivate the habit of suspending desire, both in ourselves and in our children. Now, Locke does not explain in Some Thoughts Concerning Education precisely how it is that he takes habit to influence the will. Locke takes up this point in the Essay, however:

Locke argues that habituation causes us to take pleasure in habitual actions and, as a result, to desire them. Habit thus influences the will by creating or strengthening desires for habitual actions. The implication is that by cultivating the habit of suspending desire, we may increase the strength of the desire motivating suspension. Now, one way in which habit might strengthen this desire is by causing it to become more pressing or painful, since more pressing desires do tend to be stronger. Locke does not commit himself to this narrow account habituation, however. And, indeed, this narrow account does not seem particularly plausible: the habitual desire to brush my teeth consistently determines my will every morning, for example, even though this desire is not particularly pressing or painful. The alternative is that habituation might be able to strengthen certain desires without making them more pressing. Accordingly, one possible consequence of habituation, albeit one that Locke himself does not note explicitly, is that habituation might render the desire motivating suspension strong enough actually to motivate suspension even in cases in which it is not the agent’s most pressing desire.

It may be worth stepping back at this point to review the dialectic of the argument. My goal in this section has been to argue for the negative claim that the desire motivating suspension need not be an agent’s most pressing desire. The evidence for this negative claim is that, according to Locke, we are able to suspend even our most pressing desires, which implies that the desire motivating suspension need not itself be our most pressing desire. Against this proposal, Stuart objects that a less pressing desire cannot motivate an agent to suspend a more pressing desire. In response to Stuart, however, I have argued that, in Locke’s view, for a desire to be more or less pressing is just for it to be more or less painful, and there is no reason why a less painful desire should not be able to motivate an agent to suspend a more painful desire. To lend further credence to this view, I have suggested that a less painful desire might grow stronger (that is, more causally efficacious) than a more painful desire as a result of habituation. While Locke himself does not make this suggestion explicitly, it does seem to fit nicely with what he has to say about cultivating the habit of suspension.

4. Concluding remarks

Earlier, I noted that Locke says remarkably little about how suspension works. All that he says about my first question (What motivates suspension?) is that “the inclination, and tendency of their nature to happiness […] puts them upon caution, deliberation, and wariness, in the direction of their particular actions” (2.21.52). He says nothing at all about my second question (What are the conditions under which we are motivated to suspend?), merely observing that it “is evident in Experience” (2.21.47) that we usually can suspend even our most pressing desires. Having examined each of these questions in some detail, I think that we are now in a position to appreciate Locke’s silence. Locke may not have much to say about the mechanics of suspension for the simple reason that he does not take them to be particularly puzzling. Given that we all desire happiness and realize that we often do not desire what will really make us happy, it stands to reason that rational beings like us will desire to avoid the possible future evils that might result from acting precipitately upon our most pressing desires. This desire may not be particularly pressing or painful, especially compared with the powerful urges that we are often called upon to resist. Nonetheless, through education and habituation, this desire may (and, evidently, often does) gain the strength needed to overpower even our most pressing desires, motivating us to suspend those desires and deliberate about what will bring us the greatest happiness in the long run. This account is far from complete, less a developed “doctrine” than a casual observation about the psychology of self-control, but Locke seems content to leave it at that.