HOW JOHN LOCKE CREATED REASONABLE MEN.
HOW JOHN LOCKE CREATED REASONABLE MEN. Anna Wierzbicka attributes the distinctive use in English of the word “reasonable” to the influence of John Locke. Locke believed that our knowledge of most things in the world was “very short and scanty.” “Reason” (using logic) was appropriate for a world of certainty. Locke concluded that since our knowledge was limited, it was important to specify in our speech our “degrees of assent from full assurance and confidence, quite down to conjecture, doubt and distrust.” If each man’s knowledge is limited, reasonable men can differ—can come to different opinions. And so, after Locke, there was a shift in the use of the word “reasonable.”