It is crucial, however, to see that no matter how "absolute" this power may be, Locke does not at all intend to present it as "whimsical" or "arbitrary." To say that the mind determines itself does not have to mean its power is essentially indeterminate; self-determination can also be a means that allows the will to follow reason, and indeed for Locke this is its essential purpose. The point, for him, of suspending any particular desire that happens to be pressing upon us is precisely to give our minds the "liberty" to deliberate, to weigh it in comparison with other possibilities, and then to make a reasoned judgment about what is best. The emphasis on a self-determining deliberation sets Locke apart from Hobbes, at least in a certain respect. Genuinely free action is action that follows upon specifically rational deliberation: "he that has a power to act or not to act, according as such determination directs [i.e., the mind''s reasoned judgment], is a free agent: such determination abridges not that power wherein liberty consists" (2.21.
51.348). The change in the nature of determination that the power of suspension brings about is therefore not so much from external to internal determination as it is from natural to rational determination. Those that argue for continuity between the first and later editions of the Essay can point to the fact that Locke''s insistence, from the beginning and all along the way, on the role of reason in freedom already distinguished him from Hobbes'' naturalism, and can interpret the later introduction of the power of suspension as nothing more than a working out of what this difference entails, i.e., a further description of the conditions under which a choice is free. The temporal dimension of this process is key: it allows me to take a certain distance from what is immediately present and to measure it against future pleasures and pains. Once I am, as it were, liberated from the pressures of time by the power of suspension, the only rational standard for my choices is eternity.
In other words, proper choice will be made in light of eternity, that is, the pleasures and pains that await me in the life after this one as a result of the decisions I make now. It is here that God and the moral law become significant for Locke''s understanding of freedom, as we saw earlier, and it is what allows Locke to present an apparently "normative" interpretation, distinguishing genuine from false freedom: "As therefore the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness; so the care of ourselves, that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty" (2.21.52.348). Thus, in line with his earlier arguments, Locke concedes that in most immediate cases we always already prefer one thing to another, but points out that we are nevertheless free to direct our preferences with respect to "remote" goods, and so change (over time) even our immediate desires: "The last inquiry, therefore, concerning the matter is, --Whether it be in a man''s power to change the pleasantness that accompanies any sort of action? And as to that, it is plain, in many cases he can. Men may and should correct their palates, and give relish to what either has, or they suppose has none. The relish of the mind is as various as that of the body, and like that too may be altered" (2.
21.71.362). The ideally free man, in sum, would be one who is able to allow his ultimate interests, rationally conceived, to determine his relation to any and all immediate interests. Locke therefore clearly distinguishes his notion of freedom from what is often called a "freedom of indifference," that is, "an indifferency of the man; antecedent to the determination of his will" (2.21.73.367), which means a detachment from what reason perceives as good.
This is a point on which he strongly insisted in his correspondence with Limborch, driven by a concern to avoid making freedom something "blind," an avoidance he seems to take to be a non-negotiable aspect of a sound theory of liberty. As Locke explains in the Essay , indifference in the matter of physical capacity is essential to freedom: I am free to raise my hand to my face only if I am indifferently capable of moving it or not moving it, that is, only if there is no external or internal restraint forcing it in a particular direction. But indifference with respect to reason is inimical to freedom: If there is an object moving to strike my face, an indifference with respect to whether I lift my hand is a want of freedom. To put the matter positively, freedom includes a ready capacity, and indeed a willingness, to do immediately what my reason judges to be best. The more spontaneously I follow reason, according to Locke, the freer I am. In this respect, Locke''s view of freedom is quite close to that of Descartes. It is because of the necessity of reason in freedom that Locke can claim that there is no contradiction in saying that God is absolutely free and saying that he is necessarily determined by what is best (2.21.
50.347). Once again, it seems as if Locke''s notion of freedom is essentially a classical one, which likewise affirms an indissoluble connection between freedom and reason. (excerpted from chapter 1).