We are pleased to announce the closure of vol 18 (2018) and the opening of vol 19 (2019) of Locke Studies.

At Locke Studies 2018 was a bittersweet year. The death of our founding editor, Roland Hall (York), was the low point. Tim Stanton’s sensitive tribute “Roland Hall: An Appreciation” (October 22) showed Roland to have been a thoughtful and cultured intellectual, a keen and erudite philosopher, and a sophisticated and learned editor. We found Roland’s reflections on “the real goods of life” especially heartening: “love, music, visual arts, literature (especially poetry and prose fiction), friendship, conversation, histories … they provide the needed enrichment [of life], & beauty runs through most of these” (7). We at Locke Studies are striving to continue the learned conversations about Locke, his thought and legacy, and his intellectual milieu that Roland started so long ago and to bring more enrichment and beauty to the lives of all Lockean everywhere.

The highpoint of our year was the rollout of volume 18 on July 30. The transition to an open-access, e-publication format was not without challenges, but the support of Western Libraries and Western Philosophy and the OJS platform made the experience as smooth and pleasant as could be. We would like to extend a hearty “Thank you!” to each for its support.

Our first article in volume 18 was Allison Kuklok’s critique of the standard interpretation of Locke on the classification of substances, “Strings, Physies, and Hogs Bristles: Names, Species, and Classification in Locke” (July 30). Arbitrariness is often central to interpretations of Locke’s account of classification, largely on the basis of III.vi.39. Kuklok defended a distinction between identifying specific differences among species and classifying substances (13) to push against the claim that classification is arbitrary for Locke (21). Instead, Kuklok argued according to Locke the mind follows Nature’s lead as if it were being presented with things really alike or really different when classifying substances: “Locke’s recognition of leading qualities and patterns is not necessarily evidence that Locke was a realist about species. It is, I’m arguing, evidence that Locke thought that the mind operates on the presumption in favor of realism, not unlike the way Hume thought the mind operates on the presumption in favor of causal realism” (22). Kuklok’s reading is clever and sophisticated, and we hope it will provoke responses from the defenders of arbitrariness as much as the proponents of the new realist readings of Locke on species will use it in support of their interpretations.

Next came Brian Smith’s “One Body of People: Locke on Punishment, Native Land Rights, and the Protestant Evangelism of North America” (November 25). Smith revised the standard story regarding Locke’s attitudes towards the Indigenous people of North America. Locke is often portrayed as hostile toward the Indigenous populations and as justifying the dispossession of their lands as a form of punishment due to their rejection of the natural law. Smith, however, used a diversity of texts to argue that Locke did not accept the “punishment thesis” typically attributed to him (9-27). Instead, Smith argued, Locke hoped that European and Indigenous people would form “one body of people” (31) and that through the peaceful co-occupation of a shared region, Indigenous people would begin to see the reasonableness and truth of Protestant Christianity and join the community of the godly. Smith offers theorists working on the impact of Lockean ideas on colonial North America novel ways of looking at many of Locke’s well-trod texts.

Next came a corrigendum to an article published in the 2017 volume, D. N. DeLuna’s “Shaftesbury, Locke, and Their Revolutionary Letter? [Corrigendum]” (December 8). Scholars are kindly asked to reference only the corrigendum published in volume 18. In the paper DeLuna identified passages of “highly seditious” allegorical material hitherto unnoted in the 1675 Letter to a Person of Quality (6-9). The identification of these allegories led DeLuna to revise the standard chronology of Shafesbury’s Circle’s militancy against the Stuart crown. These allegories suggest, DeLuna argues, that Shaftesbury or members of his circle were militantly hostile to the Stuarts at a much earlier date than Ashcraft suggested, though there is no evidence of any violent plot against the crown at this earlier date (13-15). DeLuna then fingers Robert Ferguson as “a prime suspect” in the production of the Letter (20) rather than Locke (16) who is commonly alleged to have been involved with it.

The main articles in the 2018 issue end with John Attig’s “Recent Publications” (December 28). Attig has added over 200 new works to the known list of scholarship on John Locke and his milieu. We are pleased that he is continuing this important service for all Lockeans and urge everyone to review the list for material relevant to their specialties and research interests. Additional items not noted here should be sent directly to John at jxa16@psu.edu for inclusion on the John Locke Bibliography as well as in next year’s edition of Attig’s “Recent Publications.”

A priority for us this year has been the expansion of our offerings of scholarly reviews of new books on Locke and books of special interests to Lockeans. We are very pleased to have been able to offer eight reviews this year and to build the pipeline for volume 19. In the 2018 issue there appears:

We intend to continue expanding this role of the journal in 2019. Lockeans with books published between 2017 and 2019 that they would like to see reviewed in Locke Studies are strongly encouraged to notify the editor (bhill28@uwo.ca) of the book’s publication and the desire to see it reviewed. Scholars interested in reviewing books for the journal are also encouraged to directly contact the editor expressing their interests.

Digitizing the back issues of Locke Studies and The Locke Newsletter has proven challenging thus far, but we are committed to making more substantial progress in 2019. At this date, we do not have a timeline for when the issues will be digitized and released, but we expect to know more early in the new year. Thank you for your patience as we explore the process for digitizing and releasing the back issues. We will update everyone when information becomes available.

Finally, I would like to thank all the authors who submitted manuscripts and the reviewers who read and commented on them. We are grateful for your service and support, and we recognize that we could not publish Locke Studies without it—Thank you! We thank all the readers of the journal as well and wish each and every one of you the very best for the new year.

We are also pleased to announce that vol 17 (2017) is now freely available on our website here. Everyone is urged to check out the articles.

Finally, we are accepting submissions for inclusion in vol 19 (2019) of Locke Studies. Please login and submit your materials for consideration here.