Locke, church and state: Stanley Fish's impossible mission

Stanley Fish’s critique of liberalism is a challenging one. This paper seeks to show how Fish’s most comprehensive attempt to deconstruct the liberal tradition is subject to fundamental flaws due to Fish’s failure to come to grips with the very foundations of liberalism itself. In particular, Fish places great emphasis on the seventeenth century English philosopher, John Locke, as the inaugurator of the basic “contradiction” to which, he believes, liberalism is beset. This paper shows that Fish has fundamentally misunderstood Locke and therefore has misunderstood the “contradiction” which he believes Locke’s political philosophy inaugurates for liberalism. Ultimately therefore, Fish’s broad challenge to liberalism, which he has also pursued in other writings, is weakened by the fact that what he perceives to be the root of the liberal problem was not present within the roots of liberalism at all.