Locke on Knowledge and Judgment: The One/Two-Act Debate Revisited

This paper reignites the debate over Locke’s one-act versus two-act account of knowledge and judgment, reassessing the recent inclination to discuss his theory within the justified true belief (JTB+) framework of Anglo-American analytic epistemology. After clarifying the key issues, it defends the one-act account by critically engaging with recent scholarship, highlighting weaknesses in the arguments of one-act proponents against the two-act account, and offering new counterarguments against the latter. Ultimately, it argues why situating Locke’s broader view of knowledge within a post-Gettierian epistemological framework is an ill-suited approach.