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PREFACE

In this book, I uncover the importance of rhetoric as figural and creative language for John Locke’s political and philosophical critique. This project may, at first glance, seem counterintuitive. Locke, after all, presents himself as a thinker and writer who should have little use for linguistic flourish: a man of science, a plain speaker, and a humble philosophical underlaborer. We need look no further than the epistle that opens An Essay Concerning Human Understanding to find this modest figure in search of knowledge when “Vague and insignificant Forms of Speech, and Abuse of Language, have so long passed for Mysteries of Science.”¹ He expresses the hope that this book, composed of his “hasty and undigested Thoughts,” marked by repetitions and his “discontinued way of writing” (7), might help others to “avoid the greatest part of the Disputes and Wranglings they have with others” (14). While the author’s intentions are good, he confesses to an artlessness that would seem to prevent him from offering anything other than unadorned truth. “I have so little Affection to be in Print, that if I were not flattered, this Essay might be of some use to others, as I think, it has been to me, I should have confined it to the view of some Friends, who gave the first Occasion to it” (9). Would we expect anything different from the empiricist philosopher or the political theorist who returns to the first principles of natural right and law?

A certain skepticism is understandable. But if we take seriously Locke’s sober commitments to natural, to say nothing of moral and political, philosophy, then we must take a closer look at his own story of how the Essay came to be. The “History of this Essay,” featured in the epistle, depicts the personal situation that launched the pages that follow:

I should tell thee that five or six Friends meeting at my Chamber, and discoursing on a Subject very remote from this, found themselves quickly at a stand, by the Difficulties that rose on every side. After we had a while puzzled our selves, without coming any nearer a Resolution of those Doubts which perplexed us, it came into my Thoughts, that we took a wrong course; and that, before we set our selves upon Enquiries of that Nature, it was necessary to examine our own Abilities, and see, what Objects our Understandings were, or were not fitted to deal with. This I proposed to the Company, who all readily assented; and thereupon it was agreed, that this should be our first Enquiry. (7)

What began as a private conversation among members of the Royal Society, interrupted and redirected by a sudden eruption of uncertainty, is transformed into a collective inquiry into epistemology, psychology, and language, undertaken with the assent of each participant. This project, the epistle shows, is a civil encounter, conducted with a care for the judgment of each individual and cognizant of their limited capacities. It is not only these five or six friends whom the author engages in inquiry, however. The epistle also invites the reader into his intimate circle by appealing to the reader’s own judgment: “If thou judgest for thy self, I know thou wilt judge candidly; and then I shall not be harmed or offended, whatever be thy Censure” (7). The invitation interpellates the reader in the same modest terms that the author has set out for himself: the Essay “was not meant for those, that had already mastered this Subject, and made a through Acquaintance with their own Understandings; but for my own Information, and the Satisfaction of a few Friends, who acknowledged themselves not to have sufficiently considered it” (7). This is only the first such instance in which the Essay gestures toward the reader as fellow inquirer and ultimately fellow judge. Locke further encourages readers to compare their experience with the claims of the Essay, establishing a mirroring relation between author and reader, as in this early claim about the importance of clear language: “There are few, I believe, who have not observed in themselves or others, That what in one way of proposing was very obscure, another way of expressing it, has made very clear and intelligible” (8).

In presenting himself and the origins of his essay as lacking in eloquence and design, Locke performs here more than the trope of modest and reluctant authorship. He reveals himself as an architect of philosophical and scientific inquiry as collective undertaking not only between fellow scholars but also between reader and writer. The civil conduct inaugurating the inquiry of the Essay signals Locke’s social and philosophical commitments as an early English empirical scientist, under the influence of Robert Boyle and other luminaries mentioned by name in the epistle (9–10). It is this performance, in the epistle and throughout the Essay, that is emblematic of what Richard Kroll in The Material Word calls the culture of Epicurean materialism. Inspired by the ancient materialist philosophy of Epicurus, preserved through the poetry of Lucretius, early moderns reinvented Epicureanism for the needs of the new experimental science. They emphasized probable judgment based in experience over certainty and demonstration. In contrast to their ancient forerunners, they sought to reconcile materialism with Christian belief, all the while remaining cognizant of the ineradicable contingency of the human condition. And unlike their Cartesian and Spinozan contemporaries, rhetoric was understood as essential to cultivating the proper conduct in science, philosophy, and, as we will see, the human understanding itself.

In the pages that follow, I pursue this insight that Locke’s seeming estrangement from rhetoric in fact signals a host of philosophical and rhetorical engagements that shape his account of judgment based in experience. His complex relationship to rhetoric, at once positive and negative, I will argue is fundamental to the critique that he launches against philosophical authorities of his day and to his project of authorizing his distinctive mode of judgment. Situating Locke in relationship to Epicurean materialist culture invites us to give proper attention to the interplay of style and substance in the Essay. In my doing so, his reliance on particular figures and styles, as well as invention, comes into focus. Creative rhetoric, or rhetoric as imaginative language, emerges as essential to the movement from experience to critique in the Essay.

The implications of Locke’s Epicurean materialism are not limited to the philosophical concerns of the Essay, however. For it is in the Two Treatises that we see the centrality of judgment to Locke’s political theory. In fact, the preface to that classic work of political theory, like the epistle to the Essay, signals its appeal to, and defense of, judgment. As Locke again apologizes, this time for the missing middle section of the Two Treatises, he conveys confidence that his interrupted discourse will still provide sufficient evidence that “my Reader may be satisfied.” As he appeals to his readers’ judgment, Locke seeks to justify “to the World” the judgment of the people of England. It is they who “saved the Nation when it was on the very brink of Slavery and Ruine” and it is their consent that makes good King William’s title (Two Treatises, 137). It is, in other words, the judgment of the people in establishing rule and in resistance to overreaching authority that Locke seeks to justify before the further judgment of his readers. The conduct of the author, in the Two Treatises as in the Essay, repeats the cautious gesture of apology for his writing to the reader and then embarks on what he hopes, but does not insist, will culminate in assent to shared judgments. The judgment of the English people in recent political memory and of Locke’s readers together, he seeks to show, is the condition of authorizing, perhaps once and for all, or perhaps not, such new and potentially fragile political conditions.

But where is rhetoric here in his appeal to judgment for politics? In politics, as in philosophy, Locke sets himself up against noise and wrangling, that is, against pernicious political rhetoric: those “Contradictions dressed up in a Popular Stile, and well turned Periods” of Locke’s adversary, Robert Filmer. Should readers doubt his charge, they are invited to conduct their own experiment, modeled after Locke’s own project in the First Treatise, by stripping “Sir Robert’s Discourses of the Flourish of doubtful Expressions, and endeavor to reduce his Words to direct, positive, intelligible Propositions, and then compare them with one another” (137). Should they choose to follow suit, they will quickly find “there was never so much glib Nonsence put together in well sounding English” (137–38) Locke solicits an alliance with his readers around plain speaking and the careful testing of propositions. While he rails here against rhetoric, or at least rhetoric from a particular source, he also shows a concern for words and their effects, especially in politics. As we take in his self-presentation as a plain-speaking philosopher and theorist of politics, we should pause to consider that it is Locke himself who raises the question of style as important for politics. And so this book investigates the varied and creative uses of rhetorical style and figure that he adopts to challenge and rework the persuasive force of claims to political authority. I do so not because it necessarily undermines Locke’s philosophical or political commitments, but because it constitutes further expression of them. In short, we do not fully understand the critical projects of the Essay or the Two Treatises without attention to the practices of style and invention through which they are brought to life for a judging readership.

The culture of Epicurean materialism in late seventeenth-century England presents a vantage point from which to consider the essential and productive contributions of rhetoric to Locke’s philosophy and political theory. To take up this vantage point does not require a denial of other intellectual influences or legacies with which Locke is sometimes affiliated: liberalism, republicanism, empiricism, to name a few. Highlighting the creative reinventions of language and arguments that make up Locke’s two most significant works of philosophy and political theory offers up new and diverse ways that his ideas might come alive to readers today. As I will argue, there are productive new avenues opened up from Locke’s thought through a renewed encounter with these well-known texts and their engagement with the early modern politics of rhetoric, passions, and imagination. Because this encounter challenges the familiar rendering of Locke as forwarding the “man of reason” in philosophy and politics, it speaks in unexpected ways to late modern readers, especially, but not only, to the critical readings of Locke’s thought in feminist and postcolonial thought. As we will see, exploring the essential contributions of rhetoric to Locke’s philosophical and political thought requires more than a general treatment of rhetoric in relation to logic or philosophy, though that can be important. It will call for locating the constitutive and creative work of rhetoric in its particular forms, especially those figures, styles, and stories that Locke uses to subvert and transform his opponents’ arguments and generate new meanings and perspectives. Considered in this way, Locke’s writings offer up an unexpected but robust site from which to explore the indispensable role of rhetoric for critique that proceeds from within the particular language and practices of politics, but is not bound to their reproduction.