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.
There are a number of people and institutions that have helped this book come into existence and deserve thanks. The project advanced at key moments thanks to the support of the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy of the University at Albany, the University of British Columbia, and Northwestern University. Northwestern offered me a small and richly interdisciplinary environment that has indelibly shaped my intellectual interests, especially in the Paris Program in Critical Theory led by Samuel Weber. It was my great fortune to present my work to the political theory community at UBC, and especially to have Barbara Arneil as a colleague. At SUNY Albany, I am grateful to David Rousseau and Julie Novkov for supporting research and family leave as well as organizing a manuscript workshop. The comments that I received in this workshop were both generous and useful in bringing this project to completion. Thank you to Douglas Casson, James Farr, Don Herzog, and Melissa Schwartzberg for this.
Over the life of this project, I have enjoyed the encouragement of close friends, both fellow academics and bemused onlookers. Thanks to Jennifer O’Donnell Erbs, Geneviève Rousselière, Zakir Paul, Jessica Keating, Jenny Peterson, Lisa Fuller, Sudarat Musikawong, Stephanie Olson, and Ron Schmidt. Conversations with and welcome criticism from a number of political theorists have enriched this project: Dean Mathiowetz, James Martel, Vicki Hsueh, Jimmy Klausen, Patchen Markell, Michaele Ferguson, Davide Panagia, Mary Dietz, Kennan Ferguson, Ivan Ascher, Karen Zivi, Jill Locke, Cristina Beltrán, Asma Abbas, Andrew Dilts, Robyn Marasco, Libby Anker, Matt Scherer, Cricket Keating, Brian Danoff, Laura Janara, Bruce Baum, and Mark Warren, in addition to anonymous reviewers for Political Theory and Penn State University Press.