Feminine Figures and the “Fatherhood”: Rhetoric and Reason in Locke’s First Treatise of Government

Abstract

Traditionally neglected, Locke’s First Treatise of Government has taken on new significance with feminist interpretations that recognize the importance of its sustained engagement with patriarchal power. Yet feminist interpreters, both critics and admirers alike, read Locke as a champion of the “man of reason,” a figure seemingly immune to the influences of passions, imagination, and rhetoric. These interpreters wrongly overlook Locke’s extended engagement with the power of rhetoric in the First Treatise, an engagement that troubles the clear opposition of masculine reason and its feminine exclusions. Taking Locke’s rhetoric seriously, I argue, makes the First Treatise newly important for what it shows us about Locke’s practice of political critique. In following the varied and novel effects of Locke’s feminine figures, we find a practice of political critique that depends on a mutually constitutive relation between rhetoric and reason.