John Locke and Rhetoric

Abstract

Abstract Recognizing the centrality of judgment to John Locke’s political thought highlights his ambivalent relationship to rhetoric. While sometimes critical of rhetoric as manipulative and distorting, he is deeply attuned to the power of persuasion over individuals and polities, in positive and negative ways. An important, but neglected, aspect of his Two Treatises of Government is a creative refiguring of the politically influential doctrine of patriarchalism. While challenging the rhetoric of this absolutist doctrine as deceptive, Locke depends on ingenious rhetoric to lead readers to see absolutism in a new light. His political critique depends in indispensable ways on figural language as well as vivid examples and narratives. Fully understanding Locke’s political critique demands that we take stock of the way that his rhetoric pluralizes and decenters the unitary, timeless figure of sovereignty and proprietorship advanced by adherents of the divine right of kings in order to inaugurate alternative political possibilities.