Authority Figures: Rhetoric and Experience in John Locke's Political Thought

Torrey Shanks. Authority Figures: Rhetoric and Experience in John Locke's Political Thought. University Park: Pennsylvania State, 2014. Pp. xvi + 152. $69.95; $32.95 (paper).

With its punning title, Authority Figures packs a lot into a little space. With a text of 135 pages, including notes, this is a concise study, but its argument covers a great deal of ground: the thrust of the book is that Locke, as an empiricist philosopher, insists on the senses as the source of knowledge and by doing so undermines traditional claims to authority (for example, those made by innatists). At the same time, the process of making judgments is not straightforward because experience itself is rich but "unruly," requiring probable reasoning, and also because passions, interests, the will, and Locke's account of selfhood all complicate the human predicament. Amid this scenario, the question of language emerges and, with it, rhetoric. Locke, well known for his objections to figurative language, nonetheless requires "the materializing force of language to bear vivid witness to the human understanding and theorize its critical capacities," and thus he appropriates "key rhetorical elements" in his account. These "material words" are needed to establish alternative ways of "thinking and speaking that critically engage philosophical, social and political authority," which is where the title's pun comes into play.

Ms. Shanks writes with panache and authority, giving the discussion considerable vitality. The challenge of the topic is considerable: the focus of the book is on Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Two Treatises ofGovernment, which together require attention to a considerable number of positions, densely argued by Locke, here confined into the space of a rather modest monograph. After a good deal of scene setting and assertions, we finally arrive at a substantial exposition of...