Experience and imagination: Approaches to rhetoric by John Locke and David Hume

Abstract

Experience and imagination constitute key issues in the thought of John Locke and David Hume. This paper examines those issues in light of their implications for rhetoric. Attention to the criterion of experience as raised by Locke reveals a significant challenge to the process of rhetorical invention and suggests that rhetoric is limited essentially to the transmission of information. The importance of imagination in oratory as discussed by Hume enlarges the rhetorical perspective to include the function of persuasion and prompts reexamination of the role of passion in communication.