Locke , Hume & Vico

John Locke's position to from persuasive dicourse alone to expository and didactic discourse seems to make him in many ways one of the founding fathers of composition theory, as he established that knowledge is built upon experiences of "operations of the mind on images already perceived through the senses" (426). His focus on rhetorical proofs based largely on inductive reasoning embraces a logical, clear form of writing and argumentation devoid of imaginative and figurative language elements, which involve appeals to the emotions in making a persuasive argument. His writing approach fits the writing required in legal, political, business and scientific rhealms.

Like Hume's effort to "separate myth from fact" in his use of proofs, both authors write of questions of fact. His arguments focus more in the government questions of commerce, taxation and politics. He also discusses the reliability of sources and a reexamination of historical truths through critical thinking about factual events that "provided decisive evidence for the claim that modern civilization was superior to ancient" (288). His work could be said to have set the ground for the New Historian approach to critiquing narrative works and seemed very very persuasive. I loved his assessment of historians as "the true friends of virtue," and his concern that history was central to contemporary culture (282). We may or may not learn from history but history does influence culture and archetypal human drama that underlies our collective psyche as well.

Vico's concern with both the mind and the soul being involved in the acquisition of knowledge through virtue and wisdom, takes a somewhat different path. In the development of knowledge he seemed to see it as a process, as Maiulari points out that the student "must rediscover his soul himself, and must seek the connection between human nature and the Divine" (1). His was an interdisciplinary approach that embraced not only history but anthropology, in his concern for culture as a "human community" (2). Even more than Hume, his work examined history, culture and mankind. His concern was with goodness and honesty leading one to knowledge and particularly "knowledge of oneself"(4). I have to admire his thoughts on knowledge of the self and the process of acquisition of all knowledge, as an evolving process. As much as Locke may be a founding father of composition theories, Vico is apparently a founding father of education, in his concern with human sciences, the understanding of a person mattering as much as knowledge of natural sciences. His concern not just for knowledge through the scientific processes of critical analysis, mathematics and technology usage, but with wisdom and it is awe inspiring. The study of composition afterall is at the base of this as an aspect in the search for knowledge and betterment of the human community