John Locke on Imagination and the Passions

John Locke is typically portrayed as having been unreservedly critical of human imagination and passions because the first threatens to pervert and interfere with our grasp of reality, and the second tend to lead to immoral behaviour and to confused and biased thought.

But a study of all Locke's writings and careful attention to the letter, spirit and development of these prominent texts supports the revision of this conventional reading of Locke.

His unpublished manuscripts show him to have had a broad, keen, long-standing interest in both subjects from a variety of perspectives - logical, educational, medical and moral - and to have had a much more subtle and complex understanding of these two subjects than scholars recognize.James G.

Buickerood's book balances what Locke took to be the bona fide contributions of imagination and passions to human understanding and moral conduct with the more familiar critical and advisory remarks, and argues that imagination and the passions of uneasiness and desire are essential to the moral agent's decision to engage in morally acceptable conduct.