Locke is most famous not for his philosophy of language but for his epistemology and political theory. Having charted his linguistic concerns, this book concludes by considering how they might make us rethink his better-known contributions to philosophy. When his searing deconstruction of words is injected into his views on human understanding and civil society, various elements in these views come under pressure, while others come more sharply into focus. I investigate the ramifications of the following three aspects of his philosophy of language: first, the concealing and constitutive power of words which belies their ideational limits; second, the doubly contractual nature of language; and finally, Locke's sometimes contradictory account of semantic individualism. I argue that these features of language unsettle, or rather further unsettle key ambitions of Locke's philosophy: intellectual humility, toleration, political judgement, trust, community and sociability. The imperfections of words threaten to poison already weak minds and communities.

This is therefore a more speculative chapter. It brings together claims of Locke's that he did not himself connect, particularly when it draws out the consequences of language for society, and thereby throws up some apparent contradictions. It could be objected that such an approach is based on an unrealistic expectation of a unified authorial personality between and even within texts that are written with different purposes, ‘by’ different discourses, and for different audiences. This objection is particularly pressing in the case of Locke, whose oeuvre is notable for its changes of mind.