Articles & Papers
Filmer Answers Locke
Five objections from Locke’s First Treatise (1689) against Filmer’s Patriarcha, and the strongest patriarchal reply to each. The aim is to test which premises Locke proves and which he assumes.
Download the full PDF One-page summary (PDF)Being made first gave Adam no sovereignty. A monarch with no subjects is a monarch of nothing.
The title rests on God’s appointment, not Adam’s priority.
Filmer’s claim is that Adam was monarch by the appointment of God, so the question is who assigned the office, not who arrived first. Offices are conferred before they are exercised all the time — an heir apparent holds a real title before he has a single subject. Locke’s ridicule of a king without subjects attacks the timing of the grant, not the grant.
The dominion of Genesis 1:28 was given to “them,” mankind in common, and covers the beasts, not men.
A grant to the household runs through its head.
“Them” names the beneficiaries, not the governor. Every family holds goods in common and still has one head who administers them. Locke’s reading shows mankind shares the use of the earth. It does not show mankind shares jurisdiction over itself, and that second claim is the one he needs.
“He shall rule over thee” is a curse on the woman and a prediction, not a charter of political power, spoken while Adam himself was being punished.
Equal in nature does not mean equal in office.
A sentence being penal does not stop it from being ordinance. The ground was cursed in the same breath (3:17) and that curse still governs the field. Scripture pairs equal creaturehood with unequal office throughout: husband and wife, parent and child, magistrate and subject, and the New Testament grounds the household order in creation itself (1 Cor. 11:8–9; 1 Tim. 2:13). Proving Eve’s equal humanity leaves her jurisdiction untouched.
God gives life, not the father. The mother shares in generation, and the Fifth Commandment says “father and mother,” which Filmer quotes only in part.
Shared causation is not shared sovereignty.
Filmer’s own answer is that God gave rule to the man as the principal agent in generation. Even without that, two contributors to one effect need not hold one office, and the command to honor both parents assigns duties toward both, not identical authority to both. “God gives life” also proves too much — it would dissolve parental authority altogether, which Locke himself defends elsewhere.
Even granting Adam’s sovereignty, no one can identify his heir, and a title no one can locate binds no one to obey anyone.
The argument concerns the kind of power, not the pedigree of its holder.
Filmer never claimed every king could trace his line — only that kings “are, or are to be reputed” the heirs of the first fathers. His thesis is that supreme power is paternal in character, single, natural, and not derived from a grant of the people. Locke’s objection defeats a genealogical theory. It does not establish consent, since an untraceable title leaves the origin of authority an open question rather than answering it for Locke.
Locke’s Second Treatise (§4) holds men equal “without subordination or subjection” unless God “by any manifest declaration of his will” sets one above another. Locke writes the exception into his own premise, and Filmer’s entire case is that Genesis is that declaration. The dispute is exegetical before it’s political — Locke has to show Scripture contains no such appointment. Assuming natural equality and asking Filmer to disprove it puts the burden in the wrong place.
Equal in what respect? Before God, in moral accountability, in natural rights, in jurisdiction over others — four different claims, and Locke needs the last one.
Is political authority carried in the relations we are born into, or does every man begin with equal jurisdiction until he consents to be governed?
Which of the five replies is weakest, and what would Locke say back?
SOURCES · Sir Robert Filmer, Patriarcha (pub. 1680) and Observations Concerning the Original of Government · John Locke, Two Treatises of Government (1689) · Scripture quoted from the KJV