As Locke’s “Whiggish” legacy wanes in the USA, Filmer’s “Patriarchal” inheritance rises.

John Locke is remembered mostly for three major works – all published in 1689, following the aftermath of England’s “Glorious Revolution”: A Letter Concerning Toleration, Two Treatises of Government (dated to 1690), and An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (dated to 1690).  The reading public knows Locke as an early Enlightenment figure - and sometimes physician - whose political writings influenced Voltaire and other French philosophes, as well as the American framers of the U.S. Constitution.  For Locke, legitimate government must be based on the “consent of the people,” a revolutionary concept in 17^th century England, but not unique to Locke’s thinking alone.

But, today, in an era of widespread political lurching to the far Right, where there is an ongoing preoccupation with anti-Enlightenment thinking and illiberal anti-constitutionalism, Locke’s legacy is being threatened.  As the U.S.A. becomes less “Whiggish”, the Right is turning away from Locke and towards his chief nemesis in his own time, namely Sir Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha, published in 1680. Filmer’s ideas may have been fairly commonplace in the seventeenth century, but he was first to systematize them.  Filmer believed essentially: “that the first kings were fathers of families.”[1]  What is important about this particular theory of patriarchalism is that Filmer drew heavily from the book of Genesis in order to make his arguments appear convincing.[2]  Hence, all families are political bodies sharing an Adamic father.[3]  A king’s sovereign power, therefore, derives from God, and all subjects are dependent on the royal will.[4]

These days we see the rise of patriarchalism across the globe, for example, in the recent elections in India, where prime minister Modi declared himself sent from God.  Thankfully, the Indian electorate has rebuffed him with a minority government.  But we also saw it earlier in Trump: he, too, considers himself God-sent.  In his humbler moments, under duress from the hush-money trial, Trump has compared himself to Mother Teresa.  Most recently, Marjorie Taylor Greene has likened the former president to Jesus. (Perhaps she is angling for the Vice-Presidential candidacy). All this is code for a return to Genesis and to the patriarchalism of so-called Divine Rule, which Locke worked to overthrow in his writings (and political activities).  It should also be noted that Locke’s First Treatise in his Two Treatises of Government was specifically devoted to his criticisms of Filmer.[5]

However, our retro-political climate is aspiring to reverse achievements that had culminated at the end of England’s seventeenth century.  At the time, Locke was attacking Filmer.  Today, Filmer is attacking Locke.  Moreover, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and 1689 was a peaceful event: the throne was offered to Mary, the Protestant daughter of the excluded Catholic King James II, and to her husband, William of Orange.[6]  By comparison, today’s right-wing activists appear to be seeking out disruption and, of course, violence, as witnessed in the attack on Congress on January 6. 2021. 

Another dimension of Filmer needs to be explored: the ante-bellum American South was very fond of Filmer’s Patriarcha because it could be used to justify slavery.[7]  Masters need servants, and by implication - slaves.  Clearly, this text from 1680 has serious ramifications for race relations in today’s America.

There is even more historical context that is worthy of a comparison.  Filmer was born in 1688, the year of the infamous Spanish Armada.  So, the sense of an external threat was strong in Filmer, as it was in Thomas Hobbes, also born in 1688!!  The two early intellectual figureheads in today’s counter-revolutionary politics, Filmer’s patriarchalism and Hobbes’s absolutism, shared a common perception of peril.  The unifying feature of this sense of danger beginning in 1588 can be further compared to the shocking impact of September 11, 2001 on the American psyche, when the Twin Towers at the World Trade Centre came crashing down in flames and cinders in New York City.  We should thus be careful not to minimize the effect of this assault on the American imagination.

Of course, 9/11 does not explain Trumpian politics in its entirety.  People tend to emulate the nonsense they see; it’s now available everywhere, on any medium, and so today we endure countless Trump look-alikes. Perhaps it is also our algorithmic lives that increases our dependence on others – or Artificial Intelligence - to do the thinking for us.  And, there is always the old formula (and song): “Dance with the one who brung you” which means even some Supreme Court justices of the USA are now inclined to dabble in elementary notions of “Divine Rule”.  For these unread jurists, here from another one of Locke's classic texts is a bit of a reminder:

There are some that tell us that a monarchy is jure divino.  I will not now dispute this opinion but only mind the assertion of it, that if they mean by this (as certainly they must), that the sole supreme arbitrary power and disposal of all things is and ought to be done by divine right in a single person, ‘tis to be suspected they have forgot what country they were born in, under what laws they live and certainly cannot but be obliged to declare Magna Charta to be downright heresy.[8]

 

 

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[1] Filmer, Patriarcha and Other Writings, ed., Johann P. Sommerville (Cambridge: Cambridge: University Press, 2004), p. 1.

[2] Ibid., p. xvii.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., p. xix.

[5] Ibid., p. xxiv.

[6] For context, see the excellent Introduction in John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed., Kerry Walters (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press), p. 24.

[7] Based on my readings on Filmer as an undergraduate student at Trent University, many years ago.

[8] John Locke, “An Essay Concerning Toleration” in A Letter Concerning Toleration and Other Writings, ed., Mark Goldie (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2010), p. 106.  Locke’s Essay Concerning Toleration was written in 1667.