The First Treatise of Government

Sir Robert Filmer (c. 1588-1653) was seventeenth-century England’s most influential advocate for the Divine Right of Kings theory. Filmer’s ideas are the subject of Locke’s First Treatise.

Filmer wrote Patriarcha sometime between the 1620s and early 1640s, during the reign of King Charles I, who attempted to rule as an absolute monarch without the consent of Parliament. It is not known whether Filmer lent any practical support to the king and his followers, though Filmer’s ideas accorded with those of the royalists. Patriarcha was published in 1680, twenty-seven years after Filmer died, so the book had far more influence on the events preceding the Glorious Revolution than it did on the events of Filmer’s own lifetime.

Posthumously or otherwise, Filmer published more than a half-dozen books on political philosophy, all of which support absolute monarchy and oppose the rights of the people to govern themselves. Locke mainly focuses on addressing the arguments found in Patriarcha in First Treatise but also uses excerpts from Observations Concerning the Originall of Government, Etc. (1652) to criticize Filmer’s views.

According to the Old Testament’s Book of Genesis, God created Adam as the first man in the world. From Adam and Eve, the first woman, all human beings are descended.

Adam figures prominently in First Treatise because Filmer argues that God made Adam the world’s first absolute monarch. As a response to Filmer, First Treatise is primarily an argument against the idea of Adam as a divinely-invested king with unlimited authority. Thus, in seven of Locke’s eleven chapters, Adam’s name appears in the chapter title and he is a central figure in both Filmer and Locke’s political interpretations of Scripture.

According to the Old Testament’s Book of Genesis, God made Eve, the first woman in the world, as a companion to Adam. God fashioned Eve from Adam’s rib. She is the first mother, from whom all human beings are descended.

Locke uses the story of Eve, more than any other Biblical figure, as an argument against Filmer’s divine-right monarchy. Scripture, Locke argues, shows that God gave the Earth to Adam and Eve together. After they sinned in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were punished together as well. Furthermore, notwithstanding the divine curse of childbirth and the practical subjection of wives to their husbands in the domestic sphere, Locke argues that God gave Adam no authority over Eve in a political sense. Locke cites all of these Biblical passages, along with the Decalogue’s commandment to honor both father and mother, as proof that God created human beings in natural freedom and equality.

In the Book of Genesis, Noah is descended from Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve. God commands Noah to build an ark that will preserve him, his family, and all species of land-based creatures during the Flood, after which Noah’s three sons will inherit and repopulate the world.

Among Biblical figures, Noah ranks behind only Eve as central to Locke’s argument against an absolute monarchy descended from Adam. After the Flood, Noah divided the world between his three sons equally. Assuming that Noah, as Adam’s last remaining heir, inherited Adam’s absolute monarchical authority, he did not convey that authority to any of his sons. What is more, his dividing of the world equally between all three sons suggests that no son in particular had more dominion or authority than the others. Furthermore, Noah himself divided the world, which means that the divine-right doctrine fails because the post-Flood conveyance of dominion did not come from God.

Algernon Sidney (1623-83) was a political philosopher and a member of Parliament during the English Civil War. A staunch enemy of royal absolutism, Sidney wrote Discourses Concerning Government (1698) as a response to Filmer’s Patriarcha.

First Treatise does not mention Sidney by name, but there are similarities in tone and substance between Locke’s work and Sidney’s Discourses. In addition to their shared ideas, Sidney and Locke also had common political associates, including the Earl of Shaftesbury. While Locke escaped English government persecution by fleeing to the Netherlands, Sidney was arrested and executed on charges of treason in 1683. Discourses was published posthumously.