>Filmer was a thinker of uncommon power, and even of uncommon originality. It is true that almost everything he said had been said many times before. But he was, at least, original enough to differ from almost every one of his own time in England; and he was original also in that he really tried to answer fundamental questions. As a political thinker he was, in my opinion, far more profound and far more original than was Locke.J. W. Allen, 'Sir Robert Filmer', in F. J. C. Hearnshaw (ed.), The Social and Political Ideas of Some English Thinkers of the Augustan Age (1928)>Filmer's origin of government is exemplified everywhere: Locke's scheme of government has not ever, to the knowledge of any body, been exemplified any where. In every family there is government, in every family there is subjection, and subjection of the most absolute kind: the father, sovereign, the mother and the young, subjects. According to Locke's scheme, men knew nothing at all of governments till they met together to make one. Locke has speculated so deeply, and reasoned so ingeniously, as to have forgot that he was not of age when he came into the world... Under the authority of the father, and his assistant and prime-minister the mother, every human creature is enured to subjection, is trained up into a habit of subjection. But, the habit once formed, nothing is easier than to transfer it from one object to another. Without the previous establishment of domestic government, blood only, and probably a long course of it, could have formed political government.Jeremy Bentham, 'Locke, Rousseau and Filmer's Systems', quoted in J. C. D. Clark, English Society, 1688–1832. Ideology, social structure and political practice during the ancien regime (1985)>Whether the theory of an actual paternal origin of government is a correct phylogenetic or logical inference, or merely a psychological delusion, we shall probably never know; but this much is certain, that it is an assumption natural to us all. Correct perception of a psychological fact underlay Sir Robert Filmer's theory: all authority is to human beings paternal in character, for they are born, not free and independent as some of Filmer's opponents would have it, but subject to parental authority; in the first place, to that of their fathers.Lewis Namier, England in the Age of the American Revolution (1930)
John C. Calhoun ahh nigga
He was disproven by Algernon Sidney
>>24720718Imperium Press published both plus De Maistre, Jean Bodin and Karl Ludwig Von Haller. They are the main right-wing publishing house dedicated to reprinting reactionary authors.
Why are his eyes glowing?
disproved by me having grown up fatherless
>>24720699Seems to me like Bentham especially is very a poor reader of Locke here. Locke literally explains how most early governments grew out of the patriarchal family unit.
>>24720699The analogy Bentham draws between a family and a gourverment remembers me of some psychoanalytical stuff I read years ago.Anyway, to my knowledge, Locke's approaches to gourerment, social contract etc. are considered as a thought experiment with a normativ aim in mind, nowadays.It was not the intention to show how things like gouverments, laws and so on actaully originated.>>24721016>>24722320>Locke literally explains how most early governments grew out of the patriarchal family unit."A Vindication of Natural Society" by Edmund Burke would be your friend. Trust me on this.
>>24722395Have you read Locke yet? The first treatise is all about the Patriarchal argument and large parts from the second treatise also deal with the (likely) historical confusion between legitimacy and patriarchal authority. You are right that Locke's account is normative for sure but he does adress the concerns that a historical perspective brings up as well. Can you tell me some more about that Burke book? From what I've read Burke is more of a polemicist than a theorist.
>>24721016If you're going to read Filmer you should get the blue Cambridge edition. There's some necessary background about the dating of the manuscript and his overall life
>>24722753nah, I'd rather give my money to a right-wing publishing house than to cambridge
