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John LockeThe First Treatise of Government
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1689A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 3-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary: “Of Adam’s Title to Sovereignty by Creation”
Since Patriarcha offers no evidence that God vested absolute authority in Adam, or that this supposed investiture makes natural freedom impossible, Locke sets aside Patriarcha for the moment and continues to address Filmer’s Observations. In Observations, Filmer claims that God’s act of creation accounts for Adam’s sovereignty over the world. Locke notes that Adam at creation was not yet a father, so he could not have possessed fatherly authority, which Filmer equates with royal authority. Filmer had anticipated this objection, insisting that Adam, though not yet a father at creation and therefore not yet a monarch in fact, was nonetheless already a monarch “in habit” (20). Locke sardonically replies that Filmer must have been an author “in habit” before ever writing a book. Locke tires of this argument, apologizes to the reader for its tediousness, and insists that it was necessary to expose Filmer’s style, for Patriarcha, like Observations, is filled with such “bare assertions, joined to others of the same kind” (23).
Chapter 4 Summary: “Of Adam’s Title to Sovereignty by Donation Gen. i. 28.”
Locke continues to refute Filmer’s Observations, using textual analysis of the Book of Genesis to argue, first, that God did not make Adam a monarch, and second, that God in fact gave dominion over the Earth not to one man but to all of mankind. The Book of Genesis shows that God gave Adam dominion over the world’s inferior creatures but none over Adam’s own species. Furthermore, God made this donation to both Adam and Eve. Likewise, whereas Filmer insists that Noah inherited absolute dominion from Adam, Locke argues that God blessed Noah and his sons, not Noah alone. Locke further argues that Filmer has invented, twisted, or ignored the plain meanings of words in an effort to ground absolute monarchy in Scripture. Locke concludes that Scripture proves the opposite, for in Scripture he finds evidence that God granted the Earth to all mankind in common and that God therefore commands mankind to live under compact, by consent of the governed.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Of Adam’s Title to Sovereignty by the Subjection of Eve”
In this chapter, Locke refutes Filmer’s argument that Eve’s subjection confers absolute monarchical authority upon Adam. First, according to the Book of Genesis, God punished both Eve and Adam for their disobedience, so it is impossible that God could have punished Adam and at the same time vested him with monarchical powers. Second, God’s curse upon woman, the curse of childbirth, likewise confers no such power upon Adam. Finally, even if Eve was made subject to her husband and if the same state of subjection became the lot of all wives, this has only domestic relevance, not political relevance. Otherwise, “there will be as many monarchs as there are husbands” (54).
Chapter 6 Summary: “Of Adam’s Title to Sovereignty by Fatherhood”
This is the fourth of four consecutive chapters in which Locke challenges Filmer’s argument for Adam’s absolute monarchical authority. Filmer claims that fatherhood—the mere act of fathering children—made Adam absolute monarch of the world. Children, therefore, are not born free.
Locke calls Filmer’s fatherhood claim the “foundation” of divine-right monarchy and then proceeds to refute it. He notes, for instance, that fathers neither create nor design their children, and that mothers have at least an equal share in conception. Furthermore, to support his claim for fatherhood as the basis of absolute monarchy, Filmer repeatedly excludes “and mother” from the Biblical commandment to “honor thy father and mother.” Finally, if fatherhood itself confers such power, then all fathers must be absolute monarchs and this would be true of multiple generations simultaneously. Sons would be subservient to their fathers but absolute monarchs over their own children, which presents the logical absurdity of absolute power residing in multiple individuals at the same time. In fact, using textual evidence from both Patriarcha and Observations, Locke identifies fifteen different places in which Filmer himself lodges “absolute natural power, which he calls fatherhood” (84). Locke views Filmer’s fatherhood argument as hostile to free and stable government.
Chapters 3-6 Analysis
Chapters 3-6 reveal several noteworthy aspects of Locke’s approach to Filmer’s evidence. These chapters also introduce key elements of Locke’s argument against fatherhood as a foundation for monarchical power—elements that demonstrate Filmer’s evidentiary errors.
Locke focuses repeatedly on Filmer’s careless use of evidence. Filmer’s case for divine-right monarchy rests on his interpretation of Scripture, so Locke reinterprets the same Scriptural passages Filmer cites, arguing that the Old Testament does not support absolute monarchy at all. Scripture proves, for instance, that Adam was not always a father and thus could not have been made absolute monarch by virtue of creation. Furthermore, God granted dominion not to Adam in private but to all mankind in common. Here and elsewhere, Locke makes a Biblical argument, supported by reason, on behalf of natural freedom. Locke further insists that Filmer is so imprecise with language that anyone hoping to follow the divine-right apologist’s reasoning must look beyond Patriarcha, with this lack of clarity on Filmer’s part explaining why Locke devotes so much space to Observations, which Locke first mentions near the end of Chapter 2.
Locke’s argument against Adam’s absolute fatherly authority also highlights problems with Filmer’s use of evidence. By far the most significant of these problems involves Adam’s relationship to Eve, as well as fathers’ relationships to mothers in general. Whereas Filmer insists that Eve’s subjection to Adam signifies Adam’s absolute monarchical authority, Locke replies that God punished both Adam and Eve for their disobedience in the Garden of Eden, so it would be strange to conclude “that this was the time, wherein God was granting Adam prerogatives and privileges,” for Adam also “had his share in the fall” (50).
Likewise, Locke criticizes Filmer’s repeated distortion of the commandment to “honor thy father and mother” by leaving out the phrase “and mother” in his quotations. Locke attributes Filmer’s dishonest and selective use of quotations to “a degree of warmth” for the divine-right cause that compels Filmer “to warp the sacred rule of the word of God” (68). In levelling the charge of “warp[ing] the [. . .] word of God” against Filmer, Locke suggests that Filmer’s argumentative tactics are not only illogical, but perhaps even heretical, as he is misrepresenting Scripture for his own ends. Since Filmer’s argument is based on the idea of a divinely-ordained political order, Locke’s assertion that Filmer is distorting the word of God helps to undermine the legitimacy of Filmer’s theoretical basis, suggesting that the Divine Right of Kings theory is not divine at all, but wholly man-made.
Locke also points out that equating fatherhood with absolute monarchy is illogical. As Locke emphasizes, creating an equivalence between fatherhood and monarchy creates a new problem with exclusivity—there are many fathers in existence at any given time, but there should only be one absolute monarch in Filmer’s preferred political system. Therefore, it is not immediately clear through which line absolute monarchy passes from generation to generation politically-speaking, especially since all men are said to descend from Adam, the original father. Furthermore, since it is possible for a man to be both a father and a son at the same time once a man has children of his own, Locke also suggests that it is contradictory for a man to be entirely subservient to one person (his father) while acting as an absolute monarch over others (his wife and his own children) simultaneously. By exposing the logical gaps in Filmer’s theory of fatherhood, Locke argues that the paternal equivalence upon which the Divine Right of Kings rests is false.
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