Robert Filmer

The English political theorist Sir Robert Filmer (died 1653) was influential in the development of English conservative thought. His treatises formed the basis for a royalist or Tory theory of kingship and government.

The eldest son of Sir Edward Filmer, Robert Filmer was born in the last decade of Elizabeth I's reign. After being educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, he retreated to his country estates in Kent, where he devoted himself to scholarly pursuits and to winning the hand of Anne, daughter of the bishop of Ely. At the beginning of Charles I's reign Filmer was knighted, but he appears to have played no major role either in local government or in Parliament.

As the conflict between Crown and Parliament deepened, Filmer took a strong royalist stand. When civil war erupted in 1641, Filmer's response was to write his Patriarcha or the Natural Powers of Kings, which, though not published, was circulated in manuscript form. His writings earned him the active hostility of Charles's parliamentary opponents. His house was looted by a parliamentary force in 1643, and the next year he was temporarily imprisoned in Leeds Castle.

With the end of the first civil war, Filmer regained his freedom and apparently played no part in the second internecine struggle, which broke out soon after. He did, however, return to his writing, and before the execution of Charles I he authored his most thoughtful treatise, The Anarchy of Limited or Mixed Monarchy, in which he argued for the establishment of a "pure" monarchy such as existed in France. Like his earlier work, this was not published at the time.

After the establishment of the Commonwealth, Filmer retreated into deeper obscurity. He continued to write, but as his ideas were anathema to England's new rulers, publication was impossible. After an appeal to the landed classes to restore traditional government in The Free-holders' Grand Inquest, he undertook an analysis of Aristotle's Politics which dealt with the question of "mixt" as opposed to "pure" forms of government, and Filmer argued, as did the French writer Jean Bodin, for the superiority of the latter type.

In 1652 Filmer wrote Observations Concerning the Original of Governments, in which he enunciated a theory of absolutism that not only opposed the more liberal ideas of John Milton and Hugo Grotius, but that also differed with the more (to him) congenial ideas of his other contemporary Thomas Hobbes. Filmer rejected any sort of "social compact" - whether stemming from man's "natural goodness" as Milton would have had it or from his depravity as Hobbes averred - as the original basis for government. He also rejected extreme mechanism and thus alienated many contemporaries. Filmer was, however, a rationalist; before his death in 1653 he wrote two works which cast doubt on the validity of witchcraft, An Advertisement to the Jurymen of England Touching Witches and The Difference between a Hebrew and an English Witch.

After the Restoration a genuine wave of promonarchical sentiment existed, and Filmer's once unpopular ideas were gradually resurrected. In 1679 his treatises (except the Patriarcha) were published. The remaining work appeared in print the following year.

Further Reading

There is no modern study of Filmer, for the scarcity of information about him precludes a full-length treatment. Thomas I. Cook, ed., in his introduction to John Locke's Two Treatises of Government (1947) provides a thorough and sympathetic analysis of Filmer's importance.

(1588-1653) English political thinker who defended the patriarchal thesis against doctrines based on consent. His main work, Patriarcha, was circulated in manuscript among his acquaintances during his lifetime, but only published 1680 as a defence of Tory support for Charles II in the Exclusion Crisis. Filmer is most famous for the fact that Locke attacked his ideas directly in the First Treatise of Government, and provided an alternative position in the Second Treatise, both published in 1689, immediately after the Glorious Revolution. Filmer argued that all legitimate government is ultimately based on God's gift to Adam of absolute sovereignty and private property over the whole world, and their transmission by primogeniture. Fatherhood and political rule are in principle the same, but the relationship is of analogy, not of homology. In effect, however, because knowledge of the true heirs had been lost after the division of the world between the sons of Noah, Filmer was obliged to admit that any government that continued in power had to be accepted as legitimate whatever its origin. The patriarchal theory was bypassed in favour of a general assertion of divine authorization. Although he took the same view of the nature of sovereignty as Hobbes and Bodin, he rejected completely Hobbes's derivation of it from the supposed original freedom of individuals by means of the social contract. Filmer's strongest argument was that in recognizing the continuation of legitimate rule over later generations without further consent, and in allowing private property established by fathers to be passed on to their sons, such theorists had in effect admitted his patriarchal theory.

— Carl Slevin

Filmer, Robert (1588-1653) Filmer is mainly remembered as the target of the Two Treatises of Government by Locke. He was a country gentleman of Kent, whose Patriarcha (1630) rests political obligation to the state on its divinely ordained authority, descending to current royalty from the patriarchal sovereignty that Adam was given over his family. In spite of Locke's description of the doctrine as ‘glib nonsense’, it formed an important object of concern to him.

This article is missing citations or needs footnotes. Please help add inline citations to guard against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies. (December 2007)

Robert Filmer (1588-1653)

Sir Robert Filmer (1588 – 26 May 1653) was an English political theorist. His best known work, Patriarcha, published in 1680, was a defense of the divine right of kings to rule. Its publication was an impetus for John Locke to write the first of his famous Two Treatises of Government and he often argues against him in his second.

Contents 1 Life 2 Patriarcha and other works 3 Views 4 Reception 5 Family 6 References 7 Notes 8 External links

Life

The son of Sir Edward Filmer of East Sutton in Kent, he studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he matriculated in 1604.^[1] Knighted by Charles I at the beginning of his reign, he was an ardent supporter of the king's cause, and his house is said to have been plundered by the parliamentarians ten times. He was imprisoned in Leeds Castle in 1643.

He and his father died in the same city, and he is buried in the church there, surrounded by his descendants to the tenth generation, who were made baronets in his honour.

Patriarcha and other works

Patriarcha, London, 1680

Filmer was already a middle-aged man when the controversy between the king and the Commons roused him into literary activity. His writings afford examples of the doctrines held by the extreme section of the Divine Right party.

The most complete expression of Filmer's thought is given in Patriarcha, or the Natural Power of Kings, which was published posthumously in 1680. Scholars have proposed dates in the 1630s and 1640s for the composition of Patriarcha.^[2] According to Christopher Hill, "The whole argument of ... Patriarcha, and of his works published earlier in the 1640s and 1650s, is based on Old Testament history from Genesis onwards".^[3]

His position was enunciated by the works which he published during his lifetime. Of the Blasphemie against the Holy Ghost from 1646 or 1647 was against Calvinists, starting from John Calvin's doctrine on blasphemy.^[4] The Freeholders Grand Inquest (1648) concerned English constitutional history; Filmer's early published works did not receive much attention, while Patriarcha circulated only in manuscript.^[5] Anarchy of a Limited and Mixed Monarchy (1648) was an attack on a treatise about monarchy by Philip Hunton. Hunton had maintained that the king's prerogative is not superior to the authority of the houses of parliament.

His Observations concerning the Original of Government upon Mr Hobbes's Leviathan, Mr Milton against Salmasius, and H. Grotius' De jure belli ac pacis appeared in 1652. As its title suggests, it attacks several political classics, the De jure belli ac pacis of Grotius, the Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes, and the Defensio pro Populo Anglicano of John Milton. The pamphlet entitled The Power of Kings, and in particular, of the King of England (written 1648) was first published in 1680.

Views

Filmer's theory is founded upon the statement that the government of a family by the father is the true origin and model of all government. In the beginning God gave authority to Adam, who had complete control over his descendants, even over life and death itself. From Adam this authority was inherited by Noah; here, Filmer most likely quotes the legend of Noah, who sailed up the Mediterranean and allocated the three continents of the Old World to the rule of his three sons. From Shem, Ham and Japheth the patriarchs inherited the absolute power which they exercised over their families and servants; and it is from these patriarchs that all kings and governors (whether a single monarch or a governing assembly) derive their authority, which is therefore absolute, and founded upon divine right.

The difficulty inherent in judging the validity of claims to power by men who claim to be acting upon the 'secret' will of God was disregarded by Filmer, who held it in no way altered the nature of such power, based on the natural right of a supreme father to hold sway. The king is perfectly free from all human control. He cannot be bound by the acts of his predecessors, for which he is not responsible; nor by his own, for it is impossible that a man should give a law to himself - a law must be imposed by another upon the person bound by it.

With regard to the English constitution, he asserted, in his Freeholders Grand Inquest touching our Sovereign Lord the King and his Parliament (1648), that the Lords give counsel only to the king, that the Commons are to perform and consent only to the ordinances of parliament, and that the king alone is the maker of laws which derive their power purely from his will. Filmer considered it monstrous that the people should judge or depose their king, for they would then become judges in their own cause.

Filmer was a severe critic of democracy. In his opinion, democracy of ancient Athens was in fact a "justice-trading system". Athenians never knew real justice, only the will of the mob. Ancient Rome was, according to Filmer, ruled fairly only after the Empire was established.

Reception

Filmer's theory, owing to a timely posthumous publication, obtained a wide recognition. Nine years after the publication of Patriarcha, at the time of the Revolution which banished the Stuarts from the throne, John Locke singled out Filmer among the advocates of Divine Right. and attacked him expressly in the first part of the Two Treatises of Government. The first Treatise goes into all his arguments seriatim, and especially pointing out that even if the first principles of his argument are to be taken for granted, the rights of the eldest born have been so often cast aside that modern kings can claim no such inheritance of authority, as Filmer asserts.

Family

His first son Sir Edward Filmer was Gentleman of the Privy Chamber .He died in 1668 and the East Sutton estate passed to his brother Robert who was created a Baronet in 1674 in honour of their father's loyalty to the Crown. See Filmer Baronets.

References

• This article incorporates text from the article "Sir Robert Filmer" in the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

Notes

1. ^ Robert Filmer in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
2. ^ John M. Wallace, The Date of Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha, The Historical Journal, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Mar., 1980), pp. 155-165.
3. ^ Christopher Hill, The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution (1993), p. 20.
4. ^ Ian Bostridge, Witchcraft and Its Transformations, C.1650-c.1750 (1997), p. 14.
5. ^ Kim Ian Parker, The Biblical Politics of John Locke (2004), pp. 80-1.

External links

• R. Filmer Patriarcha

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)