Robert Filmer e a emergência da filosofia liberal

Abstract

The sustained thesis throughout the text Robert Filmer and the emergence of liberal philosophy was oriented from start to finish by the following problem: if we consider the Two Treatises of Government by John Locke as the first book which lists the basic principles of what we could call liberal philosophy, which were the sources that influenced the English philosopher in the construction of this theory? The explanation of these response is pursued throughout this work and follows of the required decomposition of the proposed problem. First, Locke cites no tradition or authors who exercised direct influence on the composition of his major political works, but makes a great effort to refute an author considered of occasion and little known by his contemporaries, it is Robert Filmer and his démodé patriarchal theory. Secondly, the study of the works of Filmer has provided an extensive and detailed theoretical context whose principles and guidelines often assume the thesis of Locke and anticipate in over fifty years. These two observations, we raise the hypothesis that the secret of the influences of the political philosophy of Locke can be discovered by the theories and authors criticized for Filmer throughout their works. Additionally, to be possible conjecture that the works of Filmer map and try to refute the emergence of certain ideas which later, gathered by the pen of Locke, can be understood as the seeds of liberal philosophy. The pages that follow are intended to demonstrate this hypothesis through the strategic analysis of the political thought of Filmer and authors he attacks, then to investigate the key elements of the political philosophy of John Locke. Through this route, we can demonstrate not only why Locke can be understood with the one responsible for systematizing what we call liberal philosophy, but also establish that the main responsible for the spread of these ideas wrote his works between the end of the century first half of the sixteenth and seventeenth century.