Sir Robert Filmer

Sir Robert Filmer appears in the book not as an active character in a narrated life, but as the author of Patriarcha and the representative of a theory Rousseau considers dangerous: that political authority can be understood through the authority of a father over a family. Rousseau rejects this analogy because public government and private household rule have different foundations and obligations; confusing them, he argues, distorts the basic laws of society.

Identity and Political Argument

Filmer is named in connection with Patriarcha, a work that seeks to establish a patriarchal account of political authority. Rousseau calls this system detestable and treats it as a longstanding error, rather than a merely contemporary dispute. Aristotle, he notes, had already found it necessary to argue against the same confusion in the first book of Politics. Filmer’s importance here is therefore principally doctrinal: his work gives a prominent form to the claim that political rule follows the model of paternal authority.

Rousseau’s Rebuttal

The argument against Filmer turns on the difference between a household and a state. A father and a chief magistrate may both be obliged to seek the happiness of those under their care, but their rights, duties, and means of acting are fundamentally distinct. Natural affection may guide a father; for a magistrate, Rousseau says, following private inclination can instead corrupt public judgment and endanger both ruler and state. Public reason, expressed as law, must govern political conduct.

Rousseau accordingly distinguishes public economy, which he identifies with government, from private economy. The state and the family share an obligation to promote the well-being of those within them, but that resemblance does not make their rules interchangeable. The familial analogy cannot establish political legitimacy: a state is not simply a household enlarged, and a magistrate’s authority cannot be derived from paternal relations.

Place in Rousseau’s Theory of Legitimacy

The dispute belongs to a broader question about what can count as a ground for political right. Rousseau distinguishes inquiry into the actual institutions and laws of existing states from the search for principles that can make any society legitimate. Historical facts may help describe what happens, but they cannot by themselves generate a right. The decisive issue is normative: whether political obligation can be justified rather than merely imposed.

That distinction also underlies Rousseau’s criticism of force as a source of right. If strength alone conferred authority, any stronger power could inherit the supposed right, and obligation would disappear as soon as obedience could safely be refused. Filmer’s patriarchal theory is situated within Rousseau’s larger effort to replace such unsupported claims of authority with a legitimate basis for social order. The problem the book sets itself is how people can enter political association while remaining free, not how existing power can make itself appear natural.