Resumo:
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.
