Abstract

The aim of this article is to look into John Locke's critical analysis, in "Two Treatises of Government", of the patriarchalistic, paternalistic and religious conception of the political power of the King, as outlined by Robert Filmer in "Patriarcha". Locke's analysis can be read as aiming to break the obligations of gratitude upon which this conception laid, through a reconceptualization of the filial obligation and an obliteration of the bounds of gratitude from the political sphere by separating the latter from the private sphere.