Division of Property and Expansion of Rights of Political Participation: primogeniture and the Rebuttal of Patriarchalism in James Tyrrell and John Locke

The political writings of two English philosophers of the seventeenth century – James Tyrrell and John Locke – devote a considerable part of their thought to the rebuttal of Sir Robert Filmer’s patriarchalism. Both defend, as an alternative to an absolute political power based on the paternal right of the king, a government established by the consent of those who are governed; and both assume the topic of primogeniture as central in their counter-arguments against patriarchalism. The present article intends to focus on the anti-patriarchalism arguments devoted to the second topic. Mainly, it tries to identify the reason that may be behind the choice of Sir Robert’s critics to deny a right of primogeniture, when that right was in force in their country in the seventeenth century. Departing from the assumption that, then, the exercise of political rights relied of the status of proprietary, then the defense of the end of primogeniture, and the consequent possibility of the division of property by the various members of one family, may open the door to an expansion of the rights of political participation.