society somewhere. The Two Treatises also takes this view. In an earlier discussion of
parental duties to children, Locke denounces Filmer for arguing that because some
societies have sometimes allowed fathers absolute power of life and death over their
children, God therefore commands such absolute paternal authority:
But if the example of what hath been done be the rule of what ought to be,
history would have furnished our author with instances of this absolute fatherly
power in its height and perfection, and he might have showed us in Peru people
that begot children on purpose to fatten and eat them [Locke here repeats a claim
about native cannibalism from the travel accounts of Garcilasso de la Vega] …
.He that will impartially survey the nations of the world…will have but little
reverence for the practices which are in use and credit amongst men. (E I.57-58;
emphasis added)
Locke treats social codes allowing fathers to kill their children as anomalous exceptions
to the observable general rule that parents believe they have a duty to nurture their
children.
These two passages seem contradictory. In one place Locke says of parents having a
duty to nurture their children that “the practice is universal,” and can thus be taken as a
sign of God’s moral design. In another place he agrees with Filmer that in fact there have
been societies that allowed parents to kill their children rather than care for them, even
going further and alleging the existence of worse practices than those Filmer cited, and
responds that we should “have but little reverence for the practices which are in use and
credit amongst men.” If you are one of those people who is perfectly comfortable with
the idea that a man of Locke’s genius could write works that are chock full of flagrant
contradictions and obvious confusions of thought – well then, here’s another example for
your collection. You are in good company; some very respectable Locke scholars have
been equally comfortable with this low view of the quality of Locke’s work.
But if,
when confronted with what appears to be such monumental stupidity in the work of a
19
Convention