Liberty, Equality, Fraternity

[Dave Monroe]

>From Norman O. Brown, Love's Body (Berkeley: U of
California P, 1968 [New York: Random House, 1966]),
Ch. 1, "Liberty," pp. 3-31 ...

"Freud's myth of the rebellion of the sons against the
father in the primal, prehistoric horde is not a
historical explanation of origins, but a
supra-historical archetype; eternally recurrent; a
myth; an old, old story.

   "Freud seems to project into prehistoric times the
constitutional crisis of seventeenth-century England. 
The primal father is absolute monarch of the horde;
the females are his property.  The sons form a
conspiracy to overthrow the despot, and in the end
substitute a social contract with equal rights for
all.  This anachronistic history directs us to look
for the recurrence of the archetype in the seventeenth
century.
Cf. Freud, Moses and Monotheism, 130-133, 188.

   "In the First Treatise of Civil Governement, Locke
attacks Sir Robert Filmer's defense of absolute
monarchy, entitled Patriarcha.  Sir Robert Filmer,
like Freud, identifies patriarchy and monarchy,
political and paternal power.  Filmer, like Freud,
derives constitutional structure from a primal or
prehistoric mythical family, from the paternal powers
of our father Adam.  Like Freud, Filmer attributes to
the primal father unlimited power over his sons,
including the power and propensity to castrate them.

   "Locke contradicts Filmer's primal fatherhood--a
'strange kind of domineering phantom, called "the
fatherhood"' he says, a 'gigantic form'--with the
postulate of all men in the primal state of nature
free and equal.  To vindicate liberty is to vindicate
the children, liberi, the sons, against paternal
despotism.  Locke kills Filmer's fatherhood, lays that
phantom.  The battle of books reenacts Freud's primal
crime.
Locke, Two Treatises of Civil Government, 6, 7.

   "Liberty means equality among the brothers (sons). 
Locke rejects Filmer's rule of primogeniture, which
transmits the full power of father Adam to one of his
sons, and makes one brother the father of his
brethren.... Against Filmer's fatherhood Locke
champions liberty, equality, fraternity.  Locke has
father Adam's property divided equally among all his
sons.  Liberty, equality: it is all a dispute over the
inheritnace of the paternal estate.
Locke, Two Treatises of Civil Government, 92.

   "But the quality of brotherhood is a leveling in
the presence of a father; it is a way of dividing what
belongs to a father--'the father's equal love.' 
Locke's equality in the state of nature belongs to men
as sons of God.  Liberty means sonship.  To make all
men free and equal in the state of nature, Locke
allows no man the status of father, and makes all men
sons of the Heavenly Father.  The phantom of
fatherhood is bansihed from the earth, and elevated to
the skies....   Procreative power is transferred from
the earthly to the heavenly father.  The parents are
only guardians of the children they had begotten .... 
Parents are only guardians of their children: fathers
are not even fathers of their children.  Filmer's sons
were subject to castration; Locke castrates the
earthly fathers.  Thus the defense of sonship turns
into the discovery of another afther, the 'real'
father; and the real question in politics is Jesus'
question, Who is my father?
Locke, Two Treatises of Civil Government, 119-120,
143, 37; cf. 147.
Cf. Freud, Group Psychology, 89, 95.

   "Here is the inner contradiction in liberty,
equality, and fraternity.  Sonship and brotherhood are
espoused against fatherhood: but without a father
there can be no sons and brothers.  Locke's sons, like
Freud's, cannot free themselves from father
psychology, and are crucified by the contradictory
commans issuingv from the Freudian super-ego, which
says both 'thou shalt be like the father,' and 'thou
shalt not be like the father,' that is, many things
are his prerogative.  Fraternal organization in the
body politic corresponds to ego-organization in the
body physical.  As fratrna organization assumes a
father, ego-organization covertly assumes a super-ego.
Cf. Freud, The Ego and the Id, 44.

   "The dipute between fathers and sons is over
property.  In Filmer's patriarchal system paternal
power is a property which is inherited and which
consists in having property in one's own children.  To
be the subject of a king is the same as to be the son
of a father; and to be a son is to be the same as a
slave.  But libertas is what distinguishes the sons
(liberi) in the family from the slaves.  Locke
vindicates the rights of the sons, giving to each one
the fundamental right of property in his own person,
i.e., the right not to be a slave.  At the root,
liberty and personal property are identical, and
identical also with sonship.  But at the same
time--the same inner contradiction--property
essentially belongs to a father.  It finall turns out
that the property holders Locke undertook to defend
hold nothing; it all belongs to the Heavenly
Father....  It is God's ownership of us--who are
therefore his slaves--which excludes slavery as a
relation between men.
Locke, Two Treatises of Civil Government, 28.

   "Sonship, or brotherhood, freed from its secret
bondage to the father principle--sons after the ordr
of Melchizedek, without father, without mother,
without genealogy, having neither beginning of days
nor end of life, but made like unto the Son of
God--would be free from the principle of private
property.  And in the first form of Christianity the
brethren had all things in common.  Sons without
fathers share everything and own nothing....
Hebrews VII, 3; Acts II, 44.  Locke, Two Treatises of
Civil Government, 138; cf. 136.

   "As in Locke and Filmer, so in Plato and Aristotle
..." (pp. 3-7)

To be continued.  For Freud and Locke, see ...

Freud, Sigmund.  The Ego and the Id.  Trans.
   J. Riviere.  London, 1927.

__________.  Group Psychology and an Analysis of
   the Ego.  Trans. J. Strachey.  London, 1922.

__________.  Moses and Monotheism.  London, 1951.

Locke, John.  Two Treatises of Civil Government.
   London and New York: Everyman, n.d. [1689-90].

http://history.hanover.edu/early/locke/j-l2-001.htm

And on "the constitutional crisis of
seventeenth-century England," recall ...

"... Oedipa found herself after five minutes sucked
utterly into the landscape of evil Richard Wharfinger
had fashioned for his 17th-century audiences, so
preapocalyptic, death-wishful, sensually fatigued,
unprepared, a little poignantly, for that abyss of
civil war that had been waiting, cold and deep, only a
few years ahead of them." (Lot 49, Ch. 3, p. 65)

Again, to be continued ...

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