Abstracts
Abstract
Catharine Trotter Cockburn (1679?-1749) was one of the earliest defenders of John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689). This paper examines her engagement with Stoic ideas in her moral writings: Remarks upon Some Writers in the Controversy concerning the Foundation of Moral Virtue (1743) and Remarks upon the Principles and Reasonings of Dr. Rutherforth’s Essay (1747). My analysis focuses on her principle of living in accordance with nature and her concept of virtue as conformity to the nature, relations, and fitness of things. I argue that a Stoic reading of Cockburn’s moral naturalism enables us to solve some puzzle and tensions in her thought and gain a richer understanding of Cockburn’s ideas concerning the foundations of morality.
Keywords:
- Catharine Trotter Cockburn,
- Stoicism,
- virtue,
- women,
- Thomas Rutherforth,
- human nature,
- moral naturalism
Appendices
Bibliography
- Annas, Julia. The Morality of Happiness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
- Boeker, Ruth. Catharine Trotter Cockburn. In Elements on Women in the History of Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009049160.
- Bolton, Martha Brandt. “Some Aspects of the Philosophical Work of Catharine Trotter.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 31, no. 4 (1993): 565–88. https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.1993.0083.
- Broad, Jacqueline. “Catharine Trotter Cockburn on the Virtue of Atheists.” Intellectual History Review 31, no. 1 (2021): 111–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/17496977.2020.1857899.
- Broad, Jacqueline, ed. Women Philosophers of Eighteenth-Century England: Selected Correspondence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197506981.001.0001.
- Butler, Joseph. Fifteen Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel. London: W. Botham for James and John Knapton, 1729.
- Cicero. On Duties, edited by M. T. Griffin and E. M. Atkins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
- Clarke, Samuel. A Discourse concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, 3rd ed. London: Will. Botham for James Knapton, 1711.
- Cockburn, Catharine Trotter. Philosophical Writings, edited by Patricia Sheridan. Peterborough, ON: Broadview, 2006.
- Cockburn, Catharine Trotter. Remarks Upon Some Writers in the Controversy concerning the Foundation of Moral Virtue and Moral Obligation, in Works, vol. I, 380–455.
- Cockburn, Catharine Trotter. Remarks upon the Principles and Reasonings of Dr Rutherforth’s Essay on the Nature and Obligations of Virtue, in Works, vol. II, 1-107.
- Cockburn, Catharine Trotter. The Works of Mrs. Catharine Cockburn, Theological, Moral, Dramatic, and Poetical, edited by Thomas Birch, 2 vols. London: J. and P. Knapton, 1751.
- De Tommaso, Emilio M. “‘Some Reflections upon the True Grounds of Morality’— Catharine Trotter in Defence of John Locke.” Philosophy Study 7, no. 6 (2017): 326–39. https://doi.org/10.17265/2159-5313/2017.06.007.
- Ferguson, James P. The Philosophy of Samuel Clarke and Its Critics. New York: Vantage Press, 1974.
- Gill, Christopher. Learning to Live Naturally: Stoic Ethics and its Modern Significance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.
- Gordon-Roth, Jessica. “Catharine Trotter Cockburn’s Defence of Locke.” The Monist 98, no. 1 (2015): 64–76. https://doi.org/10.1093/monist/onu008.
- Green, Karen. “A Moral Philosophy of their Own? The Moral and Political Thought of Eighteenth-Century British Women.” The Monist 98, no. 1 (2015): 89–101. https://doi.org/10.1093/monist/onu010.
- Green, Karen. “On Some Footnotes to Catharine Trotter Cockburn’s Defence of the Essay of Human Understanding.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 27, no. 4 (2019): 824-41. https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2018.1509202.
- Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, edited by Peter H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.
- Long, A. A., and D. N. Sedley. The Hellenistic Philosophers, 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, vol. I.
- Long, A. A. “Stoicism in the Philosophical Tradition: Spinoza, Lipsius, Butler.” In Hellenistic and Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Jon Miller and Brad Inwood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
- Lustila, Getty L. “Catharine Trotter Cockburn’s Democratization of Moral Virtue.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 50, no. 1 (2020): 83-97. https://doi.org/10.1017/can.2019.9.
- Nuovo, Victor. Christianity, Antiquity, and Enlightenment: Interpretations of Locke. International Archives of the History of Ideas. Dordrecht: Springer, 2011. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0274-5_11.
- Plutarch. Moralia: Volume XIII, Part II. Translated by Harold Cherniss, Loeb Classical Library 470. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976.
- Rutherforth, Thomas. An Essay on the Nature and Obligations of Virtue. Cambridge: J. Bentham, 1744.
- Sheridan, Patricia. “Damaris Cudworth Masham and Catharine Trotter Cockburn: Agency, Virtue, and Fitness in their Moral Philosophies.” In The Routledge Handbook of Women and Early Modern European Philosophy, edited by Karen Detlefsen and Lisa Shapiro. New York and London: Routledge, 2023.
- Sheridan, Patricia. “Locke and Catharine Trotter Cockburn.” In The Lockean Mind, edited by Jessica Gordon-Roth and Shelley Weinberg. London and New York: Routledge, 2021. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315099675.
- Sheridan, Patricia. “On Catharine Trotter Cockburn’s Metaphysics of Morality.”, In Early Modern Women on Metaphysics, edited by Emily Thomas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316827192.019.
- Sheridan, Patricia. “Reflection, Nature, and Moral Law: The Extent of Catharine Cockburn’s Lockeanism in her Defence of Mr. Locke’s Essay.” Hypatia 22, no. 3 (2007): 133–51. https://doi.org/10.2979/hyp.2007.22.3.133.
- Sheridan, Patricia. “Virtue, Affection, and the Social Good: The Moral Philosophy of Catharine Trotter Cockburn and the Bluestockings.” Philosophy Compass 13, no. 3 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12478.
- Warburton, William. The Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated, On the Principles of a Religious Deist, From the Omission of the Doctrine of a Future State of Reward and Punishment in the Jewish Dispensation, 2 vols, 3rd ed. London: Printed for Fletcher Gyles, 1742.