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3 - Locke and Cumberland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2023

Stephen Darwall
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
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Summary

Grotius, Hobbes, and Pufendorf are canonical representatives of the early modern natural law tradition. In this chapter, we consider the tradition’s other two main figures: John Locke and Richard Cumberland. Locke is justly famous, of course, though more for his political philosophy and the more familiar topics in epistemology and metaphysics treated in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding than for his ethics. In his moral philosophy, however, he makes interesting connections between moral accountability and autonomy that provide an interesting point of contrast with Pufendorf. Cumberland is much less well known. However, Cumberland’s contemporaries saw him, along with Grotius and Pufendorf, as one of a “triumvirate of seventeenth-century founders of the ‘modern’ school of natural law” (Haakonssen). Moreover, Cumberland has special relevance to moral philosophy of the present day, since he was among the first to attempt to “locate” moral truths and facts in relation to, and perhaps reduce them to, those that are confirmable by the empirical sciences, a naturalist program that remains vital today. And he was also an important source of philosophical utilitarianism.

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Modern Moral Philosophy
From Grotius to Kant
, pp. 87 - 110
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Locke and Cumberland
  • Stephen Darwall, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book: Modern Moral Philosophy
  • Online publication: 10 June 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139025065.005
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  • Locke and Cumberland
  • Stephen Darwall, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book: Modern Moral Philosophy
  • Online publication: 10 June 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139025065.005
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Locke and Cumberland
  • Stephen Darwall, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book: Modern Moral Philosophy
  • Online publication: 10 June 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781139025065.005
Available formats
×