## 1. Life



Cockburn was born in London on August 16,
 1679.[1]
 As a child, she taught herself to write, became proficient in French,
and studied Latin grammar and logic. In addition to her studies, she
devoted time to writing plays. In 1695, Cockburn's first play
*Agnes de Castro* was staged, and was published the following
year. In 1698, her second play, *Fatal Friendship*, was staged
and printed. Both plays were very well received and she enjoyed some
celebrity in theatrical circles. Cockburn wrote three more plays over
the next three years.



While Catharine Trotter was establishing her reputation as a
playwright, she was also studying Locke's work, *An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding*. Trotter was so deeply impressed
with his ideas that she felt obliged to take up her pen in defense of
Locke. Cockburn's first philosophical work, published in 1702
and entitled *The Defence of Mr. Locke's Essay of Human
Understanding*, was a response to a series of three
anonymously-penned pamphlets critical of Locke's *Essay*.
Locke himself was so impressed with the work, he presented Cockburn
with a substantial gift of money and books in appreciation.



In 1739, Cockburn wrote her *Remarks upon some Writers in the
Controversy concerning the Foundation of moral Duty and moral
Obligation*. It was finally published, anonymously, in 1743 in the
English literary journal *The History of the Works of the
Learned*. *Remarks upon some Writers* considers primarily
the work of philosopher Samuel Clarke and various critics of his moral
theory. In 1747, she published a critique of the moral philosophy of
Dr. Thomas Rutherforth, entitled *Remarks upon the Principles and
Reasonings of Dr. Rutherforth's Essay on the Nature and
Obligation of Virtue*, whose work was strongly critical of Samuel
Clarke's moral theory. In this work, Cockburn again defends a
Clarkean view of morality.



Cockburn was also deeply interested in religious issues and she wrote
and published a series of theological works. These included a work, in
the form of two letters, that examined Catholic and Protestant
doctrine entitled *A Discourse concerning a Guide in
Controversies*. This work was first published in 1707. Another
work, first published in 1726, entitled *A Letter to Dr. Holdsworth
Occasioned by his Sermon*, was mainly a defense of Locke's
orthodoxy against charges of heresy. She wrote and published a second
*Vindication* of Locke's orthodoxy against Holdsworth, in
two parts.This work was not published until it was included in
Cockburn's collected works; Cockburn's work had attracted
sufficient attention that Thomas Birch approached her with the idea of
a volume of her collected works, including her correspondence. She
aided in the editing of this work, but did not live to see its
publication in 1751. She died in May of 1749.


## 2. Philosophy



Although primarily concerned with moral issues, Cockburn philosophical
writings (which are taken here to include *The Defence of Mr.
Locke's Essay of Human Understanding* (hereafter referred to
as the *Defence*), *Remarks upon some Writers* and
*Remarks upon the Principles and Reasonings of Dr.
Rutherforth's* Essay) address a range of philosophical
issues. In the *Defence*, she addresses a series of issues
surrounding Locke's empiricism, which include not only moral
knowledge, but also the knowledge humans can have of God's
veracity and of the immortality of the human soul. There is also a
broad range of topics addressed in her work *Remarks upon some
Writers*, in which Cockburn begins by addressing several
philosophical issues - necessity, the infinitude of space, and
the nature and existence of spirits with regard to the notion of
substance. The latter discussion revolves generally around
epistemological concerns regarding the knowledge of real essences and
the nature of substance, in which she argues that spirits must have
extension of a sort in order to be proper substances. She makes this
argument by appeal to a broadly Lockean view regarding substance.



However, it is her moral theory that is most prominently emphasized
throughout her works. Cockburn was mainly concerned with grappling
with the defects and strengths of some of the predominating issues in
moral theory at this time. Cockburn's own position is an amalgam
of three dominant strains of eighteenth-century morality: moral
rationalism, moral fitness theory and moral sense theory. Moral
rationalism is, broadly speaking, the view that morality is the result
of a rational process, whereby the mind reasons about moral ideas and
creates moral rules (although many thinkers, like Cockburn, argued
that the mind, by this process, is actually in some way discovering
eternal moral rules). Moral fitness theory is a rationalist theory
that includes the notion that the human mind is able to grasp the
various moral relations that result from the essential natures of
things in the universe; e.g., the nature of humans and God creates a
relation that necessitates the allegiance of humans to their superior
(this view was made most famous by Samuel Clarke). Moral sense theory
is the view that humans possess a special sensory ability that can
determine, pre-rationally, what is good or evil (This view was made
most famous by Shaftesbury and Hutcheson). However, for many
theorists, like Cockburn, this sensory information is not definitive
- but is seen as an aid to moralizing that can, and should, be
corrected by reason.



Much of the groundwork for her view is laid in the *Defence*.
This was written as a response to the *Remarks Upon an Essay
Concerning Humane Understanding*, a series of three pamphlets
published between 1697 and 1699 that aimed to expose the deficiencies
of Locke's empiricism. The *Remarks* were published
anonymously and their authorship has been the source of some
controversy. Long thought to have been written by Thomas Burnet, this
attribution has recently been challenged (see Walmsley, *et al*.,
2016); the author shall be referred to here as the Remarker. The
*Remarks* raised doubts concerning the tenability of
Locke's epistemology as a foundation for, among other things,
moral knowledge. In the *Essay* and other works, Locke had
suggested that morality could be known by reason and had emphasized
the demonstrative character of morality - thereby making a claim
to the certainty with which moral ideas could be known. However, Locke
never provided an explicit account of how fundamental moral ideas are
derived. The Remarker concludes that Locke's epistemology is
simply insufficient to the task, and that moral ideas, on
Locke's system, remain as uncertain as the ideas of God's
nature and the immortality of the soul. The Remarker uses the critique
of Locke as the springboard for their own moral position, one best
described as a brand of moral sense theory, in which conscience is the
human capacity for empirically discerning the moral value of acts. In
other words, one can, upon observing a given set of circumstances,
know with immediate certainty whether that act is morally good or
evil.



Cockburn responds to the *Remarks* by showing that
Locke's epistemology can satisfy these concerns. Cockburn
approaches the question of Locke's epistemological foundations
by emphasizing an aspect of Locke's theory of ideas of which
Locke himself makes little use in his account of moral knowledge.
However, it is a concept that he uses in his proof of God's
existence (the proof of which Cockburn reiterates in her
*Defence*). Cockburn's moral theory employs Locke's
concept of reflection as a foundation not just for our knowledge of
God, but also as a means for human moral knowledge. She argues that it
is by reflecting upon the operations of our own minds that we can
reach an understanding of both human and divine nature. According to
Cockburn, morality is grounded in human nature, and the truth of moral
laws is guaranteed by the fact that humans are designed by God. This
emphasis on human nature leads Cockburn quite naturally into a fitness
account of morality that predates Clarke's own view -
human nature entails that certain actions are fit and appropriate for
humans and certain are not. In later works, Cockburn explicitly adopts
the language of fitness relations to describe the necessary moral
order arising from our created natures.



In the *Defence*, Cockburn also introduces the idea of
'conscience' as a way of accounting for human moral
sentiment. According to Cockburn, conscience is a faculty, which she
describes as a "sudden affection." This idea of conscience
as a kind of natural moral affection complements Cockburn's view
that morality is founded upon human nature: Moral *knowledge*
arises from reflection upon our own natures and moral
*affection* arises out of our natural constitutions. Cockburn
uses this notion of conscience as a response to the Remarker's
account of morality. She argues that conscience is not an immediate
source of moral knowledge, but a source of moral affection or feeling
that complements, and presupposes, a proper (i.e., rational) knowledge
of moral laws.



In later works, Cockburn adopts the term 'moral sense' to
describe the affective faculty of conscience, a term which is not
meant to signal any affinity with Francis Hutcheson. She understood
Hutcheson to found morality exclusively on the moral sense while her
own view sees moral sense as only one component within a largely
rationalistic account of human moral understanding. It is not
surprising that Cockburn developed a proto-moral sense theory in the
*Defence* and in later works. She sought early on to establish
a foundation for morality in human nature that sufficiently accounted
for the type of natural and seemingly immediate human moral
sensibility that the Remarker believed was not accounted for by
Locke.



Cockburn takes up the defense of Samuel Clarke's theory in later
works. Her first defense of Clarke was made in *Remarks upon some
Writers*. Here we find the language of 'fitness'
occupying an even more prominent place than it had done in the
*Defence*. This is only natural, given that the work is partly
devoted to a defense of Clarke's fitness theory, which had come
to prominence in the intervening years. Throughout her discussion,
Cockburn maintains a commitment to the basic view that morality is
founded in the nature of humans and God. She sees this view as
cohering with the general concept of fitness that she locates in
Clarke and his followers. In the *Remarks upon some Writers*,
Cockburn responds to critics of Clarkean moral fitness theory. These
critics attack Clarke from a shared basic view of morality as a system
of laws expressing God's will. These laws are enforced by
rewards and punishments that obligate by appealing to the fundamental
human desire for happiness and freedom from pain. Rewards and
punishments are thus seen as the fundamental means of harmonizing
God's will and human interest. Their main objection to fitness
theory is that fitness relations are not primitive moral constructs,
but actually presuppose more primitive constructs - i.e.,
God's will and human interest. Clarke's theory is accused
of failing to provide sufficient account of these fundamental facts of
divine and human nature. Cockburn responds to this line of criticism
by arguing that fitness theory in fact rests upon a more robust
conception of the relationship between the will of God and human
interest than do the voluntarist accounts offered by Clarke's
critics.



According to Cockburn, fitness theory assumes that both human nature
and God's creative will are fundamental for morality. Fitness
theory rests upon the view that human interest is a basic expression
of a human nature brought into being by divine will. Natural good and
evil are thus fundamental concepts for moral fitness theory, for it is
human nature and all that is associated with it that provides the
basis for moral law. For Cockburn, it is through knowledge of our own
and God's natures that humans can understand the right and
proper relations that ought to subsist in the universe. According to
this account, moral obligation arises from the demands of our natures
- that is, we ought to be guided by that which is suitable and
proper to our natures as rational and social beings. Common sense
judges virtuous practice according to what is fit and natural, and not
merely according to the good the practice produces.



In Cockburn's third and last philosophical work, the *Remarks
upon the Principles and Reasonings of Dr. Rutherforth's*
Essay, she answers Dr. Thomas Rutherforth, a critic of Clarke's
fitness theory. Rutherforth himself offers a brand of
consequentialism, defining as moral goodness that which brings about
good and prevents evil. Cockburn objects to this view, arguing that it
ignores the underlying fitness relations that serve to define what
harms and benefits are significant or relevant for human beings in
particular circumstances. Even a hermit or someone stranded on a
deserted island may possess a sense of virtue, Cockburn argues, since
virtue is not founded on our prediction of the effects our actions
will have on other people. On Cockburn's view, humans have a
natural and innate tendency toward what is good and benevolent that
transcends merely weighing the effects of one's actions.
Cockburn identifies the moral sense as being a source of this
disinterested affection essential to moral decision-making. While
reason retains its position of prominence in her morality, the moral
sense plays an important role according to her in motivating agents to
act morally. The obligation we feel to obey moral rules arises, for
Cockburn, not from reason alone, but from the perceptions of natural
conscience, or moral sense. The moral sense, if governed by the
"natural perceptions of the understanding," ought to
influence our actions - it is a necessary component in creating
moral obligation.



Here again, Cockburn sought to distance herself from Hutcheson's
moral sense theory. For Cockburn, moral sense was an important factor
in accounting for moral judgments, but she insisted on its
subordination to reason as a guide in moral judgment. She holds this
moral sense account in concert with her fitness view. She presents her
moral sense theory within the context of a general moral fitness
theory, suggesting that Clarkean moral fitness theory could easily
accommodate such an account. In this way, Cockburn sees herself as
offering an account of moral motivation not entirely obvious in
Clarke's theory, but tempering the suggestion of blind instinct
she sees in Hutcheson's moral sense view. Cockburn's
morality sought to establish a foundation for morality in human nature
that sufficiently accounted for the type of natural and seemingly
immediate human moral sensibility that the Remarker believed was not
accounted for by Locke and that Clarke's critics saw as lacking
in his fitness view.