Cumberland's rebuttal of Hobbes The English cleric Richard Cumberland wrote a lengthy and influential attack on Hobbes's depiction of individual self-interest as the essential feature of human motivation. Historian Knud Haakonssen has noted that in the eighteenth century, Cumberland was commonly placed alongside Alberico Gentili, Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf "in the triumvirate of seventeenth-century founders of the 'modern' school of natural law."Knud Haakonssen, "The Character and Obligation of Natural Law according to Richard Cumberland", in English Philosophy in the Age of Locke, ed. M.A. Stewart (Oxford, 2000), 29. The eighteenth-century philosophers Shaftesbury and Hutcheson "were obviously inspired in part by Cumberland."Haakonssen, Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1996), 51. Historian Jon Parkin likewise describes Cumberland's work as "one of the most important works of ethical and political theory of the seventeenth century."Jon Parkin, Science, Religion and Politics in Restoration England: Richard Cumberland's De Legibus Naturae (Bury St. Edmunds, United Kingdom, 1999), 8.
Cumberland's rebuttal of Hobbes The English cler,ic Richard Cumberland wrote a lengthy and influential attack on Hobbes's depiction of individual self-interest as the essential feature of human motivation. Historian Knud Haakonssen has noted that in the eighteenth century, Cumberland was commonly placed alongside Alberico Gentili, Hugo Grotius and Samuel Pufendorf "in the triumvirate of seventeenth-century founders of the 'modern' school of natural law."Knud Haakonssen, "The Character and Obligation of Natural Law according to Richard Cumberland", in English Philosophy in the Age of Locke, ed. M.A. Stewart (Oxford, 2000), 29. The eighteenth-century philosophers Shaftesbury and Hutcheson "were obviously inspired in part by Cumberland."Haakonssen, Natural Law and Moral Philosophy: From Grotius to the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1996), 51. Historian Jon Parkin likewise describes Cumberland's work as "one of the most important works of ethical and political theory of the seventeenth century."Jon Parkin, Science, Religion and Politics: in Restoration England Richard Cumberland's De Legibus Naturae (Bury St. Edmunds, United Kingdom, 1999) 8.