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Locke and Catharine Trotter CockburnIn Jessica Gordon-Roth & Shelley Weinberg (eds.), The Lockean Mind, Routledge. 2021.
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Damaris Masham and Catharine Trotter Cockburn: Agency, Virtue, and Fitness in their Moral PhilosophiesIn Karen Detlefsen & Lisa Shapiro (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Women and Early Modern European Philosophy, Routledge. 2023.This essay contrasts Damaris Masham and Catharine Trotter Cockburn’s respective moral philosophies. It argues that their views are both remarkably innovative, yet strikingly similar. By focusing on Masham and Cockburn’s accounts of agency and virtue, it is demonstrated that both thinkers take human nature as a sort of guide to moral behavior – i.e., it shows that the moral agent operates under the perception of moral principles as arising from human nature. While both thinkers are known to have …Read more
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On Catharine Trotter Cockburn's metaphysics of moralityIn Emily Thomas (ed.), Early Modern Women on Metaphysics, Cambridge University Press. 2018.
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32Virtue, affection, and the social good: The moral philosophy of Catharine Trotter Cockburn and the BluestockingsPhilosophy Compass 13 (3). 2018.This paper explores the intellectual relationship between three eighteenth century women thinkers: Catharine Trotter Cockburn, and the Bluestockings Elizabeth Carter and Catherine Talbot. All three share a virtue-ethical approach according to which human happiness depends on the harmonization of our essentially rational and sociable natures. The affinity between the Bluestockings and Cockburn, I show, illuminates important new avenues for thinking about the Bluestockings as philosophers in their…Read more
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9Anne Conway: A Woman PhilosopherSarah Hutton New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004, viii + 271 pp., $75.00 (review)Dialogue 45 (4): 810-813. 2006.
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66Reflection, nature, and moral law: The extent of Catharine Cockburn's lockeanism in herHypatia 22 (3): 133-151. 2007.: This essay examines Catharine Cockburn's moral philosophy as it is developed in her Defence of Mr. Locke's Essay on Human Understanding. In this work, Cockburn argues that Locke's epistemological principles provide a foundation for the knowledge of natural law. Sheridan suggests that Cockburn's objective in defending Locke's moral epistemology was conditioned by her own prior commitment to a significantly un-Lockean theory of morality. In exploring Cockburn's views on morality in terms of thei…Read more
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49Anne Conway: A Woman PhilosopherSarah Hutton New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004, viii + 271 pp., $75.00 (review)Dialogue 45 (4): 810-813. 2006.
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100Pirates, Kings and Reasons to Act: Moral Motivation and the Role of Sanctions in Locke’s Moral TheoryCanadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (1): 35-48. 2007.Locke's moral theory consists of two explicit and distinct elements — a broadly rationalist theory of natural law and a hedonistic conception of moral good. The rationalist account, which we find most prominently in his early Essays on the Law of Nature, is generally taken to consist in three things. First, Locke holds that our moral rules are founded on universal, divine natural laws. Second, such moral laws are taken to be discoverable by reason. Third, by dint of their divine authorship, mora…Read more
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119Resisting the Scaffold: Self-Preservation and Limits of Obligation in Hobbes's LeviathanHobbes Studies 24 (2): 137-157. 2011.The degree to which Hobbes's citizenry retains its right to resist sovereign power has been the source of a significant debate. It has been argued by a number of scholars that there is a clear avenue for legitimate rebellion in Hobbes's state, as described in the Leviathan - in this work, Hobbes asserts that subjects can retain their natural right to self-preservation in civil society, and that this represents an inalienable right that cannot, under any circumstances, be transferred to the sover…Read more
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Nicholas Jolley, Locke: His Philosophical Thought Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 21 (1): 48-50. 2001.
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38Anne Conway: A Woman Philosopher Sarah Hutton New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004, viii + 271 pp., $75.00 (review)Dialogue 45 (4): 810. 2006.
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14Pirates, Kings and Reasons to Act: Moral Motivation and the Role of Sanctions in Locke’s Moral TheoryCanadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (1): 35-48. 2007.Locke's moral theory consists of two explicit and distinct elements — a broadly rationalist theory of natural law and a hedonistic conception of moral good. The rationalist account, which we find most prominently in his early Essays on the Law of Nature, is generally taken to consist in three things. First, Locke holds that our moral rules are founded on universal, divine natural laws. Second, such moral laws are taken to be discoverable by reason. Third, by dint of their divine authorship, mora…Read more
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60Locke: A Guide for the PerplexedContinuum. 2010.Introduction -- Locke's theory of ideas -- Locke's theory of matter -- Locke's theory of language -- Locke's theory of identity -- Locke's theory of morality -- Locke's theory of knowledge.
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124The Metaphysical Morality of Francis Hutcheson: A Consideration of Hutcheson’s Critique of Moral Fitness TheorySophia 46 (3): 263-275. 2007.Hutcheson’s theory of morality shares far more common ground with Clarke’s morality than is generally acknowledged. In fact, Hutcheson’s own view of his innovations in moral theory suggest that he understood moral sense theory more as an elaboration and partial correction to Clarkean fitness theory than as an outright rejection of it. My aim in this paper will be to illuminate what I take to be Hutcheson’s grounds for adopting this attitude toward Clarkean fitness theory. In so doing, I hope to …Read more
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1Locke's Ethics and the British Moralists: The Lockean Legacy in Eighteenth Century Moral PhilosophyDissertation, The University of Western Ontario (Canada). 2002.This dissertation examines Locke's influence on moralists of the eighteenth century. I will show how Locke's moral theory and the problems it raises set the tenor of moral discussion for subsequent theorists. My analysis does not rely upon proving explicit and direct influences of Locke on the theorists I examine. Rather, I want to show that Locke's influence was more general and systemic than would be revealed through the search for explicit debts and appropriations. Locke's attempt to produce …Read more
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75This essay examines Catharine Cockburn's moral philosophy as it is developed in her Defence of Mr. Locke's Essay on Human Understanding. In this work, Cockburn argues that Locke's epistemological principles provide a foundation for the knowledge of natural law. Sheridan suggests that Cockburn's objective in defending Locke's moral epistemology was conditioned by her own prior commitment to a significantly un-Lockean theory of morality. In exploring Cockbum's views on morality in terms of their d…Read more
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46Parental Affection and Self-Interest: Mandeville, Hutcheson, and the Question of Natural BenevolenceHistory of Philosophy Quarterly 24 (4). 2007.
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15Catharine Trotter Cockburn: Philosophical Writings (edited book)Broadview Press. 2006.An important thinker who contributed to eighteenth-century debates in epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics, Catharine Trotter Cockburn pursued the life of a dramatist and essayist, despite the prevailing social, cultural, and moral prescriptions of her day. Cockburn’s philosophical writings were polemical pieces in defence of such philosophers as John Locke and Samuel Clarke, in which she grappled with the moral and theological questions that concerned them and produced her own unique answers t…Read more
Guelph, Ontario, Canada
Areas of Specialization
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
Meta-Ethics |
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |