6 - Catharine Trotter Cockburn
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
Summary
Catharine Trotter Cockburn (1679–1749) enjoyed two successful careers in her lifetime. In her youth, she was tremendously popular as one of England's first woman writers for the stage; and in her later years, she was celebrated for her philosophical defences of John Locke and Samuel Clarke (1675–1729). Although all of Cockburn's philosophical texts were written and published in the eighteenth century, in style and content she might be considered the last of the seventeenth-century women philosophers in England. Cockburn's works bear all the distinctive marks of early modern women's writing: her feminist views appeal to the equal rational capacities of the sexes, and her philosophical ideas are built upon the foundations of natural reason. From her early Defence of Locke (1702) to her final vindication of Clarke, Remarks upon the Principles and Reasonings of Dr. Rutherford (1747), Cockburn develops an impressively consistent moral position based upon the human capacity for reason and sociability. In this chapter, I examine the connection between Cockburn's feminist and moral views, as well as the metaphysical themes and principles in her writings. Cockburn did not develop a full-bodied or systematic metaphysical thesis, but there are distinct lines of development in her views on the soul and body, and the concept of substance in general. Furthermore, her writings reveal that she is another English woman who derives inspiration, both directly and indirectly, from the philosophy of the Cambridge Platonists, More and Cudworth.
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- Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century , pp. 141 - 165Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003