A Moral Philosophy of Their Own? The Moral and Political Thought of Eighteenth-Century British Women

Abstract

In 1702 Catharine Trotter, who would later be known by her married name, Cockburn, published a defense of John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding in response to the criticisms leveled against it by Thomas Burnet.1 Burnet claimed Locke's empiricist philosophy is incapable of explaining our knowledge of moral principles, of proving the existence of a veracious and good God, or demonstrating the immortality of the soul. It is a dangerous deist or Socinian philosophy, which can go no further than the Epicureans in explaining the grounds of morality. Cockburn, as I shall henceforth call her, defended Locke's orthodoxy, and in doing so sketched her own understanding of the grounds of morality, which she took to be consistent with Locke's empiricist philosophy.3In 170S Mary Astell published her major philosophical work The Christian Religion as Professed by a Daughter of the Church.4 In it, she, like Burnet, took issue with Locke's empiricism, and in particular with his conjecture that it would not be beyond the power of God to give matter the capacity to think. Philosophically and politically, Astell and Cockburn appear diametrically opposed. Astell was a Cartesian, a supporter of the established Church, a Tory who was against occasional conformity and toleration. Cockbum was a Lockean, a Whig, who celebrated Marlborough's victories in Europe, and published a pamphlet, A Discourse Concerning a Guide in Controversies, which argued for the individual's right to follow their own conscience.1 * * * 5 * Yet, despite these divergences in their philosophical and political attitudes, I shall argue that they shared certain metaethical assumptions, and that by the middle of the century the moral philosophy of many British women was built on the same foundation. Despite the fact that British women were divided between advocates of reform and those who were politically conservative, basic metaethical presuppositions, associated with 'fitness theory' united them. On this foundation they developed various characterizations of the kind of life that is fit for humanity and of the political organization that would promote such a life.In 1783 Catharine Macaulay published A Treatise on the Immutability of Moral Truth. She too, grounded morality in the fitness of things. Like Cockburn, Macaulay was a follower of Locke, and his political principles color her account of the history of the Stuarts and the English Civil War.7 Like her predecessors, she appeals to fitness in order to explain the existence of immutable moral truths, recognizable by reason. As with Cockburn, this introduces a puzzling mixture of rationalist and empiricist elements into her moral theory. This fusion led Cockburn to be accused of philosophical incompetence, which might also be leveled against Macaulay.8 But I shall argue that Cockburn and Macaulay offer two slightly different syntheses of rationalist and empiricist approaches to moral theory, and that similar views can be found in the philosophically informed novels of their female contemporaries. There is enough common ground here to ascribe a shared moral philosophy, which results in two somewhat opposed political outlooks. The commonalities are sufficiently strong, and sufficiently distinct from the positions now assumed to be standard, for their common assumptions to amount to a distinctive moral theory.To make this case I first discuss the points of convergence and divergence between Astell and Cockburn. I then provide an overview of the syncretic philosophy developed by Cockburn, and compare it with that proposed by Macaulay later in the century. Last, I indicate the traces of these views in the novels of Sarah Fielding, Jane Collier, Sarah Scott, and Hannah More.1. ASTELL, COCKBURN, AND LOVEAstell was heavily influenced by Descartes, Malebranche, and more immediately, by the Cambridge Platonist, John Norris. Cockburn was a defender of Locke. Hence they seem to belong to two opposed epistemological traditions, that of the rationalists and the empiricists respectively. …