Probability, Punishments and Property: Richard Cumberland’s Sceptical Science of Sovereignty

Abstract

The development of natural law theory in late seventeenth-century Europe owed a great deal to the distinctive political situations left in the wake of religious and political conflict during that period. Fragile political stability often coexisted with problems of religious pluralism. In these contexts natural law theory offered a useful means of sidestepping intractable religious conflict while at the same time offering new resources for the legitimacy of the early modern state.