On some footnotes to Catharine Trotter Cockburn’s Defence of the Essay Of Human Understanding

What is it about?

Two footnotes added to the second edition of Catharine Trotter Cockburn’s Defense of the Essay of Human Understanding, which appeared in her collected works of 1751, have led to her being accused of philosophical incompetence, or more mildly, of having been a poor interpreter of John Locke. This paper argues, by contrast, that Trotter Cockburn had an excellent understanding of Locke’s moral epistemology but came to recognize that there was an insufficiency in her early defense of his views, which ultimately resulted from the ambiguity in the Lockean notion of an idea. Her footnotes attempt to fill a lacuna in his moral epistemology that derives from this ambiguity. While the resulting fix to Locke’s claim that the principles of morality are demonstrable on the basis of reflection on the ideas that we have of God and ourselves may not be appealing to those who are not already believers, it shows that far from being confused, Trotter Cockburn was a subtle philosopher with an excellent grasp of Lockean moral epistemology.

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Why is it important?

Catharine Cockburn was a significant eighteenth-century female philosopher whose discussion of Locke's moral epistemology significantly illuminates his ethical ideas and the gaps in his reasoning.