COCKBURN, CATHARINE TROTTER
(1679?–1749)

Catharine Trotter, according to her editor and biographer, was born on August 16, 1679, the younger of two daughters of David Trotter, a captain in the Royal Navy and his wife, Sarah Ballenden, of a well-connected Scottish family. Trotter's father died of the plague while on a voyage that was to have made his fortune. Instead, his family was forced to survive on an irregularly disbursed pension from the reigning monarch. Trotter was educated at home, and perhaps largely self-educated, although she seems to have taught herself French and Latin. She was a precocious writer, publishing a novella at a young age, followed by poems, and ultimately five plays, four appearing between 1695 and 1701 and the last in 1706, all of which achieved a certain renown.

In 1701 Trotter began to live with her married sister in Salisbury, where she remained until her own marriage in 1708. In Salisbury Trotter joined the circle surrounding Gilbert Burnet (1643–1715), the bishop of Salisbury, which included his wife, the devotional writer Elizabeth Burnet (1661–1709), and his cousin, Thomas Burnet of Kemnay (1656–1729), a lively correspondent of Trotter's. It was during her time in Salisbury that Trotter's theological and philosophical interests began to manifest themselves. In 1702 she published A Defense of Mr. Locke's Essay, a reply to criticisms of John Locke by yet another Thomas Burnet (c. 1635–1715), and in 1707 A Discourse concerning a Guide in Controversies, the fruits of her struggles with Roman Catholicism, justifying her decision to return to the Church of England.

In 1708, she married the clergyman Patrick Cockburn (1678–1749), and her scholarly interests were for some time suspended while she struggled to raise a family of four in somewhat reduced circumstances, brought on when her husband lost his curacy, on finding himself unable to swear the oath of abjuration on the ascension of George I (1660–1727) to the throne. In 1726 Cockburn was able to reconcile himself with this oath and became first the rector at Aberdeen and then the vicar of Long Worsley in Northumberland, where the family was still living at the time of Catherine's death in 1749.

With the restoration of the family fortunes, Cockburn's philosophical interests also revived, and in 1726 she published A Letter to Dr. Holdsworth. While she did not resume publishing until close to the end of her life, first bringing out Remarks upon Some Writers in the Controversy concerning the Foundation of Moral Virtue and Moral Obligation in 1743 and then Remarks upon the Principles and Reasonings of Dr. Rutherforth's Essay in 1747, it is clear from letters written throughout this period, particularly those to a niece, Anne Arbuthnot, that Cockburn maintained a lively reading program and developed her intellectual interests in correspondence.

Cockburn's works were collected by Thomas Birch and published after her death, and include, in addition to her published philosophical work, several hitherto unpublished pieces, a play, and a fascinating collection of letters. Some doubts have been raised about the dates of Cockburn's life supplied by Birch, stimulated by a letter to G. Burnet written in 1707, in which she reports the marriage of a son and the birth of a grandchild. Since, according to Birch's reckoning, this would make Trotter a mere twenty-seven, it has been suggested that her birth date should be pushed back to accommodate the birth of a son and grandson. There are some limits, however, on the extent to which Trotter's age in 1706 can be adjusted, since according to Birch's account, she was seventy-one at the time or her death and was publishing close to that time. An alternative possibility is that Trotter was not in fact the birthmother of the son she mentions casually to Birch.

Each of Cockburn's works takes roughly the same form, that of a loosely organized commentary on some other work, often itself critical in nature. Her earlier work defends Locke against various attacks, and her later work is written in defense of Samuel Clarke.

Her presentation then can appear somewhat diffuse and disorganized. In her early defense of Locke against Thomas Burnet, for example, she considers three different criticisms: that Locke's rejection of innate moral principles leaves him with no resources on which to ground one's knowledge of moral principles, that Locke provides no way in which he can establish God's veracity, and, finally, that an account of personal identity based like Locke's on consciousness instead of substance does not provide grounds for personal immortality.

There are, however, some common threads that tend to reappear in much of her work. In particular, Cockburn is very much embroiled in eighteenth-century attempts to walk a middle ground between deism and voluntarism. Her concern is to argue that human beings can, by means of their intellectual resources, derive an understanding of moral concepts based on their nature as sensitive, rational, and social beings. It is through this complex understanding of ourselves that we are able to work out what is suitable or fit for us. Cockburn argues that the complexity of our nature does not limit our grasp of what is fit for us simply to what is pleasant or what is in our self-interest, but that we can derive a full sense of our moral obligation from our nature as rational, social beings. Therefore, there is no need to turn to an otherwise unmotivated appeal to God's decrees to account for the full range of our moral obligations. Cockburn also wants to maintain that, while our understanding of the nature of these obligations rests on our understanding of ourselves, it is nevertheless God's decrees that give these principles the force of law. But since we know that God is good, and we understand, from our own case, what it is to be good, we also know that God would not require of us actions that are, as we understand it, irrational. Her position is designed to guard against both the view that human morality is entirely independent of religion and against the view that our obligations have only a religious and no rational support.

See also Locke, John.

Bibliography

works by cockburn

The Works of Mrs. Catharine Cockburn, Theological, Moral, Dramatic and Poetical. Several of Them Now First Printed. Revised and Published, with an Account of the Life of the Author. 2 vols. Compiled by Thomas Birch. London: J. and P. Knapton, 1751.

works about cockburn

Atherton, Margaret. "Women Philosophers in Early Modern England." In A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Steven Nadler, 404–422. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002

Bolton, Martha Brandt. "Some Aspects of the Philosophical Work of Catharine Trotter." Journal of the History of Philosophy 31 (4) (October 1993): 565–578.

Broad, Jacqueline. "Catharine Trotter Cockburn." In Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth Century, 141–165. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Nuovo, Victor. "Catharine Cockburn." In The Dictionary of Seventeenth-Century British Philosophers, edited by Andrew Pyle. Bristol, U.K.: Thoemmes Press, 2000.

Waite, Mary Ellen. "Catharine Trotter Cockburn." In A History of Women Philosophers. Vol. 3, Modern Women Philosophers, 1600–1900, edited by Mary Ellen Waite, 101–125. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic, 1991.

Margaret Atherton (2005)