A Treatise of the Laws of Nature

A Treatise of the Laws of Nature, originally
titled De Legibus Naturae, first appeared in 1672
as a theoretical response to a range of issues that came
together during the late 1660s. It conveyed a conviction
that science might offer an effective means of
demonstrating both the contents and the obligatory
force of the law of nature. At a time when Hobbes’s
work appeared to suggest that the application of
science undermined rather than supported the idea of
obligatory natural law, Cumberland’s De Legibus
Naturae provided a scientific explanation of the natural
necessity of altruism.
Through his argument for a moral obligation to
natural law, Cumberland made a critical intervention in
the early debate over the role of natural jurisprudence
at a moment when the natural law project was widely
suspected of heterodoxy and incoherence.
Liberty Fund publishes the first modern edition of A
Treatise of the Laws of Nature, based on John
Maxwell’s English translation of 1727. The edition
includes Maxwell’s extensive notes and appendixes. It
also provides, for the first time in English, manuscript
additions by Cumberland and material from Barbeyrac’s
1744 French edition and John Towers’s edition of
1750.
Richard Cumberland
(1632–1718) was bishop of
Peterborough.
Jon Parkin is a Lecturer in Politics
at the University of York, United Kingdom.
Knud Haakonssen is Professor of Intellectual History and Director of the Centre for Intellectual History at the University of Sussex, England.