ABSTRACT
Catharine Trotter Cockburn (1674-1749) was well known during her lifetime as a playwright and moral philosopher. In her final play, The Revolution of Sweden (1706), she explores themes of duty and citizenship that reappear throughout her later philosophical works in the form of arguments defending moral obligation and disinterested benevolence. However, her traditionally structured philosophical works never directly address the political or feminist concerns that are the focal point of The Revolution of Sweden, so the play and her philosophical writings must be understood together to appreciate her radical conception of citizenship. According to Cockburn, citizenship requires individuals to use reason to control passions and place the public good above self-interest. This is consistent with her later philosophical view that the moral sense, when aided by reason, can allow someone to discover immutable moral laws and the will of God. Because the use of reason, which is central to Cockburn’s ideal of citizenship, is open to both men and women equally, both sexes are required to show loyalty to the state in the same way. But because men and women are both citizens within her scheme, Cockburn must deal with the problem that duties to the state may sometimes conflict with duties to one’s spouse. In The Revolution of Sweden, Cockburn supports the view that when duties are in conflict, obligations to the state take precedence over individual concerns like marriage. She supports a woman’s right to resist her husband if he tries to keep her from acting in accordance with her obligations to the state. Not only are women full citizens in Cockburn’s eyes (a radical view, for the early eighteenth century): married women are citizens first and wives second. In this respect she takes the theme of justified resistance further than other political thinkers of her time.
