Richard Cumberland

Richard Cumberland (1631 or 1632 to 1718) was an English philosopher and, from 1691, Bishop of Peterborough. Born in London, the son of a tailor, he studied at St Paul's School and Magdalene College, Cambridge, and for a time studied medicine. In 1672 he published his major work, De legibus naturae, which advanced a utilitarian account of morality grounded in natural law and opposed the egoistic ethics of Thomas Hobbes. The book stressed the social nature of human beings and made the common good the supreme law of morality, and it came to be counted among the three great works of the modern natural law tradition beside Grotius and Pufendorf. Cumberland belonged to the Latitudinarian movement and was closely allied with the Cambridge Platonists. He also wrote on ancient Jewish weights and measures.