Chapter 1 - God and Consequences

Summary

In Grotius, Cumberland, and Locke we see the basic elements of the theological version of morality as legislation. Grotius used a framework of evaluating the consequences of different possible rules for fallible, biased people as a way of determining what ought to be done. Cumberland provided a theory of right in which all the content of all divine laws could be traced back to one divine attribute, benevolence. Locke, while less systematically consequentialist than Cumberland, had a hedonistic theory of the good, an account of God that also emphasized benevolence, and (most interestingly) a willingness to press very hard on the legislative metaphor in order to establish the correct content of natural law when it was in dispute. Locke imagines God as a legislator using precisely the structure of rationality that a human legislator would use in contemplating which law to pass, including problems of biased and fallible execution of the law. Locke’s use is clearly counterfactual. It is probably not a coincidence that both Locke and Cumberland were strong supporters of new scientific theories that sought to understand nature by means of natural laws.