CUMBERLAND, RICHARD. - English philosopher, b. in London on 15 July 1631, d. there on 9 Oct. 1718. Bishop of Peterborough in the Anglican Church, he is known for his opposition to the egoistic materialism of Hobbes.
To Hobbes’s theory of the original struggle (homo homini lupus), he opposed in his treatise De legibus naturae (London 1672) an optimistic conception, developing the idea of a fundamental lex naturae which he defined as universal benevolence. On this concept he built a systematic view of the social and historical world inspired by teleology, though in his philosophy of nature he followed Cartesian mechanism, and he anticipated the Enlightenment perspective on social life.
BIBL.: F. E. Spaulding, R. C. als Begründer der englischen Ethik, Leipzig 1893; F. C. Sharp, The ethical system of R. C., extracted from Mind, 21 (1912).