Terryl L. Givens
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- February 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195313901
- eISBN:
- 9780199871933
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195313901.003.0008
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
The tradition of prisca theologia and the Corpus Hermeticum are Pico della Mirandola instrumental in revival of preexistence. Real flowering is under the Cambridge Platonists, especially Henry More, ...
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The tradition of prisca theologia and the Corpus Hermeticum are Pico della Mirandola instrumental in revival of preexistence. Real flowering is under the Cambridge Platonists, especially Henry More, along with Anne Conway and Kabbalists, who often combined the idea with theosis or deification. Thomas Traherne was the most prolific poet of the idea. Poets reworked Milton's great epic, to restore what they saw as occluded references to human preexistence.Less
The tradition of prisca theologia and the Corpus Hermeticum are Pico della Mirandola instrumental in revival of preexistence. Real flowering is under the Cambridge Platonists, especially Henry More, along with Anne Conway and Kabbalists, who often combined the idea with theosis or deification. Thomas Traherne was the most prolific poet of the idea. Poets reworked Milton's great epic, to restore what they saw as occluded references to human preexistence.
Amos Funkenstein
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780691181356
- eISBN:
- 9780691184265
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691181356.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter examines how medieval theology, in most of its varieties, viewed with intense suspicion any doctrine that took God’s presence in the world too literally. So much was this true that not ...
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This chapter examines how medieval theology, in most of its varieties, viewed with intense suspicion any doctrine that took God’s presence in the world too literally. So much was this true that not only physical predicates, but also general-abstract predicates such as goodness, truth, power, and even existence were at times considered an illicit mode of speech when predicated of God and his creation univocally. In the latter sense, nearly all important philosophical discussions on the nature of God sinned against the classical, medieval-Thomistic tradition. Not only Henry More or Spinoza were guilty; to all of them, including Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibniz, God shared with his creation some genuine predicates literally and unequivocally.Less
This chapter examines how medieval theology, in most of its varieties, viewed with intense suspicion any doctrine that took God’s presence in the world too literally. So much was this true that not only physical predicates, but also general-abstract predicates such as goodness, truth, power, and even existence were at times considered an illicit mode of speech when predicated of God and his creation univocally. In the latter sense, nearly all important philosophical discussions on the nature of God sinned against the classical, medieval-Thomistic tradition. Not only Henry More or Spinoza were guilty; to all of them, including Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibniz, God shared with his creation some genuine predicates literally and unequivocally.
Euan Cameron
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199257829
- eISBN:
- 9780191698477
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199257829.003.0018
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History, History of Ideas
This chapter considers those writers who vigorously defended the idea of an ‘invisible world’ of spirits. These include Nathaniel Homes, Meric Casaubon, Henry More, Joseph Glanvill, and John Aubrey.
This chapter considers those writers who vigorously defended the idea of an ‘invisible world’ of spirits. These include Nathaniel Homes, Meric Casaubon, Henry More, Joseph Glanvill, and John Aubrey.
Robert Pasnau
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199567911
- eISBN:
- 9780191725449
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199567911.003.0016
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
This chapter considers whether the having or lacking of extension can explain the divide between the material and the immaterial. A key notion turns out to be that of a holenmer: an object that is ...
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This chapter considers whether the having or lacking of extension can explain the divide between the material and the immaterial. A key notion turns out to be that of a holenmer: an object that is spread out in space, but yet exists wholly in each place that it exists.Less
This chapter considers whether the having or lacking of extension can explain the divide between the material and the immaterial. A key notion turns out to be that of a holenmer: an object that is spread out in space, but yet exists wholly in each place that it exists.
Seth Lobis
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780300192032
- eISBN:
- 9780300210415
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300192032.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Against the idea of a linear “disenchantment of the world,” this chapter makes a case for the persistence of magical views of sympathy in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The ...
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Against the idea of a linear “disenchantment of the world,” this chapter makes a case for the persistence of magical views of sympathy in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The Cambridge Platonists Ralph Cudworth, Henry More, and Benjamin Whichcote shared a commitment to a vital, magical worldview, defined against the thoroughgoing mechanistic materialism of Hobbes and others, and to a sympathetic view of human nature. They conceived sympathy as a magical principle of the whole; providentially perfect, the order of things constituted a universal system, comprehending the natural as well as the moral. The Cambridge Platonists’ insistence on this overarching order exerted a deep influence on the third Earl of Shaftesbury, long a central figure in the history of sensibility. Shaftesbury supported their rejection of moral relativism and their advancement of a broadly non-mechanistic, magical worldview. For him, the sympathetic universe was not an irrecoverable prelapsarian ideal but a present reality. Yet, in Shaftesbury’s conception of sympathy, the focus has shifted from the natural world to the moral, and from the ontological to the aesthetic; in his principal work, Characteristicks, sympathy emerges as both the unifying force of society and the organizing principle of artistic production.Less
Against the idea of a linear “disenchantment of the world,” this chapter makes a case for the persistence of magical views of sympathy in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The Cambridge Platonists Ralph Cudworth, Henry More, and Benjamin Whichcote shared a commitment to a vital, magical worldview, defined against the thoroughgoing mechanistic materialism of Hobbes and others, and to a sympathetic view of human nature. They conceived sympathy as a magical principle of the whole; providentially perfect, the order of things constituted a universal system, comprehending the natural as well as the moral. The Cambridge Platonists’ insistence on this overarching order exerted a deep influence on the third Earl of Shaftesbury, long a central figure in the history of sensibility. Shaftesbury supported their rejection of moral relativism and their advancement of a broadly non-mechanistic, magical worldview. For him, the sympathetic universe was not an irrecoverable prelapsarian ideal but a present reality. Yet, in Shaftesbury’s conception of sympathy, the focus has shifted from the natural world to the moral, and from the ontological to the aesthetic; in his principal work, Characteristicks, sympathy emerges as both the unifying force of society and the organizing principle of artistic production.
Catherine Abou-Nemeh
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199987313
- eISBN:
- 9780199346240
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199987313.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
This chapter investigates the ways in which Nicolas Hartsoeker challenged Descartes’ mechanical model of nature along the lines of the Cambridge Platonists Henry More and Ralph Cudworth, in light of ...
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This chapter investigates the ways in which Nicolas Hartsoeker challenged Descartes’ mechanical model of nature along the lines of the Cambridge Platonists Henry More and Ralph Cudworth, in light of Réaumur’s experiments on regenerating crayfish legs at the Parisian Academy in 1712. Hartsoeker believed that regeneration of crayfish limbs could not be explained satisfactorily with the Cartesian fundamentals of matter in motion and rejection of animal soul. Hartsoeker developed, and asserted, his proposition that Intelligences mediated between inert matter and God in his system of nature. I argue that the crayfish experiments, as first tried by Réaumur and then repeated by Hartsoeker himself, allowed the latter to distance himself definitively from Descartes’ mechanical philosophy. And while the crayfish trials of 1712 were a watershed for Hartsoeker, I will show that the ferment for philosophical change in his system of nature had been brewing for a while.Less
This chapter investigates the ways in which Nicolas Hartsoeker challenged Descartes’ mechanical model of nature along the lines of the Cambridge Platonists Henry More and Ralph Cudworth, in light of Réaumur’s experiments on regenerating crayfish legs at the Parisian Academy in 1712. Hartsoeker believed that regeneration of crayfish limbs could not be explained satisfactorily with the Cartesian fundamentals of matter in motion and rejection of animal soul. Hartsoeker developed, and asserted, his proposition that Intelligences mediated between inert matter and God in his system of nature. I argue that the crayfish experiments, as first tried by Réaumur and then repeated by Hartsoeker himself, allowed the latter to distance himself definitively from Descartes’ mechanical philosophy. And while the crayfish trials of 1712 were a watershed for Hartsoeker, I will show that the ferment for philosophical change in his system of nature had been brewing for a while.
Gerard Passannante
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226648491
- eISBN:
- 9780226648514
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226648514.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
When Aby Warburg first encountered Botticelli's Venus he discovered something like an illustrated history of ideas, her metaphysical undressing catching Warbug's imagination. His attention towards ...
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When Aby Warburg first encountered Botticelli's Venus he discovered something like an illustrated history of ideas, her metaphysical undressing catching Warbug's imagination. His attention towards Venus was not only to the ideas that she influenced, but also the way in which they were transmitted, enacted, and represented. She gave a certain “pervasive influence” or the spreading and dissemination of an idea and the ways in which this influence is able to embody itself within the structure of a body, a thought, or a poem. The chapter thus explores the figure of this materialist diffusion in the works of three readers of the De rerum natura that struggled with the problem of Lucretian pervasiveness: Edmund Spenser, Pierre Gassendi, and Henry More.Less
When Aby Warburg first encountered Botticelli's Venus he discovered something like an illustrated history of ideas, her metaphysical undressing catching Warbug's imagination. His attention towards Venus was not only to the ideas that she influenced, but also the way in which they were transmitted, enacted, and represented. She gave a certain “pervasive influence” or the spreading and dissemination of an idea and the ways in which this influence is able to embody itself within the structure of a body, a thought, or a poem. The chapter thus explores the figure of this materialist diffusion in the works of three readers of the De rerum natura that struggled with the problem of Lucretian pervasiveness: Edmund Spenser, Pierre Gassendi, and Henry More.
David S. Sytsma
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- July 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190274870
- eISBN:
- 9780190274894
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190274870.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
This chapter sets Baxter’s involvement with mechanical philosophy against the backdrop of the growth of mechanical philosophy, with particular attention to the growing interest in Epicurean ideas and ...
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This chapter sets Baxter’s involvement with mechanical philosophy against the backdrop of the growth of mechanical philosophy, with particular attention to the growing interest in Epicurean ideas and the work of Pierre Gassendi. Baxter’s engagement with mechanical philosophy is traced in chronological sequence from the 1650s until his death in 1691. In the course of this narrative, Baxter’s personal relationships to Joseph Glanvill, Robert Boyle, Matthew Hale, and Henry More are surveyed. The context of Baxter’s manuscript and published works relating to mechanical philosophy are also discussed. Matthew Hale appears as a significant figure in the development of Baxter’s philosophical thought, as well as the production of his published works and the suppression from publication of an important manuscript on the nature and immortality of the soul.Less
This chapter sets Baxter’s involvement with mechanical philosophy against the backdrop of the growth of mechanical philosophy, with particular attention to the growing interest in Epicurean ideas and the work of Pierre Gassendi. Baxter’s engagement with mechanical philosophy is traced in chronological sequence from the 1650s until his death in 1691. In the course of this narrative, Baxter’s personal relationships to Joseph Glanvill, Robert Boyle, Matthew Hale, and Henry More are surveyed. The context of Baxter’s manuscript and published works relating to mechanical philosophy are also discussed. Matthew Hale appears as a significant figure in the development of Baxter’s philosophical thought, as well as the production of his published works and the suppression from publication of an important manuscript on the nature and immortality of the soul.
Emily Thomas
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198807933
- eISBN:
- 9780191845727
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198807933.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
This chapter explores the first British account of absolute time or duration, developed in the mid-seventeenth century by the Cambridge Platonist Henry More. It explores the evolution of More’s views ...
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This chapter explores the first British account of absolute time or duration, developed in the mid-seventeenth century by the Cambridge Platonist Henry More. It explores the evolution of More’s views on time; the relationship More perceives between time, duration, and God; and the motivations underlying More’s views. It argues that, as More’s views developed across the course of his career, an asymmetry emerged in his mature work with regard to divine presence: God is extendedly present in space, yet holenmerically present in time. The chapter concludes with a note on the influence More may have wielded over later British thinkers.Less
This chapter explores the first British account of absolute time or duration, developed in the mid-seventeenth century by the Cambridge Platonist Henry More. It explores the evolution of More’s views on time; the relationship More perceives between time, duration, and God; and the motivations underlying More’s views. It argues that, as More’s views developed across the course of his career, an asymmetry emerged in his mature work with regard to divine presence: God is extendedly present in space, yet holenmerically present in time. The chapter concludes with a note on the influence More may have wielded over later British thinkers.
Robert Pasnau
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199567911
- eISBN:
- 9780191725449
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199567911.003.0017
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
This chapter considers the difficult question of what accounts for a thing's location in space. This question is distinguished from the more familiar question of what the nature of space is. A ...
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This chapter considers the difficult question of what accounts for a thing's location in space. This question is distinguished from the more familiar question of what the nature of space is. A distinction is proposed between intrinsic and extrinsic theories of location.Less
This chapter considers the difficult question of what accounts for a thing's location in space. This question is distinguished from the more familiar question of what the nature of space is. A distinction is proposed between intrinsic and extrinsic theories of location.
Peter Harrison
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199934409
- eISBN:
- 9780199367740
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199934409.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
In this chapter, Peter Harrison first shows that the Cambridge Platonists accepted Descartes's emphasis on the fundamental laws of nature, but rejected many of the details of his account on several ...
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In this chapter, Peter Harrison first shows that the Cambridge Platonists accepted Descartes's emphasis on the fundamental laws of nature, but rejected many of the details of his account on several grounds: They did not approve of Descartes’ speculative method, favoring more experimental procedures; they were concerned about the potentially heretical theological consequences of Descartes's position; finally, on scientific grounds they rejected Descartes's aetherial matter and vortices, positing a “spirit of nature” or “plastic nature” instead that serves as an intermediary between God and the creation. Harrison then notes that the Cambridge Platonists’ position was viewed by their successors as problematic, since it seemed to be asserted more as a hypothesis than as something based on empirical evidence. As a result, Harrison argues, several Newtonianscame to the position that the laws of nature are basic explanatory principles that cannot be deduced from the nature of God, but rather must be discovered and justified through experience.Less
In this chapter, Peter Harrison first shows that the Cambridge Platonists accepted Descartes's emphasis on the fundamental laws of nature, but rejected many of the details of his account on several grounds: They did not approve of Descartes’ speculative method, favoring more experimental procedures; they were concerned about the potentially heretical theological consequences of Descartes's position; finally, on scientific grounds they rejected Descartes's aetherial matter and vortices, positing a “spirit of nature” or “plastic nature” instead that serves as an intermediary between God and the creation. Harrison then notes that the Cambridge Platonists’ position was viewed by their successors as problematic, since it seemed to be asserted more as a hypothesis than as something based on empirical evidence. As a result, Harrison argues, several Newtonianscame to the position that the laws of nature are basic explanatory principles that cannot be deduced from the nature of God, but rather must be discovered and justified through experience.
David S. Sytsma
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- July 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190274870
- eISBN:
- 9780190274894
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190274870.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
This chapter addresses Baxter’s response to Copernicanism, substantial forms, Descartes’s laws of motion, and Henry More’s variant of mechanical philosophy. Baxter was far more concerned about ...
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This chapter addresses Baxter’s response to Copernicanism, substantial forms, Descartes’s laws of motion, and Henry More’s variant of mechanical philosophy. Baxter was far more concerned about changing notions of substance and causality than he was about Copernicanism. His objections to mechanical philosophy stemmed from a desire to affirm secondary causes as intrinsic sources of motion, which he regarded as important to a correct understanding of God and creation. He defended a concept of substantial form and objected to the theological foundation of Descartes’s first law of motion. Baxter also argued for the plausibility of various kinds of nonliving principles of motion against Henry More’s restriction of motion to spiritual beings.Less
This chapter addresses Baxter’s response to Copernicanism, substantial forms, Descartes’s laws of motion, and Henry More’s variant of mechanical philosophy. Baxter was far more concerned about changing notions of substance and causality than he was about Copernicanism. His objections to mechanical philosophy stemmed from a desire to affirm secondary causes as intrinsic sources of motion, which he regarded as important to a correct understanding of God and creation. He defended a concept of substantial form and objected to the theological foundation of Descartes’s first law of motion. Baxter also argued for the plausibility of various kinds of nonliving principles of motion against Henry More’s restriction of motion to spiritual beings.
Andrea Brady
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780719088636
- eISBN:
- 9781781706893
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719088636.003.0011
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Andrea Brady analyses the complex implications of the return of supernatural phenomena in mid-seventeenth century pamphlet accounts of ghostly hauntings (about ‘real sightings as well as rhetorical ...
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Andrea Brady analyses the complex implications of the return of supernatural phenomena in mid-seventeenth century pamphlet accounts of ghostly hauntings (about ‘real sightings as well as rhetorical ghosts in political satire’) against a growing ‘widespread scepticism’. She traces this return not only to the persistence of folk tradition but also to a conscious attempt by the Cambridge Platonists Henry More and Joseph Glanville to restore a ‘consensus which was eroding – in divine retribution, in immortal soul, in providence of history, in vision as access to truth’. The defence of ghostly apparitions is identified by Brady as a ‘conservative’ project to ward off ‘the threat [they believed] scepticism posed to church and state’.Less
Andrea Brady analyses the complex implications of the return of supernatural phenomena in mid-seventeenth century pamphlet accounts of ghostly hauntings (about ‘real sightings as well as rhetorical ghosts in political satire’) against a growing ‘widespread scepticism’. She traces this return not only to the persistence of folk tradition but also to a conscious attempt by the Cambridge Platonists Henry More and Joseph Glanville to restore a ‘consensus which was eroding – in divine retribution, in immortal soul, in providence of history, in vision as access to truth’. The defence of ghostly apparitions is identified by Brady as a ‘conservative’ project to ward off ‘the threat [they believed] scepticism posed to church and state’.
Tobias Menely
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780226239255
- eISBN:
- 9780226239422
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226239422.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 18th-century Literature
This chapter situates sensibility in relation to several canonical accounts of human obligation that contrast the imperatives given by the spoken word with those of the creaturely voice. It begins ...
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This chapter situates sensibility in relation to several canonical accounts of human obligation that contrast the imperatives given by the spoken word with those of the creaturely voice. It begins with three exemplary premodern considerations of the situation of communication, the relation between addresser and addressee: the two cosmogonies in Genesis, the political and linguistic philosophy of Aristotle, and René Descartes’s correspondence with Henry More on the animal sign. Considering the philosopher Thomas Reid, the naturalist John Ray, and the political economist Bernard Mandeville, this chapter characterizes eighteenth-century sensibility, in its attribution to the animal of a capacity for address, as an explicit alternative to the Cartesian bête machine. Finally, it locates an afterlife of sensibility in the writing of two twentieth-century philosophers, Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, for whom the addressive voice of the animal presents an unrelenting theoretical and ethical impasse.Less
This chapter situates sensibility in relation to several canonical accounts of human obligation that contrast the imperatives given by the spoken word with those of the creaturely voice. It begins with three exemplary premodern considerations of the situation of communication, the relation between addresser and addressee: the two cosmogonies in Genesis, the political and linguistic philosophy of Aristotle, and René Descartes’s correspondence with Henry More on the animal sign. Considering the philosopher Thomas Reid, the naturalist John Ray, and the political economist Bernard Mandeville, this chapter characterizes eighteenth-century sensibility, in its attribution to the animal of a capacity for address, as an explicit alternative to the Cartesian bête machine. Finally, it locates an afterlife of sensibility in the writing of two twentieth-century philosophers, Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida, for whom the addressive voice of the animal presents an unrelenting theoretical and ethical impasse.
David S. Sytsma
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- July 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190274870
- eISBN:
- 9780190274894
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190274870.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
Drawing on previously unexamined manuscript evidence, this chapter addresses Baxter’s response to two issues concerning the soul. First, the application of mechanical philosophy to proofs for the ...
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Drawing on previously unexamined manuscript evidence, this chapter addresses Baxter’s response to two issues concerning the soul. First, the application of mechanical philosophy to proofs for the immortality of the soul resulted in a modification of the argument from the soul’s immateriality, with a new contrast between mechanical bodies and incorporeal substance. Baxter preferred an alternative mode of argumentation, and regarded proofs put forward by Henry More and Pierre Gassendi as either weak or a temptation to materialism. Second, Thomas Willis’s De anima brutorum (1672) made use of Gassendi’s theory of a material soul, which provoked a reply from Baxter. In a neglected manuscript, Baxter set forth various objections to chapters from Willis’s book, and contented that that Willis’s theory could be logically extended into an argument for the complete materialism of the human soul.Less
Drawing on previously unexamined manuscript evidence, this chapter addresses Baxter’s response to two issues concerning the soul. First, the application of mechanical philosophy to proofs for the immortality of the soul resulted in a modification of the argument from the soul’s immateriality, with a new contrast between mechanical bodies and incorporeal substance. Baxter preferred an alternative mode of argumentation, and regarded proofs put forward by Henry More and Pierre Gassendi as either weak or a temptation to materialism. Second, Thomas Willis’s De anima brutorum (1672) made use of Gassendi’s theory of a material soul, which provoked a reply from Baxter. In a neglected manuscript, Baxter set forth various objections to chapters from Willis’s book, and contented that that Willis’s theory could be logically extended into an argument for the complete materialism of the human soul.
Cedric C. Brown
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- December 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198790792
- eISBN:
- 9780191833434
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198790792.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 17th-century and Restoration Literature, Milton Studies
Friendship bonds, employing gift exchange, are ubiquitious in early modern society. Despite modern interest in intimacy, most practice is with instrumental friendship, as in models from antiquity. ...
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Friendship bonds, employing gift exchange, are ubiquitious in early modern society. Despite modern interest in intimacy, most practice is with instrumental friendship, as in models from antiquity. The choice of a series of interlocking case studies is explained, crossing gender roles and representing friendship of different kinds, based as much on the material evidence of lived friendship as literary representation. The book is in three parts, each arranged around a social group. This chapter introduces each group and briefly illustrates the indivisibility of values along the behavioural spectrum by elaborating on the connubium that initiated Alan Bray’s 2003 study, The Friend. Institutional and broader social bonds as well as intimacy tied together the lives of John Finch, Thomas Baines, Henry More, Lady Conway, and Christ’s College, Cambridge. Thereafter, another foundation is laid by identifying one key religious understanding, the idea of Christ as the perfect friend.Less
Friendship bonds, employing gift exchange, are ubiquitious in early modern society. Despite modern interest in intimacy, most practice is with instrumental friendship, as in models from antiquity. The choice of a series of interlocking case studies is explained, crossing gender roles and representing friendship of different kinds, based as much on the material evidence of lived friendship as literary representation. The book is in three parts, each arranged around a social group. This chapter introduces each group and briefly illustrates the indivisibility of values along the behavioural spectrum by elaborating on the connubium that initiated Alan Bray’s 2003 study, The Friend. Institutional and broader social bonds as well as intimacy tied together the lives of John Finch, Thomas Baines, Henry More, Lady Conway, and Christ’s College, Cambridge. Thereafter, another foundation is laid by identifying one key religious understanding, the idea of Christ as the perfect friend.
Emily Thomas
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198807933
- eISBN:
- 9780191845727
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198807933.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
Isaac Newton’s space and time absolutism is infamous, and would prove hugely influential. This chapter explores Newton’s early manuscript De Gravitatione, and asks two questions of it. First, what ...
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Isaac Newton’s space and time absolutism is infamous, and would prove hugely influential. This chapter explores Newton’s early manuscript De Gravitatione, and asks two questions of it. First, what are time and space? In answer, it builds on John Carriero’s 1990 ‘Causation’ reading, arguing that Newton was drawing on Henry More’s account of emanative causation. It goes on to read Newton as holding that time and space are real but not really distinct from God, and they should be understood as incorporeal dimensions. Second, how is God present in time and space? It answers that Newton’s God is holenmeric, not extended.Less
Isaac Newton’s space and time absolutism is infamous, and would prove hugely influential. This chapter explores Newton’s early manuscript De Gravitatione, and asks two questions of it. First, what are time and space? In answer, it builds on John Carriero’s 1990 ‘Causation’ reading, arguing that Newton was drawing on Henry More’s account of emanative causation. It goes on to read Newton as holding that time and space are real but not really distinct from God, and they should be understood as incorporeal dimensions. Second, how is God present in time and space? It answers that Newton’s God is holenmeric, not extended.
Matthew J. Kisner
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- December 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198829294
- eISBN:
- 9780191867880
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198829294.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This chapter considers Descartes’s view on whether the passions are ethically reliable in the sense of informing us of the value of things with respect to the ethical ends of virtue and happiness. ...
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This chapter considers Descartes’s view on whether the passions are ethically reliable in the sense of informing us of the value of things with respect to the ethical ends of virtue and happiness. The answer to this question is unclear, first, because the passions could not inform us in this way unless they were contentful mental states, which has been a contested issue. Secondly, even if the passions are contentful, it is not clear that Descartes regarded their contents as ethically reliable. Descartes often claimed that the passions are only reliable guides to animalistic aims and bodily survival. The chapter draws on Henry More’s reading of Descartes to show that Descartes did regard the passions as ethically reliable, with some qualifications. The chapter also shows that Descartes was a likely influence on More’s boniform faculty and, by extension, on the tradition of moral sentimentalism.Less
This chapter considers Descartes’s view on whether the passions are ethically reliable in the sense of informing us of the value of things with respect to the ethical ends of virtue and happiness. The answer to this question is unclear, first, because the passions could not inform us in this way unless they were contentful mental states, which has been a contested issue. Secondly, even if the passions are contentful, it is not clear that Descartes regarded their contents as ethically reliable. Descartes often claimed that the passions are only reliable guides to animalistic aims and bodily survival. The chapter draws on Henry More’s reading of Descartes to show that Descartes did regard the passions as ethically reliable, with some qualifications. The chapter also shows that Descartes was a likely influence on More’s boniform faculty and, by extension, on the tradition of moral sentimentalism.
Mark Blacklock
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198755487
- eISBN:
- 9780191816680
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198755487.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Chapter 1 describes the disparate conditions for the emergence of higher-dimensioned space as a cultural object. It gives an account of Immanuel Kant’s original work on space, and particularly his ...
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Chapter 1 describes the disparate conditions for the emergence of higher-dimensioned space as a cultural object. It gives an account of Immanuel Kant’s original work on space, and particularly his thoughts on the dimensionality of space, considering this formulation ‘foundational’ for the nineteenth-century novel. Reading scholarly discussion in British periodicals it identifies the persistent use of analogy as a rhetorical device for explaining the ideas of dimensionality. It identifies, too, the fact that geometry itself is a model of the more abstract form that is space, alerting us to a structural shift between domains early in the life cycle of the fourth dimension, as it leaves geometry—a domain of pure thought—to enter space, a phenomenon of the physical world. It also considers Henry More’s notion of ‘spissitude’, an earlier iteration of the fourth dimension.Less
Chapter 1 describes the disparate conditions for the emergence of higher-dimensioned space as a cultural object. It gives an account of Immanuel Kant’s original work on space, and particularly his thoughts on the dimensionality of space, considering this formulation ‘foundational’ for the nineteenth-century novel. Reading scholarly discussion in British periodicals it identifies the persistent use of analogy as a rhetorical device for explaining the ideas of dimensionality. It identifies, too, the fact that geometry itself is a model of the more abstract form that is space, alerting us to a structural shift between domains early in the life cycle of the fourth dimension, as it leaves geometry—a domain of pure thought—to enter space, a phenomenon of the physical world. It also considers Henry More’s notion of ‘spissitude’, an earlier iteration of the fourth dimension.
Emily Thomas
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198807933
- eISBN:
- 9780191845727
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198807933.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Metaphysics/Epistemology
What is time? Traditionally, it has been answered that time is a product of the human mind, or the motion of celestial bodies. In the mid-seventeenth century, a new kind of answer emerged: time or ...
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What is time? Traditionally, it has been answered that time is a product of the human mind, or the motion of celestial bodies. In the mid-seventeenth century, a new kind of answer emerged: time or eternal duration is ‘absolute’, in the sense it is independent of human minds and material bodies. This study explores the development of absolute time or eternal duration during one of Britain’s richest and most creative metaphysical periods, from the 1640s to the 1730s. It features an interconnected set of main characters—Henry More, Walter Charleton, Isaac Barrow, Isaac Newton, John Locke, Samuel Clarke, and John Jackson—alongside a large and varied supporting cast, whose metaphysics are all read in their historical context and given a place in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century development of thought on time. In addition to interpreting the metaphysics of these characters, this study advances two general, developmental theses. First, the complexity of positions on time (and space) defended in early modern thought is hugely under-appreciated. Second, distinct kinds of absolutism emerged in British philosophy, helping us to understand why some absolutists considered time to be barely real, whilst others identified it with the most real being of all: God.Less
What is time? Traditionally, it has been answered that time is a product of the human mind, or the motion of celestial bodies. In the mid-seventeenth century, a new kind of answer emerged: time or eternal duration is ‘absolute’, in the sense it is independent of human minds and material bodies. This study explores the development of absolute time or eternal duration during one of Britain’s richest and most creative metaphysical periods, from the 1640s to the 1730s. It features an interconnected set of main characters—Henry More, Walter Charleton, Isaac Barrow, Isaac Newton, John Locke, Samuel Clarke, and John Jackson—alongside a large and varied supporting cast, whose metaphysics are all read in their historical context and given a place in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century development of thought on time. In addition to interpreting the metaphysics of these characters, this study advances two general, developmental theses. First, the complexity of positions on time (and space) defended in early modern thought is hugely under-appreciated. Second, distinct kinds of absolutism emerged in British philosophy, helping us to understand why some absolutists considered time to be barely real, whilst others identified it with the most real being of all: God.
