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Cambridge Platonists and the Miltonic Heritage

Terryl L. Givens

in When Souls Had Wings: Pre-Mortal Existence in Western Thought

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, ... More

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

Defending the ‘Invisible World’: The Campaign against ‘Saducism’

Euan Cameron

in Enchanted Europe

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.

God’s Omnipresence, God’s Body, and Four Ideals of Science

Amos Funkenstein

in Theology and the Scientific Imagination

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 ... More

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

‘Christ’s College and the Latitude-Men’ Revisited: A Seminary of Heretics?

Marilyn A. Lewis

in History of Universities: Volume XXXIII/1

This chapter examines the notorious quarrel between Ralph Widdrington and Ralph Cudworth concerning the mastership of Christ's College. This prosopographical study of the fellowship at Christ's ... More

This chapter examines the notorious quarrel between Ralph Widdrington and Ralph Cudworth concerning the mastership of Christ's College. This prosopographical study of the fellowship at Christ's College between 1644 and 1669 yields two conclusions. First, Widdrington's opposition required that Cudworth be ever vigilant as master of the college, especially during the Restoration of the Monarchy. Perhaps without Widdrington's sour and vindictive temper and personal ambition there would have been less urgency in Henry More's and Cudworth's formation and consolidation of a congenial fellowship, but it was necessary to create an environment in which the Platonist philosophers and their pupils could work freely. More and Cudworth, as close friends and philosophical allies, formed the nucleus of a community with a particular intellectual character. This leads to the second and much more important conclusion: all of that effort was necessary because there was definitely something going on intellectually in the college which had to be defended. Widdrington and his high church allies took umbrage at what the ‘latitude-men’ were thinking, saying, and writing at the ‘seminary of Heretics’. The chapter then looks at the circle of Christian Platonists in Cambridge whose collective thinking would eventually become known as ‘Cambridge Platonism’.Less

Mind and Extension

Robert Pasnau

in Metaphysical Themes 1274–1671

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 ... More

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

“Moral Magick”:: Cambridge Platonism and the Third Earl of Shaftesbury

Seth Lobis

in Virtue of Sympathy: Magic, Philosophy, and Literature in Seventeenth-Century England

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 ... More

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

The Pervasive Influence

Gerard Passannante

in The Lucretian Renaissance: Philology and the Afterlife of Tradition

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 ... More

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

Réaumur’s Crayfish Experiments in Hartsoeker’s Système: Regeneration and the Limits of Mechanism

Catherine Abou-Nemeh

in The Life Sciences in Early Modern Philosophy

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 ... More

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

Location

Robert Pasnau

in Metaphysical Themes 1274–1671

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 ... More

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

Baxter and the Rise of Mechanical Philosophy

David S. Sytsma

in Richard Baxter and the Mechanical Philosophers

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 ... More

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

Henry More and the Development of Absolute Time

Emily Thomas

in Absolute Time: Rifts in Early Modern British Metaphysics

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 ... More

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

Loving the Body, Loving the Soul: Conway’s Vitalist Critique of Cartesian and Morean Dualism

Julia Borcherding

in Oxford Studies in Early Modern Philosophy, Volume IX

This chapter examines Anne Conway’s ‘argument from love’ in her Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy. This argument, supported by a further argument, the ‘argument from pain’, ... More

This chapter examines Anne Conway’s ‘argument from love’ in her Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy. This argument, supported by a further argument, the ‘argument from pain’, undermines the dualist dichotomy between mind and matter by appealing to a vitalist similarity principle. The goal is two-fold: first, to contribute to a close systematic reconstruction and analysis of Conway’s arguments, which so far is largely lacking in the literature; second, to establish that these arguments are richer and more compelling than commentators have thought. The chapter shows that Conway’s case against the dualist poses a considerable challenge to the dualisms of Henry More and Descartes.Less

Laws of Nature in Seventeenth-Century England: From Cambridge Platonism to Newtonianism

Peter Harrison

in The Divine Order, the Human Order, and the Order of Nature: Historical Perspectives

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 ... More

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

A Commotion over Motion

David S. Sytsma

in Richard Baxter and the Mechanical Philosophers

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 ... More

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

Anne Conway (1631–79)

Jacqueline Broad (ed.)

in Women Philosophers of Seventeenth-Century England: Selected Correspondence

This chapter contains selected letters from the correspondence of Anne, Viscountess Conway, and the Cambridge Platonist and philosopher-theologian Henry More. The letters span the period from 1650 to ... More

This chapter contains selected letters from the correspondence of Anne, Viscountess Conway, and the Cambridge Platonist and philosopher-theologian Henry More. The letters span the period from 1650 to 1653 and are mainly focused on ideas in René Descartes’s Principles of Philosophy and More’s Philosophicall Poems. Their exchange covers such topics as the ontological argument for the existence of God, the Cartesian method of doubt, Cartesian cosmology, and the nature of soul and body. The letters show Conway engaging in critical appraisals of both More and Descartes’s metaphysical assumptions. The chapter begins with an introductory essay by the editor, situating the correspondence in the context of More’s and Conway’s mature philosophical views. It is argued that these letters foreshadow Conway’s later interest in issues to do with the nature of substance and God. The correspondence includes editorial annotations, to assist the reader’s understanding of early modern terms and ideas.Less

Ghostly authorities and the British popular press

Andrea Brady

in Gothic Renaissance: A reassessment

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 ... More

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

The Significant Voice: Address and the Animal Sign

Tobias Menely

in The Animal Claim: Sensibility and the Creaturely Voice

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 ... More

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

Margaret Cavendish (1623–73)

Jacqueline Broad (ed.)

in Women Philosophers of Seventeenth-Century England: Selected Correspondence

This chapter contains a selection of the private correspondence of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, as well as several epistles taken from her published works. It includes Cavendish’s ... More

This chapter contains a selection of the private correspondence of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, as well as several epistles taken from her published works. It includes Cavendish’s letters to and from the Dutch diplomat Constantijn Huygens, the English philosopher Walter Charleton, the Cambridge Platonist Henry More, and the philosopher-theologian Joseph Glanvill, spanning the period from 1655 to 1668. It begins with an introductory essay by the editor, situating the letters and epistles in the context of Cavendish’s wider philosophy, and in the context of early modern debates concerning matter and motion. The topics of the letters range from issues to do with experimental science, the constitution of material things, and the nature of reason to the existence of space and belief in witches and demons and spirits in nature. The text includes editorial annotations to assist the reader’s understanding of early modern words and ideas.Less

The Incipient Materialism of Mechanical Philosophy

David S. Sytsma

in Richard Baxter and the Mechanical Philosophers

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 ... More

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

Introduction: Explorations of the Friendship Spectrum

Cedric C. Brown

in Friendship and its Discourses in the Seventeenth Century

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. ... More

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