Table Of ContentTHE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS IN PHILOSOPHICAL CONTEXT
POLITICS, METAPHYSICS AND RELIGION
ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D'HISTOIRE DES IDEES
INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS
150
THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS
IN PHILOSOPHICAL CONTEXT
Politics, Metaphysics and Religion
EDITED BY
G.A.J. ROGERS, J.M. VIENNE
AND Y.C. ZARKA
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THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS IN
PHILOSOPHICAL CONTEXT
POLITICS, METAPHYSICS AND RELIGION
edited by
G. A. J. ROGERS
University ofKeele, Keele . United Kingdom
J. M. VIENNE
Universite de Nantes. France
and
Y. C. ZARKA
CNRS Paris . France
Springer-Science+Business Media, B.V.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Cambr Idge Platonlsts In phi losophical context : po l t t t cs ,
metaphysics. and relIgion I edited by G.A.J . Rogers. J.M. Vlenne.
and Y.C . Zarka.
p . cm . (Arch Ives Internatlonales d 'htstoire des Idees =
Internat ional ar ch ives of the hIstory of Ideas; 150>
EnglIsh and French .
Includes b IblIograph Ical references and Index .
1. Cambr idge Platon lsts. 2 . Philosophy, Engllsh--17th century.
3 . England--Intellectual llfe-- 17th century. I. Rogers . G. A. J.
<Graham Alan John). 1938- II. Vlenne. Jean-MIchel. III. Zarka,
Yves Char les . IV. Ser Ies : ArchIves Internattonales d'h tsto ire des
i dees; 150.
B1133.C2C292 1997
141' . 2 · 094209032- - dc21 97 -10318
ISBN 978-90-481-4844-8 ISBN 978-94-015-8933-8 (eBook)
001 10.1007/978-94-015-8933-8
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved
© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1997.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1997
No part of this publication may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Contributors vii
Abbreviations viii
Introduction ix
Jean Michel Vienne
PART ONE
Chapter I The Other-Worldly Philosophers and the Real World :
The Cambridge Platonists, Theology and Politics
G. A. J. Rogers 3
Chapter II Liberte et Verite: Politique et morale dans la
correspondance hollandaise de More et de Cudworth
Luisa Simonutti 17
Chapter III Critique de Hobbes et fondement de la morale chez
Cudworth
Yves-Charles Zarka 39
PART Two
Chapter IV The Heritage of Patristic Platonism in Seventeenth-
century English Philosophical Theology
David W. Dockrill 55
Chapter V John Smith et Ie Portique
Jacqueline Lagree 79
Chapter VI Cudworth, Boethius and the Scale of Nature
Sarah Hutton 93
Chapter VII Ralph Cudworth, un platonisme paradoxal: La Nature
dans la Digression concerning the Plastick Life ofNature
Alain Petit 101
Chapter VIII Ixe$"v; et Relation : Du platonisme al'empirisme
Jean-Michel Vienne 111
PART THREE
Chapter IX The Role of Illuminism in the Thought of Henry More
Robert Crocker 129
v
vi TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter X "La Nature est un art". Le vitalisme de Cudworth et de More
Jean-Louis Breteau 145
Chapter XI Force, Motion and Causality: More's Critique of Descartes
John Cottingham 159
Chapter XII Cudworth versus Descartes : platonisme et sens commun
dans la critique des Meditations
Marialuisa Baldi 173
PART FOUR
Chapter XIII Les differentes lectures du System de Cudworth par
G. W. Leibniz
Andre Robinet 187
Chapter XIV Platonic Idealism in Modern Philosophy from
Malebranche to Berkeley
Stuart Brown 197
ApPENDIX
Ralph Cudworth, Additional Manuscript n? 4981 (On the Nature of
Liberum Arbitrium) introduced by J. L. Breteau 217
Bibliography 233
Index 245
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Marialuisa Baldi CN.R. Milano, ltalia
Jean-Louis Breteau Universite de Toulouse-le -Mirail, France
Stuart Brown The Open University, United Kingdom
John Cottingham University ofReading , United Kingdom
Robert Crocker The Flinders University, Australia
David W. Dockrill Newcastle University, Australia
Sarah Hutton University ofHertfordshire, United Kingdom
Jacqueline Lagree Universite de Rennes , France
Alain Petit Universite de Clermont-Ferrand, France
Andre Robinet C.N.R.S. Paris, France; Universite Libre de Bruxelles,
Belgique
G. A. John Rogers University ofKeele, United Kingdom
Luisa Simonutti CN.R. Milano
Jean-Michel Vienne Universite de Nantes , France
Yves Charles Zarka CN.R.S. Paris, France
vii
ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THIS VOLUME
es.p.W. : More, Henry, A Collection ofSeveral Philosophical Writings,
(London, 1662).
D.D. : More, Henry, Divine Dialogues, (London, 1668).
E.M. : More, Henry, Enchiridion Metaphysicum, (London, 1671).
E.E. : More, Henry, Enchiridion Ethicum, (London, 1667) .
E.T. : More, Henry, Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, (London, 1656).
M.G. : More, Henry, An Explanation ofthe Grand Mystery ofGodliness,
(London, 1660).
T.E.I.M. : Cudworth, Ralph, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable
Morality, (London, 1731).
T.F. : Cudworth, Ralph, A Treatise ofFreewill, (ed. John Allen, London,
1838).
T.1.S.U. : Cudworth, Ralph, The True Intellectual System of the Universe ,
(London , 1678).
viii
INTRODUCTION
The Cambridge Platonists were defenders of tolerance in the political as well as the
moral sphere; they held that practical judgement came down in the last instance to
individual conscience ; and they laid the foundations of our modern conceptions of
conscience and liberty. But at the same time they maintained the existence
of eternal truths, and of a Good-in-itself, identical with Truth and Being, refusing to
admit that freedom of conscience implied moral relativism. They were critics of
dogmatism, and of the sectarian notion of "enthusiasm" as a source of illumination,
on the grounds that both were disruptive of social harmony; they pleaded the cause
of reason, in the hope that it could become the foundation of all human knowledge.
Yet, for all that, they maintained that a certain sort of mystical illumination lay at
the heart of all true thought, and that human reason had validity only in virtue of its
divine origin. They debated with Descartes and took a keen interest in his mechan-
ism and his dualism; they brought the atomistic theories of Democritus back into
repute; and they sought to provide a detailed account of the causality linking all
phenomena. But at the same time they fought against every form of materialism
and atheism; they constructed their universe on a finalistic model derived from
Plato ; and they maintained that the world could be understood only on vitalist
principles .
Occupying a territory that lies between the system of Descartes and that of
Leibniz, between rationalism and empiricism, between ancient and modern science,
between religion and philosophy, the Cambridge Platonists were at the heart of the
formation of modern thought, and many of their questions are still our own, even if
their solutions are no longer accepted. Within the framework of inquiry of their
time, they tried to bring together the most irreconcilable tendencies; and because of
this, their ideas are far less monolithic, and far harder to classify, than those of their
contemporaries, with the result that they have been largely forgotten in the history
of philosophy. Moreover, the form in which they presented their views provides an
obstacle for twentieth-century readers. The problem is one of style, of metaphorical
language, of the elaborate erudition of their scholarship, and above all of the
difficulty of subsuming their views under clear overarching principles.
One must admit that the modern reader is often put off by the very diversity of
the topics which the Cambridge Platonists addressed, so much so that the richness
of their ideas can be lost sight of. But there is, for all that, a unifying thread - one
that the contributors to this volume have tried to uncover, with the aim of restoring
the Cambridge Platonists to the important place that belongs to them in the genesis
of our modern culture. This should be particularly evident in the first four chapters
of the book, which are devoted to morals, politics and religion. Hitherto, research
on the Platonists has concentrated on their physics (with special reference to the
IX
G. A. J. Rogers et al (eds.), The Cambridge Platonists in Philosophical Context. ix-xiv .
© 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
x INTRODUCTION
correspondence between More and Descartes, and the relationship between More
and Newton), while a more recent area of interest has been their metaphysics (espe-
cially Cudworth 's "plastic nature"). The present work, by contrast, gives pride of
place to the practical dimension, in the belief that it allows us to see important con-
nections between their theories of knowledge, their physics and their metaphysics ,
and to reveal a coherence, or at any rate a certain harmony, in the positions they
advanced.
The terms in which the Platonists approached the practical side of their inquiries
are sufficiently similar to our own to be quite accessible to the modern reader. What
can be more bewildering is the theological aspect - the system of concepts and
metaphors in terms of which their moral and political (and hence religious) preoc-
cupations are worked out. These authors were committed to a pan-psychic vitalism
which seems all the more foreign to us given that many texts from the same period
are entirely free of such elements, and hence seem infinitely more accessible .
Nevertheles s, it is impossible to understand the transition from one form of moder-
nity - that proposed by Descartes - to the other equally striking forms proposed by
Leibniz, Newton or Locke, if we ignore the reservoir of ideas which the work of the
Cambridge Platonists represented for those very thinkers who elaborated their own
systems by criticising them.
There is thus much illumination to be had by approaching the Cambridge
Platonists from a practical perspective, and presenting their thought as a reaction
against the various forms of voluntarism that prevailed at the time. Calvinism and
its offshoots , in the course of affirming the transcendence of God, put the divine
will at the centre of their explanation of the universe - a notion that gave rise, in
moral philosophy, to predestination and legalism, and in political theory to state ab-
solutism. Hobbes responded to theological absolutism by putting into the hands of
the sovereign the instruments of public and private security. But by failing to ac-
commodate the guiding principles of voluntarism, his solution turns out to be much
worse that the evil it is designed to prevent: it degenerates into a relativism which is
just as dictatorial. As the Platonists saw it, it was only by restoring an authentic
transcendence that one could resist the kind of relativism that regarded all authority
as an artificial creation . But this authentic transcendence could not be identified
with theological voluntarism, any more than with Thomist scholasticism, the latter
having been compromised by its links with Catholic obscurantism and intolerance.
It could only be derived from the prisca theologia - that ancient theology which
had been embodied (as certain traditions of the time had it) in the teachings of
Moses, as well as those of Pythagoras and Plato, and even Aristotle. A Platonic
framework allowed the eternal truths themselves to be set against the supposed cre-
ation of those truths; to unify, within God, truth, goodness and being (whereas vol-
untarism made the first two notions subordinate to the arbitrary will of God); and to
follow the Timaeus in introducing final causation as the very basis of the mechan-
ical interactions of matter. In a Platonic philosophy, every human being could be
given the ability to use his reason to move away from the sensible world and
approach the divine; and tolerance became compatible with the notion of an
