1st Edition

The Cambridge Platonists

Edited By Sarah Hutton Copyright 2024

    This book illustrates the vitality and diversity of the seventeenth-century philosophers now known as the “Cambridge Platonists”, focusing chiefly on Henry More, Ralph Cudworth and two women associated with the group — Anne Conway and Damaris Masham.

    The “Cambridge Platonists” made significant contributions to early modern philosophy. Their Platonist sobriquet obscures the fact that they were at the forefront of new thinking of their day.Some of the first English philosophers to write in the vernacular, they tackled the big themes of seventeenth-century philosophy (materialism, determinism, scepticism, atheism) and contributed original and innovative ideas in metaphysics, epistemology, psychology, and ethics. This volume highlights their treatment of some key philosophical themes (from the infinity of the world and the concept of substance to consciousness animals, love), and their inter-connections with contemporary philosophers (Descartes, Leibniz, and Locke).

    This book will be a valuable resource for academics, researchers, and Philosophy graduates. The chapters in this book were originally published in the British Journal for the History of Philosophy.

    Introduction
    Sarah Hutton
     
    1. Patrides, Plotinus and the Cambridge Platonists
    Stephen R. L. Clark
     
    2. Descartes and More on the infinity of the world
    Igor Agostini
     
    3. ‘In human shape to become the very beast!’– Henry More on animals
    Cecilia Muratori
     
    4. Henry More as reader of Marcus Aurelius
    John Sellars
     
    5. Henry More on spirits, light, and immaterial extension
     Andreas Blank
     
    6. Cudworth on types of consciousness
    Vili Lähteenmäki
     
    7. Cudworth on superintellectual instinct as inclination to the good
    David Leech
     
    8. Time, space, and process in Anne Conway
    Emily Thomas
     
    9. Three texts on the Kabbalah: More, Wachter, Leibniz, and the philosophy of the Hebrews
    Mogens Lærke
     
    10. Damaris Cudworth, Lady Masham. Between Platonism and enlightenment
    Sarah Hutton

    Biography

    Sarah Hutton is Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of York, UK. The leading scholar on the Cambridge Platonists, her publications include Anne Conway. A Woman Philosopher (2004) and British Philosophy in the Seventeenth-Century (2015). She is President of the International Society for Intellectual History.