The Cambridge Platonists were an influential group of Platonist philosophers and Christian theologians at the University of Cambridge that existed during the 17th century.[1] The leading figures were Ralph Cudworth and Henry More.[2]
Mark Goldie, writing in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, notes that the term "Cambridge Platonists" was given in the 19th century and can be misleading. There is no clear distinction between the group and latitudinarians in general.
The categorization and interpretation of the Cambridge Platonists has changed over time. Frances Yates interpreted them as scholars who engaged with the Christian Kabbalah but rejected Hermeticism following Isaac Casaubon's redating of the Hermetic corpus.[3] She argues that Cudworth and More perpetuate certain Renaissance Neoplatonic ideas, including a broad syncretism of early forms of Hermeticism, in a new scholarly context.[3]
Dmitri Levitin has challenged any categorization of the Cambridge Platonists as a cohesive philosophical group. While he admits that the group "existed as a loose set of acquaintances linked by tutorial relationships," he argues that they were not exclusive in their interest in Platonism, nor did most of them believe in any syncretism or a prisca theologia/philosophia perennis.[4] Levitin notes that of the Cambridge Platonists, only More saw himself as a philosopher rather than a philologistortheologian and he faced criticism from others, including Cudworth, for his lack of attention to historical detail.[5] Moreover, philosophers not traditionally deemed "Cambridge Platonists" took an historical and philosophical interest in Platonism and ideas of ancient science.[6] Based on these conclusions Levitin rejects any categorization of the Cambridge Platonists as a cohesive group in terms of philosophical views as historically unfounded.
More recently, David Leech has argued that while Levitin makes some important points "it would be a mistake to assume that the category of Cambridge Platonism is a retroprojection of nineteenth century historiography. This is because earlier practices of referring to a group of primarily Cambridge-based 'Platonists', invariably including Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688) and Henry More (1614–1687), usually Benjamin Whichcote (1609–1683), and (more variably) a number of other key figures, can be traced back at least to the 1730s in continental Europe, and still earlier in English texts."[7]
The Cambridge Platonists used the framework of the philosophia perennisofAgostino Steuco, and from it argued for moderation.[8] They believed that reason is the proper judge of disagreements, and so they advocated dialogue between the Puritan and Laudian traditions. The orthodox English Calvinists of the time found in their views an insidious attack, by-passing as it did the basic theological issues of atonement and justification by faith. Given the circle's Cambridge background in Puritan colleges such as Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, the undermining was intellectually all the more effective. John Bunyan complained in those terms about Edward Fowler, a close latitudinarian follower.[9][need quotation to verify]
Their understanding of reason was as "the candle of the Lord", an echo of the divine within the human soul and an imprint of God within man. They believed that reason could judge the private revelations of Puritan narrative, and investigate contested rituals and liturgy of the Church of England. For this approach they were called "latitudinarian".
The dogmatism of the Puritan divines, with their anti-rationalist demands, was, they felt, incorrect. They also felt that the Calvinist insistence on individual revelation left God uninvolved with the majority of mankind. At the same time, they were reacting against the reductive materialist writings of Thomas Hobbes. They felt that the latter, while rationalist, were denying the idealistic[clarification needed] part of the universe.
To the Cambridge Platonists, religion and reason were in harmony, and reality was known not by physical sensation alone, but by intuition of the intelligible forms that exist behind the material world of everyday perception. Universal, ideal forms inform matter, and the physical senses are unreliable guides to their reality. In response to the mechanical philosophy, More proposed a "Hylarchic Principle", and Cudworth a concept of "Plastic Nature".[8][need quotation to verify]
Though coming later and not generally considered a Cambridge Platonist himself, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713) was much influenced by the movement.
The Cambridge Platonists were an influential group of 17th century philosophers and clergy whose teachings on philosophy and theology later influenced Leibniz, Locke, the Scottish common sense philosopher Thomas Reid, and Kant. They thrived at Cambridge largely between 1633 and 1678, though their younger disciples carried their thinking into the early 18th century. They identified themselves neither with the Puritans nor the High Anglicans, and they encouraged toleration within the church. The Cambridge Platonists drew on the dualistic philosophies of mind and matter of Plato (427–347 BCE) and Plotinus (205–270 CE), contending that mind is prior to matter and that reason is superior to knowledge derived from the senses. They developed the ideas that reason and morality reside in the human mind and that reason is indeed the indwelling of God in the mind that allows individuals to judge both natural and divine revelation. This group of thinkers, who were among the first to write philosophy primarily in the English language (rather than in Latin or French), believed that the rational and the spiritual could go hand-in-hand. These philosophers taught that human nature possessed an innate tendency toward goodness and that human nature was perfectible. Humans possess free will, and they learn rationally the wisdom of practicing Christ's universal love. Thus, while the Cambridge Platonists devoted their energies to metaphysical questions regarding the immortality of the soul and the existence of God, they also attended closely to morality and the principles of daily living.
