Fécondité et limites de la réception du platonisme en Angleterre au XVIIe siècle: le cas des platoniciens de Cambridge

Abstract

Even if in seventeenth-century England empiricism was the main current of thought, Platonism also played a significant part. In the thirties, elaborating at least partly upon the Florentine revival of the quattrocento, Thomas Jackson challenged the Aristotelian views still prevailing at Oxford. Outside academic circles, Lord Herbert of Cherbury was also a vocal critic of scholasticism and somehow prepared the way for the acceptance of the Cartesian doctrine by English thinkers. However, Platonism mostly flourished at Cambridge among a group of men who, after discarding the Calvinist principles on which they had been nurtured, developed a rational theology relying heavily on Platonist or Plotinian ideas. By the mid-century, Benjamin Whichcote bore the brunt of the Calvinist assault, as his former tutor, Antony Tuckney, reproached him for deviating from the orthodox path. The philosophers of the group were Ralph Cudworth and Henry More who endeavoured to find in Platonism an adequate answer to Hobbesian determinism and materialism. Capitalizing upon the Platonist and neo- Platonist texts, which they were thoroughly familiar with, they developed a kind of metaphysics, epistemology and ethics which, in their view, harmoniously combined the best of the Platonic tradition with basic Christian tenets.