The Platonic Poems of Katherine Philips

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)1. The Appeal of PlatonismKatherine Philips (1632-1664) wrote poems on the human and the divine in the language of early modern idealism. While her contemporary Anne Conway (1631-1679) engaged directly in philosophical debates through her correspondence with figures such as the Cambridge Platonist Henry More, Philips worked in a decorous lyrical mode. In 1671, Conway wrote a tract in which she challenged Cartesian dualism and Hobbesian materialism. Informed by a Platonic commitment to the contemplative life, distrust of the senses, and veneration of the triad of soul, world spirit, and the One, Philips's poetry also opposes the political and philosophical implications of mechanism. While Conway's tract was published posthumously in 1692 as the Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, Philips constrained the publication of her poetry during her lifetime to limit their apparent social (and perhaps intellectual) ambitions.1 A comparison of these two women's writings reveals how female intellectuals participated in philosophical controversy in this period, and forces us to reassess the term 'Platonic' as a descriptor of Philips's poetic meditations.Although Platonism was diffused throughout Christian theology, it was treated sceptically in the popular Protestant writing of the seventeenth century. Plato is cited in five of the thirty-seven best-selling religious tracts published in the late 1650s through 1670s, but not approvingly.2 Despite such scepticism, Platonic philosophy became increasingly popular in the mid-century, as intellectuals sought to reconcile scientific discovery with idealist concepts of nature and scriptural wisdom, and to provide new models of religious and political toleration. For its defenders, Platonic philosophy represented a means of achieving wisdom and happiness. Denying that the human condition was fearful and decrepit, Platonists viewed the absolute goodness of God as incompatible with Calvinist predestination. Writing in 1666, Samuel Parker argued that Platonists sensed their condition to be 'secure', 'as 'tis certain that Infinite Goodness cannot be angry with him, that has endeavoured with all faithfulness and diligence to know and do his Duty'. Platonism 'requires of us to act suitable to the Dignity of rational Beings, to keep up the Splendour and Grandeur of our Natures, and to scorn any Action that's unhandsome, or unworthy our Station and Quality ... It teaches us to imitate and resemble the Divine Perfections, to be God-like in Wisdom, and Justice.'3 As Carol Barash has argued, Philips's poetry drew on the femme forte tradition to construct models of female heroism in response to political events; but it should also be noted that Platonism itself, in its celebration of human dignity and the splendour of human nature as a mirror of divine goodness, articulated a form of personal heroism which could evade the particularities of temporal politics.4 And the emphasis of the Platonists on rationality rather than revelation - the Cambridge Platonists in particular contended that reason and the Bible were thoroughly reconcilable - represented a temperate intervention in mid-century British religious factionalism and enthusiasm.Platonic truth was also unaffected by its unpopularity. According to Benjamin Whichcote, 'the Universal Acknowledgment of a Thing for Truth doth not ly in every individual Person's receiving it ... but in the due and even Proportion it bears to the Universal Reason of Mankind'.5 The universal need not be adopted by all in order to be true: differences of opinion, even ideological defeat, could be accommodated without jeopardizing the truth discovered by the individual. As such, Platonism allowed writers like Philips - constrained not only by her rural location, but also by the shifting fortunes of the mixed Royalist and Parliamentarian affiliations of her family - to construct a discourse of honour, truth and beauty which could be fulfilled privately. …