Cambridge Platonists Research Articles

Locke on life: the vital union and the embodied person

ABSTRACT This paper offers an interpretation of Locke's understanding of life, challenging a familiar reading which treats him as endorsing a mechanical reduction of the living body. Against the mechanists, Locke clearly states that the internal movement constitutive of life is excited from within the organism, and he also holds that the coordination of the bodily organs (their unity of function) cannot be understood mechanically. Rather, the different parts of the organism enjoy a ‘vital union', a concept that Locke borrows from Henry More and the Cambridge Platonists. In the final part of the paper, it is shown how personhood, on Locke's understanding, partakes in this vital union and how the person is thus embodied in the human organism, or ‘Man’.

The Law of Reason and Beyond

Lady Damaris Cudworth Masham, an English philosopher and theologian, holds a distinctive place in the intellectual discourse of late seventeenth century England. As the daughter of Ralph Cudworth, a prominent Cambridge Platonist, and a close friend and student of John Locke, Damaris Masham participated in a number of discussions at once, related in one way or another to the basic tenets of Christian theology and moral philosophy. The first of these is a dispute with the English Malebranchians, primarily John Norris and his intellectual companion Mary Astell, regarding the concept of the love of God. The second important debate concerned the defence of John Locke's rational Christianity against attacks from deists and enthusiasts. In addition to the defence of moderate conformist theology against radical non-conformism, Masham's writings also offer a special vision of Christian moral life, in which there is room for pleasures, the precepts of natural law and the commandments of Christian Revelation. Natural law occupies an important, but underexplored place in Masham's moral philosophy and theology. This paper is intended to fill said gap and is devoted to the reconstruction of Masham's approach to natural law and its connection with other crucial concepts of her moral theology: pleasures, sociability, reason, Revelation. In order to accomplish this goal, we interpret Masham's writings in light of relevant contexts and consider them as polemical arguments in which natural law plays an important, but limited role.

“We shall remove the Sun”: Henry More’s Neoplatonic adaptation of Jacob Böhme’s philosophy

ABSTRACT This article presents a detailed analysis of how the Cambridge Platonist Henry More (1614–1687) adapted the philosophy of the German mystic Jacob Böhme (1575–1624). For More, Böhme’s errors can be amended only by intervening radically in his philosophical system, discussing not what Böhme said, but what he should have said. In particular, the essay studies how and why More, in Censura, altered a scheme used by Böhme in his Clavis to explain visually the core of his philosophical insight. It claims that this intervention, which consists mainly in moving the position of the Sun in the scheme, turns Böhme’s circular metaphysical system, in which the Sun, or fire, was the fulcrum of a perpetual movement, into a Neoplatonic system of emanation. In so doing, More fashions himself as a “Böhme redivivus”, showing to his readers that the only way of making sense of Böhme is to read him in Neoplatonic terms. The removal of the Sun from its original place in the scheme thus exemplifies More’s unease with Böhme’s conception of the Sun as fully embedded in the dynamic interplay of light and darkness, and shows that More’s interpretation of Böhme involves a full operation of rewriting.

Ралф Кадуърт и неговата роля в историята на моралната философия през ранната модерна епоха

Sarah Hutton, renowned scholar of Ralph Cudworth’s philosophy in the present day, notes that Cudworth himself has constructed a conception of the human mind that lies at the root of most fully developed philosophical psychology that a representative of Seventeenth-Century Cambridge Platonists has ever endowed in the terms of his own intellectual heritage. Cudworth had turned his attention to the philosophical tradition of Platonism, especially to the Plotinus’ Enneads, to have developed the same philosophical psychology distinguished by its notion of the soul like self-determining entity having many faculties: intellectual, vital, and moral. On account of this state of affairs Hutton presumes that it is rightfully to think Cudworth undoubtedly to have carried out real theory of mind that has yielded explanations about discernible experience in relation to the human mental states. Hutton rightly thinks on account of that statement that the definitions of the essence of the soul Plotinus has presented in his Enneads, IV, are substantial part of Cudworth’s philosophical psychology that places emphasis on the notion of the soul like self-determining and ruling entity in the realm of mental processes in human vital experience. That soul according to Cudworth can in the same time sympathize with the phenomena of this experience. Here I propose discussion on these issues. I posit that Cudworth had relied on his notion of the soul when he had developed his own epistemology in relation to the conception of morality and freewill that he had been working out. Accordingly I maintain that the moral philosophy of Cudworth within this frame of reference has had its influence on the further development of the moral philosophy in Britain.

Cudworth and More on Immaterial Extension: A New Text with Analysis

Henry More famously argues that all substances are extended, body and spirit alike. In The True Intellectual System of the Universe, More’s friend and fellow Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth notes More’s position but refrains from criticizing it. By contrast, in a passage from one of Cudworth’s unpublished manuscripts that has escaped scholarly attention and that is included here as an appendix, Cudworth addresses More directly, raising objections against More’s view and responding to two of More’s arguments. My aim in this paper is to provide a detailed analysis of Cudworth’s response to More in this passage.

Anti-voluntarism, natural providence and miracles in Thomas Burnet's Theory of the Earth.

In his Telluris Theoria Sacra and its English translation The Theory of the Earth (1681-90), the English clergyman and schoolmaster Thomas Burnet (c.1635-1715) constructed a geological history from the Creation to the Final Consummation, positing predominantly natural causes to explain biblical events and their effects on the Earth and life on it. Burnet's insistence on appealing primarily to natural rather than miraculous causes has been interpreted both by his contemporaries and by some historians as an essentially Cartesian principle. On this reading, Burnet adhered to a Cartesian style of explanation in which there was no place for miracles. In this paper, I propose a different interpretation. Burnet's commitment to natural over miraculous causes, I argue, was grounded in an anti-voluntarist theology which he inherited from the Cambridge Platonists and Latitudinarians. This anti-voluntarism, moreover, also dictated the kind of miracles to which he did appeal. This reading of Burnet contrasts with the view that he was simply following Cartesian principles. First, Descartes had espoused a radical form of theological voluntarism. Second, Burnet's and Descartes's views of providence were based on distinct attributes of God, and these attributes had quite different implications regarding the place of miracles in the providential order.

Christian Platonism: A History ed. by Alexander J. B. Hampton and John Peter Kenney

Reviewed by: Christian Platonism: A History ed. by Alexander J. B. Hampton and John Peter Kenney Jessica L. D. Jones HAMPTON, Alexander J. B. and John Peter Kenney, editors. Christian Platonism: A History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. xv + 497 pp. Cloth, $130.00 One would be hard-pressed to think of a philosophical school more consistently in dialogue with Christianity over the centuries than Platonism. Platonism's influence on the development of Christian theology and philosophy has at times been one of assistance in articulating the intelligibility of the Christian faith to the degree that it can be articulated, as we find in Augustine's oeuvre. But fierce debate has also marked the relationship between Christianity and Platonism. Platonist thinkers in the early centuries of Christianity, such as Porphyry in his Κατὰ Χριστιανῶν, have been among the religion's most dedicated critics. Christian Platonism: A History is self-conscious about this complicated relationship between Christianity and Platonism. As such, the volume's purpose is not to shy away from this relationship but, rather, to articulate its complexity in all its facets. For Christianity's longstanding dialogue with Platonism exhibits the best kind of philosophical and theological influence, one that refines the thought of both Platonists and Christians alike as members of each school deliberate about the highest things. As the editors Alexander Hampton and John Peter Kenney point out in their introductory essay, such rigorous debate could not have taken place at the level of sophistication that it did without some common, shared principles. One of those common principles, they contend, is Christianity and Platonism's mutual and fundamental "commitment to transcendence" and "adherence to an ontology countenancing the existence of a higher level of reality beyond the manifest image of the physical world." Another is a shared interest in articulating the precise sort of ontological relationship that transpires between transcendent, immaterial being and sensible being, with a "focus on the incarnational, participatory, and sacramental character of being, which calls us back to its motive force in love." Such ontological assumptions held in common made a profound dialogue between Christianity and Platonism possible. Christian Platonism uses the term "Platonism," then, for a purpose. The volume traces Christian reception of both Plato as well as subsequent philosophical iterations of Platonic-inspired schools (such as the Neoplatonists and the Cambridge Platonists). It is an intimidating task for any volume of collected essays to undertake. But the book does a wonderful job of capturing the scope of such a project by distinguishing [End Page 819] three primary areas for reflection: the conceptual, the historical, and the topical. The first distinguishes conceptual allegiances and distinctions between Christian and Platonic thinkers; the second treats a chronological set of historical intersections between Christianity and Platonism; and the final section engages subjects of contemporary concern through the lens of Christian Platonism. Rather than summarize all the essays contained in such an expansive volume, I shall highlight a few essays that may be of interest to Review of Metaphysics readers. The volume opens with Lloyd Gerson's defense of the perennial importance of Platonism, in which he focuses on drawing out the reasons why a Platonic metaphysic of eternal forms grounding the multiplicity of existing things and the possibility of practical wisdom endures in its attractiveness. While Gerson notes that Christianity is a "mixed" science, given that Christianity has to work out its theological positions with an attentiveness to history (Platonism does not have the same restriction), he nevertheless attributes Christianity's incorporation of Platonic-inspired metaphysical reflections into Trinitarian theology as a sign of Platonism's philosophical explanatory power. The subsequent essays in the conceptual section trace out the dialectic between Platonism and Christianity on metaphysical topics such as the transformation of Platonic forms into the theory of divine ideas, the nature of participation of sensible things in relation to the ideas, the simple yet Trinitarian nature of God, and the nature of theology itself. The next section concerns itself with essays on various historical intersections and divergences of Christianity and Platonism. These essays open with tracing Platonism's influence on the early Church's theological attempts to interpret scripture, which John Peter Kenney recounts as beginning with...

Divine Fate Moral and the Best of All Possible Worlds: Origen’s Apokatastasis Panton in Cambridge Origenism and Enlightenment Rationalism

AbstractIn his account of his Düsseldorf conversations with G.E. Lessing shortly before the latter’s death in 1781, F.H. Jacobi records the Enlightenment poet and philosopher’s allusion to the Kabbalistic philosophy of Henry More, whom he cited in support of his shocking Spinozist creed of the hen kai pan. Origen’s first Christian philosophy hinges upon a conviction of universal divine goodness which cannot but share its riches with beings capable of participating in it by virtue of their own free will. From this first Christian truth flow the infamous doctrines of the pre‐existence of souls and, above all, the restitution of all things envisaged as a never‐ending process of autonomous moral soul‐making. Origen’s philosophy of divine goodness and human freedom appealed deeply to the Cambridge Platonists Ralph Cudworth and Henry More, who cited the Church Father in support of their metaphysics of God’s benignity and man’s free will. German rationalist G.W. Leibniz was also a close reader of Cudworth and More. Both his Theodicy and his Monadology—notably the notion of a best possible world created by a good God and inhabited by self‐improving spiritual monads—are indebted to the Church Father’s Christian philosophy. G.E. Lessing, reviewing the controversial discussions about the apokatastasis in his day, staunchly defended Leibniz’s Origenist rationalism in several works devoted to his philosophical eschatology. Above all, he restated Origen’s notion of salvation as divine pedagogy in his celebrated Education of the Human Race. The present essay establishes the deeply Origenist character of the historic systems of these two seminal German rationalists, with their shared concern for God’s creative goodness and man’s free perfectibility.

Henry More against the Lurianic Kabbalah. The Arguments in the Fundamenta

The Cambridge Platonist Henry More was fiercely averse to the Lurianic Kabbalah, with which he became acquainted through the two tomes of the Kabbala denudata (1677; 1684). More contributed to the first tome substantially and was highly influential in shaping the reception of this work, edited by Christian Knorr von Rosenroth. He denounced the incompatibility of the Christian religion with Luria's system and in his last contribution, the Fundamenta, he put forward an apagogical argument meant to show the inconsistency of Luria's teaching. The article aims at exploring the nature of More's argument so as to highlight the philosophical essence of his criticism, the intention of which was to emphasize the incompatibility of the Kabbalah with any form of rational speculation. Luria's doctrine appeared to More to be a compromise between materialism and spiritualism, a sort of hybrid theory that was even worse than materialism, given its misleading theistic appearance as well as the lack of internal coherence. This compromise was also morally unacceptable, being symptomatic of weakness of the will.

The Eternal Truths in Henry More and Ralph Cudworth

The thorny issue of the created status of eternal verities, a hypothesis initially promulgated by Descartes in his 1630 correspondence with Mersenne, generated widespread debates across confessional lines in 17th century philosoph­ical and theological circles. At stake was not only the necessary or contingent status of these truths, and thus God’s relationship with creation, but also the very nature of the Deity. This was certainly the case for the Cambridge Platonists Henry More and Ralph Cudworth. Both were early advocates of Descartes’ philosophy, while still critical of some of its assumptions. The doctrine of the creation of eternal truths represents such an instance, and it was a highly sensitive topic for both. I shall propose a scholastic context in which to situate some of their ideas in order to shed some light on how this issue was addressed in More and Cudworth. The position where eternal truths are arbitrarily instantiated by the mere fiat of God is avoided by the Cambridge Platonists in two ways. First, the immutable, necessary, and eternal status of these ideas is safeguarded by the premise that they are intrinsic to the divine essence insofar as it is intellectual. We shall see that this raises a question concerning their precise ontological status. Second, the function of these ideas as the framework of the created order is guaranteed by the perfec­tion of the divine will. This will require a clarification of the causal relationships existing between eternal truths, God, and the realm of creation.

The Life and Theology of Alexander Knox: Anglicanism in the Age of Enlightenment and Romanticism

Alexander Knox (1737–1851), or ‘Dear Alleck’ as John Wesley affectionately called him, is perhaps best known in Wesleyan and Methodist circles for his remarkable yet underappreciated rebuttal of Robert Southey's Life of Wesley, or for his status as among one of Wesley's favoured students. But of the substance of Knox's thought, little has been said. Into this gap, David McCready's new monograph, The Life and Theology of Alexander Knox, offers a timely, illuminating bridge between Knox as student of Wesley and Knox as theologian in his own right.The monograph, expanding on what must have been a daunting doctoral dissertation, divides its labour according to its title: one half biography and the other half theology. The biographical material traverses the signal events of Knox's diverse life as touchstones in the development of Knox's ‘system’: from his relationship to Wesley, to the Church of England, to his context between Enlightenment and Romanticism, and to the legacy of the ‘Christian Platonist’ tradition. All this narrative positioning enables a sustained reflection on Knox's theology, proceeding according to Knox's preferred arrangement of doctrinal loci. The monograph ends with an account of Knox's influence and argument for his significance. The volume is indeed a compelling invitation to look again at Knox.The image of Knox that McCready portrays—Anglican, Christian Platonist, Wesleyan (of course with clarification), enlightenment and proto-romantic theologian—brings the reader through an extensive body of literature. The image of Knox gives a measure of stability to what may, at first glance, seem a nebulous and eclectic mind, showing that there is a demonstrable order, consistency, and tradition in Knox's theological reasoning (107). Noteworthy is the commitment to highlight the ‘Anglican moderates’ (82), a phrase McCready uses to refer to the Cambridge Platonists and their associates of the seventeenth century, who form the backbone of Knox's theology and, by association, a strong case is made that they are a dominant source for Wesley as well, corroborating a small undercurrent in the reception of Wesley. McCready does well to remind the reader that Wesley was Knox's most influential teacher who likely introduced Knox to these figures. Noteworthy also is the ambition of this case for Knox the theologian. The opening pages of the volume urge the reader to think of Knox alongside and, assumedly, on par with towering figures like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Friedrich Schleiermacher (1).But the project's ambitions uncover its shortcomings, however few. The structure of the project, being more expository analysis and less critical evaluation, necessarily limits the constructive claims that such a project can yield. So, the invitation to compare Knox to Schleiermacher and Coleridge, John Smith and Henry More, John Chrysostom and Clement of Alexandria, as an ecumenical theologian, a forerunner and influence on the Oxford Movement, generates the sense, perhaps the ‘intuition’, to use Knox's idiom (138), that the appeals to significance overextend the nature of the project itself. Nonetheless, for what the book is, as an undoubtedly thorough reappraisal of Knox, an invitation to press deeper into Knox's theology, and a demonstration that Knox is, as McCready shows, a theologian worth further study, this is an excellent volume.Especially of value for Wesley studies is the pressure McCready's work places on the nature, extent, and presence of a collection of figures upon the theology of John Wesley. McCready's substantiation of Knox's interpretation of Wesley, an interpretation already noted as one of the most penetrating analyses of Wesley, invites Wesleyan scholarship in two directions. On the one hand, Knox's reasoning distilled here warrants reflection on understanding Wesley as not only a kind of Anglican moderate, but as downstream of the Cambridge Platonists, making a strong case for the location of Wesley within this specific intellectual tradition, or, at least, another piece of evidence for those inclined to such a hermeneutic. On the other hand, McCready's exposition is an important reminder that Wesley's most able interpreters are, in fact, often those who knew him. Thus, there is enduring value in interrogating the more proximate inheritors of Wesley's teaching.The Life and Theology of Alexander Knox is a helpful scholarly intervention into an important theological moment. Its insights apply gentle but necessary pressure on deficits in scholarship in a number of areas at the end of the eighteenth century. I recommend this fine volume to anyone with a stake in Wesleyan, Methodist, Anglican, or Episcopal history.

Damaris Masham, Ralph Cudworth and John Locke: Some Philosophical Continuities

In this paper, I focus on Damaris Masham, to re-consider the relationship of her philosophy to the two philosophers with whom she was most closely associated: John Locke, and her father, the Cambridge Platonist, Ralph Cudworth. After considering some of the problems of interpretation which have arisen in scholarly debates, I focus her Occasional Thoughts to highlight continuities with both Locke and Cudworth in her epistemology, moral philosophy and metaphysics. I argue these show that Damaris Masham’s philosophy does not fit the received categories of empiricist or rationalist of the dominant narrative. Her position requires us to reconsider not just the relationship of her philosophy to that of Cudworth and Locke, but also of the relationship of Cudworth and Locke. Ultimately, therefore, reintegrating women into the history of philosophy challenges us to rethink standard narratives of the history of philosophy.

Fisher, Nicholas. Symon Patrick (1626–1707) and His Contribution to the Post-1660 Restored Church of England.

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‘It's all in Plato’: Platonism, Cambridge Platonism, and C.S. Lewis

In 1924 C.S. Lewis began work on a doctoral dissertation, the subject of which was to be the Cambridge Platonist Henry More (1614–1687). A number of scholars gloss this important moment in Lewis's intellectual and spiritual journey, and some offer penetrating, if cursory, analysis of how Lewis's close reading of More would have helped to shape the young scholar's philosophical and theological imagination. These important contributions notwithstanding, the influence of More and, by extension, the Platonic tradition longue durée are not properly understood in Lewis scholarship. This article argues that Cambridge Platonism and Henry More in particular were a crucial part of Lewis's initiation into, and appropriation of, the Platonic tradition. The tradition of Platonism to which the Cambridge Platonists introduced Lewis shaped the way he thought about a number of topics central to his own moral, philosophical, and religious outlook, including the relationship between the moral and the numinous, and imagination and reality, but also pneumatology, angelology, and his understanding of the supernatural, miracles, prophetic wisdom, and, especially, the nature of love.

Henry More and Descartes on the passions of the soul

ABSTRACT Henry More’s well-catalogued attack of Cartesian metaphysics has distracted scholars from exploring the reasons for the Cambridge Platonist’s abiding attraction to Descartes’s moral psychology. Even after he had become disillusioned with the implications of Descartes’s substance dualism, More defended a moral vision that relied heavily on the Frenchman’s treatise on the passions. Through a careful treatment of More’s ethical philosophy as expressed in his Enchiridion Ethicum (1668) and of the implicit moral argument of Descartes’s Passiones Animae (1650), this article explores the vast expanse of common ground these philosophers held in common. Fundamental to their shared moral vision is their conviction that the passions were fundamentally good and that they could be shaped by the will to defend against the effects of unbridled passion, including violence and atheism. More saw Descartes as an ally who also understood that the passions were the means by which the soul could become God-like.

NORMATIVITY AND BIBLICAL CRITICISM

The first thematic section of this issue of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, on “Humans, Religion, and Normativity,” features two articles. Bruce Reichenbach analyzes three phases of philosophical thought regarding what it is to be human; for the last phase identified, strong artificial intelligence (AI), he asks the question of where in strong AI intentional action and providing moral justification, that is, normativity, is to be found—he sees an incompatibility between strong AI and a Christian understanding of personhood. Joona Auvinen provides a critical examination of whether or not, and in what way exactly, the aims characteristic of religious practice are normatively significant; he argues that this is highly dependent both on controversial issues concerning the nature of religion, and on a number of controversial metanormative issues. In the “Symposium on Science, Religion, and the Rise of Biblical Criticism,” which was organized by James Ungureanu, the importance of and need for greater interdisciplinary collaboration between philosophers, theologians, scholars of religion, and historians is demonstrated in tracing the origins and development of the “conflict thesis” between science and religion. After Ungureanu's introduction, seven articles highlight the often neglected role that biblical criticism played in guiding and constructing narratives of conflict. Paul Lim analyzes the early Boyle Lectures held around 1700, to show how science and religion were addressed by three representative Anglican clerics at the time; he argues that all three Boyle lecturers sought to re-instantiate the Renaissance desideratum of returning to the sources of pure religion and praxis. Diego Lucci searches for the roots of John Locke's theory of personal identity and shows that this consciousness-based theory resulted not only from his agnosticism on substance, but also from his biblical theology; Locke rejected the resurrection of the same body and maintained that the soul dies at physical death and will be resurrected by divine miracle. Jon Thompson traces a naturalization of scriptural reason, or early Enlightenment attitudes to religious mysteries, across the seventeenth century, not so much to mainstream Reformed theology—as has been claimed in literature—but to non-mainstream developments of Protestantism, the Cambridge Platonists, and John Locke. Ungureanu brings the Symposium to the nineteenth century, and particularly to Andrew D. White, the alleged cofounder of the conflict thesis; he demonstrates how White tracked the development of the “scientific interpretation” of the Bible in his magnum opus. Nathan Bossoh analyzes how at the end of the nineteenth century the boundaries of “law” shifted, using the eighth Duke of Argyll as his interlocutor; Argyll steered a middle position between the traditional acceptance and liberal rejection of miracles and biblical revelation. Stuart Mathieson shows how the Victoria Institute, established in London in 1865 and frequently accused of being early “creationists,” found similarities in the reliance on hypotheses of both Darwin and biblical criticism; this led to an approach that was later taken up by the authors of The Fundamentals (1910–1915). Samuel Loncar situates the recent historicized origins story of “science and religion” in the history of philosophy and its connections to theology and Scripture; he shows how science and religion, as historians’ categories, derive from philosophy's tensions with theology in the transformation of the medieval university into a major research institution. This issue contains five contributions in the Articles section. Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of Uppsala and primate of the Church of Sweden, reflects on technology, theology, and spirituality in a digital age marked by polarization, populism, protectionism, post-truth, and patriarchy. Mirjam Schilling offers a virocentric perspective on evil; she argues on the basis of the biology of viruses that an additional layer of complexity on good and evil is needed over and above simply regarding viruses as malicious entities from an anthropocentric perspective. Glen Moran provides a glimpse into the use of online platforms by a prominent Muslim voice, Yasir Qadhi, to promote his views on Islam and evolution; Qadhi turns out to hold a relatively nuanced position on the compatibility between Islam and evolution, based on his understanding of the scientific consensus and Islamic scripture. César Marin et al. study the effects of academic degree and discipline on religious and evolutionary views in Chile and Colombia; they find that these effects differ between the two countries studied and attribute this to especially marked differences in high school and university curricula. Emily Qureshi-Hurst and Christopher Bennett address outstanding issues with Robert Russell's model of Non-Interventionist Objective Divine Action, focusing on quantum biology and the problem of evil; they offer potential solutions to weaknesses that they identify in the model, to improve the viability of its application to theistic evolution. The issue ends with my review of Elaine Howard Ecklund's Why Science and Faith Needs Each Other: Eight Values That Move Us Beyond Fear.

THE NATURALIZATION OF SCRIPTURAL REASON IN SEVENTEENTH‐CENTURY EPISTEMOLOGY

AbstractSeveral scholars have claimed that the decline of revealed or Scriptural mysteries in the early Enlightenment was a consequence of the trajectories of Reformed theology in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Reformed theology's fideistic stance, it is claimed, undermined earlier frameworks for relating reason to revealed mysteries; consequently, rationalism emerged as an alternative to such fideism in figures like the Cambridge Platonists. This article argues that Reformed theologians of the seventeenth century were not fideists but re‐affirmed Medieval claims about the eschatological concord of reason and revealed mysteries. Furthermore, the article suggests that early Enlightenment attitudes to religious mysteries owe more to innovations in Socinianism and Cambridge Platonism than to mainstream Reformed theology.

Adam Smith and the Cambridge Platonists

Adam Smith is usually seen as the founding father of modern economics, interpreted as a science that explains human agency in terms of the pursuit of egoistic self-interest. But a reading of Smith’s writings on moral sentiments shows how critical he was of explanations of society which focus solely on self-interest. When engaging in a critique of those individualistic explanations, Smith refers to the criticism that Thomas Hobbes received from the Cambridge Platonists, who argued against the fatalist view of the human agent driven solely by self-interest. Here the connections between Smith’s view and the Cambridge Platonists are further explored, while also assessing its implications for the common interpretation of Adam Smith as the founding father of modern economics.

Ralph Cudworth y El laberinto del libre arbitrio, Suárez, Hobbes y Leibniz a la luz de su Treatise of freewill

This article addresses the problem of free will by examining the relationship between the understanding and the will. The scholastic debate about which of both faculties should be considered free was continued in early Modernity, giving rise to different answers: voluntarists, intellectualists and necessitarians. The first part of this paper presents these three positions in the light of the doctrines of Suárez, Leibniz and Hobbes. The second part is devoted to the Ralph Cudworth’s criticisms against them in his Treatise of Freewill. As it will be seen, each of these solutions produces different expressions of what I will call the "paradox of the faculties", which the Cambridge Platonist sought to overcome through an original psychology of action.

ANNE CONWAY'S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

Anne Conway (1631–79) produced only one short treatise – The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy – but addressed key problems in the philosophy of religion which are still much discussed today. The most significant of these are the problem of religious diversity and the problem of evil. Although the sources of her ideas may be found in the Kabbalah of Isaac Luria and the work of the Cambridge Platonists and the Quaker George Keith, among others, she offers her own unorthodox solutions to these problems. The idea of Christ as an indwelling mediator of the divine who assists us in our moral endeavours is designed to appeal to those of all religions and none, while her claim that God created creatures knowing that they would eventually be redeemed, and that suffering promotes moral development which leads to redemption offers a novel response to the problem of evil. Conway's work is also important for its influence on the work of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and some have argued that it prefigures, at least in outline, the field theory of modern physics.