The Cambridge Platonists in Philosophical Context

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

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2. Part One

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. The Other-Worldly Philosophers and the Real World: the Cambridge Platonists, Theology and Politics

      • G. A. J. Rogers

      Pages 3-15

   3. Liberté et VéRité: Politique Et Morale Dans La Correspondance Hollandaise De More Et De Cudworth

      • Luisa Simonutti

      Pages 17-37

   4. Critique De Hobbes Et Fondement De La Morale Chez Cudworth

      • Yves Charles Zarka

      Pages 39-52

3. Part Two

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 53-53

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   2. The Heritage of Patristic Platonism in Seventeenth Century English Philosophical Theology

      • D. W. Dockrill

      Pages 55-77

   3. John Smith et Le Portique

      • Jacqueline Lagrée

      Pages 79-92

   4. Cudworth, Boethius and the Scale of Nature

      • Sarah Hutton

      Pages 93-100

   5. Ralph Cudworth: Un Platonisme Paradoxal. La Nature Dans La Digression Concerning the Plastick Life of Nature

      • Alain Petit

      Pages 101-110

   6. ∑χέσις et Relation: Du Platonisme à L’Empirisme

      • Jean-Michel Vienne

      Pages 111-126

4. Part Three

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 127-127

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   2. The Role of Illuminism in the Thought of Henry More

      • Robert Crocker

      Pages 129-144

   3. “La Nature est un Art”. Le Vitalisme de Cudworth et de More

      • Jean-Louis Breteau

      Pages 145-157

   4. Force, Motion and Causality: More’s Critique of Descartes

      • John Cottingham

      Pages 159-171

   5. Cudworth Versus Descartes: Platonisme et Sens Commun dans la Critique des Méditations

      • Marialuisa Baldi

      Pages 173-183

5. Part Four

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 185-185

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   2. Les Différentes Lectures du System de Cudworth par G. W. Leibniz

      • André Robinet

      Pages 187-196

   3. Platonic Idealism in Modern Philosophy from Malebranche to Berkeley

      • Stuart Brown

      Pages 197-214

6. Back Matter

   Pages 215-258

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The Cambridge Platonists were defenders of tolerance in the political as well as the moral sphere ; they held that practical j u d g e m e n t came down in the last instance to individual conscience ; and they laid the foundations of our modern conceptions of conscience and liberty. But at the same time they ma intained the existence of eternal truths , and of a Good-in-itself , identical with Truth and Being, refusing to admit that freedom of conscience i m p li e d moral relativism. They were critics of dogmatism, and of the sectarian notion of "enthusiasm" as a source of illumination , on the grounds that both were disruptive of social harmony; they pleaded the cause of reason , in the hope that it could become the foundation of all human knowledge . Yet , for all that , they ma intained that a certain sort of mystical illumination lay at the heart of all true thought , and that human reason had validity only in virtue of i t s divine origin . They debated with Des cartes and took a keen interest in his mech- ism and his dualism ; they brought the atomistic theories of Democritus back into repute; and they sought to provide a detailed account of the causality link ing all phenomena.

• Hobbes
• Moral
• Plato
• Religion
• René Descartes
• Thomas Hobbes
• politics

`This collection will be of interest to historians and researches in theology as wel as philosophers.'
`The scholarship represented by all of the essays in this collection is of uniformly high quality. The volume is a most worthy addition to Kluwer's excellent International Archives of the History of Ideas.
The Review of Metaphysics. (March, 2000)

• University of Keele, Keele, UK

  G. A. J. Rogers

• Université de Nantes, France

  J. M. Vienne

• CNRS Paris, France

  Y. C. Zarka

Policies and ethics