Cudworth, Ralph (1617–88)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Hutton
Keyword(s):  
Central Element ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Intellectual System ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Ralph Cudworth ◽  
Cambridge Platonism ◽  
Argument From Design ◽  
Cambridge Platonists

Ralph Cudworth was the leading philosopher of the group known as the Cambridge Platonists. In his lifetime he published only one work of philosophy, his True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678). This was intended as the first of a series of three volumes dealing with the general topic of liberty and necessity. Two further parts of this project were published posthumously, from the papers he left when he died: A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality (1731) and A Treatise of Freewill (1838). Cudworth’s so-called Cambridge Platonism is broadly Neoplatonic, but he was receptive to other currents of thought, both ancient and modern. In philosophy he was an antideterminist who strove to defend theism in rational terms, and to establish the certainty of knowledge and the existence of unchangeable moral principles in the face of the challenge of Hobbes and Spinoza. He admired and borrowed from Descartes, but also criticized aspects of Cartesianism. Cudworth’s starting point is his fundamental belief in the existence of God, conceived as a fully perfect being, infinitely powerful, wise and good. A major part of his True Intellectual System is taken up with the demonstration of the existence of God, largely through consensus gentium (universal consent) arguments and the argument from design. The intellect behind his ‘intellectual system’ is the divine understanding. Mind is antecedent to the world, which is intelligible by virtue of the fact that it bears the stamp of its wise creator. The human mind is capable of knowing the world since it participates in the wisdom of God, whence epistemological certainty derives. The created world is also the best possible world, although not bound by necessity. A central element of Cudworth’s philosophy is his defence of the freedom of will – a meaningful system of morals would be impossible without this freedom. Natural justice and morality are founded in the goodness and justice of God rather than in an arbitrary divine will. The principles of virtue and goodness, like the elements of truth, exist independently of human beings. A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality contains the most fully worked-out epistemology of any of the Cambridge Platonists and constitutes the most important statement of innate-idea epistemology by any British philosopher of the seventeenth century.

Newton and Cambridge Platonism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Hutton
Keyword(s):  
Significant Part ◽  
Infinite Space ◽  
University Of Cambridge ◽  
Ralph Cudworth ◽  
Cambridge Platonism ◽  
Henry More ◽  
The University ◽  
The Trinity ◽  
Cambridge Platonists

This article discusses Isaac Newton’s relations with two older colleagues at the University of Cambridge, Ralph Cudworth and Henry More, two of the so-called Cambridge Platonists,. It shows that there are biographical links between them, especially between More and Newton. Despite differences in theological outlook (e.g. on the Trinity), they shared intellectual interests and scholarly approach. All three were critical of Descartes, and More, like Newton, posited infinite space. In addition, there were parallels in their investigations of biblical prophecy—thanks to their debt to the Cambridge Bible scholar Joseph Mede. Newton drew on Cudworth and, like More, examined the texts of the Kabbala denudata. It is argued here that, although Newton differed from them in his conclusions, More and Cudworth were a significant part of Newton’s intellectual background.

scholarly journals A crítica de Hume ao argumento do desígnio

DoisPontos ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
José Oscar De Almeida Marques
Keyword(s):  
Intelligent Design ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
The World ◽  
Argument From Design

É comum considerar que o chamado “argumento do desígnio” (o argumento a posteriori para provar a existência de Deus a partir da ordem e funcionalidade do mundo) teria sido refutado ou seriamente abalado por Hume. Mas a natureza e o alcance dessa alegada refutação são problemáticos, pois Hume muitas vezes expressou suas críticas por meio de seus personagens e evitou assumi-las diretamente enquanto autor. Em vez de supor que Hume procedeu dessa forma apenas para disfarçar suas verdadeiras convicções e evitar um conflito com as autoridades eclesiásticas, proponho que sua posição nesse assunto não é tão categórica como às vezes se supõe, e que os famosos argumentos de Filo nos Diálogos mostram apenas que é possível que a ordem e funcionalidade do mundo tenham surgido sem a intervenção de um desígnio consciente, mas não podem por si sós dar a essa hipótese o mínimo grau de plausibilidade necessário para torná-la digna de uma séria consideração. De fato, antes da revolução explicativa operada por Darwin um século depois, ninguém estava realmente em condições de vislumbrar uma alternativa plausível à atuação de algum tipo de inteligência na geração da ordem e funcionalidade do mundo. Hume’s Critique of the Argument from Design Abstract The so-called “argument from design” (the a posteriori argument to prove the existence of God from the order and functionality of the world) is commonly considered to have been refuted or seriously impaired by Hume. But the nature and scope of this alleged refutation is problematic because Hume often expressed his criticisms through other characters’ mouth and avoided to assume them directly as author. Contrarily to the supposition that Hume proceeded in this way only to disguise his true convictions and to avoid a confrontation with ecclesiastical authorities, I propose that his stance on the matter is not, in fact, as clear-cut as it is sometimes supposed, and that Philo’s famous arguments in the Dialogues show only that it is possible for the order and functionality of the world to have arisen without the intervention of an intelligent design, but cannot by themselves lend to this hypothesis the least degree of plausibility needed to make it worthy of serious consideration. In fact, before the explanatory revolution inaugurated by Darwin a century later, nobody was in position to envisage a plausible alternative to the operation of some sort or other of intelligence in the generation of the order and functionality of the world.

From Cambridge Platonism to Scottish Sentimentalism

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael B. Gill
Keyword(s):  
Adam Smith ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Surface Appearance ◽  
Ralph Cudworth ◽  
Cambridge Platonism ◽  
Henry More ◽  
Moral Philosophers ◽  
Cambridge Platonists

The Cambridge Platonists were a group of religious thinkers who attended and taught at Cambridge from the 1640s until the 1660s. The four most important of them were Benjamin Whichcote, John Smith, Ralph Cudworth, and Henry More. The most prominent sentimentalist moral philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment – Hutcheson, Hume, and Adam Smith – knew of the works of the Cambridge Platonists. But the Scottish sentimentalists typically referred to the Cambridge Platonists only briefly and in passing. The surface of Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith's texts can give the impression that the Cambridge Platonists were fairly distant intellectual relatives of the Scottish sentimentalists – great great-uncles, perhaps, and uncles of a decidedly foreign ilk. But this surface appearance is deceiving. There were deeply significant philosophical connections between the Cambridge Platonists and the Scottish sentimentalists, even if the Scottish sentimentalists themselves did not always make it perfectly explicit.

Cudworth and Descartes

Philosophy ◽  
1933 ◽  
Vol 8 (32) ◽  
pp. 454-467
Author(s):  
Joshua C. Gregory
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual System ◽  
Ralph Cudworth ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Cambridge Platonists

Ralph Cudworth, Doctor of Divinity, Master of Christ’s College at Cambridge, and philosophical chieftain of the Cambridge Platonists, published The True Intellectual System of the Universe in 1678 to disprove “the fatal necessity of all actions and events.” This disproof would destroy the various atheisms founded upon such “fatal necessity”; it would also correct those Christians who mistakenly honoured God by subjecting men to a divinely administered fate. Cudworth, with a constant eye on Hobbes, whom he did not name, struck at atheism by establishing a “true intellectual system” and by arguing away its principle of fate. His design swelled as he worked to meet the various versions of “fatal necessity” with the various atheisms founded upon them, to establish the true doctrine, and to accommodate his own copious learning, and it swelled too much for the published work to be more than a first instalment of his whole design.

The Argument from Evil: Reply to Professor Richman

1980 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Langston
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Natural Religion ◽  
The World ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
The Face ◽  
Argument From Evil ◽  
Nelson Pike

The problem of evil has traditionally been formulated as a claim about the incompatibility of the statements ‘God exists’ and ‘There occur instances of suffering’. Hume, for example, in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, part x, claims that the statements ‘God exists’ and ‘There occur instances of suffering’ are incompatible. In his esssy ‘Hume on Evil’, Nelson Pike argues that it has not been shown that the statements ‘God exists’ and ‘There occur instances of suffering’ are incompatible because it has not been shown that God could not have a morally sufficient reason for permitting suffering he could prevent.1 Moreover, according to Pike, the theist who is convinced that God must have a morally sufficient reason for permitting suffering he can prevent will claim that the statements ‘God exists’ and ‘There occur instances of suffering’ are not incompatible. He will claim this even though he cannot specify the morally sufficient reason why God permits suffering he can prevent. The theist will thus maintain that God exists even given the occurrence of suffering in the world.2 Robert Richman, in his essay ‘The Argument from Evil’, argues that Pike is too generous to the theist. According to Richman, only if the theist can specify the morally sufficient reason why God permits suffering he can prevent will the theist be rationally justified in maintaining that God exists in the face of suffering in the world. Richman supports his position by reformulating the argument from evil in terms of what he calls ‘the logic of our moral judgmentsr’.3 Richman thinks that his formulation of the argument from evil is successful against the theist who cannot specify the morally sufficient reason why God permits evil he can prevent. In this paper, I shall argue that Richman's argument is not successful against the typical theist, i.e. the person who accepts the existence of God on the basis of faith or a priori arguments.4

Theodicy and Animal Pain

Philosophy ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 64 (247) ◽  
pp. 79-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Moral Development ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Major Difficulty ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Animal Pain ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Free Actions ◽  
Perfect World

The existence of evil is compatible with the existence of God, most theists would claim, because evil either results from the activities of free agents, or it contributes in some way toward their moral development. According to the ‘free-will defence’, evil and suffering are necessary consequences of free-will. Proponents of the ‘soul-making argument’—a theodicy with a different emphasis—argue that a universe which is imperfect will nurture a whole range of virtues in a way impossible either in a perfect world, or in a totally evil one. The pain of animals is widely thought to constitute a major difficulty for both of these accounts, for if we ask whether the only evils present in the world result directly from the free actions of created agents, or contribute in some way to ‘soul-making’ of such agents, we are bound to admit that, on the face of it, much animal pain does not.

scholarly journals God and the Problem of Evil: An Attempt at Reframing the Debate

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 218
Author(s):  
Brett Wilmot
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Process Philosophy ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Traditional Account ◽  
The World ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
The Face ◽  
Divine Perfection ◽  
Philosophical Debates

This article attempts to reframe the traditional account of the problem of evil for God’s existence. The philosophical debates about the problem of evil for the existence of God within the traditional framework do not exhaust the available options for conceiving of God’s perfection, including our understanding of God’s power and God’s relationship to the world. In responding to the problem of evil, rational theists should seek a reformulation of divine perfection consistent with God’s existence as both necessary and as morally relevant to human life in a manner that does not collapse in the face of the problem of evil. The neoclassical account of God’s nature as developed in the tradition of process philosophy is presented as an alternative that meets these requirements.

Power of Darkness: Narrative and Biographical Reflexivity in A Series of Unfortunate Events

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-212
Author(s):  
ELIZABETH BULLEN
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Risk Society ◽  
Project Risk ◽  
Young Readers ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
High Earning ◽  
Textual Culture ◽  
Children’S Exposure ◽  
Central Claim

This paper investigates the high-earning children's series, A Series of Unfortunate Events, in relation to the skills young people require to survive and thrive in what Ulrich Beck calls risk society. Children's textual culture has been traditionally informed by assumptions about childhood happiness and the need to reassure young readers that the world is safe. The genre is consequently vexed by adult anxiety about children's exposure to certain kinds of knowledge. This paper discusses the implications of the representation of adversity in the Lemony Snicket series via its subversions of the conventions of children's fiction and metafictional strategies. Its central claim is that the self-consciousness or self-reflexivity of A Series of Unfortunate Events} models one of the forms of reflexivity children need to be resilient in the face of adversity and to empower them to undertake the biographical project risk society requires of them.

Persons in a World of Things

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan L. Mittleman
Keyword(s):  
Explanatory Power ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Classic Essay

This chapter focuses on the reality of persons in a world of things. It begins and ends with some relevant views drawn from the Jewish philosophers Buber (1878–1965), Heschel (1907–72), and Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903–93). Framed by the Jewish concerns, it turns to a philosophical exploration of human personhood. The chapter begins by consiering Sellars's classic essay on the scientific and manifest images of “man-in-the-world.” Sellars shows how urgent and difficult it is to sustain a recognizable image of ourselves as persons in the face of scientism. With additional help from Nagel and Kant, it argues that persons cannot be conceptually scanted in a world of things. Notwithstanding the explanatory power of science, there is more to life than explanation. Explanation of what we are needs supplementing by a conception of who we are, how we should live, and why we matter. Those are questions to which Jewish sources can speak.

Too WEIRD, Too Fast: Preprints about COVID-19 in the Psychological Sciences

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arathy Puthillam
Keyword(s):  
Overwhelming Majority ◽  
Global Pandemic ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Conducting Research ◽  
Psychological Studies

That American and European participants are overrepresented in psychological studies has been previously established. In addition, researchers also often tend to be similarly homogenous. This continues to be alarming, especially given that this research is being used to inform policies across the world. In the face of a global pandemic where behavioral scientists propose solutions, we ask who is conducting research and on what samples. Forty papers on COVID-19 published in PsyArxiV were analyzed; the nationalities of the authors and the samples they recruited were assessed. Findings suggest that an overwhelming majority of the samples recruited were from the US and the authors were based in US and German institutions. Next, men constituted a large proportion of primary and sole authors. The implications of these findings are discussed.

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