‘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.

‘Christ’s College and the Latitude-Men’ Revisited: A Seminary of Heretics?

This chapter examines the notorious quarrel between Ralph Widdrington and Ralph Cudworth concerning the mastership of Christ's College. This prosopographical study of the fellowship at Christ's College between 1644 and 1669 yields two conclusions. First, Widdrington's opposition required that Cudworth be ever vigilant as master of the college, especially during the Restoration of the Monarchy. Perhaps without Widdrington's sour and vindictive temper and personal ambition there would have been less urgency in Henry More's and Cudworth's formation and consolidation of a congenial fellowship, but it was necessary to create an environment in which the Platonist philosophers and their pupils could work freely. More and Cudworth, as close friends and philosophical allies, formed the nucleus of a community with a particular intellectual character. This leads to the second and much more important conclusion: all of that effort was necessary because there was definitely something going on intellectually in the college which had to be defended. Widdrington and his high church allies took umbrage at what the ‘latitude-men’ were thinking, saying, and writing at the ‘seminary of Heretics’. The chapter then looks at the circle of Christian Platonists in Cambridge whose collective thinking would eventually become known as ‘Cambridge Platonism’.

Defining Man as Animal Religiosum in English Religious Writing ca. 1650–ca. 1700

This article surveys the emergence and usage of the redefinition of man not as animal rationale (rational animal) but as animal religiosum (religious animal) by numerous English theologians between 1650 and 1700. Across the continuum of English Protestant thought, human nature was being redescribed as unique due to its religious, not primarily its rational, capabilities. This article charts said appearance as a contribution to debates over man's relationship with God; then its subsequent incorporation into the discussion over the theological consequences of arguments in favor of animal rationality, as well as its uses in anti-atheist apologetics; and then the sudden disappearance of the definition of man as animal religiosum at the beginning of the eighteenth century. In doing so, the article hopes to make a useful contribution to our understanding of changing early modern understandings of human nature by reasserting the significance of theological writing in the dispute over the relationship between humans and beasts. As a consequence, it offers a more wide-ranging account of man as animal religiosum than the current focus on “Cambridge Platonism” and “Latitudinarianism” allows.

The Call of Conscience

Although it is common to speak of the call of conscience, the specifically linguistic character of this call is frequently occluded in the history of thought. This is clear in the modern history of the idea, in which ideas of moral intuition or moral sentiment predominate, from Cambridge Platonism through to neo-Kantianism. This occlusion is flagged by Gerhard Ebeling, who emphasizes the word-event character of conscience. This is further developed through reference to Emmanuel Levinas and his distinction between Le Dit and Le Dire, and it is contrasted with the seemingly silent ethical demand proposed by K. E. Løgstrup. This difference is interpreted further through a discussion of an incident in writings of the Japanese poet Bashō and the Good Samaritan.

Cambridge Platonism

Cambridge Platonism was an intellectual movement broadly inspired by the Platonic tradition, centred in Cambridge from the 1630s to the 1680s. Its hallmark was a devotion to reason in metaphysics, religion and ethics. The Cambridge Platonists made reason rather than tradition and inspiration their ultimate criterion of knowledge. Their central aim was to reconcile the realms of reason and faith, the new natural philosophy and Christian revelation. Although loyal to the methods and naturalism of the new sciences, they opposed its mechanical model of explanation because it seemed to leave no room for spirit, God and life. In epistemology the Cambridge Platonists were critics of empiricism and stressed the role of reason in knowledge; they also criticized conventionalism and held that there are essential or natural distinctions between things. In metaphysics they attempted to establish the existence of spirit, God and life in a manner consistent with the naturalism and method of the new sciences. And in ethics the Cambridge Platonists defended moral realism and freedom of the will against the voluntarism and determinism of Hobbes and Calvin. Cambridge Platonism was profoundly influential in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was the inspiration behind latitudinarianism and ethical rationalism, and many of its ideas were developed by Samuel Clarke, Isaac Newton and the Third Earl of Shaftesbury.

Masham, Damaris (1658–1708)

Damaris Cudworth, who became Lady Masham on her marriage to Sir Francis Masham in 1685, was an English moral philosopher who published two short treatises on moral philosophy. These show that she became a disciple of John Locke, although her philosophical background was in Cambridge Platonism. She applied Lockean arguments to defend the education of women; her anti-idealism led her to oppose Malebranche and his English followers, John Norris and Mary Astell; and she also corresponded with Leibniz.

Culverwell, Nathaniel (c.1618–c.1651)

Nathaniel Culverwell (or Culverwel) was one of the first natural law theorists in seventeenth-century England, and one of the first moral philosophers to stress the primacy of reason. His aim was to revive the natural law tradition of Aquinas and Suarez, which had fallen into disrepute in English Calvinism. Culverwell’s theory is a synthesis of rationalism and voluntarism. It attempts to do justice to both the normative and coercive, to the moral and punitive aspects of law. The emphasis of his theory is, however, strongly rationalist, a reaction against the voluntarist legacy of Calvinism. Culverwell had close connections with some of the leading figures of Cambridge Platonism. He is not, however, a typical member of this school, because of the strong Calvinist strands of his early sermons.

More, Henry (1614–87)

The English philosopher Henry More was one of the leaders of the movement known as Cambridge Platonism. Like his Cambridge colleague Ralph Cudworth, More elaborated a constructive metaphysics which, although deeply informed by the new philosophy and science of the seventeenth century, recovered what More saw as an ancient truth or ‘cabbala’. The articulation of this truth was an exercise of reason, guided by innate notions or inherent, God-given cognitive propensities. More’s ultimate aim as a philosopher was religious or ethical. His ‘one main Design’, he explained, was ‘The knowledge of God, and therein of true Happiness, so far as Reason can cut her way through those darknesses and difficulties she is encumbred with in this life’ (1662: iv). Among the central themes of the ancient truth More rediscovered and defended were the existence of a God whose leading attributes are wisdom and goodness; the immateriality and immortality of the human soul (the hope of immortality being, as More explained in the Preface to his poem Psychathanasia (1642), ‘the very nerves and sinews’ of religion); a dualism of active spirit and passive matter that differed significantly from the dualism of Descartes, despite More’s early enthusiasm for (and continuing engagement with) Cartesianism; the animation of matter by an immaterial but unthinking spirit of nature; and the existence of an infinite, substantial space, really distinct from matter, in which God is everywhere present and everywhere potentially active. More’s appeals to experiment in defence of the spirit of nature provoked criticism from Robert Boyle. His doctrine of infinite, substantial space was (in the opinion of some historians) an important influence on Isaac Newton. Space seems, on More’s portrayal, to be something divine; this troubled George Berkeley, who thought that by assigning space the ‘incommunicable’ or unshareable attributes of God, More in the end encouraged the atheism he worked so hard to defeat. More is usually represented as a rationalist in religion: ‘I conceive’, he once wrote, ‘Christian Religion rational throughout’ (1662: iv). It is important to distinguish, however, between More’s appeal to reason as a writer defending Christianity, and his appraisal of reason’s role in an ordinary Christian life. More was conscious of living in ‘a Searching, Inquisitive, Rational and Philosophical Age’, and he saw it as his duty to serve God by ‘gaining or retaining the more Rational and Philosophical’ of his contemporaries in the Christian faith (1664: 482). Rational and philosophical genius was not, however, required of every Christian: although More’s accounts of faith vary somewhat from work to work, they typically call not for a rational assessment of argument and evidence, but for moral purity, and for a belief in (and devotion to) a relatively short list of ‘essentials’. More sought a statement of these essentials that would reach across Protestant sectarian divides. He also defended a liberty of conscience or religion that was, he said, the natural right of every nation and every person. It was, however, a liberty that could be forfeited, and More thought it had been forfeited by some (atheists, for example, and at least some Catholics and Muslims) who might be found claiming its protection.