Ralph Cudworth

Die systematische Diskussion um die Gültigkeit der These von der Unableitbarkeit eines Sollens aus einem Sein ist bis auf den heutigen Tag nicht abgeklungen.  Für unser Thema ist von Bedeutung, daß Befürworter wie Kritiker der sogenannten Sein/Sollen-Kluft immer wieder darauf hingewiesen haben, daß David Hume das historische Verdienst zukommt, als erster die metaethische These von der Unüberbrückbarkeit der Kluft zwischen ethischen Normen und Tatsachen formuliert zu haben.  - In der vorliegenden Magisterarbeit aus dem Jahre 1989, die an der Philipps-Universität Marburg entstanden ist, wird unter Rückgriff auf die zeitgenössischen Debatten, an denen sich Hume beteiligte und zu denen er Stellung bezog, versucht, eine überzeugende Interpretation in Auseinandersetzung mit der modernen Literatur zu entwickeln.

This article analyzes new evidence from the marginalia to Ficino’s Plotinus manuscripts and offers a novel reading of Ficino’s “De Vita” 3. It settles scholarly disagreements concerning Paul O. Kristeller’s manuscript research and Frances Yates’s Hermetic thesis about “De Vita” 3, and reconsiders accepted conclusions regarding the centrality of Hermetic magic in Ficino’s philosophy. It demonstrates the origins and sources for “De Vita” 3 in Ficino’s reading of Plotinus’s explanations of prayer, and also reveals Iamblichus’s overlooked influence on Ficino: on the performative nature of philosophy in “De Vita” 3, and even on Ficino’s acknowledgment of the pseudonymity of the Hermetica.

In the late sixteenth century a number of influential writers claimed Stoicism to be compatible with Christianity but by the mid eighteenth century, Stoicism had come to be associated with atheism. What happened during the course of the reception of Stoicism in the intervening period? While it remains unclear who was the first person to call the Stoics atheists, there is no doubt that the most philosophically sustained analysis of Stoic theology during this period is to be found in Ralph Cudworth's True Intellectual System of the Universe, published in 1678. Cudworth's aim in this work is to catalogue and then attack all existing forms of atheism and one of the four principal forms of atheism he identifies he calls ‘Stoical’. However, in Cudworth's complex taxonomy of different forms of theism and atheism, Stoicism appears twice, first as a form of atheism but also as a form of imperfect theism. The aim of this study is to examine Cudworth's claims about Stoic theology, assessing their fairness, but also placing them within the wider context of the early modern reception of Stoicism.

In his A Treatise of Freewill, Ralph Cudworth argues against Stoic determinism by drawing on what he takes to be other concepts found in Stoicism, notably the claim that some things are ‘up to us’ (ἐφ᾽ ἡμῖν) and that these things are the product of our choice (προαίρεσις). These concepts are central to the late Stoic Epictetus and it appears at first glance as if Cudworth is opposing late Stoic voluntarism against early Stoic determinism. This paper argues that in fact, despite his claim to be drawing on Stoic doctrine, Cudworth uses these terms with a meaning first articulated only later, by the Peripatetic commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias.

And this is the most natural scale by which the intellectual mind in the contemplation of corporeal things ascends to God; from the passive prints and signatures of that one art and wisdom that appears in the universe, by taking notice from thence of the exemplary or archetypal cause, one infinite and eternal mind setting his seal upon all. Ralph Cudworth1

Although many commentators on Rousseau’s philosophy have noted its affinities with Platonism and acknowledged the debt that Rousseau himself expressed to Plato on numerous occasions, David Williams is the first to offer a thoroughgoing, systematic examination of this linkage. His contributions to the scholarship on Rousseau in this book are threefold: he enters the debate over whether Rousseau is a Hobbesian (in rejecting transcendent norms) or a Platonist (in accepting them) with a decisive argument supporting the latter position; he tackles from a new angle the ever-challenging question of unity in Rousseau’s thought; and he explores the dynamic metaphor of the chain throughout Rousseau’s writings as a key to understanding them as inspired by Platonism.

The book is organized into three main parts. The first sketches the background of Platonism and materialist positivism in modern European metaphysics and political philosophy that provided the context for Rousseau’s intellectual development. The second examines Rousseau’s choice of Platonism over positivism and its consequences for his philosophy generally. The third addresses the legacy of Rousseau’s thought and its appropriation by Kant, Marx, and Foucault, suggesting that in an age where materialism and relativism are rife, Rousseau may have much to teach us about how we view our own society and can engage in constructive critique of it.

Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688) is a member of the group of philosophers and theologians commonly called ‘the Cambridge Platonists’. Although not part of the canon of great early modern philosophers, Cudworth’s work is of more than merely passing interest. Cudworth was an influential philosopher in the early modern period both for his criticisms of contemporaries like Hobbes, Descartes, and Spinoza, and for his own distinctive philosophical views. This entry focusses on Cudworth’s views on mind and body, considering both his criticisms of contemporaries’ theories of mind and body, and outlining his alternative form of dualism in which plastic nature plays a central role.

In this paper, I aim to disentangle and explicate the phenomena pertaining to Cudworth’s concept of consciousness and aim to show that as Cudworth insists on degrees within conscious mentality in general, he ultimately draws an interesting and specific distinction between two different types of consciousness dependent on the intensity of a subject’s awareness of herself as the subject of action. A further distinction is drawn between reflection as a voluntary consideration of one’s thoughts and actions and consciousness in general. Here an important distinguishing factor, besides the voluntariness of reflection, is the different kinds of reflexive structures pertaining to reflection and consciousness.

The capability of deliberation and self-determination requires self-consciousness, understood as lucid undistorted awareness of oneself as subject. Elementary consciousness, as a subjective experience, does not provide a lucid enough experience of one’s subjecthood to qualify as a basis for such higher-level activity. As one type of consciousness features the fairly specific role of being closely involved in morally responsible agency, we are also led to ask about the characteristics of the more elementary consciousness. Reflexivity, phenomenality, and content of thought in addition to subjecthood turn out to be features embraced by Cudworth’s pioneering conception of consciousness.

Resumen. En el presente trabajo se estudia el lugar que ocupa Ralph Cudworth en la historia de la filosofía. El objetivo es mostrar que este autor no es parte del canon de la filosofía del siglo XVII y que, sin embargo, es un representante del período moderno en las primeras historias de la filosofía. Para ello, primero se introduce al autor y luego se expone la presentación que se realiza del inglés en las obras de Jacob Brucker, Wilhelm Tennemann, Taddä Rixner y Joseph Marie Degérando, para terminar en las Lecciones sobre historia de la filosofía de Georg Hegel. En un segundo momento se exponen algunas reflexiones en torno a Cudworth, que se originan a partir de la lectura de la bibliografía actualizada sobre dicho autor. Las conclusiones muestran la importancia de estudiar este tipo de pensadores, que no forman parte del canon de la filosofía pero son parte de la conformación del mismo. Palabras clave: Ralph Cudworth, canon filosófico, historiografía filosófica, Platónicos de Cambridge. [en] The Enigma of Ralph Cudworth in the History of Philosophy Abstract. The present paper studies the place of Ralph Cudworth in the history of philosophy. The objective is to show that this author is not part of the canon of seventeenth-century philosophy and yet he is a representative of the modern period in the first histories of philosophy. For this purpose I will first introduce Cudworth and then exhibit the presentation of this author in the works of Jacob Brucker, Wilhelm Tennemann, Taddä Rixner and Joseph Marie Degérando, finishing this itinerary with Georg Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy. Then I will show some reflections about Cudworth that proceed from the actualized bibliography on this author. The conclusions indicate the importance of studying this kind of thinkers, who are not part of the canon of philosophy but are part of the conformation of this same canon.

This examination considers the influence of the seventeenth century Cambridge Platonist Cudworth upon the thought of the late eighteenth century German thinker Herder. It focuses upon Herder’s use of Cudworth’s philosophy to create a revised version of Spinoza’s metaphysics. Both Cudworth and Herder were concerned with the problem of determinism. Cudworth outlined a number of difficulties relating to this problem in the thought of Spinoza, and proposed amendments, particularly the introduction of the middle principle of plastik, which would mediate between the Ideas of transcendent reason and mechanical materialism. We find these amendments to Spinoza’s philosophy also employed in Herder’s contribution to the Pantheism Controversy, in which he too offers a revised Spinozism and introduces his own middle principle of Kraft. This demonstrates an important but under-explored English contribution to a key development in German intellectual history. The Pantheism Controversy was an epoch-making event, helping to bring an end to the German Enlightenment, and to inaugurate the Romantic movement. Herder’s version of Spinoza’s thought revived the philosopher’s fortunes, and Herder’s notion of Kraft became central to Romantic aesthetics. Finally, Herder’s use of Cudworth demonstrates the important but overlooked source of Platonic realism in German Romantic thought.

This introductory article outlines the themes and aims of this special issue, which offers new perspectives on early modern debates about agency in two ways: First, it recovers writings on agency and liberty that have been widely neglected or that have received insufficient attention, including writings by Anne Conway, Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, William King, Gabrielle Suchon, Elizabeth Berkeley Burnet, Mary Astell, and Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury. Second, it reveals the richness of early modern debates about agency and liberty.

ENS de Lyon,  17-18 mai 2019. Colloque international, org. Delphine Antoine-Mahut, Pierre Girard, Gianni Paganini et Susana Seguin.

L’historiographie dominante envisage le XVIIe siècle philosophique comme une gigantomachie opposant deux clans. D’une part, les métaphysiciens “cartésiens” et “rationalistes,” d’autre part ceux qui envisagent la métaphysique dans le prolongement de la physique et défendent une conception empiriste ou matérialiste de l’esprit humain. Or la caducité de ces oppositions, largement héritées de Descartes lui-même, est au cœur de l’agenda de la recherche en histoire de la philosophie moderne. Il existe en effet des philosophes à la fois anti-cartésiens et anti-aristotéliciens (Gassendi et Hobbes); des cartésiens empiristes (Regius, Desgabets ou Régis); des anti-cartésiens qui sont platoniciens (More, Cudworth) ; ou bien encore, des anti-cartésiens qui ouvrent à la dimension historique et sociale (Vico). Puis il y a des auteurs clandestins qui font le choix de se placer en marge des grands systèmes philosophiques, par refus de l’esprit de système-lui-même (Fontenelle) Et il y aussi des femmes philosophes qui se situent de manière polémique à l’égard du patriarchalisme dominant. En se focalisant sur ces philosophies alternatives, ce workshop questionne la manière coutumière de concevoir les racines de notre modernité. L’initiative s’inscrit dans le cadre de la formation doctorale de l’ENS de Lyon et de l’Université Lyon 3.

The dominant historiography presents the philosophy of the Seventeenth Century as a giant battle opposing two clans: one the one hand, the “Cartesian” and “rationalist” metaphysicians, one the other, those who see metaphysics as an extension of physics and defend an empiricist or materialist conception of the human mind. The obsoleteness of the oppositions, largely inherited from Descartes himself, are at the heart of the research agenda in the history of modern philosophy. For there are philosophers who are at the same time anti-Cartesian and anti-Aristotelian (Gassendi and Hobbes); empiricist Cartesians (Regius, Desgabets, Regis); anti-Cartesians who are Platonists (More, Cudworth); or, again, anti-Cartesians opening up to the historical and social dimensions (Vico). And then there are clandestine writers who situate themselves at the margins of the great philosophical systems, rejecting the spirit of systems itself (Fontenelle); and also women philosophers who take a polemical stance in relation to the dominant patriarchialism. Focusing on these alternative philosophies, this workshop questions the customary way of understanding the roots of our modernity.

Resumen: En The True Intellectual System of the Universe Ralph Cudworth utiliza una gran cantidad de fuentes para reconstruir algunas doctrinas del pasado. En este trabajo propongo prestar atención al uso que realiza el inglés de la obra de Plutarco de Queronea. La hipótesis que guía el trabajo sostiene que Cudworth hace uso de esa obra como fuente del pensamiento antiguo a pesar de no estar enteramente de acuerdo con su interpretación de Platón. Esto significa que se aprecian dos niveles de lectura de las obras de Plutarco: por una parte, la expo-sición como fuente de otros autores; y por otra, la interpretación que el propio Plutarco realiza de las fuentes, en especial, de Platón. Esto me permitirá obtener algunas conclusiones sobre la labor de Cudworth como historiador de la filosofía y su relación con la filosofía platónica. Abstract: " Plutarch in 'The True Intellectual System of the Universe' ". In The True Intellectual System of the Universe Ralph Cudworth uses a great deal of sources in order to reconstruct past doctrines. In this paper, I propose that we pay attention to the way he uses Plutarch of Chaeronea's work. The hypothesis that guides this article sustains that Cudworth uses this work as a source of ancient thought despite not totally agreeing with his interpretation of Plato. This means that Plutarch's work has two levels of reading: on the one hand, its exposition as a source of other authors; and, on the other hand, the interpretation that Plutarch himself makes of his sources, especially, of Plato. This will allow me to draw some conclusions concerning Cudworth's work as a historian of philosophy and his relationship with Platonic philosophy.

In his 'True Intellectual System of the Universe' (1678), the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688) argues against so-called stratonical materialism that matter alone is not able to initiate its own activity and organization. If matter were the sole principle of its organization, the latter would lack any kind of regularity. But we observe certain patterns and a lawlike order in the objects and in the activity within the universe. Therefore, Cudworth argues, one cannot do
without some governing principle that is responsible for the observed harmony. He then situates this principle in an adapted version of the Platonic Essences. Although, the Essences do not exist for us, they have to be considered as elements of the universe because they exist as phenomena in
the mind of God, and, for Cudworth, God is in the Universe. But there would be no possibility for matter to obey to the rules of order (the logic) provided by the Essences when there was no connection at all between matter and the Essences. It is this connection-principle that Cudworth terms ‘plastic nature’.

Now, Cudworth’s ‘plastic nature’ is at the same time the principle that binds matter and spirit (the Essences in God’s mind) and the result of this connection, that is: the coexistence of matter and spirit in a living being. Although the spiritual element in the living being is unconscious, all
spiritual actions are nonetheless determined by logical principles. On the one hand, the activity of the living being is governed by an external rule and therefore unconscious activity. On the other hand though, the activities of living beings such as plants and animals are determined by reason;
their behaviour is predictable once one has found the essential rule that governs their activity. In this way, although they lack native intelligence, plants and animals can be said to behave in an rule-governed manner.

In my talk, I will discuss the ontological and epistemological consequences of Cuworth’s conception of ‘plastic nature’ as a mediating term between matter and spirit of the living being.

This paper in history of philosophy covers themes about determinism from Pomponazzi to Cudworth. It deals with Pico della Mirandola, Lipsius and the neo-Stoics, Pietro Pomponazzi's attacks on free will, the English dramatist John Webster, Marin Mersenne, Hobbes's deterministic psychology, and English NeoPlatonism.

The aim of this chapter is, first, to analyse the specific articulation, in Plotinus, of the notions of self-knowledge, self-consciousness, and interiority. It is, more precisely, to show how the conceptual relations we have inherited from the ‘Cartesian moment’—between self-knowledge and self-consciousness, but also between self and substance, or between self and identity—are actually dissociated in Plotinus ‘philosophy. Insofar as he accepts an immediate reflexivity, Plotinus cannot be enlisted for the ancient thought of the self. But because he does not confer on self-knowledge the value of a principle, he cannot be enlisted either for the modern philosophies of consciousness and the subject. Nonetheless, Plotinus’ philosophy of the self was a direct source of inspiration for a Modern, the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth, who finds in it a basis to criticize some fundamental aspects of Descartes’ thought. The chapter therefore also evaluates this legacy.

A Plastic Possibility for Ralph Cudworth’s Libertarianism [Origen’s Philosophy of Freedom in Early Modern Times: Debates about Free Will and Apokatastasis in 17th-Century England and Europe, Alfons Fürst ed., Adamantiana 13 (Münster: Achendorff Verlag) 2019, 75-85]

Chapter in Plotinus’ Legacy: Studies in the Transformation of “Platonism”
from Early Modernism to the Romantics, Stephen Gersh, ed. Cambridge
University Press. 

This chapter incorporates material presented as "John Smith's Plotinian Rational Theology" at the 15th Annual International Society for Neoplatonic Studies Conference, Olomouc, Czech Republic, 14-17 June 2017 and as "John Smith's 'Great Principles of Religion': The Natural Theology of a Cambridge Platonist" at the Maine Philosophical Institute, 71st Annual Meeting, University of Maine, 30 April 2016.

'Inexcusabiles' - The Debate on Salvation and the Virtues of the Pagans in the Early Modern Period (1595 - 1772)
8 April 2016

Organisers: Alberto Frigo (University of Reims) and Guido Giglioni (Warburg Institute)

Speakers include: Michela Catto (FBK-ISR, Trento), Alberto Frigo (Reims), Guido Giglioni (Warburg Institute), Douglas Hedley (Cambridge),  Franck Lessay (Paris), John Marenbon (Cambridge), Giuliano Mori, Michael Moriarty (Cambridge), François Trémolières (CELLF and Paris Ouest Nanterre) and Han van Ruler (Rotterdam)

In his pioneering Le Problème du salut des infidèles (1912, 1934), Louis Capéran devoted a number of pages to the theological debate on pagan salvation and the limbo at the time of Fénelon and Rousseau. More recently, Michael Moriarty has produced a comprehensive study on this topic (Oxford 2011), highlighting the role played by the French moralists. Yet the multiple forms that the Medieval and Renaissance debate on the pagans took during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries remain to be addressed in full. This one-day conference intends to fill this gap by looking at the history of early modern controversies on the salvation and virtues of the pagans. The posthumous edition of Montaigne’s Essais (1595) and Johann August Eberhard’s Neue Apologie des Socrates (1772) are the chronological limits that define the context that will be examined in this conference. Its aim is to reassess the question of the moral status of unbelievers in the early modern period by analysing how some specific theological issues were reshaped at the time. Above all, the conference will explore how the theme of the virtues and the salvation of the pagans intersected the early modern reception of ancient philosophy. The modern revival of Stoicism, Epicureanism and Scepticism is well known and has been studied extensively. Little attention, however, has been devoted to the relationship between the ethical models inspired by the heroes and philosophers of antiquity and the ‘new philosophy’.

Programme

10.00 Doors open and registration
10.15 Welcome

Session 1: The Humanistic Background
Guido Giglioni (Warburg Institute) - Between St Paul and Galen: How Juan Huarte de San Juan Responded to Inquisitorial Censorship
Alberto Frigo (University of Reims) - Montaigne’s Gods

11.30 Coffee

12.00 Session 2: The Theological Debate
Michael Moriarty (University of Cambridge) - ‘Would God Have Created the World in Order to Damn It?’; or is that a ‘Stupid Question’?
John Marenbon (University of Cambridge) - Pagan Salvation and Pagan Virtues – Collius and La Mothe Le Vayer
Han van Ruler (University of Rotteram) - The Scope of Grace: Early Modern Moral Philosophy and the Metaphysico-Moral Paradoxes of Divine Assistance

13.45 Lunch

14.45 Session 3: The Philosophers and the Unbelievers
Franck Lessay (University of Paris) - Hobbes’s Covenant, a Refuge for Heretics and Atheists?
Douglas Hedley (University of Cambridge) - Cudworth and Pagan Monotheism
François Tremolières (CELLF and Paris Ouest Nanterre) - Vertu des païens et salut des infidèles dans l’oeuvre de Fénelon

15.30 Coffee break
16.00 Session 4: The New Pagans
Giuliano Mori - Historia Gentilium (ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam): Jesuits, Missionaries, and the Seventeenth-Century Quest for a Universal History
Michela Catto (FBK-ISR, Trento) - Jesuits and Chinese Atheism: Back and Forth between Europe and China

17.30 Close and reception
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http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/events/colloquia-2015-16/pagan-virtues/

Les Éléments de théologie de Proclus constituent un monument philosophique radicalement singulier tant par son architecture propre que par la façon dont la tradition l'a revisité. Ordonnant, sous une forme géométrique, les principes de la métaphysique néoplatonicienne, ils ont à la fois constitué celle-ci en système et opéré comme le principal relais de sa transmission aux pensées byzantine, arabe, et occidentale. Ce sont ces effets d'héritage et d'adaptation que les textes ici réunis visent à évaluer. Du Liber de causis à Hegel en passant par Thomas d'Aquin, Dietrich de Freiberg, Giordano Bruno, les Platoniciens de Cambridge et Leibniz, se reconstitue ainsi une « grande chaîne des êtres », réarticulée par la chaîne des raisons, et à chaque fois revivifiée par celle de la transmission.