The Cambridge Platonists

Abstract

God is Matter. No, God is Love. All is matter. No spirit, no God. The soul is immortal. All is matter in motion. Is knowledge confined to sensation? Cartesian Dualism. The ghost in the machine. Hobbes's Leviathan. The fool sayeth in his heart there is no God. Reason is the candle of the Lord. Enter the warriors of the Lord. If, in the mid-seventeenth century, humanity dreamt collectively, its nightmares would perhaps have consisted of these topics whirling in never-ending vortices in a sea of doubt. And yet we are often told that the student of the Cambridge Platonists often notes some kind of cloistered piety and learning cultivated in isolation. A. C. Mc. Giffert considers they were in isolation and that their "spirituality and their emphasis upon immediate apprehension of God and Divine things were out of line with the tendencies of the period in which they lived, and their influence was circumscribed and temporary." Evelyn Underhill, in trying to define mysticism, opposes the "doctrinal excesses of Gnosticism" to "the tepid speculations of the Cambridge Platonists." They are often accused of advocating a contemplative static world rather than an active and dynamic one. It is true that at times the Cambridge Platonists seek gnosis, the ideal of contemplative knowledge, but most of their published works are soaked in polemic and they are certainly not seen as radically dis engaged. What many seem to forget is the undoubted fact that seething round the 'cloistered' lives of Whichcote, Smith, Culverwel, Sterry, Henry More and Cudworth there was civil and religious unrest with Puritan ranged against Prelatist, and both ranged against Roman Catholic. Most important of all, the "new philosophy'' was throwing all in doubt and taking firm hold in the Protestant countries of Europe. Despite Church sanctions, it was also making headway in France, Italy and Catholic parts of Germany. [...]