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This volume contains essays that examine the work and legacy of the Cambridge Platonists. The essays reappraise the ideas of this key group of English thinkers who served as a key link between the Renaissance and the modern era.
The contributors examine the sources of the Cambridge Platonists and discuss their take-up in the eighteenth-century. Readers will learn about the intellectual formation of this philosophical group as well as the reception their ideas received. Coverage also details how their work links to earlier Platonic traditions.
This interdisciplinary collection explores a broad range of themes and an appropriately wide range of knowledge. It brings together an international team of scholars. They offer a broad combination of expertise from across the following disciplines: philosophy, Neoplatonic studies, religious studies, intellectual history, seventeenth-century literature, women's writing, and dissenting studies.The essays were originally presented at a series of workshops in Cambridge on the Cambridge Platonists funded by the AHRC.
List of contents
1. Introduction.- 2. Dii Medioxumi and the Place of Theurgy in the Philosophy of Henry More.- 3. Cambridge Platonism(s): John Sherman and Peter Sterry.- 4. "A Philosopher at Randome": Translating Jacob Böhme in Seventeenth-century Cambridge.- 5. Plotinus in Verses: The Epic of Emanation in Henry More's Psychozoia.- 6. The Neoplatonic Hermeneutics of Ralph Cudworth.- 7. Cudworth and the English Debate on the Trinity.- 8. "Think on these things": Benjamin Whichcote and Henry Hallywell on Philippians 4:8 as a guide to Deiformity.- 9. Giving Locke Some Latitude: Locke's Theological Influences from Great Tew to the Cambridge Platonists.- 10. Mixing Politics with the Pulpit: Eternal Immutable Morality and Richard Price's Political Radicalism.- 11. "Have Ye Not Heard That We Cannot Serve Two Masters?": The Platonism of Mary Wollstonecraft.- 12. "This is not quite fair, Master More!": Coleridge and the Cambridge Platonists.- 13. "A track pursuing not untrod before": Wordsworth, Plato, and theCambridge Platonists.- 14. The Legacy of a 'Living Library': On the Reception of John Smith.- 15. Between Theodicy and Apologetics. Plato as "An Human Preface of the Gospel": Joseph Maistre and Simone Weil in the Wake of Cudworth.
About the author
Douglas Hedley is Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge and Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at the University of Cambridge. He has previously held Fellowships at the Universities of Notre Dame (2103-14) Muenster (2017) and was visiting Professor at the University of McGill in 2018.
David Leech is a Lecturer at the University of Bristol, UK. He has published widely on aspects of Cambridge Platonism, including the monograph “The Hammer of the Cartesians: Henry More’s Philosophy of Spirit and the Origins of Modern Atheism.” Peeters Publishers, Leuven, 2013.
Summary
This volume contains essays that examine the work and legacy of the Cambridge Platonists. The essays reappraise the ideas of this key group of English thinkers who served as a key link between the Renaissance and the modern era.
The contributors examine the sources of the Cambridge Platonists and discuss their take-up in the eighteenth-century. Readers will learn about the intellectual formation of this philosophical group as well as the reception their ideas received. Coverage also details how their work links to earlier Platonic traditions.
This interdisciplinary collection explores a broad range of themes and an appropriately wide range of knowledge. It brings together an international team of scholars. They offer a broad combination of expertise from across the following disciplines: philosophy, Neoplatonic studies, religious studies, intellectual history, seventeenth-century literature, women’s writing, and dissenting studies.The essays were originally presented at a series of workshops in Cambridge on the Cambridge Platonists funded by the AHRC.
