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Censuring Theteutonic Philosopher? Aries – Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 18 (2018) 54–74 ARIES brill.com/arie Censuring the Teutonic Philosopher? Henry More’s Ambivalent Appraisal of Jacob Böhme Douglas Hedley* University of Cambridge [email protected] Abstract This essay examines Henry More’s engagement with Jacob Böhme and compares the sympathetic critique of Böhme with More’s much more negative evaluation of Spinoza. More directs his criticism of Böhme at the similarities between Spinoza and Böhme: their materialism and confusion of God and world. The present essay suggests, how- ever, that the perception of shared Platonism informs More’s more favourable approach to the Silesian. The problem of what “Platonism” means in this context is thus also addressed. Böhme’s writings were valued by More because of a shared metaphysics that rejected both radical dualism and pantheism, and the Platonic theology of the good- ness of God and the freedom of man, together with the rejection of predestination. Spinoza, on the other hand, is rejected because of his radical determinism, his denial of any substantial distinction between good and evil, and the transcendent being of the divine. Keywords Henry More – Jacob Böhme – Cambridge Platonists – Spinoza – metaphysics – Platonic theology * I am deeply grateful to Christian Hengstermann for his suggestions. All the translations of More’s Latin are by Hengstermann. I am also very grateful to Adrian Mihai and Lucinda Martin for very helpful comments and improvements. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi: 10.1163/15700593-01801004Downloaded from Brill.com10/01/2021 02:13:40AM via free access censuring the teutonic philosopher? 55 … ‘Why need I be afraid? Say rather how dare I be ashamed of the Teutonic theosophist, Jacob Behmen?’ s.t. coleridge ∵ The Puzzle of More’s Reading of Böhme Jacob Böhme’s legacy in England was momentous. Modern disciplinary cate- gories fail to capture the writings of a figure like Böhme, or indeed the Cam- bridge Platonist Henry More (1614–1687). The goals of integrating new science into ancient paradigms, or the improvement of society through Scripture seem anachronistic, yet these were widely shared in the 17th century, including by figures such as Bacon and Newton. One might think of Richard Popkin’s notion of a “Third Force”, a strand of thought alongside rationalists and empiricists, constituted by writers drawing up a Kabbalistic, apocalyptic and millenarian worldview.1 Ernst Troeltsch argued persuasively for the influence of the Radi- cal Reformation upon the development of the Modern World.2 The reception of Böhme by Henry More might constitute a striking instance of the vigor and power of this influence. Yet it contains a puzzle. More was a retiring scholar, a learned correspondent with Descartes and versed with the latest science. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1662 and conversed with Newton in the 1680s. More fought indefatigably against “enthusiasm”; he was energeti- cally engaged in a vitriolic debate with the hermeticist and alchemist Thomas Vaughan.3 Why did he take such an avid interest in the enigmatic mysticism of the Silesian cobbler? One answer is to claim that More regretted Böhme’s lack of philosophical refinement but admired his moral qualities. Robert Crocker claims that More valued Böhme ‘as a genuinely saintly man’, but rejected him ‘as a philosopher’.4 I wish to suggest that there is a genuinely philosophical dimension to the ambivalence evinced by More towards Böhme and it is linked to the shared 1 Popkin, The Third Force. 2 Troeltsch, Die Bedeutung des Protestantismus. 3 Crocker, ‘Mysticism and Enthusiasm in Henry More’, 137–155, esp. 144ff. 4 Ibid., 148. Aries – Journal for the Study of Western EsotericismDownloaded 18 from (2018) Brill.com10/01/2021 54–74 02:13:40AM via free access 56 hedley Platonic or better “Neoplatonic” inheritance of the two thinkers. More defends a Böhme Neoplatonicus. The question of “Neoplatonism” in relation to such an eclectic and idiosyncratic figure as Böhme is a thorny issue. In this essay I wish to contrast the gently critical approach of More to Böhme with More’s savage repudiation of Spinoza. This is not a whimsical or haphazard compari- son. More deliberately placed his sympathetic critique of Böhme in proximity to his antagonistic assessment of Spinoza. In his praefatio to Opera omnia ii/1 (xiv–xv), More explicitly links “Behmenism” to Spinozism (and Kabbalism): haec certe mea scripta proximè antecedentibus admodum homogenea sunt. This homogeneity consists in their shared enthusiasm and materialism: laying too much stress on the imagination, Böhme, Isaac Luria and Spinoza end up view- ing the world itself as the Deity. The English Romantic philosopher, poet and man of letters, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), wrote of the ‘contemptuous pride in those literati, who have most distinguished themselves by their scorn of Behmen’.5 Coleridge viewed Böhme as an ‘enthusiast’ but not a ‘fanatic’. Hegel viewed Böhme, along with Bacon, as the key philosophers of the early modern period.6 Schelling and Tillich had their debts to Böhme. For Paul Tillich, Böhme is ‘the Protestant mystic and philosopher of life’, the source of ‘the classic statement that all things are rooted in a Yes and a No’.7 This sympathetic account of Böhme is heralded by Henry More. In fact, well before Böhme’s influence on nineteenth-century philosophy, the Silesian thinker was having an impact in England.The contemporary Reformed theologian Richard Baxter (1615–1691) is a witness to the influence of German sources upon many Protestant groups and sects.8 Baxter notes that Paracelsus and the German theology exert a powerful hold upon the radical sects in England.9 Yet it was Cambridge that proved the most fertile ground for the early reception of Böhme. Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688), Peter Sterry (1613– 1672) and JohnWorthington (1618–1671) had Böhme in their libraries. Cudworth admired the ‘practical parts’ but rejected the ‘revelations’ as lacking in rational foundation. Sterry seemed unsure as to whether Böhme was a true visionary or the victim of satanic manipulation, yet he evidently admired much in his writings. Worthington placed Böhme alongside Thomas à Kempis and Tauler 5 Coleridge, Biographia Literaria i, 141. 6 See the excellent work by Cecilia Muratori, The First German Philosopher. 7 Tillich, The Courage to Be, 42. 8 Troeltsch, Die Bedeutung des Protestantismus, 26. 9 Bailey, Milton and Jakob Boehme, 95. Aries – Journal for the Study of Western EsotericismDownloaded from 18Brill.com10/01/2021 (2018) 54–74 02:13:40AM via free access censuring the teutonic philosopher? 57 for his ‘savoury truths’ among the ‘stubble and wood and hay’.10 The sibling Böhme enthusiasts, Charles (1615–c. 1672) and Durand Hotham (1617–1691), were educated at More’s college: Christ’s. More’s earliest familiarity with Böhme may date back to Charles Hotham’s Ad Philosophiam Teutonicam Manuductio (1648), a work dedicated to the Chancellor, senate and students of Cambridge.11 This university composition advocated Böhme, albeit with reservations, and the text contains verses written by Henry More: I Ken no Teutonick, good Charles! Then vent Thy self, and thine own Ingenie depeint. Write Hothamick, & thine own sense explain; So shall thy learned page with force detaine My ravish’d mind. For what-so Piety, Deep-brooding Silence, Alternations sly Of changing thoughts: What-so inspired Love, That with his golden wings doth gently move, Thy heart-blood fanning to an heavenly flame: What any, or all these together claime, Will be the due of those adorned Lines Wherein thine own Soules image cleerly shines. But now through unknown paths and darksome places Thou lead’st us, with wrinch’d feet, and limping paces: In mids of those broke-windings, Cold invades My stonisht mind, and Horror in the shades. Yet while I look upon thy candour bright, To sudden day straight turns this hideous night While I thy Morals and well-meaning Will Consider, in this night I feare no ill: Yea more, well weighing thy far-searching wit then suspect some good lies hid in it.12 More studied the works of Böhme repeatedly throughout his career, from Enthusiasmus triumphatus (1656) to the The Divine Dialogues, where More sees the work of Divine providence in proponents of inner religion in figures such 10 Christie (ed.), Diary and Correspondence of Worthington, vol. 2, part ii, 291–293, 294, 302, 305, 307, 322. 11 On the Hotham brothers’ reception of Böhme, see Muratori, ‘A Philosopher at Randome’. 12 Cf. Hutton, ‘Henry More and Jacob Böhme’, 170. For the original, see Charles Hotham, An introduction to the Teutonick philosophie (translated by Durant Hotham into English). Aries – Journal for the Study of Western EsotericismDownloaded 18 from (2018) Brill.com10/01/2021 54–74 02:13:40AM via free access 58 hedley as Böhme.13 In The Two Last Dialogues (1668), Böhme’s invincible obscurity is attacked, as is his claim to divine inspiration.14 Already in 1670 More had written to his ‘heroine pupil’,Lady Anne Conway (1631–1679), that ‘Honest Jacob is wholesome at the botome though a philosopher but at randome’.15 It seems to have been the encouragement of Anne Conway that led to the composition of his Philosophiae teutonicae censura of 1670 (published in 1679). More writes: ‘It is as clear as it can possibly be that such a phenomenon as Jakob Boehme was rather a jewel than a stain in divine providence, even though, as regards his opinion about his own inspiration, he was plainly deceived.’16 Yet Henry More says of himself candidly ‘I have a natural touch of enthusiasm’.17 This is perhaps not surprising since Böhme’s thought is a bewildering mix- ture of eccentric, though not exactly heretical doctrines, fused with some dis- tinctly unorthodox accounts of the Trinity and the Incarnation.
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