The Cambridge Platonists in Philosophical Context

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THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS IN PHILOSOPHICAL CONTEXT

POLITICS, METAPHYSICS AND RELIGION ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D'HISTOIRE DES IDEES INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

150

THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS IN PHILOSOPHICAL CONTEXT Politics, Metaphysics and Religion EDITED BY G.A.J. ROGERS, J.M. VIENNE AND Y.C. ZARKA

Founding Directors: P. Dibonf (Paris) and R.H. Popkin (Washington University, St. Louis & UCLA) Directors: Brian Copenhaver (University of California, Los Angeles, USA), Sarah Hutton (The University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom), Richard Popkin (Washington Univer- sity, St Louis & University of California, Los Angeles, USA) Editorial Board: J.F. Battail (Paris); F. Duchesneau (Montreal); A. Gabbey (New York); T. Gregory (Rome); J.D. North (Groningen); M.J. Petry (Rotterdam); J. Popkin (Lexington); Th, Verbeek (Utrecht) Advisory EditorialBoard: J. Aubin (paris); A. Crombie (Oxford); H. Gadamer (Heidelberg); H. Gouhier (paris); K. Hanada (Hokkaido University); W. Kirsop (Melbourne); P.O. Kristeller (Columbia University); E. Labrousse (Paris); A. Lossky (Los Angeles); J. Malarczyk (Lublin); J. Orcibal (Paris); W. ROd (MQnchen); G. Rousseau (Los Angeles); H. Rowen (Rutgers University, N.J.); J.P. Schobinger (Zurich); J. Tans (Groningen) THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS IN PHILOSOPHICAL CONTEXT POLITICS, METAPHYSICS AND RELIGION

edited by

G.A. J. ROGERS University ofKeele, Keele . United Kingdom

J. M. VIENNE Universite de Nantes. France

and

Y. C. ZARKA CNRS Paris. France

Springer-Science+Business Media, B.V. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Cambr Idge Platonlsts In phi losophical context : po l t t t cs , metaphysics. and relIgion I edited by G.A.J. Rogers. J.M. Vlenne. and Y.C . Zarka. p . cm . (Arch Ives Internatlonales d'htstoire des Idees = Internat ional arch ives of the hIstory of Ideas; 150> EnglIsh and French . Includes b IblIograph Ical references and Index .

1. Cambridge Platon lsts. 2 . Philosophy, Engllsh--17th century. 3 . England--Intellectual llfe--17th century. I. Rogers . G. A. J.

ISBN 978-90-481-4844-8 ISBN 978-94-015-8933-8 (eBook) 001 10.1007/978-94-015-8933-8

Printed on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved © 1997 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1997. Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover 1st edition 1997 No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner. TABLE OF CONTENTS

List ofContributors vii Abbreviations viii Introduction ix Jean Michel Vienne

PART ONE Chapter I The Other-Worldly Philosophers and the Real World : The Cambridge Platonists, Theology and Politics G. A. J. Rogers 3 Chapter II Liberte et Verite: Politique et morale dans la correspondance hollandaise de More et de Cudworth Luisa Simonutti 17 Chapter III Critique de Hobbes et fondement de la morale chez Cudworth Yves-Charles Zarka 39

PART Two Chapter IV The Heritage of Patristic Platonism in Seventeenth- century English Philosophical Theology David W. Dockrill 55 Chapter V John Smith et Ie Portique Jacqueline Lagree 79 Chapter VI Cudworth, Boethius and the Scale of Nature Sarah Hutton 93 Chapter VII Ralph Cudworth, un platonisme paradoxal: La Nature dans la Digression concerning the Plastick Life ofNature Alain Petit 101 Chapter VIII Ixe$"v; et Relation : Du platonisme al'empirisme Jean-Michel Vienne 111

PART THREE Chapter IX The Role ofIlluminism in the Thought of Henry More Robert Crocker 129

v vi TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter X "La Nature est un art". Le vitalisme de Cudworth et de More Jean-Louis Breteau 145 Chapter XI Force, Motion and Causality: More's Critique of Descartes John Cottingham 159 Chapter XII Cudworth versus Descartes : platonisme et sens commun dans la critique des Meditations Marialuisa Baldi 173

PART FOUR Chapter XIII Les differentes lectures du System de Cudworth par G. W. Leibniz Andre Robinet 187 Chapter XIV Platonic Idealism in Modern Philosophy from Malebranche to Berkeley Stuart Brown 197

ApPENDIX Ralph Cudworth, Additional Manuscript n? 4981 (On the Nature of Liberum Arbitrium) introduced by J. L. Breteau 217 Bibliography 233 Index 245 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Marialuisa Baldi CN.R. Milano, ltalia Jean-Louis Breteau Universite de Toulouse-le -Mirail, France Stuart Brown The Open University, United Kingdom John Cottingham University ofReading, United Kingdom Robert Crocker The Flinders University, Australia David W. Dockrill Newcastle University, Australia Sarah Hutton University ofHertfordshire, United Kingdom Jacqueline Lagree Universite de Rennes, France Alain Petit Universite de Clermont-Ferrand, France Andre Robinet C.N.R.S. Paris, France; Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgique G. A. John Rogers University ofKeele, United Kingdom Luisa Simonutti CN.R. Milano Jean-Michel Vienne Universite de Nantes, France Yves Charles Zarka CN.R.S. Paris, France

vii ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THIS VOLUME

es.p.W. : More, Henry, A Collection ofSeveral Philosophical Writings, (London, 1662). D.D. : More, Henry, Divine Dialogues, (London, 1668). E.M. : More, Henry, Enchiridion Metaphysicum, (London, 1671). E.E. : More, Henry, Enchiridion Ethicum, (London, 1667) . E.T. : More, Henry, Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, (London, 1656). M.G. : More, Henry, An Explanation ofthe Grand Mystery ofGodliness, (London, 1660). T.E.I.M. : Cudworth, Ralph, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, (London, 1731). T.F. : Cudworth, Ralph, A Treatise ofFreewill, (ed. John Allen, London, 1838). T.1.S.U. : Cudworth, Ralph, The True Intellectual System ofthe Universe, (London , 1678).

viii INTRODUCTION

The Cambridge Platonists were defenders of tolerance in the political as well as the moral sphere; they held that practical judgement came down in the last instance to individual conscience; and they laid the foundations of our modern conceptions of conscience and liberty. But at the same time they maintained the existence of eternal truths, and of a Good-in-itself, identical with Truth and Being, refusing to admit that freedom of conscience implied moral relativism. They were critics of dogmatism, and of the sectarian notion of "enthusiasm" as a source of illumination, on the grounds that both were disruptive of social harmony; they pleaded the cause of reason, in the hope that it could become the foundation of all human knowledge. Yet, for all that, they maintained that a certain sort of mystical illumination lay at the heart of all true thought, and that human reason had validity only in virtue of its divine origin. They debated with Descartes and took a keen interest in his mechanism and his dualism; they brought the atomistic theories of Democritus back into repute; and they sought to provide a detailed account of the causality linking all phenomena. But at the same time they fought against every form of materialism and atheism; they constructed their universe on a finalistic model derived from Plato ; and they maintained that the world could be understood only on vitalist principles. Occupying a territory that lies between the system of Descartes and that of Leibniz, between rationalism and empiricism, between ancient and modern science, between religion and philosophy, the Cambridge Platonists were at the heart of the formation of modern thought, and many of their questions are still our own, even if their solutions are no longer accepted. Within the framework of inquiry of their time, they tried to bring together the most irreconcilable tendencies; and because of this, their ideas are far less monolithic, and far harder to classify, than those of their contemporaries, with the result that they have been largely forgotten in the history of philosophy. Moreover, the form in which they presented their views provides an obstacle for twentieth-century readers. The problem is one of style, of metaphorical language, of the elaborate erudition of their scholarship, and above all of the difficulty ofsubsuming their views under clear overarching principles. One must admit that the modern reader is often put off by the very diversity of the topics which the Cambridge Platonists addressed, so much so that the richness of their ideas can be lost sight of. But there is, for all that, a unifying thread - one that the contributors to this volume have tried to uncover, with the aim of restoring the Cambridge Platonists to the important place that belongs to them in the genesis of our modern culture. This should be particularly evident in the first four chapters of the book, which are devoted to morals, politics and religion. Hitherto, research on the Platonists has concentrated on their physics (with special reference to the

G. A. J. Rogers et al (eds.), The Cambridge Platonists in Philosophical Context. ix-xiv . © 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers. x INTRODUCTION correspondence between More and Descartes, and the relationship between More and Newton), while a more recent area of interest has been their metaphysics (espe- cially Cudworth 's "plastic nature"). The present work, by contrast, gives pride of place to the practical dimension, in the belief that it allows us to see important con- nections between their theories of knowledge, their physics and their metaphysics, and to reveal a coherence, or at any rate a certain harmony, in the positions they advanced. The terms in which the Platonists approached the practical side of their inquiries are sufficiently similar to our own to be quite accessible to the modern reader. What can be more bewildering is the theological aspect - the system of concepts and metaphors in terms of which their moral and political (and hence religious) preoccupations are worked out. These authors were committed to a pan-psychic vitalism which seems all the more foreign to us given that many texts from the same period are entirely free of such elements, and hence seem infinitely more accessible. Nevertheless, it is impossible to understand the transition from one form of moder- nity - that proposed by Descartes - to the other equally striking forms proposed by Leibniz, Newton or Locke, if we ignore the reservoir of ideas which the work of the Cambridge Platonists represented for those very thinkers who elaborated their own systems by criticising them. There is thus much illumination to be had by approaching the Cambridge Platonists from a practical perspective, and presenting their thought as a reaction against the various forms of voluntarism that prevailed at the time. Calvinism and its offshoots, in the course of affirming the transcendence of God, put the divine will at the centre of their explanation of the universe - a notion that gave rise, in moral philosophy, to predestination and legalism, and in political theory to state absolutism. Hobbes responded to theological absolutism by putting into the hands of the sovereign the instruments of public and private security. But by failing to accommodate the guiding principles of voluntarism, his solution turns out to be much worse that the evil it is designed to prevent: it degenerates into a relativism which is just as dictatorial. As the Platonists saw it, it was only by restoring an authentic transcendence that one could resist the kind of relativism that regarded all authority as an artificial creation . But this authentic transcendence could not be identified with theological voluntarism, any more than with Thomist scholasticism, the latter having been compromised by its links with Catholic obscurantism and intolerance. It could only be derived from the prisca theologia - that ancient theology which had been embodied (as certain traditions of the time had it) in the teachings of Moses, as well as those of Pythagoras and Plato, and even Aristotle. A Platonic framework allowed the eternal truths themselves to be set against the supposed creation of those truths; to unify, within God, truth, goodness and being (whereas voluntarism made the first two notions subordinate to the arbitrary will of God); and to follow the Timaeus in introducing final causation as the very basis of the mechanical interactions of matter. In a Platonic philosophy, every human being could be given the ability to use his reason to move away from the sensible world and approach the divine; and tolerance became compatible with the notion of an INTRODUCTION xi antecedent and immutable truth. It even became possible, by adopting Plato's dis- tinction between dialectical "ascent" and contemplation, to take account of the difference between the necessary advance of rational inquiry and the divine illumination which alone could bring this inquiry to fruition. There are, however , two complications that need to be touched on. The first has a positive aspect to it. The Platonism we have just referred to was reinterpreted in the light of Neo-platonism, itself christianised by the Fathers of the Church, notably Origen . Three fundamental elements - emanationism, the scale of being, and the Stoic themes of the world soul and the divine fire running through the universe - these enriched the Platonists ' stock of metaphors, if not concepts, and introduced a vitali st dimension which was certainly not a feature of Platonism in its original form. The second point, however, is a negative one. Christianity , on the one hand, and the current state of the sciences on the other, could not accommodate all the Platonic and Neoplatonic theses mentioned. Conceiving of a Trinity not reducible to three fundamental elements, a creation not consisting of emanation, a divine presence that is not an internal fire but a natural principle of organization, providing a justific ation of causality that invoked something more precise than mere impact- in short taking advantage of the priority of being , truth and goodness without falling into various forms of pantheism or materialism (the very move Spinoza was making at this precise time) - all these were additional factors demanding a modification of Platonism in its original form. The task of providing foundations for human morals and politics, and justifying a science where Truth and Goodness could be grounded in Being, without an imme- diate human dependence on a divine will detached from the divine reason - these were also the preoccupations of Grotius in the field of law. As a follower of Arminius , Grotius too was opposed to Calvinist voluntarism, and he tries to estab- lish a conception of man created by God yet capable of finding his own way in life, capable of elaborating a natural law which "would, in a certain sense, apply even if we agreed thee was no God, or that human affairs are not an object of concern to him" (De Jure Bellis ac Pads, Prol. 11). The Platonists followed suit in their desire to think of a universe which was itself so ontologically marked by the divine presence that one could ignore any interventions made by God under the form of particular and arbitrary acts of will. This generates a difficult and constantly threat- ened balance between the distancing of God on the one hand and his necessary presence on the other; here the terms of the subsequent debate between Clark and Leibniz are already clearly laid down.

To provide its "guiding thread" for readers of the Cambridge Platonists, the volume thus opens with the moral and political dimension in their writings and their lives, a dimension that is all too often ignored. The Cambridge Platonists were ardent defenders of freedom of conscience, and they based this defence on a law of nature, itself articulated by the power of reason present in every human being. This Xll INTRODUCTION rational theology proceeds via each individual conscience, to which we are be- holden even if it speaks with a different voice in each of us. Chapter I, by John Rogers, shows how this theory is exemplified in the actions and sermons and treatises of Cudworth and More. The doctrine of freedom of conscience, close to that of the Latitudinarians, would arouse the interest of the Remonstrants in Holland, who were engaged in a struggle against rigorous Calvinist dogma, and various forms of intolerance. Chapter II, by Luisa Simonutti, clarifies the nature of this liberal morality, and compares the positions of the Arminians with those of the Platonists by examining the correspondence between Cudworth and More on the one hand, and the writings of Van Limborch, spokesman for Arminianism, on the other. Peace must take precedence over dogmatic rigour, whether it be that of the Calvinist or that of the enthusiast: "Where the freedom to seek for truth is re- strained, the truth is overwhelmed; where the faculty of pursuing truth is recog- nised, the truth shines forth and allows herself to be found without difficulty." But this freedom must be based on the transcendence of Truth and Goodness. These theses, and the practical moral and political conclusions which flow from them, are opposed to those of Hobbes - at any rate as he was understood when his works were published. Chapter III, by Yves-Charles Zarka, examines the moral position of Cudworth by analysing three aspects of his opposition to the relativism attrib- uted to Hobbes - epistemic, theological and political - which call into question the three principles of ethics: free action, subject and norm. Cudworth's opposition was the basis for his new analysis of conscience and liberty, revealed in one of his un- published writings, the text of which is provided in the appendix by J. L. Breteau. Part Two of the volume shows how this moral position was developed among the supporters of Platonic philosophy. First of all, Chapter IV, by David Dockrill, analyses the sources which Neo-Platonism drew on, and insists on the difficulties involved in trying to adapt the Christian revelation to the conceptual forms of Platonism; this difficult enterprise begun by the Fathers of the Church, notably Origen, brought about certain transformations which gave modern Platonism its specific character: God cannot be distinguished from Intelligence; He cannot be a monad unrelated to a world emanating from Him, since He must possess the idea of all things before freely creating them. In order to Christianise this Platonism, use was made of the themes of natural law, of right reason, and of the world soul - themes which could lead one to suppose a direct Stoic influence. Chapter V, by Jacqueline Lagree, uses the example of John Smith's sermons to show that the borrowing is not a borrowing of concepts but a merely rhetorical borrowing: the Platonists employed this vocabulary not so much in order to make use of Stoic philosophy as to mark the fact that they belonged to the hierarchical world of Christian thought. Chapter VI, by Sarah Hutton, makes a more precise study of the metaphor of the Chain of Being borrowed from Boethius, to underline this hierarchy in the universe which was so essential for the Platonists: beings endowed with intelligence must precede material beings, knowledge must precede sensation, final causation must precede mechanism. In Chapter VII, Alain Petit focuses on the expression "plastic life", in order to explore the relationship between the Platonists INTRODUCTION xiii and Plotinus ; in spite of certain ambiguities, Cudworth shows himself to be a cau- tious supporter of Plotinus. His major and most prominent concern is a theological one : by introducing his "plastic nature", Cudworth seeks a via media between mechanism and hyper-voluntarism, between a God who does nothing and a God who does everything. A final source of inspiration for the Platonists was atomism. If it is true that the Platonists attached a decisive importance to the activity of the mind and the priority it gives mankind over sensible data, one can understand their interest in ancient atomism and Cartesian mechanism; the latter provides the disor- ganised material elements which only the mind, according to the Platonists, can put into their proper relations. Chapter VIII, by Jean-Michel Vienne, studies the importance of these relations, and shows that, paradoxically, a new empiricism was destined to arise from this neo-Platonic requirement. The third part of the volume draws out the consequences for physics and metaphysics of the Platonic structure thus defined. The relationship between things must express the pre-eminence of the mind: three chapters analyse this form of pan- psychist vitalism which provides a rationale for the causal relationship between things. Chapter IX, by Robert Crocker, concentrates on More's life to show how the successive styles of his works correspond to his own experiences, whether mystical, intellectual or literary, and how his conception of atoms, of their interactions due to spiritual forces, and of causality in general, underwent a corresponding evolution . Chapter X focuses on vitalism itself: Jean-Louis Breteau shows how the concept develops by diverging from Cartesian mechanism, and taking the form of Cudworth's "plastic nature", or More's "spirit of Nature". Chapter XI continues the story by analysing the concept of causation: John Cottingham shows how, faced with the vague explanations of causality given by Descartes, and in spite of the opposition of the post-Cartesians to the theory of influx (which seemed to them irra- tionalist), More struggled to give an account of the ontological nature of the causal link by means of a kind of vitalist explanation which has some links with occasion- alism. Chapter XII concludes this part of the volume by a metaphysical analysis of the work of Cudworth : Marialouisa Baldi takes as her starting point his various crit- icisms of the Cartesian proofs of God's existence in order to demonstrate the opposition of the Platonists to voluntarism, their affirmation of the identity of truth, goodness and being, and their conception of ideas and of sensation - all positions based on a vitalist Platonism ; nevertheless, dangerous as Cartesianism may have been, its mechanistic atomism was an antidote to materialism in so far as it still allowed for mental intervention in the material world. Two final chapters provide accounts of the subsequent evolution of this Platonic vitalism. Chapter XIII transcribes for the first time the series of notes made by Leibniz in the course of his successive readings of Cudworth's vitalist arguments. Andre Robinet sees in the different passages which Leibniz noted not the influence of Cudworth on Leibniz, but on the contrary the traces of the progressive discover- ies Leibniz himself made concerning his theory of monads, which made him react in different ways to the same text of Cudworth. Finally, Chapter XIV, by Stuart Brown, is concerned with what became of this British Platonism at the hands of XIV INTRODUCTION

John Norris, George Berkeley and Arthur Collier, at the start of a Platonist revival which this time went beyond the city of Cambridge. For these writers, as for More, Cudworth and Leibniz, there are eternal moral truths which can be "no creatures of ours, nor yet of God's either", as Norris puts it. These new Platonists rediscovered the original moral intuitions of their Cambridge predecessors.

By taking moral philosophy as its starting point, this volume aims to grasp a unifying theme in the views of the Cambridge Platonists, and to convince today's readers of the interest of their views and analyses. The importance of the physical and metaphysical theories of these Platonists cannot of course be ignored; but their conception of the causal relationship between phenomena, of the finality which per- vades the universe, their theory of knowledge which requires an innate rational ca- pacity if not innate ideas as such - all these features acquire a greater coherence and scope if they are considered as stemming from their concern to place man at the very centre of their inquiries - man in his personal relationship to God, achieved thanks to his free conscience. In the twentieth century where there has been a separation of science and morals, fact and value, philosophy and religion, it is easier for us to understand Descartes and Newton, concerned as they were to keep theology and morality separate. But this separation was sometimes due to fear of the authorities or public opinion, and did not reflect their methods of discovery . One of the fascinations of the Platonists is that they ignored, or even rejected, these boundaries, and insisted on the necessity of achieving an overall conception of the various dimensions of human existence. But for all that, the stress on theology and morals could not be at the expense of the autonomy of the subject and his search for truth - a delicate balance which they never quite managed to achieve. But the fact that they did not succeed in producing a fully unified conception of the world does not make their achievement insignificant. If nothing else, a reading of the manuscript by Cudworth to be found at the end of this volume, should prove the point.

Jean-Michel Vienne translated by John Cottingham