Gods and giants: Cudworth’s platonic metaphysics and his ancient theology

ABSTRACT

The Cambridge Platonists are modern thinkers and the context of seventeenth-century Cambridge science is an inalienable and decisive part of their thought. Cudworth’s interest in ancient theology, however, seems to conflict with the progressive aspect of his philosophy. The problem of the nature, however, of this ‘Platonism’ is unavoidable. Even in his complex and recondite ancient theology Cudworth is motivated by philosophical considerations, and his legacy among philosophers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries should not be overlooked. In particular we will draw on the scholarship of the German Egyptologist Jan Assmann in order to reassess the significance of Cudworth’s theory of religion for later philosophical developments.

KEYWORDS:

• Ancient theology
• monotheism
• atheism
• Platonism
• German Idealism

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Christian Hengstermann for detailed assistance with the essay, and the anonymous readers of the journal. Further thanks are due to Peter Cheyne.

Notes

1 See Gill, British Moralists; Beiser, Sovereignty of Reason; and Darwall, British Moralists.

2 See the detailed study of Cudworth's relationship to Descartes by Gysi, Platonism and Cartesianism. On Cudworth's concept of self-consciousness, see Thiel, ‘Cudworth and Seventeenth-century Theories of Consciousness’.

3 Dr Adrian Mihai observes that the quote regarding the radii deitatis seems to come from Bernard of Clairvaux's Sermones Super Cantica, Sermo 31, and not from Jerome, as Cudworth reports.

4 For discussion, see Leroux's in Plotin, Traité Sur la Liberté, 305.

5 Adrian Mihai notes that Cudworth possibly quotes the beautiful expression ignorantiae asylum from Spinoza's Ethics I, Appendix, in TIS II, 562 and 588.

6 For discussion of Coleridge as an exponent and developer of Cudworth's philosophy, see Cristine Flores, ‘Contemplant Spirits’.

7 On the Cambridge Platonists’ reception of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, notably his concepts of knowledge and religion, see Cope, Joseph Glanvill, 71–2; Walker, Ancient Theology, 164–93; and Lagrée, ‘Lumière naturelle’.