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ABSTRACT
Ralph Cudworth’s theory of mind was the most fully developed philosophical psychology among the Cambridge Platonists. Like his seventeenth-century contemporaries, Cudworth discussed mental powers in terms of soul (anima) rather than mind (mens) and considered the function of the soul to be not merely intellectual, but vital and moral. Cudworth conceived the soul as a single self-determining unit which combined many powers. He developed this against a philosophical agenda set by Descartes and Hobbes. But he turned to ancient philosophy, especially the philosophy of Plotinus, to develop a psychology which is distinguished by the attention he gives to both conscious and unconscious states, and to the powers which enable it to reflect on itself, to co-ordinate its activities and direct them to good ends. I argue that in so doing, Cudworth sought to elaborate a theory of mind which accounted for observable experience of mental operations. My paper outlines the complexities of Cudworth’s taxonomy of mental powers, focusing on three key powers which Cudworth developed through his reading of Plotinus: energy (energeia), self-power (tò autexousion, or tò hegemonikon), and sympathy (sumpatheia).
Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of this article were presented at the University of York and King’s College London. I wish to express my thanks for comments and suggestions made by the audience on both occasions, and for the insightful criticisms of the anonymous BJHP referees.
Notes
1 In his Vade mecum, sive manuale philosophicum (1675), Johann Scherzer paraphrases Aristotle, in his definition of the soul as the power in nature endowed with life, through which we live, feel and understand (‘physici potestate vitam habentis. Principium, quo primam vivens sentimus, & intelligimus’). Cf. Johannes Micrelius, Lexicon philosophicum (1662) which defines ‘psuche’ as ‘forma vivens vitae principium’. For early modern philosophical dictionaries, see Lessici filosofici (2006–13).
2 Although Cudworth has attracted increasing interest latterly, John Passmore's Ralph Cudworth. An Interpretation (1951) is one of the few to discuss Cudworth's manuscript writings and has not been superseded (notwithstanding an erroneous attribution of one of the manuscripts). Among recent studies, see especially Carter, The Little Commonwealth of Man; Sellars, ‘Is God a Mindless Vegetable?’ and ‘Stoics Against Stoics’. There is also discussion of Cudworth in Darwall, The British Moralists, 109–48; Schneewind, Moral Philosophy from Montaigne to Kant; Irwin, The Development of Ethics, 2:238–63.
3 Lähteenmäki, ‘Cudworth on Types of Consciousness’, 9–34; Thiel, The Early Modern Subject; Pécharman, ‘Cudworth on Self-consciousness and the I Myself’. These discussions are chiefly interested in the relationship of consciousness and self-consciousness.
4 There is no modern edition of The True Intellectual System (hereafter TIS), but it is available in a modern reprint (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1964). It was edited by Thomas Birch (London, 1743) and again in 1839 and 1845, and translated into Latin by Johan Lorenz Mosheim (Jena, 1733; reprinted Leiden 1773). A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality (hereafter EIM) was first printed in 1731, translated by Mosheim and printed with his Latin translation of TIS. A Treatise of Freewill (hereafter FW) prints the shortest of the three BL manuscripts of ‘Liberty’. References to both EIM and FW will be to my 1996 edition of both texts.
5 BL MS Additional 4978–82 contain three drafts of Cudworth's writings on ‘Liberty and Necessity’, only one of which, MS 4978, has been published as FW. A few pages of MS 4981, edited by J. L. Bretau, are printed as an Appendix in Rogers et al., The Cambridge Platonists in Philosophical Context.
6 Cudworth's writings on ‘Liberty and Necessity’ were intended to form part of his magnum opus. Their precise relationship to one another and to the published writings has not been fully studied. Their discussion of the soul is considerably enlarged. Hegemonikon is a term not used to any extent in TIS.
7 Ray, The Wisdom of God in the Works of Creation, Jean Le Clerc (ed.), Bibliotheque choisie, 1703 and 1706. Diderot Encyclopédie, Art. ‘Plastique’. ‘Plastic nature’ as an unconscious power had a broader cultural reception, as evidenced in Alexander Pope's ‘An Essay on Man’ and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's early poems. Testimony to the longevity of Cudworth's ‘Plastic Nature’ is Paul Janet's De plastica naturæ vita quæ a Cudwortho in systemate intellectuali.
8 Sympathy is normally regarded as a very eighteenth-century idea, especially in relation to the culture of sensibility, where it was associated with emotion and sensibility and sensitive awareness, and often counterposed to reason. See Schliesser, Sympathy. A History. Cudworth's treatment of sympathy has hitherto been ignored – an exception is Martine Pécharman's podcast, ‘Sympathy as a Cudworthian Non-moral Background to Cudworth's Ethics’.
9 Cudworth also glosses magic, fate and sympathy by means of a quotation from Harvey's De generatione animalium, that nature works ‘by a kind of Fate or Command, acting according to Laws’ (TIS, 162).
10 Plotinus is not the only ancient philosopher with whom Cudworth engages – Aristotle is another. See Hutton, ‘Aristotle and the Cambridge Platonists: The Case of Cudworth’.
11 Cudworth often critiques philosophers without naming them. In EIM he names several scholastic philosophers, but not in his discussion of scholastic faculty psychology. As Terence Irwin has pointed out, his source for these was Suarez (Irwin, The Development of Ethics, 250, n. 38). Suarez is a possible source for his account of the ‘vulgar psychology’ of the scholastics. Both Samuel Mintz and Terence Irwin argue that he was addressing John Bramhall, who fielded conventional scholastic arguments in his attacks on Hobbes: Mintz, The Hunting of Leviathan; Irwin, The Development of Ethics, 241. But Cudworth could equally well be targeting the rich heritage of Calvinist scholasticism which flourished at seventeenth-century Cambridge.
12 My claim is not that Cudworth was unique in appealing to experience, or that Hobbes and Descartes were not concerned to explain observable cognitive phenomena.
13 The interior psychic struggle of the soul is described more fully in the unpublished MSS.
14 Greek transliterated.
15 The hegemonikon is also not infallible: it can be a ‘self-impairing’ power, if it makes the wrong choices. FW, 185.
16 See also TIS, 771 for the Phaedran charioteer as an emblem of the soul.
17 In BL MS Additional 4980, Cudworth posits two types of free will (autexousion), animal free will and moral free will. This suggests that he did not think Plastic Nature was sufficient for the purpose. Further work on the manuscripts will be required to ascertain whether this is the case.
18 I therefore differ from Jorgensen, ‘Seventeenth-Century Theories of Consciousness’ who argues that Cudworth was not interested in a ‘natural’ explanation of consciousness.
19 It would be interesting to know whether Cudworth played a role in mediating the Plotinian elements that have been identified in Locke. Magrin, See The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self, 36. Also Magrin, ‘Plotinus on the Inner Sense’.