Cambridge Platonists a group of seventeenthcentury philosopher-theologians at the University of Cambridge, principally including Benjamin Whichcote (1609–83), often designated the father of the Cambridge Platonists; Henry More; Ralph Cudworth (1617–88); and John Smith (1616–52). Whichcote, Cudworth, and Smith received their university education in or were at some time fellows of Emmanuel College, a stronghold of the Calvinism in which they were nurtured and against which they rebelled under mainly Erasmian, Arminian, and Neoplatonic influences. Other Cambridge men who shared their ideas and attitudes to varying degrees were Nathanael Culverwel (1618?–51), Peter Sterry (1613–72), George Rust (d.1670), John Worthington (1618–71), and Simon Patrick (1625– 1707).
As a generic label, ‘Cambridge Platonists’ is a handy umbrella term rather than a dependable signal of doctrinal unity or affiliation. The Cambridge Platonists were not a self-constituted group articled to an explicit manifesto; no two of them shared quite the same set of doctrines or values. Their Platonism was not exclusively the pristine teaching of Plato, but was formed rather from Platonic ideas supposedly prefigured in Hermes Trismegistus, in the Chaldean Oracles, and in Pythagoras, and which they found in Origen and other church fathers, in the Neoplatonism of Plotinus and Proclus, and in the Florentine Neoplatonism of Ficino. They took contrasting and changing positions on the important belief (originating in Florence with Giovanni Pico della Mirandola) that Pythagoras and Plato derived their wisdom ultimately from Moses and the cabala. They were not equally committed to philosophical pursuits, nor were they equally versed in the new philosophies and scientific advances of the time.
The Cambridge Platonists’ concerns were ultimately religious and theological rather than primarily philosophical. They philosophized as theologians, making eclectic use of philosophical doctrines (whether Platonic or not) for apologetic purposes. They wanted to defend ‘true religion,’ namely, their latitudinarian vision of Anglican Christianity, against a variety of enemies: the Calvinist doctrine of predestination; sectarianism; religious enthusiasm; fanaticism; the ‘hide-bound, strait-laced spirit’ of Interregnum Puritanism; the ‘narrow, persecuting spirit’ that followed the Restoration; atheism; and the impieties incipient in certain trends in contemporary science and philosophy. Notable among the latter were the doctrines of the mechanical philosophers, especially the materialism and mechanical determinism of Hobbes and the mechanistic pretensions of the Cartesians. The existence of God, the existence, immortality, and dignity of the human soul, the existence of spirit activating the natural world, human free will, and the primacy of reason are among the principal teachings of the Cambridge Platonists. They emphasized the positive role of reason in all aspects of philosophy, religion, and ethics, insisting in particular that it is irrationality that endangers the Christian life. Human reason and understanding was ‘the Candle of the Lord’ (Whichcote’s phrase), perhaps their most cherished image. In Whichcote’s words, ‘To go against Reason, is to go against Go. . . Reason is the Divine Governor of Man’s Life; it is the very Voice of God.’ Accordingly, ‘there is no real clashing at all betwixt any genuine point of Christianity and what true Philosophy and right Reason does determine or allow’ (More). Reason directs us to the self-evidence of first principles, which ‘must be seen in their own light, and are perceived by an inward power of nature.’ Yet in keeping with the Plotinian mystical tenor of their thought, they found within the human soul the ‘Divine Sagacity’ (More’s term), which is the prime cause of human reason and therefore superior to it. Denying the Calvinist doctrine that revelation is the only source of spiritual light, they taught that the ‘natural light’ enables us to know God and interpret the Scriptures. Cambridge Platonism was uncompromisingly innatist. Human reason has inherited immutable intellectual, moral, and religious notions, ‘anticipations of the soul,’ which negate the claims of empiricism. The Cambridge Platonists were skeptical with regard to certain kinds of knowledge, and recognized the role of skepticism as a critical instrument in epistemology. But they were dismissive of the idea that Pyrrhonism be taken seriously in the practical affairs of the philosopher at work, and especially of the Christian soul in its quest for divine knowledge and understanding. Truth is not compromised by our inability to devise apodictic demonstrations. Indeed Whichcote passed a moral censure on those who pretend ‘the doubtfulness and uncertainty of reason.’ Innatism and the natural light of reason shaped the Cambridge Platonists’ moral philosophy. The unchangeable and eternal ideas of good and evil in the divine mind are the exemplars of ethical axioms or noemata that enable the human mind to make moral judgments. More argued for a ‘boniform faculty,’ a faculty higher than reason by which the soul rejoices in reason’s judgment of the good.
The most philosophically committed and systematic of the group were More, Cudworth, and Culverwel. Smith, perhaps the most intellectually gifted and certainly the most promising (note his dates), defended Whichcote’s Christian teaching, insisting that theology is more ‘a Divine Life than a Divine Science.’ More exclusively theological in their leanings were Whichcote, who wrote little of solid philosophical interest, Rust, who followed Cudworth’s moral philosophy, and Sterry. Only Patrick, More, and Cudworth (all fellows of the Royal Society) were sufficiently attracted to the new science (especially the work of Descartes) to discuss it in any detail or to turn it to philosophical and theological advantage. Though often described as a Platonist, Culverwel was really a neo-Aristotelian with Platonic embellishments and, like Sterry, a Calvinist. He denied innate ideas and supported the tabula rasa doctrine, commending ‘the Platonist. . . that they lookt upon the spirit of a man as the Candle of the Lord, though they were deceived in the time when ’twas lighted.’
The Cambridge Platonists were influential as latitudinarians, as advocates of rational theology, as severe critics of unbridled mechanism and materialism, and as the initiators, in England, of the intuitionist ethical tradition. In the England of Locke they are a striking counterinstance of innatism and non-empirical philosophy.
See also MORE, HENRY; NEOPLATONISM; PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION ; PLAT. A.G.