The Cambridge Platonists were defenders of tolerance in the political as well as the moral sphere ; they held that practical j u d g e m e n t 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 ma intained the existence of eternal truths , and of a Good-in-itself , identical with Truth and Being, refusing to admit that freedom of conscience i m p li e d 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 ma intained 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 i t s divine origin . They debated with Des cartes and took a keen interest in his mech- ism and his dualism ; they brought the atomistic theories of Democritus back into repute; and they sought to provide a detailed account of the causality link ing all phenomena.

Klappentext

The philosophy of the Cambridge Platonists in the mid-seventeenth century constituted a unique return to many themes of classical Christian Platonism in epistemology and metaphysics. It did so at a time marked by great changes in the natural sciences and in philosophy under the impact of such figures as Galileo and Descartes and great religious and political turmoil in England associated with the Civil War. As well as examining central aspects of their thought and their political and religious implications, this book explores themes arising from that context and the relationship of key figures in the group with their contemporaries and successors. It consists of a series of original papers written by leading scholars of the period from England, France and Australia. A particular feature is the links made with contemporary political debate, an aspect of their thought hardly touched on in any other publications on the school.

Inhalt
I The Other-Worldly Philosophers and the Real World: The Cambridge Platonists, Theology and Politics.- II Liberté et Vérité: Politique et morale dans la correspondance hollandaise de More et de Cudworth.- III Critique de Hobbes et fondement de la morale chez Cudworth.- IV The Heritage of Patristic Platonism in Seventeenth century English Philosophical Theology.- V John Smith et le Portique.- VI Cudworth, Boethius and the Scale of Nature.- VII Ralph Cudworth, un platonisme paradoxal: La Nature dans la Digression concerning the Plastick Life of Nature.- VIII ?????? et Relation: Du platonisme à l'empirisme.- IX The Role of Illuminism in the Thought of Henry More.- X La Nature est un art. Le vitalisme de Cudworth et de More.- XI Force, Motion and Causality: More's Critique of Descartes.- XII Cudworth versus Descartes: platonisme et sens commun dans la critique des Méditations.- XIII Les différentes lectures du System de Cudworth par G. W. Leibniz.- XIV Platonic Idealism in Modern Philosophy from Malebranche to Berkeley.