Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T11:29:31.186Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2.7 - Christian Platonism in Early Modernity

from II - History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2021

By
Derek A. Michaud
Edited by
Alexander J. B. Hampton  and
John Peter Kenney
Alexander J. B. Hampton
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
John Peter Kenney
Affiliation:
Saint Michael's College, Vermont
Get access

Summary

This chapter is an overview of the varieties of Christian Platonism in early modern philosophy including canonical figures like Descartes, Malebranche, Leibniz, Berkeley, and Kant as well as the Cambridge Platonists, Cudworth, More, Smith, and Conway. It emphasizes the diversity of views inspired by the Christian Platonist tradition in response to Epicurean naturalism.

Keywords

Cambridge Platonismdualismmonismearly modern
Type
Chapter
Information
Christian Platonism
A History
 , pp. 280 - 302
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Berkeley, George. The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne. Edited by Luce, A. A. and Jessop, T. E.. 9 vols. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1948–1957.Google Scholar
Bryson, James. The Christian Platonism of Thomas Jackson. Leuven: Peeters, 2016.Google Scholar
Conway, Anne. The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy. Edited by Coudert, Allison P. and Corse, Taylor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Cudworth, Ralph. A Sermon Preached before the Honourable House of Commons at Westminster, March 31, 1647. Cambridge: Roger Daniel, 1647.Google Scholar
Cudworth, Ralph. The True Intellectual System of the Universe. London: Richard Royston, 1678.Google Scholar
Daniel, Stephen H. “Berkeley’s Christian Neoplatonism, Archetypes, and Divine Ideas.” Journal of the History of Philosophy 39, no. 2 (2001): 239–258.Google Scholar
Davidson, Jack. “Leibniz: The Last Great Christian Platonist.” In Brill’s Companion to German Platonism, edited by Kim, Alan, 43–75. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Descartes, René. Oeuvres de Descartes. Edited by Adam, Charles and Tannery, Paul. 13 vols. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1964–1974.Google Scholar
Cottingham, John, Stoothoff, Robert, Murdoch, Dugald The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Edited by Cottingham, John, Stoothoff, Robert, Murdoch, Dugald. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984–1985.Google Scholar
Cottingham, John, Stoothoff, Robert, Murdoch, Dugald The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vol. III: The Correspondence. Edited by Cottingham, John, Stoothoff, Robert, Murdoch, Dugald, and Kenny, Anthony. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Dillon, John. “Plotinus: The First Cartesian?” Hermathena 149 (1990): 19–31.Google Scholar
Dominiak, Paul Anthony. Richard Hooker: The Architecture of Participation. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2019.Google Scholar
Fennema, Scott. “George Berkeley and Jonathan Edwards on Idealism: Considering an Old Question in Light of New Evidence.” Intellectual History Review 29, no. 2 (2019): 265–290.Google Scholar
Gaukroger, Stephen. The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1210–1685. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerson, Lloyd. Platonism and Naturalism: The Possibility of Philosophy. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2020.Google Scholar
Green, Garth W. The Aporia of Inner Sense: The Self-Knowledge of Reason and the Critique of Metaphysics in Kant. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hedley, Douglas. “Gods and Giants: Cudworth’s Platonic Metaphysics and his Ancient Theology.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 25, no. 5 (2017): 932–953.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hedley, Douglas and Hutton, Sarah, eds. Platonism at the Origins of Modernity: Studies on Platonism and Early Modern Philosophy. Dordrecht: Springer, 2008.Google Scholar
Henry, John. “Henry More.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/henry-more/. Accessed 31 January 2020.Google Scholar
Hutton, Sarah. “The Cambridge Platonists.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2013/entries/cambridge-platonists/. Accessed 31 January 2020.Google Scholar
Hutton, Sarah.“Lady Anne Conway.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/conway/. Accessed 31 January 2020.Google Scholar
Janowski, Zbigniew. Augustinian-Cartesian Index: Texts and Commentary. South Bend, IN: St. Augustine Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Jonik, Michael. “Mind and Matter in Early America: The Berkeley–Johnson Correspondence.” The Pluralist 11, no. 1 (2016): 39–48.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Edited by Guyer, P. and Wood, A.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. “On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World.” In Theoretical Philosophy, 1755–1770, edited by Walford, David and Meerbote, Ralf, 375–416. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Leech, David. “Defining ‘Cambridge Platonism’.” In The Cambridge Platonism Sourcebook, edited by Douglas Hedley, David Leech, et al., www.cambridge-platonism.divinity.cam.ac.uk/about-the-cambridge-platonists/defining-cambridge-platonism. Accessed 31 January 2020.Google Scholar
Leech, David. The Hammer of the Cartesians: Henry More’s Philosophy of Spirit and the Origins of Modern Atheism. Leuven: Peeters, 2013.Google Scholar
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. New Essays on Human Knowledge. Translated and edited by Remnant, Peter and Bennett, Jonathan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Philosophical Essays. Edited and translated by Ariew, Roger and Garber, Daniel. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1989.Google Scholar
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. Theodicy. Translated by E. M. Huggard and edited by Austin Farrar. Chicago: Open Court, 1990.Google Scholar
Lennon, Thomas M. The Battle of the Gods and Giants: The Legacies of Descartes and Gassendi, 1655–1715. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
LoLordo, Antonia. “Epicureanism and Early Modern Naturalism.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 19, no. 4 (2011): 647–664.Google Scholar
Longuenesse, Beatrice. “Kant’s ‘I Think’ versus Descartes’ ‘I am a Thing that Thinks’.” In Kant and the Early Moderns, edited by Garber, Daniel and Longuenesse, Beatrice, 32–40. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008.Google Scholar
Look, Brandon C. “Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2017/entries/leibniz/. Accessed 31 January 2020.Google Scholar
Malebranche, Nicholas. The Search after Truth. Translated by Thomas M. Lennon and Paul J. Olscamp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Marion, Jean-Luc. On Descartes’ Passive Thought: The Myth of Cartesian Dualism. Translated by Christina M. Gschwandtner. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2018.Google Scholar
Marmodoro, Anna and Cartwright, Sophie, eds. A History of Mind and Body in Late Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.Google Scholar
McClymond, Michael J. and McDermott, Gerald R.. The Theology of Jonathan Edwards. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
McKim, Robert. “Wenz on Abstract Ideas and Christian Neo-Platonism in Berkeley.” Journal of the History of Ideas 43, no. 4 (1982): 665–671.Google Scholar
Menn, Stephen. Descartes and Augustine. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mercer, Christia. “Descartes’ Debt to Teresa of Ávila, or Why we Should Work on Women in the History of Philosophy.” Philosophical Studies 174 (2017): 2539–2555.Google Scholar
Mercer, Christia. Leibniz’s Metaphysics: Its Origin and Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Mercer, Christia. “The Platonism at the Core of Leibniz’s Philosophy.” In Platonism at the Origins of Modernity: Studies on Platonism and Early Modern Philosophy, edited by Hedley, Douglas and Hutton, Sarah, 225–238. Dordrecht: Springer, 2008.Google Scholar
Michaud, Derek A. Reason Turned into Sense: John Smith on Spiritual Sensation. Leuven: Peeters, 2017.Google Scholar
More, Henry. An Antidote Against Atheisme, Or an Appeal to the Natural Faculties of Man, whether there be not a God. London: Roger Daniel, 1653.Google Scholar
Niederbacher, Bruno. “The Human Soul: Augustine’s Case for Soul-Body Dualism.” In The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, 2nd ed., edited by Stump, Eleonore and Kretzmann, Norman, 125–141. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Osler, Margaret J. “Eternal Truths and the Laws of Nature: The Theological Foundations of Descartes’ Philosophy of Nature.” Journal of the History of Ideas 46, no. 3 (1985): 349–362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plato., Sophist. Greek text with English translation by Harold N. Fowler. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1921.Google Scholar
Plotinus., Enneads. Greek text with English translation by A. H. Armstrong. 7 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968–1988.Google Scholar
Proclus., In Platonis Timaeum Commentarii. Edited by Diehl, E.. 3 vols. Leipzig: Teubner, 1903–1906.Google Scholar
Pyle, Andrew. Malebranche. London and New York: Routledge, 2003.Google Scholar
Schmaltz, Tad. “Nicolas Malebranche.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/malebranche/. Accessed 31 January 2020.Google Scholar
Schumacher, Lydia. Divine Illumination: The History and Future of Augustine’s Theory of Knowledge. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.Google Scholar
Smith, John. Select Discourses. London: J. Fisher, 1660.Google Scholar
Ward, Richard. The Life of Henry More. Edited by Hutton, Sarah, Courtney, Cecil, Courtney, Michelle, Crocker, Robert, and Hall, A. Rupert. Dordrecht: Springer, 2000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wenz, Peter S. “Berkeley’s Christian Neo-Platonism.” Journal of the History of Ideas 37, no. 3 (1976): 537–546.Google Scholar
Wilson, Catherine. Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×