Sarah Hutton

In dialogue with Thomas Hobbes: Margaret Cavendish's natural philosophy

Abstract It is well documented that Margaret Cavendish came into close contact with many of the great thinkers of mid-seventeenth-century Europe. When read in the context of the work of Thomas Hobbes, in particular his De Corpore of 1655, Cavendishs own natural philosophy may be better understood not merely as a product of, but also as a valid contribution to, this wider intellectual context. Understanding her Philosophical Letters (1664), her Blazing World (1666), and her Grounds of Natural Philosophy (1668) in such a light may go some way towards redeeming her philosophical reputation from those contemporary, and modern, critics, who have sought to demean it.

Henry More (1614-1687) tercentenary studies

Henry More: a biographical essay.- Henry More and the limits of mechanism.- Henry More and the scientific revolution.- Henry More versus Robert Boyle: the spirit of nature and the nature of providence.- Leibniz and Mores Cabbalistic circle.- The spiritualistic cosmologies of Henry More and Anne Conway.- Henry More and witchcraft.- Mysticism and enthusiasm in Henry More.- Henry More and Jacob Boehme.- Appendix: A commendatory poem by Henry More.- Henry More and the Jews.- More, Locke and the issue of liberty.- Reason and toleration: Henry More and Philip van Limborch.- A bibliography of Henry More compiled by Robert Crocker.

Some renaissance critiques of Aristotle's theory of time

Summary This paper offers a preliminary enquiry into a largely neglected topic: the concept of time in the post-medieval, pre-Newtonian era. Although Aristotles theory of time was predominant in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, it was, in this period, subjected to the most serious attack since that by the ancient Neoplatonists. In particular, in the work of Bernadino Telesio, Giordano Bruno and Francesco Patrizi we have concerted attempts to reconsider Aristotles definition of time. Although the approach of each is different, all three endeavour to dissociate time from movement and to conceive it as part of an independent duration. They were probably inspired by Neoplatonism, and they offer important antecedents to Newtons theory of absolute time.

Intellectual History and the History of Philosophy

Summary The issue which I wish to address in this paper is the widespread tendency in Anglophone philosophy to insist on a separation between the history of philosophy and the history of ideas or intellectual history. This separation reflects an anxiety on the part of philosophers lest the special character of philosophy will be dissolved into something else in the hands of historians. And it is borne of a fundamental tension between those who think of philosophys past as a source of ideas and arguments of interest to the present, and those who hold that the philosophy of the past should be studied on its own terms, in relation to its immediate context, without reference to the present. The challenge, then, is to re-historicise the history of philosophy, and to keep the philosophers onside.

From Cudworth to Hume: Cambridge Platonism and the Scottish Enlightenment

This paper argues that the Cambridge Platonists had stronger philosophical links to Scottish moral philosophy than the received history allows. Building on the work of Michael Gill who has demonstrated links between ethical thought of More, Cudworth and Smith and moral sentimentalism, I outline some links between the Cambridge Platonists and Scottish thinkers in both the seventeenth century (e.g., James Nairn, Henry Scougal) and the eighteenth century (e.g., Smith, Blair, Stewart). I then discuss Humes knowledge of Cudworth, in Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, The Natural History of Religion and Dialogues concerning Natural Religion.

Salving the phenomena of mind: energy, hegemonikon, and sympathy in Cudworth

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).

Between Newton and Leibniz: Emilie du Châtelet and Samuel Clarke

The long-running quarrel between Leibniz and Newton has dominated the historical image of both men and has obscured their common aims and interests. The Leibniz-Clarke controversy (1715–1716), in which Samuel Clarke defended Newton against Leibniz’s critique has come to be seen as emblematic of their mutual antithesis, Madame du Châtelet’s championship of both Leibniz and Newton conflicts with this received picture. In her Institutions de physique she took Leibniz’s side against Clarke, Institutions de physique, but she did not wholly reject Newtonian physics. In this essay I examine her position in the wider context of the fluid state of scientific theory in the early eighteenth century. This is reflected in Du Châtelet’s revisions to her Institutions as well as in another work of Clarke’s with which she was well-acquainted, his translation of Rohault’s Physics. This is a hybrid text by virtue of the fact that Clarke added a Newtonian gloss to a textbook of Cartesian physics. This hybridity is paralleled in Du Châtelet’s response to Newton and Leibniz in her Institutions, which was also conceived as a textbook. I suggest Madame du Châtelet’s views on Newtonianism in Institutions de physique is coloured by three things—the hypothetical character of Newton’s as yet unproven theories, theological concerns influenced by her then mentor Maupertuis and her concern with the underlying problems of physics which both Newton and Leibniz sought to address.

The Persona of the Woman Philosopher in Eighteenth‐Century England: Catharine Macaulay, Mary Hays, and Elizabeth Hamilton

As the title of his Elémens de la philosophie de Neuton (1738) indicates, Voltaire celebrated Newton as a philosopher.1 Although the ‘the new philosophy’ (‘la nouvelle philosophie’) of Newton which he presents in this book,2 is co-terminous with natural philosophy, the term philosophy, for Voltaire, has far wider connotations, extending to literature, imagination and public life.3 This view is suitable to his own status as ‘philosophe’ a term which, especially as adopted into English parlance, has come to have stronger connotations with ‘belles lettres’ than with philosophy in the abstract.4 However, this shift, is absent from the original French, especially as used by Voltaire in the context of Newtonianism, and it is reinforced in the accompanying dedicatory verses, which he also published separately as ‘Le philosophe à Madame la Marquise du Chastelet’.5 For Voltaire ‘the all powerful charm of philosophy’6 had not a little to do with the attractions of the person who assisted him in his studies of Newton, Emilie du Châtelet, the French translator of Newton,7 whom he celebrates in his various Newtonian writings as an exceptional woman. Voltaire’s public praise of Madame Du Châtelet acknowledges above all her superior command of Newtonianianism. He duly celebrates her as a philosophical woman and, as such, an exception among her sex. The dedication to the 1741 edition of his Elémens

Ralph Cudworth, God, Mind and Nature

The frontispiece of Ralph Cudworth’s True Intellectual System of the Universe presents in visual summary, the classification of ancient philosophers into theists and atheists which occupies the book’s nine hundred pages. The theists are represented by Pythagoras, Aristotle and Socrates, grouped on the left, with their eyes or hands directed heavenwards. The atheists represented by Anaximander, Epicurus and Strato are ranged on the right-hand side, with their attention on anything but heaven. To this day Cudworth’s repetitious and forbiddingly learned tome is remembered for its arguments against atheism. The True Intellectual System exemplifies rational religious apologetics in action: the erudite fashioning of arguments drawn from the whole of history, including antique atheism and contemporary natural philosophy to beat the unbeliever ‘at his own weapon’.1 The title of the abbreviated re-issue of the work by Thomas Wise in 1706 underlines the work’ s apologetic character: A Confutation of the Reason and Philosophy of Atheism.

Cudworth, Boethius and the Scale of Nature

If frequency of citation is the criterion, Boethius is not a major source for Cudworth, even among the Platonic philosophers he quotes. Cudworth’s sources are famously, even infamously, eclectic: the majority of The True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678) consists of consensus gentium arguments drawn from a huge range of classical sources. Cudworth was after all one of the leading classical scholars of seventeenth-century England. In terms of the range and detail of his familiarity with classical sources, he may be viewed as a fifth-generation humanist. His humanism is not altogether of the cinquecento mould, for he examines the texts he quotes (Virgil, Euripedes, Stobaeus, Lucretius, Cicero, Plutarch and others) not with the eye of a philologist, but with the eye of a philosopher, pillaging them for doctrines and arguments from which to construct the taxonomy of true and false philosophy which constitutes The True Intellectual System. Furthermore, the philosophers with whom Cudworth enters into dialogue include not just the classics of ancient philosophy, Aristotle no less than Plato, but also the new philosophers of the seventeenth century, especially Hobbes and Descartes, but also Spinoza, Bacon, Lord Herbert and other un-named ‘moderns’. Cudworth’s use of modern philosophy is not all negative — though he is unquestionably hostile to Hobbes and Spinoza. His receptivity to the mechanical philosophy, however, is striking, both for his adoption of fundamental tenets of Cartesian natural philosophy and his critical examination of new arguments.