Ralph Cudworth (1617 - June 26, 1688) was an English philosopher, the leader of the Cambridge Platonists. This image has been released into the public domain by the copyright holder, its copyright has expired, or it is ineligible for copyright. ... Events Change of emperor of the Ottoman Empire from Ahmed I (1603-1617) to Mustafa I (1617-1623). ... June 26 is the 177th day of the year (178th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 188 days remaining. ... // Events A high-powered conspiracy of notables, the Immortal Seven, invite William and Mary to depose James II of England. ... A philosopher is a person who thinks deeply regarding people, society, the world, and/or the universe. ... The Cambridge Platonists were a group of divines at Cambridge University in England in the middle of the 17th century (between 1633 and 1688). ...

Born at Aller, Somerset, he was educated at Cambridge University and became a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. In 1645, he became master of Clare Hall and professor of Hebrew. In 1654, he transferred to Christ's College, Cambridge, and was master there until his death. His great work, entitled The True Intellectual System of the Universe, was published in 1678. He was a leading opponent of Thomas Hobbes. Aller is a village and parish in Somerset, England, situated five miles west of Somerton on the A372 road towards Bridgwater in the South Somerset district. ... The University of Cambridge is the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world, with one of the most selective sets of entry requirements in the United Kingdom. ... Full name Emmanuel College Motto - Named after Immanuel Previous names - Established 1584 Sister College(s) Exeter College Master The Lord Wilson of Dinton Location Regent Street Undergraduates 494 Postgraduates 98 Homepage Boatclub Emmanuel front court and the Wren chapel Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge... // Events January 10 - Archbishop Laud executed on Tower Hill, London. ... Events April 5 - Signing of the Treaty of Westminster, ending the First Anglo-Dutch War. ... Full name Christs College Motto Souvent me Souvient I Often Remember Named after Christ Previous names Gods-house (1437), Christs College (1505) Established 1505 Sister College Wadham College Master Prof. ... Events August 10 - Treaty of Nijmegen ends the Dutch War. ... Thomas Hobbes (April 5, 1588–December 4, 1679) was an English philosopher, whose famous 1651 book Leviathan set the agenda for nearly all subsequent Western political philosophy. ...

He was the son of Dr Ralph Cudworth (d. 1624), rector of Aller, formerly fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. His father died in 1624, and his mother then married the Rev. Dr Stoughton, who gave the boy a good home education. Cudworth was sent to his father's college, was elected fellow in 1639, and became a successful tutor. In 1642 he published A Discourse concerning the true Notion of the Lord's Supper, and a tract entitled The Union of Christ and the Church. In 1645 he was appointed master of Clare Hall and the same year was elected Regius professor of Hebrew. He was now recognized as a leader among the remarkable group known as the Cambridge Platonists. The whole party were more or less in sympathy with the Commonwealth, and Cudworth was consulted by John Thurloe, Cromwell's secretary to the council of state, in regard to university and government appointments. Full name Emmanuel College Motto - Named after Immanuel Previous names - Established 1584 Sister College(s) Exeter College Master The Lord Wilson of Dinton Location Regent Street Undergraduates 494 Postgraduates 98 Homepage Boatclub Emmanuel front court and the Wren chapel Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge... Full name Clare College Motto - Named after Elizabeth de Clare Previous names University Hall (1326), Clare Hall (1338), Clare College (1856) Established 1326 Sister College Oriel College St Hughs College Master Prof. ... Hebrew (עִבְרִית ‘Ivrit) is a Semitic language of the Afro-Asiatic language family spoken by more than 7 million people, mainly in Israel, the West Bank, the United States and by Jewish communities around the world. ... The Cambridge Platonists were a group of divines at Cambridge University in England in the middle of the 17th century (between 1633 and 1688). ... John Thurloe (1616-1668) was a secretary to the council of state in Protectorate England and spymaster for Oliver Cromwell. ...

His sermons, such as that preached before the House of Commons, on March 31, 1647, advocate principles of religious toleration and charity. In 1650 he was presented to the college living of North Cadbury, Somerset. From the diary of his friend John Worthington we learn that Cudworth was nearly compelled, through poverty, to leave the university, but in 1654 he was elected master of Christ's College, whereupon he married. In 1662 he was presented to the rectory of Ashwell, Herts. In 1665 he almost quarrelled with his fellow-Platonist, Henry More, because the latter had written an ethical work which Cudworth feared would interfere with his own long-contemplated treatise on the same subject. To avoid clashing, More brought out his book, the Enchiridion ethicum, in Latin; Cudworth's never appeared. The House of Commons is a component of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also includes the Sovereign and the House of Lords. ... March 31 is the 90th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (91st in Leap years), with 275 days remaining. ... // Events March 14 - Thirty Years War: Bavaria, Cologne, France and Sweden sign the Truce of Ulm. ... Events March 18 – Short-timed experiment of the first public buses holding 8 passengers begins in Paris May 3/May 2 - Catherine of Braganza marries Charles II of England – as part of the dowry, Portugal cedes Bombay and Tangier to England May 9 - Samuel Pepys witnessed a Punch and Judy... Platonic idealism is the theory that the substantive reality around us is only a reflection of a higher truth. ... Henry More. ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ...

In 1678 he published The True Intellectual System of the Universe: the first part, wherein all the reason and philosophy of atheism is confuted and its impossibility demonstrated (imprimatur dated 1671). No more was published, perhaps because of the theological clamour raised against this first part. Cudworth was installed prebendary of Gloucester in 1678. He died on the 26th of June 1688, and was buried in the chapel of Christ's. His only surviving child, Damaris, a devout and talented woman, became the second wife of Sir Francis Masha. The Lady Masham was distinguished as the friend of John Locke and exchange letters with Gottfried Leibniz. Much of Cudworth's work still remains in manuscript; A Treatise concerning eternal and immutable Morality was published in 1731; and A Treatise of Freewill, edited by John Allen, in 1838; both are connected with the design of his magnum opus, the Intellectual System. Events August 10 - Treaty of Nijmegen ends the Dutch War. ... Gloucester (pronounced ) is a city and district in south-west England, close to the Welsh border. ... John Locke (August 29, 1632–October 28, 1704) was a 17th-century English philosopher. ... Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (also von Leibni(t)z) (July 1 (June 21 Old Style) 1646, Leipzig – November 14, 1716, Hanover) was a German polymath, deemed a genius in his day and since. ... John Allen was the first president of the University of South Florida, from 1960 to 1970. ...

The Intellectual System arose, so its author tells us, out of a discourse refuting "fatal necessity," or determinism. Enlarging his plan, he proposed to prove three matters: (a) the existence of God; (b) the naturalness of moral distinctions; and (c) the reality of human freedom. These three together make up the intellectual (as opposed to the physical) system of the universe; and they are opposed respectively by three false principles, atheism, religious fatalism which refers all moral distinctions to the will of God, and thirdly the fatalism of the ancient Stoics, who recognized God and yet identified Him with nature. The immense fragment dealing with atheism is all that was published by its author. Cudworth criticizes two main forms of materialistic atheism, the atomic, adopted by Democritus, Epicurus and Hobbes; and the hylozoic, attributed to Strato of Lampsacus, which explains everything by the supposition of an inward self-organizing life in matter. Atomic atheism is by far the more important, if only because Hobbes, the great antagonist whom Cudworth always has in view, is supposed to have held it. It arises out of the combination of two principles, neither of which is atheistic taken separately, i.e. atomism and corporealism, or the doctrine that nothing exists but body. The example of Stoicism, as Cudworth points out, shows that corporealism may be theistic. Stoicism is a school of philosophy commonly associated with such Greek philosophers as Zeno of Citium, Cleanthes, or Chrysippus and with such later Romans as Cicero, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus. ... Atheism, in its broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of any deities. ... Democritus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher (born at Abdera in Thrace around 460 BC; died in 370 BC). ... Epicurus (Epikouros or Eπίκουρος in Greek) (born Samos 341 BC–died Athens, 270 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosopher who was the founder of Epicureanism, one of the most popular schools of Hellenistic Philosophy. ... Hylozoism is the philosophical doctrine that all material things possess life. ... Strato of Lampsacus (c. ...

Into the history of atomism Cudworth plunges with vast erudition. It is, in its purely physical application, a theory that he fully accepts; he holds that it was taught by Pythagoras, Empedocles, and in fact, nearly all the ancient philosophers, and was only perverted to atheism by Democritus. It was first invented, he believes, before the Trojan war, by a Sidonian thinker named Moschus or Mochus, who is identical with the Moses of the Old Testament. In dealing with atheism Cudworth's method is to marshal the atheistic arguments elaborately, so elaborately that Dryden remarked "he has raised such objections against the being of a God and Providence that many think he has not answered them"; then in his last chapter, which by itself is as long as an ordinary treatise, he confutes them with all the reasons that his reading could supply. A subordinate matter in the book that attracted much attention at the time is the conception of the "Plastic Medium," which is a mere revival of Plato's "World-Soul," and is meant to explain the existence and laws of nature without referring all to the direct operation of God. It occasioned a long-drawn controversy between Pierre Bayle and Le Clerc, the former maintaining, the latter denying, that the Plastic Medium is really favourable to atheism. This topic is considered to be an essential subject on Wikipedia. ... Empedocles of Agrigentum Empedocles (c. ... The Trojan War was a war waged, according to legend, against the city of Troy in Asia Minor by the armies of the Achaeans, following the kidnapping (or elopement) of Helen of Sparta by Paris of Troy. ... Sidon, Zidon or Saida, (Arabic صيدا Ṣaydā is the third-largest city in Lebanon. ... Moses or Móshe (מֹשֶׁה, Standard Hebrew Móše, Tiberian Hebrew Mōšeh, Arabic موسى Musa), son of Amram and his wife, Jochebed, a Levite. ... Note: Judaism commonly uses the term Tanakh, but not Old Testament, because it does not recognize the concept of a New Testament. ... Plato Plato (Greek: Πλάτων Plátōn) (ca. ... Pierre Bayle (November 18, 1647 – December 28, 1706) was a French philosopher and writer. ...

No modern reader can endure to toil through the Intellectual System; its only interest is the light it throws upon the state of religious thought after the Restoration, when, as Birch puts it, "irreligion began to lift up its head." It is immensely diffuse and pretentious, loaded with digressions, its argument buried under masses of fantastic, uncritical learning, the work of a vigorous but quite unoriginal mind. As Bolingbroke said, Cudworth "read too much to think enough, and admired too much to think freely." It is no calamity that natural procrastination, or the clamour caused by his candid treatment of atheism and by certain heretical tendencies detected by orthodox criticism in his view of the Trinity, made Cudworth leave the work unfinished. King Charles II The English Restoration or simply Restoration was an episode in the history of Great Britain beginning in 1660 when the monarchy was restored under King Charles II after the English Civil War. ... Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (1678 - December 12, 1751) was an English statesman and writer. ...

A much more favourable judgment must be given upon the short Treatise on eternal and immutable Morality, which deserves to be read by those who are interested in the historical development of British moral philosophy. It is an answer to Hobbes's famous doctrine that moral distinctions are created by the state, an answer from the standpoint of Platonism. Just as knowledge contains a permanent intelligible element over and above the flux of sense-impressions, so there exist eternal and immutable ideas of morality. Cudworth's ideas, like Plato's, have "a constant and never-failing entity of their own," such as we see in geometrical figures; but, unlike Plato's, they exist in the mind of God, whence they are communicated to finite understandings. Hence "it is evident that wisdom, knowledge and understanding are eternal and self-subsistent things, superior to matter and all sensible beings, and independent upon them"; and so also are moral good and evil. At this point Cudworth stops; he does not attempt to give any list of Moral Ideas. It is, indeed, the cardinal weakness of this form of intuitionism that no satisfactory list can be given and that no moral principles have the "constant and never-failing entity," or the definiteness, of the concepts of geometry. Henry More, in his Enchiridion ethicum, attempts to enumerate the "noemata moralia"; but, so far from being self-evident, most of his moral axioms are open to serious controversy.

The Intellectual System was translated into Latin by JL Mosheim and furnished with notes and dissertations which were translated into English in J Harrison's edition (1845). Our chief biographical authority is T Birch's "Account," which appears in editions of the Works. There is a good chapter on Cudworth in J Tulloch's Rational Theology, vol. ii. Consult also P Janet's Essai sur le médiateur plastique (1860), WR Scott's Introduction to Cudworth's Treatise, and J Martineau's Types of Ethical Theory, vol. ii. Johann Lorenz von Mosheim (1694 – September 9, 1755), German Lutheran divine and Church historian, was born at Lubeck on the 9th of October, 1694 or 1695. ...

References

• This article incorporates text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, a publication in the public domain.