Cambridge Platonism

The claim

Moral distinctions are eternal and immutable. They are not made by God's will and not made by human agreement, and they are known in the way mathematical truths are known.

What it held

The Cambridge Platonists were fighting on two fronts, which is what gives their position its shape. Against Calvinism they argued that a God who damns by arbitrary decree is not good in any sense the word can bear, and that reason is not a casualty of the Fall but the divine light in us. Against Hobbes they argued that a world of matter in motion cannot account for consciousness, and that morality founded on a sovereign's command is not morality at all.

Cudworth's argument is the sharpest. If something is good only because commanded, then calling God good says nothing but that God commands what he commands. Moral truths must therefore be independent of will — as necessary as the truths of geometry, and grasped in the same way.

Henry More corresponded with Descartes admiringly and then broke with him over extension: More thought spirit must be extended, and posited a spirit of nature to do the work brute mechanism could not. Anne Conway, associated with the group, argued against the dualism entirely, and Leibniz read her.

How it argued

Argument by consequence — showing what follows from voluntarism and from materialism, and holding that the consequences are unacceptable — combined with an unusually generous reading of pagan philosophy.

What it was arguing against

Calvinist predestination, Hobbes' materialism and command theory of law, and religious dogmatism of all kinds.

Where it disagreed with itself

Whether moral realism of this strength can be maintained without the Platonic metaphysics that supports it. More's spirit of nature was thought a step backwards even by allies.

Common misconceptions

That they were a minor devotional group. Cudworth's argument against divine command theory is still the standard one, and Locke, Shaftesbury and Newton all engaged with them directly.

How it began

Emmanuel College, Cambridge — a Puritan foundation, which makes the reaction against Calvinism a family quarrel.

What became of it

Faded after 1700, overtaken by Lockean empiricism and by a religious climate that found their latitude suspect from both directions.

Lasting influence

Shaftesbury and the eighteenth-century moral sense school. Kant's insistence that morality cannot rest on will. Anne Conway's monism reached Leibniz and shows in the monads.

Why it still matters

Moral realism — the view that ethical claims are true or false independently of what anyone wills — is a major contemporary position, and this is where it was argued most vigorously in English.

Put another way

A candle, which the group used constantly: reason as a light given rather than a fire lit.

Where to start

Cudworth's Treatise, or a good anthology — the primary texts are long and the arguments are compact.

The surprising bit

Anne Conway wrote her philosophy while enduring migraines so severe that she was trepanned, and published nothing in her lifetime. Leibniz read the posthumous book and adopted her word: monad.

In their own words

Connections

Answers

Old Academy

Opposed by

British Empiricism

Influenced

British Idealism

The verdict

The best English answer to Hobbes, made by people better known for tolerance than for argument.

Sources

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy