Cambridge Platonists
The Cambridge Platonists were a group of broad-minded Anglican clergymen who were educated at, and taught in, the University of Cambridge in the seventeenth century, and were sympathetic to the thought of the philosophers Plato (427-347 BCE) and Plotinus (205-270 CE).
The Cambridge Platonists were not committed to a set of specific philosophical doctrines but shared a common philosophical and theological outlook. As well as their respect for the works of Plato and the Neoplatonist Plotinus and their hostility to the materialist philosophy of their older contemporary Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), they were broad-minded and tolerant in matters of religious doctrine, preferring to emphasise the moral aspects of religious belief and taking no part in the theological controversies which marked, and marred, intellectual life in seventeenth century England. Suspicious equally of ecclesiastical authority and of personal revelation as sources of religious truth, and convinced that religious truth cannot be in conflict with reason, they distanced themselves both from the Highchurchmanship of those such as William Laud (1573-1645, Archbishop of Canterbury 1633-1645) who were in the ascendant during the reign of Charles I (reigned 1625-1649) and from the Calvinism of the Puritans who ruled England during the period of the Commonwealth (1649-1660). They were sometimes referred to as 'latitudinarians', i.e., supporters of a Broad Church, a party which is still influential in the Church of England, though it would seem diminishingly so.
The first of the Cambridge Platonists is usually said to have been Benjamin Whichcote (1609-1683, Fellow of Emmanuel College 1632-1644 and Provost of King's College 1644-1656), and many of the Cambridge Platonists (e.g., Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688) and John Smith (1618-1652)) were his pupils at Emmanuel College in the 1630s. Although Whichcote seems to have encouraged his pupils to read Plato and Plotinus, the little of his own work that has survived provides scant evidence of an interest in specifically philosophical issues, though it is eloquent testimony to his latitudinarian position in matters of religion.
Probably the best-known of the Cambridge Platonists is Henry More (1614-1687), who was an undergraduate at Christ's College and so not one of Whichcote's pupils. He published more than a dozen works on philosophical and theological topics, corresponded with the philosopher, René Descartes (1596-1650), whom he greatly admired, and explicitly declared his allegiance to the thought of Plato and Plotinus.
While for the most part the Platonism of the Cambridge Platonists shows itself in the adoption of an Idealist approach to philosophical questions, in the use of arguments first deployed by Plato and Plotinus, and, more vaguely, in the elaboration of a 'spiritual' view of the universe, they sometimes commit themselves to specific Platonic or Plotinian doctrines which seem at odds with Christian orthodoxy. For example, in arguing for the immortality of the soul Henry More maintains, in a manner reminiscent of Plato in Phaedo 72e-78b, that our souls will not only survive the death of our body but existed before we were born. Ralph Cudworth, after a lengthy comparison of the three hypostases of Plotinus' system (the One, the Universal Mind, and the Universal Soul) and the three 'persons' of the Christian Trinity (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit), concludes with the surprising observation that the two doctrines are virtually identical. And John Smith seems closer to a Plotinian than to a Christian doctrine of salvation when he says that 'Salvation is nothing else but a true participation of the divine nature. Heaven is not a thing without us, nor is happiness anything distinct from a true conjunction of the mind with God in a secret feeling of his goodness and reciprocation of affection to him'.