ABSTRACT
This chapter considers in broad terms four areas in which most or at least some of the salient Cambridge Platonists contributed to thinking about the history of evil: the nature of philosophical inquiry, human nature as itself made up of good powers, the eternal and immutable nature of morality, and responsible agency. The Cambridge Platonists are so-called not just for their Platonism, but because the majority in this school of thought were centered at Cambridge University. In keeping with Plato and the legacy of Platonism, the Cambridge Platonists held that philosophical inquiry is something that should be carried out in a way that is itself wise and good; evil and self-serving pride tends to tarnish or undermine philosophical inquiry. Ralph Cudworth, More, and other Cambridge Platonists were deeply vexed by what they saw as the religious and ethical implications of determinism: whatever evil exists by human volition is fixed and could not be otherwise.
