ABSTRACT
The Cambridge Platonists were a group of seventeenth-century thinkers, all of whom were associated with the University of Cambridge, England, whose writings are distinguished by a marked admiration for the philosophy of Plato (c. 427-347 B.C.) and his followers. The chief members of this group were Ralph Cudworth (1617-88) and Henry More (1614-87). The group also included Nathaniel Culverwell (161951), Peter Sterry (1613-72), and John Smith (1618-52). The younger generation associated with them included Joseph Glanvill (1636-80) and Anne Conway (c. 1630-79). They are characterized by a liberal religious temper rather than a specific set of common doctrines. In their emphasis on free will and their opposition to predestinarian Calvinism, they can be placed in the Erasmian tradition. Most of them expressed open admiration for Origen (c. 185-c. 251). In philosophy, they were distinguished by a broad receptivity to ideas modern as well as ancient. In addition to Platonism, they drew on Stoicism and the new philosophy and science of the seventeenth century, and, in particular, on the mechanical philosophy of René Descartes (1596-1650) and the new astronomy of Copernicus (1473-1543) and Galileo (1564-1642). This interest in new ideas was accompanied by a repudiation of the authority of Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) and scholastic thought. They were also hostile to some contemporary thought, especially to the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and Baruch Spinoza (1632-77), which they attacked on religious grounds as materialist and, therefore, atheistic.
