This book presents a contextual study of the life and work of the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688). Focusing on the theological basis of Cudworth's ethical philosophy, this book unlocks the hitherto ignored political aspect to Cudworth's ethical philosophy. Through a detailed examination of Cudworth's published works - particularly his voluminous "True intellectual system of the Universe" -, his posthumously published writings, and his 'freewill' manuscripts Benjamin Carter argues that the ethical and political arguments in Cudworth's philosophy develop out of (...) Cudworth's Trinitarian theology. Carter traces the link between Cudworth's trinitarianism and his ethical and political ideas by placing Cudworth's work in the turbulent religious and intellectual context of seventeenth-century England, and the University of Cambridge in particular. (shrink)

The English Neoplatonic philosopher Ralph Cudworth introduced the term ‘consciousness’ into the English philosophical lexicon. Cudworth uses the term to define the form and structure of cognitive acts, including acts of freewill. In this article I highlight the important role of theological disputes over the place and extent of human freewill within an overarching system of providence. Cudworth’s intellectual development can be understood in the main as an increasingly detailed and nuanced reaction to the strict voluntarist Calvinism that is typified (...) in the thought of his near contemporary William Perkins. At the heart of Cudworth’s rejection of Calvinism is the dilemma over whether God is understood primarily in terms of will or justice. In this fleshing-out of the power of consciousness Cudworth moves from an instrumental account of the working of the human mind towards an account of human consciousness that is intrinsic to his definition of human agency. (shrink)