The Cambridge Platonists and Early Modern Philosophy
Inventing the Philosophy of Religion

Samuel M. Kaldas' study explores the development and influence of the early modern philosophers known as the Cambridge Platonists.

Samuel M. Kaldas (Author)

9781009426916, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 May 2024

330 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.5 cm, 0.63 kg

'Kaldas's work should be read by historians of modern philosophy as well as by philosophers and theologians interested in the relation of faith and reason, the goodness and will of God, and religious epistemology.' Charles Taliaferro, Religious Studies Review

Often neglected by historians today, the seventeenth-century philosophers known as the Cambridge Platonists were recognised in their time as some of the most influential and controversial philosophers in England. Whereas most studies of the Cambridge Platonists have discussed their later careers, this book focuses on their early, formative years at Cambridge during the English Civil Wars. Samuel M. Kaldas explores how the Cambridge Platonists addressed issues central to philosophy of religion as we know it today through their engagement with early seventeenth-century religious controversies about predestination, the character and nature of God, and the role of reason in religion. His study serves as an accessible introduction to both the Cambridge Platonists, and to English religious controversies that contributed to the birth of the modern philosophy of religion. At the same time, Kaldas provides context for and fresh insights into the Cambridge Platonists' intellectual development and the coherence of their thought.

1. Learned and ingenious men
2. 'Plato and His Scholars': Early Cambridge Platonism
3. Puritanism and predestination
4. Cambridge Platonists versus Cambridge Calvinists: John Goodwin and the 1651 Whichcote-Tuckney correspondence
Part II. Rival Conceptions of God and Goodness: The Platonic Anti-Calvinism of the Cambridge Platonists: 5. Goodness and the will of God: Moral realism versus voluntarism
6. Is God an arbitrary tyrant? Platonic participation versus the Decree of Reprobation
7. Righteousness real and imagined: Participation and deification versus imputed righteousness
Part III. The Religious Epistemology of the Cambridge Platonists: 8. Reason and the mind of God: Platonic religious epistemology
9. Deification as spiritual sensation: The epistemology of religious experience
10. Liberty, violence and practical reason: Moral obligation and the law of love
11. Conclusion: The Cambridge Platonists as early modern Christian Platonists.

Subject Areas: Philosophy of religion [HRAB]