Ralph Cudworth


Ralph Cudworth was an English Anglican clergyman, Christian Hebraist, classicist, theologian and philosopher, and a leading figure among the Cambridge Platonists who became 11th Regius Professor of Hebrew, 26th Master of Clare Hall, and 14th Master of Christ's College. A leading opponent of Hobbes's political and philosophical views, his magnum opus was his The True Intellectual System of the Universe.

Family background

Cudworth's family reputedly originated in Cudworth, Yorkshire, moving to Lancashire with the marriage of John de Cudworth and Margery, daughter of Richard de Oldham, lord of the manor of Werneth, Oldham. The Cudworths of Werneth Hall, Oldham, were lords of the manor of Werneth/Oldham, until 1683. Ralph Cudworth 's father, Ralph Cudworth (Snr), was the posthumous-born second son of Ralph Cudworth of Werneth Hall, Oldham.
The philosopher's father, Ralph Cudworth, was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he graduated with a BA in 1592/93 and an MA in 1596. Emmanuel College was, from its inception, a stronghold of Reformist, Puritan and Calvinist teaching, which shaped the development of puritan ministry, and contributed largely to the emigrant ministry in America. Ordained in 1599 and elected to a college fellowship by 1600, Cudworth Snr was much influenced by William Perkins, whom he succeeded, in 1602, as Lecturer of the Parish Church of St Andrew the Great, Cambridge. He was awarded the degree of Bachelor of Divinity in 1603. He edited Perkins's Commentary on St Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, with a dedication to Robert, 3rd Lord Rich (later 1st Earl of Warwick), adding a commentary of his own with dedication to Sir Bassingbourn Gawdy. Lord Rich presented him to the Vicariate of Coggeshall, Essex to replace the deprived minister Stoughton (priest)#Origin and religious background|Thomas Stoughton], but he resigned this position, and was licensed to preach from the pulpit by the Chancellor and Scholars of the University of Cambridge. He then applied for the rectorate of Aller, Somerset and, resigning his fellowship, was appointed to it in 1610.
His marriage to Mary Machell, brought important connections. Cudworth Snr was appointed as one of James I's chaplains. Mary's mother was the sister of Sir Edward Lewknor, a central figure among the puritan East Anglian gentry, whose children had attended Emmanuel College. Mary's Lewknor and Machell connections with the Rich family included her first cousins Sir Nathaniel Rich and his sister Dame Margaret Wroth, wife of Sir Thomas Wroth of Petherton Park near Bridgwater, Somerset, influential promoters of colonial enterprise in New England. Aller was immediately within their sphere.
The children of Ralph Cudworth Snr and Mary Cudworth were:

Education

The second son, and third of five children, Ralph Cudworth was born at Aller, Somerset, where he was baptised. Following the death of his father, Ralph Cudworth Snr, John Stoughton,, succeeded as Rector of Aller, and married the widow Mary Cudworth. Dr Stoughton paid careful attention to his stepchildren's education, which Ralph later described as a "diet of Calvinism". Letters, to Stoughton, by both brothers James and Ralph Cudworth make this plain; and, when Ralph matriculated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Stoughton thought him "as wel grounded in Schol-Learning as any Boy of his Age that went to the University". Stoughton was appointed Curate and Preacher at St Mary Aldermanbury, London, and the family left Aller. Ralph's elder brother, James Cudworth, married and emigrated to Scituate, Plymouth Colony, New England. Mary Machell Cudworth Stoughton died during summer 1634, and Dr Stoughton married a daughter of John Browne of Frampton and Dorchester.

Pensioner, Student and Fellow of Emmanuel College (1630–1645)

From a family background embedded in the early nonconformity and a diligent student, Cudworth was admitted to his father's old college, Emmanuel College, Cambridge, matriculated, and graduated ; MA ). After some misgivings, he was elected a Fellow of Emmanuel, and became a successful tutor, delivering the Rede Lecture. He published a tract entitled The Union of Christ and the Church, in a Shadow, and another, A Discourse concerning the True Notion of the Lord's Supper, in which his readings of Karaite manuscripts were influential.

11th Regius Professor of Hebrew (1645) and 26th Master of Clare Hall (1645–1654)

Following sustained correspondence with John Selden, he was elected as 11th Regius Professor of Hebrew. In 1645, Thomas Paske had been ejected as Master of Clare Hall for his Anglican allegiances, and Cudworth was selected as his successor, as 26th Master. Similarly, his fellow-theologian Benjamin Whichcote was installed as 19th Provost of King's College. Cudworth attained the degree of Bachelor of Divinity, and preached a sermon before the House of Commons of England, which was later published with a Letter of Dedication to the House. Despite these distinctions and his presentation, by Emmanuel College, to the rectorate of North Cadbury, Somerset, he remained comparatively impoverished. He was awarded the degree of Doctor of Divinity, and, in January 1651/2, his friend Dr John Worthington wrote of him, "If through want of maintenance he should be forced to leave Cambridge, for which place he is so eminently accomplished with what is noble and Exemplarily Academical, it would be an ill omen."

Marriage (1654) and 14th Master of Christ's College (1654–1688)

Despite his worsening sight, Cudworth was elected and admitted, as 14th Master of Christ's College. His appointment coincided with his marriage to Damaris, daughter of Matthew Cradock, first Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company. Hence Worthington commented "After many tossings Dr Cudworth is through God's good Providence returned to Cambridge and settled in Christ's College, and by his marriage more settled and fixed."
In his Will, Matthew Cradock had divided his estate beside the Mystic River at Medford, Massachusetts into two moieties: one was bequeathed to his daughter Damaris Cradock, ; and one was to be enjoyed by his widow Rebecca, and afterwards to be inherited by his brother, Samuel Cradock, and his heirs male. Samuel Cradock's son, Samuel Cradock Jnr, was admitted to Emmanuel, graduated ; MA ; BD ), was later a Fellow, and pupil of Benjamin Whichcote's. After part of the Medford estate was rented to Edward Collins, it was placed in the hands of an attorney; the widow Rebecca Cradock, petitioned the General Court of Massachusetts, and the legatees later sold the estate to Collins.
The marriage of the widow Rebecca Cradock to Cudworth's colleague Benjamin Whichcote laid the way for the union between Cudworth and her stepdaughter Damaris, which reinforced the connections between the two scholars through a familial bond. Damaris had first married Thomas Andrewes Jnr of London and Feltham, son of Sir Thomas Andrewes,, which union had produced several children. The Andrewes family were also engaged in the Massachusetts project, and strongly supported puritan causes.

Commonwealth and Restoration

Cudworth emerged as a central figure among that circle of theologians and philosophers known as the Cambridge Platonists, who were in sympathy with the Commonwealth: during the later 1650s, Cudworth was consulted by John Thurloe, Oliver Cromwell's Secretary to the Council of State, with regard to certain university and government appointments and various other matters. During 1657, Cudworth advised Bulstrode Whitelocke's sub-committee of the Parliamentary "Grand Committee for Religion" on the accuracy of editions of the English Bible. Cudworth was appointed Vicar of Great Wilbraham, and Rector of Toft, Cambridgeshire Ely diocese, but surrendered these livings when he was presented, by Dr Gilbert Sheldon, Bishop of London, to the Hertfordshire Rectory of Ashwell.
Given Cudworth's close cooperation with prominent figures in Oliver Cromwell's regime, Cudworth's continuance as Master of Christ's was challenged at the Restoration but, ultimately, he retained this post until his death. He and his family are believed to have resided in private lodgings at the "Old Lodge", and various improvements were made to the college rooms in his time. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1662.

Later life

In 1665, Cudworth almost quarrelled with his fellow-Platonist, Henry More, because of the latter's composition of an ethical work which Cudworth feared would interfere with his own long-contemplated treatise on the same subject. To avoid any difficulties, More published his Enchiridion ethicum, in Latin; However, Cudworth's planned treatise was never published. His own majestic work, The True Intellectual System of the Universe, was conceived in three parts of which only the first was completed; he wrote: "there is no reason why this volume should therefore be thought imperfect and incomplete, because it hath not all the Three Things at first Designed by us: it containing all that belongeth to its own particular Title and Subject, and being in that respect no Piece, but a Whole."
Cudworth was installed as Prebendary of Gloucester. His colleague, Benjamin Whichcote, died at Cudworth's house in Cambridge, and Cudworth himself died, and was buried in the Chapel of Christ's College. An oil portrait of Cudworth hangs in the Hall of Christ's College. During Cudworth's time an outdoor Swimming Pool was created at Christ's College, and a carved bust of Cudworth there accompanies those of John Milton and Nicholas Saunderson.
Cudworth's widow, Damaris Andrewes Cudworth, maintained close connections with her daughter, Damaris Cudworth Masham, at High Laver, Essex, which was where she died, and was commemorated in the church with a carved epitaph reputedly composed by the philosopher John Locke.

Children

The children of Ralph Cudworth and Damaris Andrewes Cudworth were:
The stepchildren of Ralph Cudworth were:
Cudworth was a member of the Cambridge Platonists, a group of English seventeenth-century thinkers associated with the University of Cambridge who were stimulated by Plato's teachings but also were aware of and influenced by Descartes, Hobbes, Bacon, Boyle and Spinoza.

Plastic principle

The role of nature was one faced by philosophers in the Age of Reason or Enlightenment. The prevailing view was either that of the Church of a personal deity intervening in his creation, producing miracles, or an ancient pantheism – deity pervading all things and existing in all things. However, the "ideas of an all-embracing providential care of the world and of one universal vital force capable of organizing the world from within." presented difficulties for philosophers of a spiritual as well as materialistic bent.
Cudworth countered these mechanical, materialistic views of nature in his True intellectual system of the universe, with the idea of 'the Plastick Life of Nature', a formative principle that contains both substance and the laws of motion, as well as a nisus or direction that accounts for design and goal in the natural world. He was stimulated by the Cartesian idea of the mind as self-consciousness to see God as consciousness. He first analysed four forms of atheism from ancient times to present, and showed that all misunderstood the principle of life and knowledge, which involved unsentient activity and self-consciousness, addressing the tension between theism and atheism, took both the Stoic idea of Divine Reason poured into the world, and the Platonic idea of the world soul to posit a power that was polaric – "either as a ruling but separate mind or as an informing vital principle – either nous hypercosmios or nous enkosmios. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica:
All of the atheistic approaches posited nature as unconscious, which for Cudworth was ontologically unsupportable, as a principle that was supposed to be the ultimate source of life and meaning could only be itself self-conscious and knowledgeable, that is, rational, otherwise creation or nature degenerates into inert matter set in motion by random external forces. Cudworth saw nature as a vegetative power endowed with plastic and spermatic forces, but one with Mind, or a self-conscious knowledge. This idea would later emerge in the Romantic period in German science as Blumenbach's Bildungstreib and the Lebenskraft. Guido Giglioni writes:
The essence of atheism for Cudworth was the view that matter was self-active and self-sufficient, whereas for Cudworth the plastic power was unsentient and under the direct control of the universal Mind or Logos. For him atheism, whether mechanical or material could not solve the "phenomenon of nature." Henry More argued that atheism made each substance independent and self-acting such that it 'deified' matter. Cudworth argued that materialism/mechanism reduced "substance to a corporeal entity, its activity to causal determinism, and each single thing to fleeting appearances in a system dominated by material necessity."
Cudworth had the idea of a general plastic nature of the world, containing natural laws to keep all of nature, inert and vital in orderly motion, and particular plastic natures in particular entities, which serve as 'Inward Principles' of growth and motion, but ascribes it to the Platonic tradition:
Further, Cudsworth's plastic principle was also a functional polarity. As he wrote:
As another historian notes in conclusion, "Cudworth's theory of plastic natures is offered as an alternative to the interpretation of all of nature as either governed by blind chance, or, on his understanding of the Malebranchean view, as micro-managed by God."

Plastic principle and mind

Cudworth's plastic principle also involves a theory of mind that is active, that is, God or the Supreme Mind is "the spermatic reason" which gives rise to individual mind and reason. Human mind can also create, and has access to spiritual or super-sensible 'Ideas' in the Platonic sense. Cudworth challenged Hobbesian determinism in arguing that will is not distinct from reason, but a power to act that is internal, and therefore, the voluntary will function involves self-determination, not external compulsion, though we have the power to act either in accordance with God's will or not. Cudworth's 'hegemonikon' is a function within the soul that combines the higher functions of the soul on the one hand with the lower animal functions, and also constitutes the whole person, thus bridging the Cartesian dualism of body and soul or psyche and soma. This idea provided the basis for a concept of self-awareness and identity of an individual that is self-directed and autonomous, an idea that anticipates John Locke.

Views on animals

Cudworth rejected René Descartes' animal machine doctrine, which held that animals are mere automata devoid of consciousness. In contrast to Descartes' strict dualism, which limited subjective experience to rational, immaterial human souls, Cudworth argued that animals possess a form of soul marked by internal self-activity and sensibility. He maintained that living beings are distinguished from inanimate matter not only by rationality but also by their capacity for autonomous motion and subjective states. Though based on metaphysical premises not widely held today, Cudworth's account provided a moral and philosophical contrast to mechanistic interpretations of animal life and denied that animals should be regarded as mindless or morally insignificant.

Legacy

Locke examined how man came to knowledge via stimulus, which approach led to his idea of the 'thinking' mind, which is both receptive and pro-active. The first involves receiving sensations and the second by reflection – "observation of its own inner operations", with the second activity acting upon the first. Thought is set in motion by outer stimuli which 'simple ideas' are taken up by the mind's self-activity, an "active power" such that the outer world can only be real-ized as action by the activity of consciousness. Locke also took the issue of life as lying not in substance but in the capacity of the self for consciousness, to be able to organize disparate events, that is to participate life by means of the sense experiences, which have the capacity to produce every kind of experience in consciousness. These ideas of Locke were taken over by Fichte and influenced German Romantic science and medicine..
Thomas Reid and his "Common Sense" philosophy, was also influenced by Cudworth, taking his influence into the Scottish Enlightenment.
George Berkeley later developed the idea of a plastic life principle with his idea of an 'aether' or 'aetherial medium' that causes 'vibrations' that animate all living beings. For Berkeley, it is the very nature of this medium that generates the 'attractions' of entities to each other.
Berkeley meant this 'aether' to supplant Newton's gravity as the cause of motion. However, in Berkeley's conception, aether is both the movement of spirit and the motion of nature.
Both Cudworth's views and those of Berkeley were taken up by Coleridge in his metaphor of the eolian harp in his 'Effusion XXXV' as one commentator noted: "what we see in the first manuscript is the articulation of Cudworth's principle of plastic nature, which is then transformed in the published version into a Berkeleyan expression of the causal agency of motion performed by God's immanent activity."

Works

Sermons and treatises

Cudworth's works included The Union of Christ and the Church, in a Shadow ; A Sermon preached before the House of Commons ; and A Discourse concerning the True Notion of the Lord's Supper. Much of Cudworth's work remains in manuscript. However, certain surviving works have been published posthumously, such as ''A Treatise concerning eternal and immutable Morality, and A Treatise of Freewill. ''

''A Treatise concerning eternal and immutable Morality'' (posth.)

Cudworth's Treatise on eternal and immutable Morality, published with a preface by Edward Chandler, is about the historical development of British moral philosophy. It answers, from the standpoint of Platonism, Hobbes's famous doctrine that moral distinctions are created by the state. It argues that just as knowledge contains a permanent intelligible element over and above the flux of sense-impressions, so there exist eternal and immutable ideas of morality.

''A Treatise of Freewill'' (posth.)

Another posthumous publication was Cudworth's A Treatise of Freewill, edited by King's College London|John Allen]. Both this and the Treatise on eternal and immutable Morality are connected with the design of his magnum opus, The True Intellectual System of the Universe.

''The True Intellectual System of the Universe'' (1678)

In 1678, Cudworth published The True Intellectual System of the Universe: the first part, wherein all the reason and philosophy of atheism is confuted and its impossibility demonstrated, which had been given an Imprimatur for publication.

The Intellectual System arose, according to Cudworth, from a discourse refuting "fatal necessity", or determinism. Enlarging his plan, he proposed to prove three matters:
  1. the existence of God;
  2. the naturalness of moral distinctions; and
  3. the reality of human freedom.
These three comprise, collectively, the intellectual system of the universe; and they are opposed, respectively, by three false principles: atheism, religious fatalism, and the fatalism of the ancient Stoics. Only the first part, dealing with atheism, was ever published.
Cudworth criticizes two main forms of materialistic atheism: the atomic ; and the hylozoic. Atomic atheism, to which Cudworth devotes the larger part of the work, is described as arising from the combination of two principles, neither of which is, individually, atheistic. The example of Stoicism, Cudworth suggests, shows that corporealism may be theistic.
Cudworth discusses the history of atomism at length. It is, in its purely physical application, a theory that he fully accepts. He holds that theistic atomism was taught by Pythagoras, Empedocles and many other ancient philosophers, and was only perverted to atheism by Democritus. Cudworth believes that atomism was first invented before the Trojan War by a Sidonian thinker named Moschus or Mochus.
Cudworth's method in arranging his work was to marshal the atheistic arguments elaborately before refuting them in his final chapter. This led many readers to accuse Cudworth himself of atheism – as John Dryden remarked, "he has raised such objections against the being of a God and Providence that many think he has not answered them". Much attention was also attached to a subordinate matter in the book, the conception of the "Plastic Medium" which was intended to explain the existence and laws of nature without referring to the direct operation of God. This theory occasioned a long-drawn controversy between Pierre Bayle and Georges-Louis Leclerc, with the former maintaining, and the latter denying, that the Plastic Medium is favourable to atheism.
Summing up the work, Andrew Dickson White wrote in 1896:

To this day he remains, in breadth of scholarship, in strength of thought, in tolerance, and in honesty, one of the greatest glories of the English Church... He purposed to build a fortress which should protect Christianity against all dangerous theories of the universe, ancient or modern... While genius marked every part of it, features appeared which gave the rigidly orthodox serious misgivings. From the old theories of direct personal action on the universe by the Almighty he broke utterly. He dwelt on the action of law, rejected the continuous exercise of miraculous intervention, pointed out the fact that in the natural world there are "errors" and "bungles" and argued vigorously in favor of the origin and maintenance of the universe as a slow and gradual development of Nature in obedience to an inward principle.

Arms