Cambridge Platonists

The Cambridge Platonists were a group of theologians and philosophers at the University of Cambridge in the middle of the 17th century. The leading figures were Ralph Cudworth and Henry More.

Mark Goldie, writing in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, notes that the term "Cambridge Platonists" was given in the 19th century and can be misleading. There is no clear distinction between the group and latitudinarians in general. Further, the women philosophers Mary Astell, Anne Conway and Damaris Masham were all closely related to this circle.

The Cambridge Platonists used the framework of the philosophia perennis of Agostino Steuco, and from it argued for moderation. They believed that reason is the proper judge of disagreements, and so they advocated dialogue between the Puritan and Laudian traditions. The orthodox English Calvinists of the time found in their views an insidious attack, by-passing as it did the basic theological issues of atonement and justification by faith. Given the circle's Cambridge background in Puritan colleges, the undermining was intellectually all the more effective. John Bunyan complained in those terms about Edward Fowler, a close latitudinarian follower.

Their understanding of reason was as "the candle of the Lord": an echo of the divine within the human soul and an imprint of God within man. They believed that reason could judge the private revelations of Puritan narrative, and investigate contested rituals and liturgy of the Church of England. For this approach they were called "latitudinarian".

The dogmatism of the Puritan divines, with their anti-rationalist demands, was, they felt, incorrect. They also felt that the Calvinist insistence on individual revelation left God uninvolved with the majority of mankind. At the same time, they were reacting against the reductive materialist writings of Thomas Hobbes. They felt that the latter, while rationalist, were denying the idealistic part of the universe.

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