"Democritus Platonissans" by Henry More. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.
This is the first complete modern edition of Henry More's long philosophical poem, A Platonick Song of the Soul (1647). This early work, written in Spenserian stanzas, is a sustained literary presentation of the Neoplatonic doctrine of the immateriality and immortality of the soul. The Introduction to this book discusses both the literary background of the work and its varied philosophical and scientific sources, from Plotinus to Ficino and Galileo.
The typical Cartesian collection contains papers which treat the problems arising out of Descartes's philosophy as though they and it appeared for the first time in a recent journal. The approach of this collection is quite different. The eight contributo
Of all the Cambridge Platonists, Henry More has attracted the most scholar ly interest in recent years, as the nature and significance of his contribution to the history of thought has come to be better understood. This revival of interest is in marked contrast to the neglect of More's writings lamented even by his first biographer, Richard Ward, a regret echoed two centuries after his 1 death. Since then such attention as there has been to More has not always served him well. He has been dismissed as credulous on account of his belief in witchcraft while his reputation as the most mystical of the Cambridge 2 school has undermined his reputation as a philosopher. Much of the interest in More in the present century has tended to focus on one particular aspect of his writing. There has been considerable interest in his poems. And he has come to the attention of philosophers thanks to his having corresponded with Descartes. Latterly, however, interest in More has been rekindled by renewed interest in the intellectual history of the seventeenth century and Renaissance. And More has been studied in the context of seventeenth-cen tury science and the wider context of seventeenth-century philosophy. Since More is a figure who belongs to the Renaissance tradition of unified sapientia he is not easily compartmentalised in the categories of modern disciplines. Inevitably discussion of anyone aspect of his thought involves other aspects.
An investigation into the remarkable "poetics of the atom" in English literary texts from the mid to late seventeenth century. The early modern "atom" - understood as an indivisible particle of matter - captured the poetic imagination in ways that extended far beyond the reception of Lucretius and Epicurean atomism. Contrarily to fears of atomisation and materialist threat, many poets and philosophers of the period sought positive, spiritual motivation in the concept of material indivisibility. This book traces the metaphysical import of these poetic atoms, teasing out an affinity between poetic and atomic forms in seventeenth-century texts. In the writings of Henry More, Thomas Traherne, Margaret Cavendish, Hester Pulter and Lucy Hutchinson, both atoms and poems were instrumental in acts of creating, ordering and reconstructing knowledge. Their poems emerge as exquisitely self-conscious atomic forms, producing intimate reflections on the creative power and indivisibility of self, soul and God. The book begins with a survey of the imaginative possibilities surrounding the early modern "atom", before considering the indivisible centres of the Cambridge Platonist Henry More's cosmic, Spenserian poetics. The focus then turns to the lyrical bond formed between atom and soul in the writings of Thomas Traherne, and from there, to the experimental sequences of Margaret Cavendish and Hester Pulter, whose poetic spaces create new worlds and imagine alternative lives. The book concludes with a study of Lucy Hutchinson's creation poem Order and Disorder, which anticipates the regeneration of fallen being in atomic and alchemical terms.
This comparative and interdisciplinary study focuses on a cluster of epoch-making themes that emerged in the late sixteenth century. Michelangelo and Giordano Bruno are taken as the founding fathers of the Baroque, and we see that beyond the Alps their lessons were echoed in Montaigne, Cervantes, and the Counter-Reformation culture of the Mediterranean basin. Maiorino shows that the common denominator that links the origins of the Baroque to its maturity is the concept of form as &"process,&" which is then articulated into chapters on the formative unity of the arts, art forms at the threshold, and the development from humanist perfection to Baroque perfectibility. Such an evolution in literature and the arts is situated in relation to the age of explorations (Columbus), scientific inventions (the telescope), and the fundamental shift from the enclosed Ptolemic system to the open universe of the Copernican revolution. At the Baroque point of origin, the inner vitality of Michelangelo's emphasis on creation as &"process&" rather than completed act taught a crucial lesson to Baroque artists. Their response to the infinite and open universe of the &"New Science&" was one that took part to be as dynamic and metamorphic as life itself. It is in the context of &"open&" forms within an &"open&" universe that this study moves from Michelangelo to Bruno. His poetics of immeasurable abundance set &"process&" at the very core of the Baroque art, thought, and science. Applied to the forms of art, growth and metamorphosis are linked to what Maiorino calls (borrowing from Mikhail Bakhtin) the Baroque chronotope of formation, which refers to forms responding to the dynamics of space-time interactions. Such interactions were exhaustive and even tested the boundaries between reality and fiction, creation and denial, conformity and criticism from picaresque Spain to middle-class Holland. And it is the painting of a Dutch artist&—Rembrandt's Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer&— that is taken as a symbol of the Baroque reconciliation of humanist learning with human or humane understanding. Such a humanizing attitude also marked the final transformation of humanist ideals of perfection into the Baroque experience of human perfectibility. This book will be of importance to all scholars concerned with the history of ideas, cultural history, and the Baroque in literature and art.
The significance of Henry More's vitalist philosophy in the history of ideas has been realized relatively recently, as the bibliography will reveal. The general neglect of the Cambridge Platonist movement may be attributed to the common prejudice that its chief exponents, especially More, were obscure mystics who were neither coherent in their philosophical system nor attractive in their prose style. I hope that this modern edition of More's principal treatise will help to correct this unjust im pression and reveal the keenness and originality of More's intellect, which sought to demonstrate the relevance of classical philosophy in an age of empirical science. The wealth of learning -- ranging as it does from Greek antiquity to 17th century science and philosophy -- that informs More' s intellectual system of the universe should, in itself, be a recom mendation to students of the history of ideas. Though, for those in search of literary satisfaction, too, there is not wanting, in More's style, the humour, and grace, of a man whose erudition did not divorce him from a sympathetic understanding of human contradictions. As for More's elaborate speculations concerning the spirit world in the final book of this treatise, I think that we would indeed be justified in regarding their combination of classical mythology amd scientific naturalism as the literary and philosophical counterpart of the great celestial frescoes of the Baroque masters.
This fifth volume covers many of the most important philosophers and movements of the nineteenth century, including utilitarianism, positivism and pragmatism.
This major work by the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg is a monumental rethinking of the significance of the Copernican revolution for our understanding of modernity.
