Henry More, 1614-1687
Henry More, 1614-1687

Author: R. Crocker

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-03-09

Total Pages: 293

ISBN-13: 9401702179

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This is the first modern biography to place Henry More’s (1614-1687) religious and philosophical preoccupations centre-stage, and to provide a coherent interpretation of his work from a consideration of his own writings, their contexts and aims. It is also the first study of More to exploit the full range of his prolific writings and a number of unknown manuscripts relating to his life. It contains an annotated handlist of his extant correspondence.

The Metaphysics of Henry More
The Metaphysics of Henry More

Author: Jasper Reid

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-05-22

Total Pages: 415

ISBN-13: 9400739885

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The book surveys the key metaphysical contributions of the Cambridge Platonist, Henry More (1614–1687). It deals with such interwoven topics as: the natures of body and spirit, and the question of whether or not there is a sharp ontological division between them; the nature of spatial extension in relation to each; the composition and governance of the physical world, including More’s theories of Hyle, atoms, vacuum, and the Spirit of Nature; and the life of the human soul, including its pre-existence. It approaches these topics and the systematic connections between them both historically and analytically, and seeks to do justice to the ways in which More’s system developed and changed—sometimes quite dramatically—over the course of his long career. It also explores More's intellectual relations with both his own inspirations (Plotinus, Origen, Ficino, Descartes, etc.) and with those who responded, whether positively or negatively, to his work (Leibniz, Locke, Boyle, Newton, etc.).

The Metaphysics of Resurrection in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy
The Metaphysics of Resurrection in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy

Author: Jon W. Thompson

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-11-14

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 3031101685

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This book provides a new account of the emergence of the philosophy of personal identity in the early modern period. Reflection on personal identity is often thought to have begun in earnest with John Locke’s famous consciousness-based account, published in the 2nd Edition of the Essay in 1694. The present work argues that we ought to understand modern notions of personal identity, including Locke’s own, as emerging from within debates about the metaphysics of resurrection across the seventeenth century. It recovers and analyses theories of personal identity and resurrection in Locke and Leibniz, as well as largely-forgotten theories from the Cambridge Platonists, Thomas Jackson, and Francisco Suárez. The book narrates a time of radical change in conceptions of personal identity: the period begins with a near-consensus on hylomorphism, according to which the body is an essential metaphysical part of the person. The re-emergence of platonism in the period then undermines the centrality of the body for personal identity, and this lays the groundwork for a more thoroughly ‘psychological’ account of personal identity in Locke. This work represents the first scholarly study to thoroughly situate early modern conceptions of personal identity, embodiment, and the afterlife within the context of late scholasticism. Finally, due to its focus on the arguments of the authors in question, the work will be of interest to philosophers of religion as well as historians of philosophy.

The Cambridge Platonists
The Cambridge Platonists

Author: Sarah Hutton

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-10-17

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 100098270X

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This book illustrates the vitality and diversity of the seventeenth-century philosophers now known as the “Cambridge Platonists”, focusing chiefly on Henry More, Ralph Cudworth and two women associated with the group — Anne Conway and Damaris Masham. The “Cambridge Platonists” made significant contributions to early modern philosophy. Their Platonist sobriquet obscures the fact that they were at the forefront of new thinking of their day.Some of the first English philosophers to write in the vernacular, they tackled the big themes of seventeenth-century philosophy (materialism, determinism, scepticism, atheism) and contributed original and innovative ideas in metaphysics, epistemology, psychology, and ethics. This volume highlights their treatment of some key philosophical themes (from the infinity of the world and the concept of substance to consciousness animals, love), and their inter-connections with contemporary philosophers (Descartes, Leibniz, and Locke). This book will be a valuable resource for academics, researchers, and Philosophy graduates. The chapters in this book were originally published in the British Journal for the History of Philosophy.

C. S. Lewis on the Final Frontier
C. S. Lewis on the Final Frontier

Author: Sanford Schwartz

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2009-07-02

Total Pages: 258

ISBN-13: 0199705488

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Sanford Schwartz offers a penetrating new reading of Lewis's celebrated Space Trilogy. Taken together, Schwartz's readings call into question Lewis's self-styled image as a "dinosaur" out of step with the main currents of modern thought. Far from a simple struggle between an old-fashioned Christian humanism and a newfangled heresy, Lewis's Space Trilogy should be seen as the searching effort of a modern religious apologist to sustain and enrich the former through critical engagement with the latter.

Space God
Space God

Author: JD Lyonhart

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2023-10-19

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 1666757047

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Henry More had an odd idea. Thinking about space, he realized it was invisible, for we see things in space but not space itself. It’s also immaterial, for matter exists in space but space is not itself material—try to grab it and it slips through your fingers. Space was also infinite and transcendent yet nonetheless omnipresent, for we cannot go anywhere except in and through space. But this was exactly how More saw God; God is invisible, immaterial, infinite, and transcendent, yet also omnipresent above, beyond, and within us. If God was somehow linked to space, he could be truly present while remaining immaterial, upholding the creator-creature distinction. He’d be near to us but would not be identical with us, just as space is distinct from the objects occupying it while remaining intimately close to those objects. What if space was, in some sense, divine? Odder still, Newton soon erected his new physics upon More’s idea. Indeed, there’s real evidence that the modern scientific world was unwittingly grounded upon this theistic metaphysic. Of course, modern physics shed these underpinnings in the nineteenth century, and was itself relativized by Einstein in the twentieth. Yet this book seeks to reappraise More’s odd idea. Is divine space theologically orthodox? Can it provide a new argument for the existence of God? And does it have any philosophical merit for us post-Einstein—a Space God for a Space Age?