‘A Moral Divinitie’: Emmanuel College and the Origins of Cambridge Platonism

This thesis attempts to shed light on the origins of the movement known as 'Cambridge Platonism' through a close philosophical and historical analysis of three key figures belonging to Emmanuel College (referred to as the Emmanuel Three): Benjamin Whichcote (1609–1683), Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688) and John Smith (1618?–1652). In particular, it focuses on the common Platonic outlook which the Emmanuel Three deployed against key tenets of the Calvinist theology of their Puritan colleagues at the university. It is argued that the Smith and Cudworth played a central role in the religious controversy that culminated in a tense correspondence between Whichcote and the Puritan theologian Anthony Tuckney in 1651. Part I of the thesis situates this analysis of the Emmanuel Three within the historiographical controversy around Cambridge Platonism. Part II gives an overview of the Emmanuel Three's intellectual context, with a particular focus on a Platonic current centred at Emmanuel College in the late 1630s. Part III turns on to the 1640s and identifies three key areas in which the Emmanuel Three present strikingly similar critiques of important Calvinist doctrines, with a secondary focus on the ways (often recognised by their opponents) in which these critiques reveal the influence of Platonism. Finally, Part IV explores the 'philosophical core' of the Emmanuel Three's philosophical outlook, providing a detailed analysis of their participatory religious epistemology and their conceptions of divine and human freedom. In sum, the thesis uses the historical problem of the origins of Cambridge Platonism to bring out the distinctive philosophical contribution of the often neglected Emmanuel Three to central and formative debates in philosophy of religion