Cambridge Platonism: Reception and Influence

The program will run as follows:

DAY 1: May 31st (1pm - 6pm)

Michael Gill - "Whichcote and Cudworth on Religious Tolerance and the Readmission of the Jews"

Nick Fisher - "The influence of John Smith's 'noble intellect and generous Christian faith' upon Simon Patrick (1626-1707)"

Luisa Simonutti - "Consciousness and identity : Locke and Cudworth"

Isabel Rivers - "The promotion of the Cambridge Platonists by some clerics and ministers from the later seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries: Gilbert Burnet, Henry Scougal, William Wishart, John Wesley, Richard Price, Alexander Knox, John Jebb"


DAY 2: June 1st (9am - 6pm)

Thomas Fedrick-Illsley - "Samuel Clarke and the Cambridge Platonists"

Friedrich Uehlein - "Whichcote, Shaftesbury and Deism"

Louise Hickman - "Deiform reason: The Cambridge Platonists and Eighteenth Century Dissenting Thought"

Sylvana Tomaselli - "Reflections on Love in the political writings of Wollstonecraft"

Derek Michaud - "John Smith's Lasting Influence: The Transatlantic Reception of a 'Living Library'"

James Vigus - ""This is not quite fair, Master More!": Coleridge's Encounters with the Cambridge Platonists"

Philippe Barthelet - "Entre théodicée et apologétique, Platon comme « préface humaine de l'Évangile » : Joseph de Maistre et Simone Weil dans le sillage ouvert par Cudworth"

Russell Manning - "The Irrelevance and Relevance of Cambridge Platonism for Twentieth-Century Theology"

Although the workshop is free to attend, we have no provision for attendee travel costs, accommodation or meals. This workshop is part of a larger project, 'Revisioning Cambridge Platonism'.

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REVISIONING CAMBRIDGE PLATONISM

The work of the Cambridge Platonists has been gravely neglected due to a combination of scholarly misapprehensions, a lack of accessible textbooks, and good critical editions of their major works. The central aim of this interdisciplinary project is to begin addressing this neglect by bringing together the major established UK and overseas researchers as well as early career academics who work on, or have a close interest in, Cambridge Platonism. This will advance research on this pivotal intellectual movement. These discussions will take place at a series of workshops at Clare College, Cambridge. Contributors will be drawn from the disciplines of Philosophy, Theology/Religious Studies, and English Literature. Topics covered by the project will include, but not be limited to, the formation and sources of Cambridge Platonism, their key philosophical and religious ideas, and their reception in the areas of (i) aesthetics; (ii) ethics; (iii) metaphysics (iv) early-modern women's writing; (v) secularisation and the origins of atheism.

The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

For queries, please contact Emily Thomas on [email protected] or David Leech on [email protected]