Ralph Cudworth was born in England in 1617 in the town of Aller, Somerset. His father’s name was also Ralph Cudworth but he was a Rector of Aller, a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and a former chaplain to King James I. The distinction here should not be too confusing since one was a baby and the other had all the above titles. Baby Cudworth’s mother was Mary Machell Cudworth, who was a nurse for James’ elder son, Henry. However, in a twist of fate, the non-baby Cudworth died in 1624 after which Mary Cudworth married Doctor John Stoughton who was responsible for young Ralph’s education.
Ralph Cudworth decided to study at Emmanuel in 1632. He received a Bachelor of Arts in 1635 and a Master of Arts in 1639. He began to serve as a tutor at the time he was elected a Fellow of Emmanuel. Presumably on a streak of learning, Cudworth also acquired a Bachelors of Divinity in 1646 followed by a Doctorate in Divinity in 1651. During these years, Cudworth became friends with Benjamin Whichcote who was the founder of the Cambridge Platonists movement.
The Cambridge Platonists.
The Cambridge Platonists were a group of thinkers in England during the seventeenth century. Significant philosophers that were part of the Cambridge Platonists were Henry More and Ralph Cudworth. Henry More’s contributions to the Cambridge Platonists were his correspondences with Descartes and his criticisms of Spinoza. The driving force behind the ideas of Cambridge Platonists was theology, they devoted considerable time and effort to the defense of the existence of God or the soul’s immortality for example.
The Opus
Cudworth’s dedication to Cambridge Platonist ideologies is revealed in his main work, The True Intellectual System of the Universe: the First Part wherein All the Reason and Philosophy of Atheism is Confuted and Its Impossibility Demonstrated, written in 1678. This work was meant to be a definitive explanation of the world through the Platonist lens. The first section would argue against atheism, specifically its Hobbsian interpretation, and by extension it would also argue against materialism. The second section would critique voluntarism. The third would contain arguments against fatalism.
Yet the first volume of his System attracted controversy. There were many split responses to the publication of the first volume. Ironically, some considered it as showing atheist results. Others found his interpretation of Christianity wrong. Thus Cudworth suspended his project due to such a reception.
The Ideas
Cudworth published more works after suspending his main project yet none in similar magnitude. Several publications are based on the supposed continuations of the True System, thus most of Cudworth’s philosophy is contained in his main work or its derivations. It is good to note here that Cudworth was officially a Calvinist but as a Platonist rejected most Calvinist theology. It is from here where his ideas sprout.
For Calvinists, God is unrestrained and able to do anything, logic need not apply. This is of importance since according to the above view, it is impossible to know anything about God through logic, leaving the only other way of learning about God, divine revelation. Platonists naturally rejected such an idea since they posed God as a rational and good being, which would allow humans to have some understanding of God’s place in the universe if not God’s nature entirely. This is the main foundation upon which Cudworth builds his philosophy, through rational theology, he aims to prove the existence of God, yielding many important corollaries in the process.