Introduction

Summary

Ralph Cudworth is a philosopher who spans the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. In an age of intellectual ferment, when the strident new philosophies of the seventeenth century announced their modernity by repudiating the past, Cudworth is a figure of continuity. This is symbolized by the fact that one of his major philosophical works, his Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, was published in the eighteenth century (1731), while the only major work published in his lifetime, his True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678), is steeped in the humanistic scholarship of the Renaissance. If the former has ensured that philosophers still pay some attention to Cudworth even today, the latter has helped deter them from close acquaintance, for Cudworth's reputation for learning has gone before him. The encrustation of erudition which clogs the pages of his True Intellectual System of the Universe has resulted in his being set aside in this century as an antiquarian.

None the less, modern neglect of Cudworth belies the enduring legacy which his writings enjoyed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries both at home and abroad. He was held in high regard by many, including John Locke, John Ray, Shaftesbury, Price and Reid. His System was reprinted twice, in different formats, in England in the eighteenth century. In 1733 Johan Lorenz Mosheim published a Latin translation of Cudworth's works in Germany. Mosheim delayed publication of his translation in order to be able to include A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, thereby ensuring a European-wide diffusion for The Treatise alongside Cudworth's True Intellectual System.